Return Engagement

Destroyer 71: Return Engagement

By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

Chapter 1

He had waited almost forty years for this moment. Forty years. And now the waiting would end here, on this winter day, with dirty snow clotting the road and the sun high and remote and cheerless in the bleak New Hampshire sky.

He touched the lever, and the wheelchair shifted closer to the darkened window. The smell of old oil filled the interior of the van. Down the road, a car neared, weaving slightly from wheels that were out of alignment.

"Is it him?" he called, his voice cracking. Was it just his age that made it crack? Once, it had been a strong voice, a powerful voice. He had been a powerful man with a strong physique that caused the young women to throw themselves at him. But now that magnificent physique was no more, and there was only one woman left.

"Hold on," Ilsa called. She ran out into the road, her body bouncing attractively. Ilsa tossed her long blond hair back from her soft oval face and trained Zeiss binoculars on the approaching car.

"The color is right," she called breathlessly. "Light blue. No, wait. The plates are wrong. Out-of-state plates. No good."

He slammed his left fist down, metal striking metal. "Damn!"

"Don't worry," Ilsa said through the tinted glass as she waved the passing car through. "He'll be along. He always comes to work by this road."

"Never mind that. I banged my hand. It stings!"

"Oh, poor baby. You really should get a grip on yourself."

Ilsa talked at the window. She couldn't see his face behind its smoky opacity. It didn't matter.

"Forty years," he said bitterly. "Actually thirty-eight years, seven months, and five days," Ilsa offered brightly.

He grunted. She hadn't been born then: Then, he had been as young as she was now. Had he known her then, he would have taken her. By force, if necessary. He would take her now-if he had anything left to take her with. Perhaps when this was over, he would find a way to take this foolish girl who had adopted the lost cause of a past generation as her own.

"Another car coming," she said, dashing out into the road again. He watched her. Her black pants were snug, hugging, her shapely girlish figure. Her white blouse was uniform crisp. She wore her armband inside out, so that only the red cloth showed. Even so, it reminded him of the old days.

"Is it him? Is it Smith?"

"Yes," Ilsa said excitedly. "It's him. It's Harold Smith."

"At last."

Harold D. Smith saw the girl first. She stood in the middle of the road, waving her arms.

She was attractive. Perhaps twenty-five or twenty-six, with a beautiful face that needed no makeup. A glimpse of a black lace brassiere showed between two straining blouse buttons. Smith noted these things absently. He had stopped looking at young women as sexual creatures about the time his white hair had started to recede, more than ten years before.

Smith braked his car. Then he noticed the van. It was one of those custorn jobs, painted bronze and decorated with airbrushed designs. It had pulled onto the slushy shoulder of the road. The plastic cover was off the rear-mounted spare tire.

The blond bounced to his side of the car and Smith let the window down. She gave him a sunny smile. He did not smile back.

"Can you help me, sir?"

"What seems to be the trouble?" Harold Smith asked.

The trouble was obvious-a flat tire but Smith asked anyway.

"I can't get the spare tire down."

"Just a moment," Harold Smith said. He pulled off the road, slightly annoyed that he would be late for work. He did not feel up to the exertion of changing a tire, not with what felt like three pounds of his wife's infamous five-alarm oatmeal congealing in his stomach.

He stepped out of his car as the blond came bouncing up like a happy puppy.

"I'm Ilsa Gmos," she said, putting out her hand. Uncertainly, he took it. Her grip was strong-stronger than he expected-and with her other hand she reached behind her back and removed a cocked pistol. She pointed it at him.

"Be nice," she warned.

Harold Smith tried to let go, but she squeezed his hand harder and spun him around. Her knee slammed into the small of his back and he fell against the car hood.

"I must warn you, young lady. If this is robbery-" But then the muzzle of the gun was at his back. He wondered if she was going to shoot him then and there.

"Hold still," she said. Her voice was a bar of metal. She undid her red armband, and, carefully turning it right-side-out, blindfolded Harold Smith. She marched him to the disabled van.

Had Smith been able to see himself just then, he would have recognized the black symbol in a white circle that burned the front of the red blindfold that had been securely knotted around his head. He might have understood then. But then again, he might not have.

"Harold Smith?" His mouth was dry. He took a drink. Why should he be nervous? It was Smith who should be nervous.

"Yes?" Harold Smith said uncertainly. He could not see, but Smith knew he was inside the bronze-hued van. The floor was carpeted, and his bald head had brushed the plush roof as he was forced in through the sliding side door. Cool hands pushed him down into a seat. It swiveled.

"Harold D. Smith?"

"Yes?" Smith's voice was calm.

The man had poise, if not courage. He wondered if that would make it easier. "The first ten years were the worst."

"I don't understand," Smith said.

"The walls were green. Light green above, and dark green below. I could do nothing but stare at them: I thought of you often in those days, Harold Smith."

"Do I know you?"

"I'm getting to that, Smith." He spat the name out. His nervousness was leaving him. Good. Ilsa smiled at him. She was kneeling on the rug, looking like a dutiful daughter, except for the pistol she kept trained on the hated Harold D. Smith.

"We didn't have television then," he continued in a calmer voice. "Television was new. In America, people had television. But not where I had been consigned. No one had television there. So I stared at the green walls. They burned my retinas, they were so green. To this day, I cannot bear to look at grass. Or American paper money."

Harold Smith tried to see past his blindfold. He kept his hands carefully placed one on each knee. He dared not make a move. He knew the blond-girl had the pistol-it had looked like a Luger-pointed at him.

"Eventually," the dry voice continued. "we had television. I think that was what saved my sanity. Television fed my mind. It was my window, for the green room had no windows, you see. I think without television I would have let myself die. Even hate can sustain a person just so long."

"Hate? I don't know you."

"You can't see me, Harold Smith."

"Your voice is not familiar."

"My voice? You last heard it in 1949. Do you remember?"

"No," Harold Smith said slowly.

"No! Not even a stirring memory, Smith? Not even that?"

"I'm sorry, what is this about?"

"Death, Smith. It is about death. My death... and yours."

Smith gripped his knees tighter.

"Do you remember where you were on June 7, 1949?"

"Of course not. No one could."

"I remember. I remember it well. It was the day I died. "

Smith said nothing. This man was obviously deranged. His mind raced. Would another car came along? Would it stop? But this was not a well-traveled road.

"It was the day I died," the voice continued. "It was the day you killed me. Now tell me, Harold Smith, that you do not remember that day."

"I don't," Smith answered slowly. "I think you have the wrong man."

"Liar!"

"I said I don't remember," Harold Smith said evenly. He knew that when you dealt with unbalanced minds, it was better to speak in a calm voice. He also knew that you shouldn't contradict them, but Smith was stubborn. He wasn't about to go along with a madman's ravings just to humor him.

Smith heard the whirring sounds of a small motor and the dry voice came closer. Smith suddenly understood that the wan was in a wheelchair. He remembered the handicapped decal on the back of the van.

"You don't remember." The voice was bitter, almost sad.

"That's correct," Smith said stiffly.

Smith heard a new sound then. It was a softer whirring, more like the muted sound of a dentist's highspeed drill. The sound made him shiver. He hated visiting the dentist. Always had.

The blindfold was swept from his eyes. Smith blinked stupidly.

The man in the wheelchair had a face as dry as his voice. It resembled a bleached walnut shell, corrugated with lines and wrinkles. The eyes were black and sharp, the lips a thin desiccated line. The rest of the face was dead, long dead. The teeth were stained almost brown, with the roots exposed by receding gums.

"I don't recognize your face," Smith said in a voice calmer than his thoughts. He could feel his heart racing and his throat tightening with fear. The man's features grew furious.

"My own mother wouldn't recognize me!" the man in the wheelchair thundered. He pounded a dead dry fist on the wheelchair's arm. Then Smith saw the blindfold hanging in the man's other hand.

But it was not a hand. Not a human hand. It was a three-fingered claw of stainless steel. It clamped, the blindfold that the girl had worn as an armband. Smith saw a black-and-white insignia distorted in the red folds. The steel claw opened with that tiny dentist's-drill whirring. The blindfold dropped on Smith's lap and he recognized the Nazi swastika symbol. He swallowed uncomfortably. He had been in the war. It was a long time ago.

"You have changed too, Harold Smith," the old man said in a quieter voice. "I can scarcely recognize you, either."

The steel claw closed noisily. Its three jointed fingers made a deformed fist.

"Modern science," the old man said. "I got this in 1983. Electrodes implanted in my upper arm control it. It is almost like having a natural hand. Before this, I had a hook, and before the hook, my wrist ended in a black plastic cap."

Smith's face was so close to the man he could smell the other's breath. It smelled like raw clams, as if the man's insides were dead.

"Fire did this to me. Fire took my mobility. It took my speech for many years. It nearly took my sight. It took other things too. But I will not speak of my bitterness any longer. I have searched for you, Harold Smith, and now I have found you."

"I think you have the wrong man," Harold Smith said softly.

"You were in the war? World War Two?"

"Yes," he said.

"He was in the war, Ilsa."

"He admits it then?" Ilsa said, She rose, clutching the Luger tightly.

"Not quite. He is stubborn."

"But he is the one?" Ilsa demanded.

"Yes, this is the day. I told you I felt it in my bones."

"We could tie him up and throw him in a ditch," Ilsa offered. "Then cover him with gasoline. Whoosh!"

"Fire would be appropriate," the man in the wheelchair said. "But I do not think I could bear watching the flames consume him. Memories, Ilsa. No, not fire. I must witness his death."

Harold Smith knew then that he would have to fight. He would risk a bullet, but he would not let himself be executed. Not without a struggle.

Smith came to his feet abruptly. He pushed the wheelchair back and narrowly ducked a vicious swipe of the old man's claw.

"Should I shoot him? Should I?" Ilsa screamed, waving her pistol.

"No. Brain him."

Ilsa swung at Smith's balding head with the heavy barrel of the Luger. But there wasn't enough force behind the blow and the gun sight merely scraped skin off Smith's head.

Smith grabbed for the gun. Ilsa kicked one leg out from under him and leaned into him. Smith fell against the swivel chair with Ilsa on top of him.

"Hold him there," the man in the wheelchair said. Smith, his head hanging back, saw the upside-down image of the old man advancing on him with the chilly whirring of machinery.

The steel claw took him by the throat and the dentist's drill sound filled his ears, louder and louder, reminding him of past pain, even as he felt the choking sensation that told him his windpipe was being crushed. His face swelled as his blood was forced up through the arteries in his neck. His ears popped, shutting out the drumming sound of his feet against the floor.

And all the time he could see the hideous old man's face staring at him, the black eyes tiny and bright in the middle of the red mist that seemed to be tilling the van's interior.

When the red mist completely filled Harold Smith's vision, he lost all conscious thought.

"Damn!"

"What is it, Ilsa?"

"I think he wet himself."

"They do that sometimes."

"But-not all over me!" She stood back from Smith's contorted corpse; looking like a woman who had heen splashed by a passing car. Her hands fluttered uselessly in the air.

"You can change later. We must leave."

"Okay. Let me lock you down."

"First get rid of the body."

"You don't want it?"

"No!"

"Not even for a souvenir? I thought we were going to skin him or something."

"Not him. He is not the one."

"He said his name was Harold Smith. I heard him."

"He is not the right Harold Smith."

"Oh no, not again. Are you sure?"

"His eyes are blue. Smith's eyes were gray.'

"Damn," said Ilsa, kicking Smith until his body rolled out the side door. She shoved the door closed on screeching rollers. "I thought you were sure."

"It doesn't matter. What is one less Smith? I am sure this one was a nonentity whom no one will miss. Drive, Ilsa."

Chapter 2

His name was Remo and he was building a house. Remo drove the last support into the hard earth. The post sank a quarter-inch at a time, driven down by the impact of his bare fist. He used no tools. He did not need tools. He worked alone, a lean young man in chinos and a black T-shirt with strangely thick wrists and an expression of utter peace on his high-cheekboned face.

Standing up, Remo examined the four supports. A surveyor, using precision equipment, could have determined that the four posts formed a geometrically true rectangle, each post perfectly level with the others. Remo knew that without looking.

Next would come the flooring. It was important that the floor of the house sit well above ground level, at least eight inches. Like all houses in Korea, Remo's home would sit on stilts to protect it against rainwater and snakes.

Remo had always wanted a home of his own. He had dreamed of one back in the days when he lived in a walk-up flat in Newark, New jersey, and pulled down $257.60 a week as a rookie cop. Before his police days, Remo had been a ward of the state and bunked with the other boys at St. Theresa's Orphanage. After he was suspended from the force-after they killed him-there had been a succession of apartments and hotel rooms and temporary quarters.

He had never dreamed that one day he would build his house with his strong bare hands here on the rocky soil of Sioanju.

Two decades ago Remo had been sent to the electric chair on a false murder charge, but he did not die. Remo had been offered a choice: work for CURE, the supersecret American anticrime organization, or replace the anonymous corpse that lay in his own grave.

It wasn't much of a choice and so Remo had agreed to become an agent of CURE. They turned him over to an elderly Korean named Chiun, the head of a fabled house of assassins, and Chiun had transformed Remo Williams into a Master of Sinauju, the sun source of the martial arts.

Somewhere along the way, Remo had become more Sinanju than American. He did not know when it had happened. Looking back, he could not even pinpoint the year. He just knew that one day long, long ago he had stepped over that line.

And now Remo had finally come home-to Sinanju on the West Korea Bay.

An aged Oriental in a subdued blue kimono strolled up the shore path and watched at a slight distance Remo's attempt to lay hardwood planks on top of the floor frame. He was tiny, and the fresh sea breeze played with the tufts of hair over each ear and teased his wispy beard.

At length, the Master of Sinanju approached. "What are you doing, my son?"

Remo glanced back over his shoulder, then returned to his task.

"I'm building a house, Little Father."

"I can see that, Remo. Why are you building a house?"

"It's for Mah-Li," Remo said.

"Ah," said Chiun, current Master of Sinanju-the town as well as the discipline. "A wedding present, then?"

"You got it. Hand me that plank, will you?"

"Will I what?"

"Will you hand me that plank?"

"Will I hand you that plank what?"

"Huh?"

"It is customary to say 'please' when one requests a boon from the Master of Sinanju," Chiun said blandly.

"Never mind," Remo said impatiently. "I'll get it myself."

Remo hefted the plank into place. The floor was forming, and next would come the walls, but the hard part would be the roof. As a kid, Remo had never been good in woodworking class, but he had picked up the basics. But as far as he knew, no American high school had ever taught classes in thatching. Perhaps Chiun could help him with the roof.

"Mah-Li already has a house," remarked Chiun after a short silence.

"It's too far from the viilage," Remo said. "She's not an outcast from the village anymore. She's the future wife of the next Master of Sinanju."

"Do not get ahead of yourself. I am the current Master. While I am Master, there is no other. Why not build Mah-Li's new house closer to mine?"

"Privacy," said Remo, looking down the hollowed tube of a bamboo shoot. He set several of these on end, in a row, and chopped off the tops with quick motions of his hands until they stood uniform in length.

"Will that not be hard on her, Remo?"

"How so?" Remo said. He split the first shoot down the middle with a vicious crack. The halves fell into his hands, perfectly split.

"She will have far to walk to wake you in the morning." Remo's hand poised in mid-chop.

"What are you talking about?"

"You are not even married yet and you are already treating your future bride disgracefully."

"How is building her a house disgraceful?"

"It is not the house. It is where the house is not."

"Where should it be?"

"Next to the house of my ancestors."

"Oh," said Remo, suddenly understanding. "Let us sit, Little Father."

"A good thought," said Chiun, settling on a rock. Remo sat at his feet, the feet of the only father he had ever known. He folded his hands over his bent knees.

"You are unhappy that I'm not building closer to you, is that it?" Remo asked.

"There is plenty of space on the eastern side."

"If you call twelve square feet spacious."

"In Sinanju, we do not dwell in our homes for hours on end, as you did in your former life in America." Remo looked out past the rock formation known as the Horns of Welcome, past the cold gray waters of the West Korea Bay. Somewhere beyond the horizon was America and the life he used to live. It was still all so fresh in his mind, but he shut away the memories. Sinanju was home now.

"A home on the eastern side would cut off your sunlight," Remo pointed out. "I know you like the sun coming through your window in the morning. I would not deprive you of that for my own pleasure.

Chiun nodded, the white wisps of beard floating about his chin. His hazel eyes shone with pleasant approval of his pupil's consideration.

"This is gracious of you. Remo."

"Thank you."

"But you must think of your future bride. On cold mornings, she would have to walk all the way from this place to your bedside."

"Little Father?" Remo said slowly, trying to pick the best words to phrase what he had to say.

"Yes?"

"Her bedside will be my bedside. We will be married, remember?"

"True," said Chiun, raising a long-nailed finger. "And this is my point exactly. She should be at your side."

"Right," said Remo, relieved.

"Right," said Chiun, thinking that Remo was getting the point at last. Sometimes he could be so slow. Residual whiteness. It would never go away entirely, but in a few decades Remo would be more like a Korean than he was now. Especially if he got more sun.

"So what's the problem?" Remo asked.

"This house. You do not need it." Remo frowned.

Chiun frowned back. Perhaps Remo had not gotten the point after all.

"Let me explain it to you," the Master of Sinanju said. "Mah-Li's place is at your side, correct?"

"That's right."

"Good. You had said so yourself. And your place is at my side, correct?"

"You are the Master of Sinanju. I am your pupil." Chiun rose to his feet and clapped his hands happily.

"Excellent! Then it is settled."

"What is settled?" Remo asked, getting up.

"Mah-Li will move in with us after the marriage. Come, I will help you take this unnecessary structure apart. "

"Wait a minute, Little Father. I never agreed to that. "

Chiun looked at Remo with astonishment wrinkling his parchrnent visage.

"What? You do not want Mah-Li? Beautiful Mah-Li, kind Mah-Li, who has graciously consented to overlook your unfortunate whiteness, your rnongrel birth, and accept you as her husband, and you do not want her to live with you upon your marriage? Is this some American custom you have never shared with me, Remo?"

"That isn't it, Little Father."

"No?"

"I wasn't planning on Mah-Li moving in with us."

"Then?"

"I was planning on moving in with her."

"Moving in?" Chiun squeaked. "As in moving out? Out of the house of my ancestors?" Chiun's many wrinkles smoothed in shock.

"I never thought of doing it any other way," Remo confessed.

"And I never thought you would dream of doing it any other wav than the way of Sinanju," Chiun snapped.

"I thought you'd want your privacy. I thought you'd understand."

"In Korea, families stick together," Chiun scolded. "In Korea, families do not break apart with marriage as they do in America. In America, families marry off their young and live many miles apart. In their apartness, they grow cool and lose their family bonds. It is no wonder that in America families fight over inheritances and murder other family members out of spite. American whites are bred to be strangers to one another. It is a disgrace. It is shameful."

"I'm sorry, Little Father. Mah-Li and I talked it over. This is the way it is with us."

"No, this is the way it is in the unfriendly land of your misbegotten birth. I have watched your television. I have seen Edge of Darkness, As the Planet Revolves." I know how it is. It will start with separate homes and escalate into contesting my will. I will have none of it!"

And saying no more, the Master of Sinanju turned on his heel with a flourish of skirts and sulked up the shore road back to the center of the village of Sinanju, nursing a deep hurt in his magnificent heart.

Remo said "Damn" to himself in a small voice and went back to building. He sliced dozens of long bamboo shoots with fingernails that had been made hard by diet and exercise, until he had enough to make the siding for his new home.

Remo had never dreamed that he would feel so miserable when he finally had a home to call his own.

It was near dusk when Remo finished the sides. The scent of smoking wood wafting from the village told him the cooking fires were going. The clean scent of boiling rice came to his nostrils, so sensitized by years of training that to him the aroma was as pungent as curry on the tongue. His mouth watered.

Remo decided the roof could wait.

When Remo stepped out from among the sheltering rocks that protected the village of Sinanju from the sea winds, he spotted Mah-Li, his wife-to-he, below. He slid onto a boulder and watched unnoticed.

In the village square, the other women had gathered around her. Mah-Li was a young girl, several years younger than Remo, but the older women of the village paid court to her as if she were the village grandmother.

Remo felt a swelling joy in his heart. Only weeks before, Mah-Li had been an outcast, living in a neat hovel beyond the rocks, far from the mainstream of the tiny village.

Weeks earlier, during the terrible days when it appeared that Chiun was on his deathbed, Remo was surrounded by the villagers of Sinanju, who despised him because he was not Korean. He had felt a greater loneliness than he could ever remember knowing.

It was then that he had met Mah-Li, herself an orphan, shunned by the other villagers and called by them Mah-Li the Beast. Remo had first found her living in her small hut, wearing a veil. He had thought she was deformed and felt pity for her. But her gentle ways had soothed the confusion in his soul, and he grew to love her.

When, in an impulsive moment, Remo lifted the veil from her face, he had expected to find horror. Instead, he had found beauty. Mah-Li was a doll. Mah-Li was called a beast because, by the standards of the flat-faced Sinanju women, she was ugly. By Western standards, she made the obligatory female newscaster on most TV stations look like hags.

Remo had not thought twice about proposing. And Mah-Li had accepted. Remo, whose life had lurched from one out-of-his-control situation to another, now felt complete.

Mah-Li's laugh tinkled up from the square. Remo smiled.

As the bride of the next Master, she was respected. There was a certain hypocrisy about it. Until he had agreed to shoulder the burdens of the village, they had spat whenever Remo had walked by too. But that was the way of Sinanju villagers. For thousands of years they were the moths that circled the flame of the sun source. They were not encouraged to work, nor to think. Only to be led and fed by the Master of Sinanju, who plied the art of the assassin for the rulers of the world.

The first Masters of Sinanju had taken to their work to support the villagers, who, in times of need, were forced to drown the youngest children in the bay waters. Perhaps it had been that way once, Remo thought, but instead of the motivation for Sinanju, the villagers had became more of a convenient excuse.

Either way, they were not to blame.

Mah-Li happened to look up then, and Remo felt a shock in the pit of his stomach. Her liquid eyes never failed to do that to him. She was so gorgeous, with a face that was perfection.

Remo started down off the rocks. But Mah-Li was already on her feet, her delicate hands lifting her long traditional skirts, and met him halfway.

They kissed once, lightly, because they were in public. Over Mah-Li's shoulder Remo saw the faces of the village women looking up at them with a rapt softness in their dark eyes that took the curse off the harsh planes of their square jaws and flat cheekbones.

"Where have you been, Remo?" Mah-Li asked lightly.

"It's a secret," Remo teased.

"You cannot tell me now?" She pouted.

"After we're married."

"Oh, but that is so long a time."

"I'm planning to talk to Chiun about that. I don't know why we can't get married right now," Remo complained. "Today."

"The Master of Sinanju has set an engagement period. We must obey him."

"Yeah, but nine months-"

"The Master of Sinanju knows best. It is his wish that you learn our ways before we are wed. It is not so difficult. "

"It is for me. I love you, Mah-Li."

"And I love you, Remo."

"Nine months. Sometimes I think he was put on earth to bust my chops."

"What are 'chops' ?" asked Mah-Li, who had learned enough English to talk to Remo in his own lanaguage, but was confused by slang.

"Never mind. Have you seen Chiun lately?"

"Earlier. He looked unhappy."

"I think he's upset with me. Again."

Mah-Li's face tightened. The Master of Sinanju was like a god to her.

"You had words?"

"I think he's going to have trouble adjusting to our being married."

"The people of this village never argue with the Master. It is not done."

"Chiun and I have been arguing for as long as we've known each other. We've argued all over America, across Europe, from Peoria to Peking. When I think of the places I've visited, I don't remember the people or the sights. I remember the arguments. If we're fighting about my refusal to grow my fingernails long, this must be Baltimore. "

"It is strange. In America, you show your love by arguing. After we are wed, do you expect me to argue with you as a token of my love?"

Remo laughed. Mah-Li's face was puzzled and serious, like a child confronting some great, complex truth. "No, I don't expect ever to argue with you at all." Remo kissed her again.

He took her hand and they walked down to the village square. The villagers made way for them, all smiles and crinkling eyes. The village was full of contentment and life. As it should be, thought Remo.

Except for the House of the Masters, in the center of the village. It was a great carven box of teak and lacquers set on a low hillock. Built for the Master Wi by the pharaoh Tutankhamen, it was the largest edifice in the village. Back in America, it wouldn't have impressed a newlywed couple as a suitable starter home. In fact, it was more of a warehouse than it was a dwelling. The earnings of centuries of past Masters of Sinaiju lay piled in elegant profusion inside its walls. It was there that Chiun lived. Now the great door was closed and the windows curtained.

Remo wondered if he should go to Chiun and try to explain things to him again. But then he remembered that every time he had explained himself in the past, Chiun had always gotten his way. Even when Chiun was wrong. Especially when Chiun was wrong.

"He'll keep," said Remo half-aloud, thinking how hungry the smell of boiling rice was making him.

"Who will keep what?" asked Mah-Li.

Remo just smiled at her. With Mah-Li around, there was no one else in the universe.

Chapter 3

Dr. Harold W. Smith was never happier.

Strolling into his Spartan office in the morning was a pleasure. The sun beamed in through the one-way picture window, filling the room with light. Smith deposited his worn briefcase on the desk and, ignoring the waiting paperwork, sauntered to the window.

Smith was a spare, pinch-faced man in his mid-sixties, but today a thin smile tugged at his compressed lips. He noticed the faint reflection of the smile in the big picture window and forced his lips to part slightly. Good, he thought. The flash of white teeth made the smile warmer. He would have to practice smiling with his mouth open until he got used to it. Smith adjusted the red carnation in the buttonhole of his impeccable three-piece suit. He liked the way the flower lent color to his otherwise drab apparel. Perhaps one day he would buy a suit that wasn't gray. But not just yet. Too much change too rapidly could be overwhelming. Smith believed in moderation.

Dr. Harold Smith had worked in this very office since the early 1960's, ostensibly as the director of Folcroft Sanitarium, on the shoreline of Rye, New York. In reality Smith, an ex-CIA agent and before that with the OSS during the war, was the head of the countercrime agency called CURE. Set up by a President who was later assassinated, CURE was an ultrasecret enforcement organization that operated outside of constitutional restrictions, protecting America from a rising tide of lawlessness.

CURE's one agent, Remo Williams, and his equally difficult mentor. Chiun, were safely back in Sinanju. Smith expected he would never see them again. He hoped so. The present President had been led to believe Remo was dead-killed during the crisis with the Soviets-and that Chiun had gone into mourning.

It had nearly been the end of CURE, but the President had sanctioned CURE to continue operations. But with no enforcement arm. Just Smith and his secret computers-just like in the beginning, the good old days. Only now, America was getting back on track. True, there were still problems. But the Mafia's back was being broken in major cities all over America. Public opinion was tipping the scales against drug use. White-collar crime was on the decline, thanks to the heavy exposure of corporate crime on Wall Street-exposure that Smith had helped to bring to light.

But best of all, no Remo and no Chiun. Smith had grown to respect both men, even to like them in his uncommunicative fashion. But they were difficult, unmanageable. Life was so much simpler without them.

A tentative knocking at his office door shook Smith out of his dreamy thoughts. He adjusted his Dartmouth tie before turning front the window.

"Come in," he sang.

"Dr. Smith?" Mrs. Mikulka, Smith's personal secretary, thrust her matronly head inside. Her face was troubled.

"Is something wrong, Mrs. Mikulka?"

"That was what I was going to ask you, Dr. Smith. I heard strange sounds in here."

"Sounds."

"Yes, whistling sounds."

Smith tried his new smile on his secretary. "I believe that was me," he said pleasantly.

"You."

"I believe I was whistling 'Zip a Dee Doo Dah.' "

"It sounded, if you'll excuse me for saying so, like the steam radiator had popped a valve."

Smith cleared his throat. "I was just thinking how good life is now. I always whistle when I'm happy."

"I've worked for you for over five years, and I can't recall you ever whistling before."

"I was never happy at work before."

"I'm glad, Dr. Smith. It's nice to see you come in at a more reasonable hour, too. And spending more time with your family."

"That reminds me," said Dr. Smith. "My wife will be here at twelve-thirty. We'll be having lunch."

"Really?" said Mrs. Mikulka. "How wonderful. I've never met your wife."

"I thought she'd like to see Folcroft. She's never been here. Perhaps you'd like to join us."

"I'd be delighted," said Mrs. Mikulka, who was astonished at the change in her tight-fisted boss. "I hope I'm dressed properly."

"I'm sure the cafeteria workers will find you presentable," assured Smith..

"Ah," said Mrs. Mikulka, realizing that her employer hadn't changed quite that much.

"Will that be all?" asked Smith, returning to his desk.

"Oh. I left you a newspaper clipping I thought you'd want to see. It's another odd one."

"Thank you, Mrs. Mikulka."

The door closed after the bosomy woman, and Smith leafed through the papers on his desk. He found the clipping. It was a brief item, a UPI dispatch:

Authorities are puzzled by the mysterious deaths of two New Hampshire men, only days apart, in Hillsborough County. Harold Donald Smith, 66, of Squantum, was found beside his parked car on a section of Route 136. His neck was crushed. Harold Walter Smith, 61, of Manchester-only twenty miles from the site of the earlier death-was discovered in his apartment. His skull had been shattered by a blunt instrument. Robbery was ruled out as the motive in both cases.

Smith tripped the intercom lever. "Mrs. Mikulka?"

"Yes, Dr. Smith?"

"You're slipping," Smith said in a light voice.

"Sir?"

"I've seen this one," he said cheerily. "You clipped it for me two weeks ago."

"No, sir."

"I remember it distinctly," said Dr. Smith, still in that light tone.

"That was a different clipping," said Mrs. Mikulka. "Those were two other Harold Smiths."

Smith's voice sank. "Are you certain?"

"Check your files."

"One moment."

Smith carried the clipping to his file cabinet. In it, news cuttings were filed by the week. Smith had told his secretary that he collected unusual human-interest stories, the more bizarre the better. It was his hobby, he had said. In reality, Mrs. Mikulka was just another unwitting information-source for CURE.

Smith riffled through the files and pulled out a clipping headlined: "SEARCH FINDS RIGHT NAME, WRONG VICTIM."

The clipping told of the bizarre murders of two men, both about the same age, living in different states. The two deaths were believed to he unrelated. The coincidence came to light when the wife of the first victim reported him missing and a nationwide search turned up the body of a man with the same name. The first man's body was also later discovered.

The name the two dead men had shared was Harold Smith.

Sniith returned to his desk with a stunned look on his lemony features. He sat down at the desk heavily, laying the two clippings side by side on the desktop as if they were alien bug specimens.

Smith touched a button and a concealed computer terminal rose from the desktop and locked into place. Smith booted up the system and initiated a search of all data links.

He keyed in the search code: SMITH HAROLD. Moments passed as the most powerful computer system in the world scanned its files, which were the combined files of every data link in America. Smith's computer plugged into every systems net accessible. "Dr. Smith?"

It was Mrs. Mikulka. She was still on the intercom.

"One moment," Smith said hoarsely.

"Are you all right?"

"I said one moment," Smith barked.

The computer screen began scrolling names. SMITH, HAROLD A. SMITH, HAROLD G. SMITH, HAROLD T.

Swiftly Smith scanned the reports. A Harold A. Smith, used-car salesman, had reported a car stolen from his lot. Smith keyed to the next file. A Harold T. Smith was murdered in Kentucky three weeks ago.

Smith input commands to select only death reports. There were thirteen of them. Thirteen Harold Smiths had died in the last seven weeks.

"Not unusual. There are a lot of Smiths," Harold W. Smith muttered, thinking of his relatives.

And to prove his own point, Smith saved the data as a separate file and requested reports of the deaths of all Harold Joneses in the same time period. Jones was as common a name as Smith.

There were two.

Smith asked for Harold Brown.

The computer informed him that three Harold Browns had died since November.

Puzzled, Smith returned to the Harold Smith file. The newspaper clippings had given the ages of the deceased Harold Smiths. All four victims were in their sixties. Smith requested age readouts from the file.

The first number was sixty-nine and it made Smith's heart leap in fear. But the next digit was only thirteen, and he relaxed.

But the rest of the numbers caused a fine sheen of perspiration to break out on his ordinarily dry forehead. Every Harold Smith on the list but one had been over sixty. The oldest was seventy-two. The one exception-the thirteen-year-old-had died of leukemia, and Smith dismissed it from the file as a coincidental anomaly. All of the others were in Smith's own age group. All of them had Smith's name. All had been murdered.

Smith reached for his intercom, and in his agitation, forgot it was already on. He turned it off and spoke into the mike. "Mrs. Mikulka. Mrs. Mikulka." He was shouting it the third time when Mrs. Mikulka burst into the room.

"Dr. Smith! What is it? What's wrong?"

"This intercom. It doesn't work!"

Mrs. Mikulka examined it critically.

"It's off."

"Oh. Never mind. Call my wife. Tell her I'm too busy to see her today. And forget lunch. Have the cafeteria send up a cheese sandwich with no mayonnaise or salad dressing and a tall glass of prune juice. I don't wish to be disturbed for the rest of the day."

Smith returned to his computer. his gray eyes fevered. Someone was killing Harold Smiths. Even if it was a random thing, it deserved investigation. If it wasn't, it could have serious implications for CURE. Either way, Harold W. Smith knew one thing was certain.

He might be the next victim.

Chapter 4

When Chiun did not emerge from his house to join in the big communal dinner in the village square, Remo decided to pretend not to notice.

Chiun was probably still angry with him, and pouting among his treasures was the surest tactic to get Remo to come to him, begging forgiveness. It wasn't going to work this time. Rem told himself. Let Chiun pout. Let him pout all night. Remo went on eating.

No one else seemed to notice that Chiun wasn't there. Or if they did. they didn't remark on it.

The villagers sat in the smoothed dirt of the square all around Remo and Mah-Li. Closest to them squatted old Pullyang, the village caretaker. During the period of Chiun's work-his exile, he had bitterly called it-in America- Pullvang ran the village. He was Chiun's closest adviser. But even he didn't seem concerned about Chiun's absence.

Pullyang leaned over to Remo, a little cackle dribbling off his lips. Remo knew that cackle meant a joke was coming. Pullyang loved to tell jokes. Pullyang's jokes would shame a preschooler.

"Why did the pig cross the road?" Pullyang whispered, giggling.

Remo, not thinking, asked, "Why?"

"To get to the other side," Pullyang howled, He repeated the joke to the crowd. The crowd howled. Even Mah-Li giggled.

Remo smiled weakly. Humor was not a Korean national trait. He would have to get used to it.

Remo decided that it might be better to introduce a more sophisticated brand of humor to the good people of Sinanju. He searched his mind for an appropriate joke. He remembered one Chiun had told him.

"How many Pyongyangers does it take to change a light bulb?" Remo knew Sinanjuers considered the people of the North Korean capital particularly backward.

"What is a light bulb?" asked Pullyang, deadpan. Remo, taken aback, tried to explain.

"It is a glass bulb. You screw it into the ceiling of your house."

"Won't the roof leak?" asked Pullyang.

"No. The light bulb fills the hole."

"Why make the light bulb hole then?"

"The hole doesn't matter," Remo said. "The light bulb is used to make light. When you have light bulbs in your house, it is like having a little sun at your command."

"Wouldn't it be easier to open a window?"

"You don't use light bulbs in the daytime," Remo said patiently. "But at night. Imagine having light all night long."

The crowd all wore puzzled faces. This was strange to them. Ever since Remo had agreed to live in Sinanju, he had promised them improvements. He had told them the treasures of Sinaniu had gathered dust for centuries and were going to waste. Remo promised to use some of the gold to improve the village. Remo had been saying that for weeks, but so far nothing had changed. Some wisely suspected that old Chiun was holding up these improvements.

"Light all night long?" repeated Pullyang.

"That's right," said Remo, grinning.

But no one grinned back. Instead there was a long uncomfortable silence.

At length Mah-Li whispered in Remo's ear. "But how will we sleep at night?"

"You can shut the light bulbs off anytime you want."

"Then why would we need them?"

Remo thought hard. Why were these people so dense? Here he was doing his best to bring them civilization and a higher standard of living, and they made him sound so stupid.

"Suppose you had to relieve yourself in the middle of the night," Remo suggested.

The crowd shrugged in unison. "You do it," a little boy said.

"But with a light bulb, you can see what you're doing," Remo pointed out.

The little boy giggled. All the children of the village laughed with him, but the adults looked mortified.

No one was going to say the obvious to Remo. Who would want to watch himself performing a bodily function? They all thought that, but to voice it to a Master of Sinanju, even if he was a white American with a big nose and unnaturally round eyes, would be disrespectful.

Out of the corner of his eye Remo, saw the door to the treasure house of Sinanju open a crack. Remo's head swiveled, and Chiun's eyes locked with his. Satisfied that Remo's senses were focused on the dwelling of the Master of Sinanju, who was ignoring him, Chiun slammed the door.

Remo muttered under his breath. He had looked. And Chiun saw him look. Had he not looked, everything would have been fine. But not now. Now Remo could no longer pretend that there wasn't a problem.

Remo excused himself from dinner, squeezed Mah-Li's hand, and made for the treasure house.

"Might as well get this over with," he said to himself. The door was locked, forcing Remo to knock.

"Who knocks?" demanded Chiun in a querulous voice.

"You know damn well who knocks," Remo snapped back. "You didn't hear me come up the path?"

"I heard an elephant. Is there an elephant with you?"

"No, there's no goddamn elephant with me."

The door shot open.

Chiun's beaming face stared back at Remo's.

"I thought not. An elephant makes less noise than you."

"Can I come in?" Remo asked, controlling himself with an effort.

"Why not? It is your house too." And Chiun moved back into the taper-lit interior.

Remo looked around. The heaps of treasure which occupied every room had been moved about. There were Grecian busts, Chinese statues, jars of precious gems, and gold in all its forms, from ingot to urn. "Redecorating?" asked Remo as Chiun settled into the low throne which sat in the center of the main room.

"I was taking count."

"I never noticed these before," Remo said, walking to a group of ornate panels stacked against one wall.

"They are nothing," said Chiun disdainfully. "Too recent."

"I read about these," Remo went on. "These panels are known as the Room of Gold. They're some kind of European treasure. I remember reading an article about them once. They're a national treasure of Czechoslovakia or Hungary or some place like that. They've been missing since the war."

"They have not," Chiun corrected. "They have been here."

"The Europeans don't know that. They think the Nazis took them."

"They did."

"Then what are you doing with them?"

"The Nazis were good at taking things that were not theirs. They were not good at keeping them. Ask any European."

"I will, if any drop in for tea."

"Do you miss America, Remo?" Chiun asked suddenly.

"America is where I was born. Sure, sometimes I miss it. But I'm happy here. Really, Little Father." Chiun nodded, his hazel eyes bright.

"Our ways are strange to you, even though now you, too, are a Master of Sinanju."

"You will always be the Master in my eyes, Little Father."

"A good answer," said Chiun. "And well spoken."

"Thank you," said Remo, hoping it would head off another one of Chiun's endless complaints about the frail state of his health in these, the ending days of his life.

"But I, being frail and in my ending days, will not always be the Master of this village," said Chiun. "You are the next Master. This we have agreed to."

"I hope that day is far off," said Remo sincerely.

"Not long ago it seemed that you would take my place much sooner."

Remo nodded, surprised that Chiun would bring up that subject himself. Remo was convinced Chiun's recent illness had been an elaborate con game designed to get them out of America. His miraculous recovery was suspicious, but Remo had not pressed the issue. He was too happy now that he had found Mah-Li. If it was one of Chiun's guilt trips that had brought that about, Remo reasoned, well, why not? Some people met through classified ads.

"We are both still young, you and I," said Chiun. "But I have suffered much in America, working for Mad Harold, the non-emperor. Too long have I breathed the foul, dirty air of your birthplace. It has robbed me of some of my years, but I have a good many years left. Decades. Many decades."

"I am glad," said Remo, wondering where this was leading.

"Even though you are soon to wed, which is the next important step toward assuming responsibility for my village, we must observe succession."

"Of course."

"You must learn to live as a Korean."

"I'm trying. I think the villagers like me now."

"Do not rush them, Remo," Chiun said suddenly.

"Little Father?"

"Do not force yourself upon them. In their eyes, you are strange, different."

"I'm just trying to get along," Remo said.

"You are to be commended for that. But if you truly wish to get along, you must do so according to rank."

"Rank?" asked Remo. "What rank? Everybody's a peasant. Except you, of course."

Chiun raised a long-nailed finger. It caught the mellow candlelight like a polished blade of bone. It looked delicate, but Remo had seen it slice through sheet metal.

"Exactly," said Chiun.

"I don't get it."

"If you desire to get along, your first priority should be to get along with me."

"Meaning?"

"Throw off the last of your American whiteness. In your former life, you were a caterpillar, a lowly green caterpillar."

"I thought you said I was white."

"You are."

"Which is it, white or green?"

"Honestly, Remo," Chum said. "You are so literal-minded. I was speaking in images. You are white, but you are like the green caterpillar. And I am asking you to emerge from the cocoon of your whiteness. In the fullness of time, you will emerge as a butterfly."

"What color?" Remo asked.

"Why, yellow, of course. Like me."

"You?"

"Yes, me."

"I never thought of you as a butterfly before."

"How could you? Caterpillars do not think. Heh-heh. They do not think, but instead squirm in the mud wishing to be butterflies. Heh-heh."

"You're unhappy that the villagers are paying so much attention to me, is that it?" Remo asked.

"Of course not," said Chiun. "I merely ask that you do not fraternize with them excessively. You are a Master of Sinanju. They are the villagers. They must look up to you. They cannot look up to you if you are squatting in the dirt with them every night, eating the same food, sharing in their peasant jokes."

"The communal meals were your idea, Little Father. Don't you remember? You wanted the village to be one happy family."

"It has gone on too long. You are too happy. It is not good to be too happy."

"I could be a lot happier," said Remo.

"Name the thing that will increase your happiness, Remo, for your happiness is mine."

"Let's cut this engagement period down to something reasonable."

"Such as?"

"One week."

"It is too late for that," said Chiun sternly.

"Why?"

"You have already been engaged for eight weeks. Even a Master of Sinanju cannot roll back time."

"I meant one more week. I don't see why I can't marry Mah-Li sooner."

"Tradition forbids it," said Chiun. "A Master of Sinanju marries for life. He must marry wisely. You must get to know Mah-Li better."

"A nine-month engagement is too much. I respect your wishes, but it is too much."

"As a matter of fact. Remo, I have been reconsidering the formal engagement period."

"Oh?"

"I have been thinking that five years is more appropriate. "

"Five-!"

Chiun waved Remo's outburst aside. "I said reconsidering. I have not made up my mind. I will keep your request in mind as I give this matter more thought."

Remo relaxed. "When will you let me know?" he asked.

"Two, perhaps three years."

"Chiun!"

"Hush, Remo. Do not shout. It is unseemly. What if the villagers hear us quarreling?"

"No chance. Not even an air-raid siren could pierce through these tapestries and stacks of gold."

"You cannot marry too soon. It would be wrong."

"I've been asking around. The normal engagement period is only three months."

"That is for Koreans," reminded Chiun. "You are not a true Korean."

"I will never be a Korean. You know that."

"We will work on that. Put yourself in my hands, Remo."

"And another thing, what about the village?"

"What about it?"

"I have some ideas that will make it better," said Remo, taking a piece of paper from his trouser pocket. Remo looked it over.

"Better than what?" asked Chiun, genuinely puzzled. "This is Sinanju. It is the center of the universe. What could make it better?"

"Running water, for one thing."

"We are by the ocean. We have all the water we need. "

"Not to drink," said Remo.

"Sinanju is blessed with the sweetest rain," Chiun said, making fluttering motions with his fingernails. "You have only to set out your pots to collect your fill."

"I was thinking about putting in toilets."

Chiun made a disgusted face. "Toilets are a European confidence trick. They promote sloth and laziness."

"How so?"

"They are too comfortable. They are indoors, where it is warm. This encourages people to sit on them too long, reading mindless magazines, ruining their minds and posture."

"There isn't even a decent outhouse in the entire village. Everybody uses chamber pots or goes behind a rock. After a big feast, the air is unbreathable."

"It is the natural way. Fertilizer. It helps the crops."

"The only crops in Sinanju are mud and rocks," Remo said flatly. "The people are so lazy even the rice has to be trucked in."

"Do not insult my people, Remo," Chiun warned.

"What's insulting about good hygiene? I know you have a toilet in this house," Remo pointed out.

"This house was built by the finest Egyptian architects," Chiun said loftily, "back when Egyptians were good for something more than losing wars and dusting the ruins of their ancestors. It contains many curiosities. Somewhere in it there is a European water closet, I am sure. An antique."

"I hear it flush from time to time."

"It is necessary to keep even antiques in proper working order," Chiun sniffed.

"Chiun, you've got tons of gold just sitting here doing nothing and your people are living like . . . like . . ."

"Like Koreans," supplied Chiun.

"Exactly."

"I am glad we understand one another."

"No, we don't," Remo said. "If I'm going to live here the rest of my life, I want to do something constructive. These people don't need more gold or more security. They need a better standard of living."

"The people of Sinanju have food," said Chiun slowly. "They have family. they have protection. Even Americans have not that. Americans are subject to all manner of brutality from other Americans. In Sinanju, as long as there is a Master of Siilanju, no one need fear theft."

"That's because no one has anything worth stealing."

"They have me. I am their wealth. They have the protection of the awesome magnificence that is Chiun, reigning Master of Sinanju. They know that. They appreciate that. They love me."

Just then there was a knock on the door. "Enter, beloved subject," said Chiun loudly. Pullyang, the caretaker, scuttled into the room. He came to Remo's side and whispered into his ear. He took no notice of Chiun.

"Three," said Relno.

Pullyang doubled over with laughter. He ran out into the night. Rcmo heard him repeat his answer over and over. Other laughter welled up into the night.

"He didn't wait for the punch line," said Remo. "That wasn't even the funny part."

"What did Pullyang ask of you?" demanded Chiun.

"He wanted to know how many Pyongyangers it takes to change a light bulb."

"That was my joke!" Chinn hissed. And with a furious swirl of sleeves and skirts he leapt to his feet and bounded to the door.

"It takes three Pyongyangers to change a light bulb," Chiun shouted into the night. "One to change the bulb and two to shout encouragement while he does this!" The laughter died abruptly.

Chiun slammed the door and returned to his throne. "I don't understand the Korean sense of humor," said Remo.

"That is because you have none yourself. You are like all Americans, who turn the relieving of bodily wastes into a leisure activity. If I let you get your way now, you will next litter my poor village with condoms."

"What's this?"

"Condoms," repeated Chiun. "They are another American confidence trick. The tall buildings in which there are many rooms and each person owns a different room. But actually they own only the empty space within those walls, which is to say they own nothing."

"Those are condos," Remo corrected.

"And this is the treasure house of Sinanju. The house of my ancestors, and the house of all future Masters of Sinanju. Including you. Is it not good enough for you, toilet-loving American white?"

"I like it fine."

"Good. Then you will live here."

"When I am head of the village, yes," said Remo. "But until then, Mah-Li and I will live in the house I am building with my own hands."

"So be it," said Chiun, coming to his feet. "I have given you everything and you have spurned my best. Take your filthy belongings and go sleep on the beach."

"What belongings?" said Remo. "I'm wearing everything I own."

Chiun's fingernails flashed to the mahogany floor and speared the slip of paper on which Remo had written his list of improvements for the village of Sinanju.

"This filthy belonging," said Chiun, lifting it to Remo's hurt face. "I will have no toilets or condoms in Sinanju."

"Have it your way, then," Remo said unhappily.

He plucked the list and walked out of the House of the Masters without a backward glance.

Chapter 5

Dr. Harold K. Smith was a simple country doctor. The people of Oakham, Massachusetts, liked Dr. Harry, as he was called. He made house calls. No doctors made house calls anymore. Not when there was so much money to be made off the sick, and the most efficient way was to jam them into the office waiting room with plenty of waiting.

Dr. Harry had been making house calls for nearly forty years. He liked the homey touch. It was a nice, stress-free way to practice medicine. It filled his sixty-nine-year-old soul with peace. And even at his age, peace was what he most yearned for.

Dr. Harry might never have taken this route in life, but upon his graduation from Tufts Medical School, he was drafted. That was in 1943. Dr. Harry spent the next two years as a combat medic with the First Attack Squad, A Company, as they liberated France.

He had seen young men running one minute and screaming in muddy ditches-their legs chopped to hamburger by .50-caliber machine-gun bullets-the next. Crouched in foxholes, he had watched them being blown to ragged chunks of meat by grenades, crushed under panzer treads, and snuffed out with such appalling suddenness that even today he still had nightmares and woke up in cold sweats.

It had not been the best way to first practice medicine, but it had meant something. For some of the wounded Dr. Harry had treated, it had meant the difference between life and death, between walking back on the troop ships to America and hobbling on one leg and two crutches. Dr. Harry had absorbed everything it was possible for a physician to learn about wound cavitation, traumatic amputation, and human endurance, but after returning home in 1946, he went into family medicine and put the war out of his mind. Almost.

And so, on a particularly bitter winter's day, when a triple amputee was wheeled, unannounced, into his shabbily genteel office, Dr. Harry didn't hesitate to greet him. Even though the sight of the man brought back shuddering memories.

The man's age was impossible to guess. His face was rilled like a topographical map of the mountains of Mexico. His skin was unnaturally pale, and the thin red blanket that rested on his lap, covering the front of the motorized wheelchair, hung slack. There were two blunt bulges under it where his legs stopped.

The man's right arm ended in a steel claw, one of the new appliances which were such a boon to the amputee population. Dr. Harry had read about them, but had never seen one. His medical curiosity overcame his war memories and he found himself looking forward to examining this patient with unexpected eagerness.

"I'm Dr. Smith," said Dr. Harry to the old man and his beautiful blond companion. "What seems to be the trouble'?"

"I'm Ilsa," the blond said. "He's having trouble with his good arm. I think it's the sciatic nerve. It's acted up before. "

"You are his nurse?"

"His companion," said Ilsa.

She is so young, thought Dr. Harry, and so beautiful. He could tell by the solicitous way she hovered over him that she was intensely devoted to this shattered shell of a human being.

"Follow me into the examination room, and we'll have a look," Dr. Harry suggested.

"Ilsa, you will wait here," the man said. His voice was as dry as his eves were bright. And they were very bright, unnaturally bright.

"Yes, of course."

Behind the closed pine door, Dr. Harry opened the stainless-steel drawer containing his instruments and said, "Please remove your shirt."

Dr. Harry watched the man unbutton his shirt with his good hand. The fingers, gnarled and scarred, fumbled at the buttons. Dr. Harry nodded. Dexterity was impaired, but not as bad as all that. Probably the nerve was just inflamed.

When the shirt was off, Dr. Harry saw that from the neck down the man's body was a striated mass of scar tissue. Burns, horrible ones, had done that a very long time ago.

"I hope my appearance does not disturb you," said the old man. Dr. Harry suddenly remembered that he'd not asked the patient's name. Normally he left that to his receptionist, but she had already gone home for the day.

"I saw as much and worse in my time. During the war."

The patient seemed to tense as Dr. Harry approached with the blood-pressure cuff.

"You were in the war, World War Two?" the patient asked.

"Medic. European Theater of Operations."

"Those were terrible times, for both sides."

Dr. Harry nodded absently as he fitted the blood-pressure sleeve about the patient's bicep. "Do you think you could work the pump?" he asked.

The patient took the bulb and began squeezing rhythmically. The sleeve began inflating.

"I have never seen an appliance like yours," Dr. Harry said. "Bionic?"

"Yes. It is a boon to me, especially after all these years. You see, I, too, was in the war. My life ended there, for all intents."

"A terrible thing," said Dr. Harry sympathetically, looking at his watch, but surreptitiously examining the claw. It fitted onto the wooden stump of the man's wrist, the joining sealed in a plastic sleeve. Tiny wires led from the base of the appliance to the man's intact shoulder muscles. Electrodes. Brain impulses to those muscles produced twitches which in turn sent electrical signals to the artificial hand. The signals produced humanlike finger movements.

Even as Dr. Harry watched, the steel claw tensed.

The machinery whirred briefly. It was fascinating. He couldn't take his eves off it.

"Medical science is making remarkable strides," the patient said, noticing the doctor's gaze.

"They're way ahead of this country doctor. I understand they'll be making bionic legs one day."

"Yes, but those are for men who still have one good leg. I know, I have looked into this. They cannot make them strong enough to support a man on two metal legs."

"Interesting that you should say that," said Dr. Harry, taking the inflating bulb from the patient's hand. "I was reading about a new process someone has invented for forging titanium. You know, it's stronger than steel and lighter as well. They've had excellent luck using it for implants, artificial joints and the like."

"Well, steel is too heavy for some uses, and lighter metals, like aluminum for example, are too weak. They can't take the stress. If this man's process works as they say it does, I can see the day when they'll build bionic legs of titanium to help men like yourself to walk."

"I am intrigued. I must look into this. My doctors told me that there was no hope for me."

"There is always hope. You just have to hang around long enough for science to catch up to our problems."

"You are a great believer in hope, Dr. Smith."

Dr. Harry laughed. "I imagine so."

"Were you ever in Japan, Dr. Smith?" asked the patient.

"After the war, I came home. I haven't left Massachusetts since."

"I meant during the war. Were you there?"

"No,"

"Perhaps you do not remetnber?"

"I'm sure I would," Dr. Harry said absently, reading the sphygmomanometer. "Your blood pressure is high. Hmmm. it seems to be rising even as you speak. When did this trouble come on?"

"Forty years ago. In Japan."

"Forget Japan. I meant the nerve."

"It all started then." The steel claw whirred open like a venus flytrap preparing to catch a meal. "I have longed to meet you, Dr. Smith."

"Really?" said Dr. Harry Smith, taking his eyes off the claw with difficulty.

"Yes. Ever since that day in Japan, June 7, 1949." The man's voice had dropped to a growl, and Dr. Harry took an involuntary step back. The man's arm-his good one-shot out, catching his open wrist. The grip was firm.

"Excuse me," said Dr. Harry, wriggling free. But pulling free was a mistake, because with the touch of a lever, the grizzled old man sent the wheelchair surging forward. Dr. Harry felt something clamp onto his right thigh. He looked down.

It was the steel claw. It bit through the cloth of his smock, which was reddening. Had he spilled some mercurochrome? But of course, he had not, and that voice was growling close to his ear.

"You thought I was dead, Dr. Smith. Harold K. Smith. You thought you had killed me that day. You did kill my future. But you did not kill my spirit. I live. I lived for you. All these years for you. And this moment."

Dr. Harry groped for the man's wrist. Maybe if he snapped the connection at the wrist sheath. Maybe. But the claw dug deeper with that damnable whirring, and Dr. Harry slipped to his knees.

"Ilsa!"

Dr. Harry heard the throaty bark through ringing ears. The pain was intensifying.

The blond bounced in through the door.

"He's not dead yet," she said. Her voice was disappointed.

"I would not have called you if I did not need help," the old man snarled. "Hold him down."

Dr. Harry felt soft fingers clamp his rounded shoulders, keeping him down on both knees. He tried to fight, but could not. And then through the ringing in his ears, he heard the whirring of the steel claw as it found his throat. The last words he heard were the girl's.

"I hope this one doesn't wet all over me too."

Dr. Harry fell onto the legless lap of the man in the wheelchair and slid off, taking the thin red blanket with him. On the underside, the crooked black cross of the swastika blazed like a blackened ember in its white circle.

"Was it him?" Ilsa asked breathlessly.

"No, it was not him. I could tell the first time he spoke. It was not his voice."

"Then why did you kill him?"

"His name was Harold Smith. It was reason enough. Pick up the flag and let us depart."

"Are we going to Boston next? There must be a lot of Harold Smiths there."

"No. Boston must wait. This doctor told me something important. We must return home, immediately. I must speak with my doctor about an important new discovery in metals."

Chapter 6

The Master of Sinanju was unhappy.

Seated amid the opulence of the treasures of his ancestors, he hung his head low. He could not sleep. He lacked appetite-not that it mattered to the people of his village.

When Chiun had not joined the communal evening meal, no one had come to inquire of his health. No one had offered so much as a bowl of cold rice. Not Pullyang, the formerly faithful, nor Mah-Li, to whom he had bestowed a dowry of gold so that she could marry Remo-a dowry that had been the last shipment of gold from the mad non-emperor Harold Smith.

The Master of Sinanju picked up the goosequill that would inscribe this day's infamy in the personal daily records of Chiun, whom history-he hoped-would call Chiun the Great.

Dipping the quill into the black ink in a stone receptacle, Chiun began to transcribe, not for the first time, the story of how he had taken a white, a homeless unwanted white, and bestowed upon him the great art of Sinanju. He paused, pondering how best to describe Remo.

In past years, he had avoided the obvious; Remo the White. Too indelicate. Remo the Fair seemed a good compromise. But for this scroll, Chiun decided, he would be called Remo the Ingrate.

Chiun wrote "Remo the Ingrate" in the complicated ideographic language of his ancestors and, satisfied, wrote on.

He recorded how the village, dazzled by the coming of the ingrate, Remo, had turned against Chiun. Not in obvious ways, he hastened to scribble-for he did not wish his descendants to call him "Chiun, the Master who lost the respect of the village"-but in subtle ways, insidious ways. They paid attention to Remo. And in paying attention to him, there was less attention paid to the proper person. Chiun decided not to mention who the proper person might be. Better that future Masters learn to read between the lines, where truth usually lay.

Chiun wrote of his pride-a pride now sullied by ingratitude-in bringing the white to Sinanju. For this fair-skinned Korean had taken to Sinanju better than any pupil before him. He had grown through the phases of Sinanju, from the night of the salt to that glorious day when the spirit of Wang, greatest Master of Sinanju, had visited him. It had been only last year, but the boundless pride of it still filled Chiun's aged heart. Remo had seen the great Wang and was now a full Master of Sinanju. It was only meet that the villagers accord him due respect, despite his deficiencies of pigment. But even the great Wang would have been the first to say that in Remo's case, less is more.

"Less is more," cackled Chiun aloud. He had heard the phrase on an American TV commercial and liked it. In a few centuries, when America had gone the inevitable way of the Roman Empire and slipped into history, no one would know that the aphorism was not Chiun's own.

Remo, Chiun wrote, was the fulfillment of the greatest legend in the history of Sinanju. He was the night tiger who was white, but who in coming to Sinanju would be revealed as the incarnation of Shiva, the Destroyer. Chiun had known Remo was Shiva for many years. But there had never been proof other than the clues the legends had foretold.

But in the American city of Detroit, Chiun wrote on, a city so unhappy that on certain religious holidays the inhabitants attempted to burn it to the ground, Chiun had confronted, not Shiva the Destroyer, but Shiva Remo.

Remo had been injured in a fire. Chiun had pulled him from a tangle of wreckage. When Remo had come to life, he spoke not in Remo's voice. He said words that were not words Chiun had come to expect from his former pupil. They were cruel words. For Remo had not recognized Chiun. Not at all. Not even after all they had been through together.

Even now, months later, Chiun had difficulty suppressing the shock he had experienced seeing Remo under the spell of the Hindu God of Destruction. In one accident, all that Chiun had worked for, the training of a new Master, one who would one day return to Sinanju, marry, and raise yet another Master, had been dispelled like a fragile soap bubble.

Remo's spell had been temporary, but Chinn could not know how long it would be before Shiva repossessed Remo's mind once more. And so Chiun, to save the years of training he had poured into the ungrateful white, to ensure the continuation of his line, had contrived to break the bonds that tied Remo to his homeland. The nature of this subterfuge, Chiun wrote on the scroll, was not important except perhaps to note in passing its brilliance. After a pause, Chiun inserted the word "unsurpassed" before the word "brilliance." Some truths did not belong between the lines.

It had worked, Chiun wrote on. He and Remo had returned to Sinanju, no longer bound to work for the client state of America. Remo had agreed to succeed Chiun and had fallen in love with a Korean maiden. And now they were to wed. In time, there would be grandchildren. And Chiun's lifework would be complete. Chiun, who had married unwisely and had no living heir to call his own. Chiun, who was forced to take a white pupil to continue the line of Sinanju, and although his misjudgment might have been catastrophic, had in fact produced the greatest Master of Sinanju, Remo the Fair.

Chiun stopped and crossed out the word "Fair," substituting "Ingrate." Then he crossed that word out and tried to think of a word that somehow meant both. He could think of none.

And in thinking, he was reminded of his sadness. All of his dreams for Remo-and for Sinanju-had come true. Yet he was unhappy. The treasure house of Sinanju was bursting with new gold and old treasure. Yet he was unhappy. He need never work in a foreign land again. Yet he was unhappy. Remo had promised to remain with hirn in Sinanju, taking no outside work without mutual agreement. And Chiun was unhappy.

But he dared not admit this. Remo had always complained about Chiun's constant carping, as he had called it. Chiun thought the choice of words unfortunate, even harsh, but understood that there was a grain of truth in them. Chiun had for years beseeched Remo to abandon America and work for more reasonable empires. Like Persia, now fallen into disgrace and called Iran. Chiun had hoped that working for another country would be the first step toward making Remo a Korean.

Now Remo had done better. He had come to Sinanju and had won over its inhabitants. Chiun had never thought it would happen, much less happen this easily. And still Chiun was unhappy.

He would have liked to complain openly, but he dared not. If Remo thought that Chiun was unhappy, as much as Remo loved Chiun, he might do something rash. Like insist that they return to America, where Chiun had been happier. Comparatively.

A peculiar look crossed the wrinkled features of the Master of Sinanju at that thought.

He set aside his scroll to dry, and from a low table took a square piece of parchment. It had been manufactured during the reign of Thutmosis II. By Western standards it was priceless. To the Master of Sinanju it was notepaper worthy of the greatest house of assassins in history.

Chiun addressed the note to Remo, suddenly thinking of a word that meant both "fair" and "ingrate," and began to write.

A green outline of the United States of America filled the right-hand side of the computer screen.

Dr. Harold W. Smith tapped a key and the borders of the forty-eight contiguous states appeared within the outline. On the left-hand side of the screen, separated by a dotted line, was a vertical list of Harold Smiths, along with the dates and places of their deaths. Smith had called up the list after a new man, a Dr. Harold K. Smith, had been found murdered in his Massachusetts office. His was the last name on the list, which was arranged chronologically by date of death.

Dr. Smith's fingers flurried across the board, tapping in a keying sequence.

One by one, a number was assigned to each name on the list. And one by one, a corresponding number appeared on the map. Each time a new number appeared on the outline, a solid green line ran from the previous number to its location, like a child's connect-the-dots game.

When the program ceased running, Dr. Smith had a zigzag line running from Alabama to Massachusetts. The line meandered in a winding but definite progression. That probably meant the murderer-if there was only one-traveled by road.

Smith tapped a key and all major U.S. highways appeared on the map.

The zigzag line seemed to correspond to the major highway systems in the states in which the murders had been committed. It was a confirmation; there was a pattern. And the line, which had headed in a northerly direction from Alabama up through the Great Lakes region and into New England, was now moving south. The next Harold Smith to die, Smith deduced would be in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, or Connecticut. And after that?

The traveling killer could not drive east into the Atlantic Ocean. Thus he could continue either south into New York, or west, into upstate New York. Either way, Smith realized with a queasy feeling, the killer's path would bring him, eventually, inexorably, to Rye, New York.

And to himself; Harold W. Smith.

Chapter 7

An accident of seating had made Ferris D'Orr one of the leading lights in his field.

Ferris D'Orr was in metals. Some who could make that claim speculated in gold or platinum, others in silver. Ferris D'Orr was in titanium. He didn't buy it, sell it, or trade it. He worked it. He was, at age twenty-four, one of the leading metallurgists in a field where practical application, not scarcity, created value.

As he tooled his silver-gray BMW into the parking lot of Titanic Titanium Technologies, in Falls Church, Virginia, Ferris D'Orr thought again of that portentous day when it had all begun.

D'Orr had been a high-school student, and not a very good one incidentally, dating Dorinda Dommichi, the daughter of a dentist who thought Ferris was a likable enough fellow, but not much more. That was because Ferris lacked ambition. Totally. He had no plans for college, no particular career direction, and a vague hope of winning the state lottery.

Ferris also had hopes of marrying Dorinda. If for no other reason than that her folks had money. Ferris liked money.

It had all come crashing down one night on the front seat of Ferris' gas-guzzling Chrysler. Ferris had decided that it was time that his relationship with Dorinda, in his words, "ascend to a new plateau of intimacy."

"Okay," said Dorinda, not exactly understanding, but liking the sound of the words.

"Excellent," said Ferris, pulling her sweater up over her head.

"What are you doing?" asked Darinda.

"We're ascending. Remember?"

"Then why are you pushing me down on the seat?"

"How do you unlock this thing?" Ferris asked, tugging on her bra strap.

"Try the front."

"That's where I'm headed. Your front."

"I mean it unlocks in front."

"Oh. Why didn't you say so?"

It had not been the exciting, pleasurable experience Ferris D'Orr had always dreamed of. The front seat was too cramped. After Ferris got one leg tangled in the steering wheel, they tried the back seat.

"That's better," Ferris grunted. He was sweating. It seemed like a lot more work than he expected.

"This is icky," said Dorinda, her brows knitting.

"Give it time. We're just getting started."

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than Ferris was done.

"That's it?" asked Dorinda in a disappointed voice.

"Wasn't it wonderful?" asked Ferris, dreamy-eyed.

"It was icky. Let's go see a movie and forget this ever happened."

"Dorinda, I love you," Ferris said, taking Dorinda in his arms. And in his passion, he spilled his greatest secret. "I want to marry you."

"Maybe," said Dorinda. "I'll have to ask my father first. "

"My mother might object too," said Ferris. "She's got some crazy idea of me marrying a nice Jewish girl."

"How come?" Dorinda asked, closing her jeans.

"My mother is Jewish. But I'm not."

"That's nice," said Dorinda.

"I'm only telling you this because I don't want any secrets between us now. Not after tonight. Promise that this will be our little secret?"

"I promise," said Dorinda, who at breakfast the next morning asked her father a simple question.

"What's Jewish?"

"A Person who is a Jew is Jewish. It's a religion. You've heard Father Malone mention them at Mass."

"Oh," said Dorinda, who skied in the winter, sailed in the summer, and rode horses the rest of the year, but otherwise didn't get around much. "I thought they only existed in the Bible. Like Pharisees."

"Why do you ask?" said Dorinda's mother.

"Because Ferris said he wasn't one."

"Of course not. He goes to church with us, doesn't he?"

"But his mother is, though."

Mrs. Dommichi dropped her coffee. Dr. Dommichi coughed violently.

"When did he tell you this?" asked Dr. Dommichi casually.

"After," said Dorinda, buttering a muffin.

"After what'?"

"After we ascended the new plateau of intimacy." Ferris D'Orr noticed a definite coolness in the Dommichi family's attitude toward him the next time he happened to drop in at suppertime. At first, he thought it was something he had said, but when they stopped inviting him on the weekly family boat outings, he knew he was in deep trouble.

He asked Dorinda what was wrong one night while she was resisting his attempts to unclasp her bra.

"My dad says you're a Jew."

Ferris stopped. "You told him!"

"Of course."

"But that was a secret. Our secret."

"Isn't that what secrets are for, to tell other people?"

"I'm not a Jew. My mother is a Jew. My father was a Catholic. I was raised Catholic. Even after my father died, I stayed Catholic. Despite my mother's nagging."

"My father says a Jew is a Jew."

"What else does he say?" asked Ferris dejectedly, giving up on Dorinda's snow-white brassiere.

"He says that I shouldn't count on marrying you."

"Damn," said Ferris D'Orr, realizing his meal ticket was slipping out of his fingers.

Despite that, Dorinda's family had invited him to Thanksgiving dinner. It was a typical Italian Thanksgiving, with a lot of wine, garlic bread, homemade ravioli, and linguine in clam sauce. And as an afterthought, a very small turkey. You didn't eat much turkey with all that pasta. Ferris suspected that Dorinda had to throw a tantrum to wangle the invitation.

His suspicions were confirmed when, instead of seating him at the family table next to Dorinda, her parents, and the seven Dommichi children, he got stuck in a satellite table with a gaggle of cousins.

Ferris made the best of it. He was there for the food, mostly. And so he struck up a conversation with a short-haired cousin not many years older than he.

"Ferris D'Orr," he had said, sizing up the man.

"Johnny Testa. Happy to meet you." He had the polite air of'an Eagle Scout about him. In fact, Ferris found him too nice. Maybe the guy is a priest or a seminary student, Ferris thought.

"You from around here?"

"Originally. I'm on leave at the moment from the Navy."

"Oh yeah? Submarines and aircraft carriers and that stuff."

"Actually, I only get out on the water when Uncle Dom invites the family out on his sloop. I'm with the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington. I'm a metallurgist,"

"You work with metal?" said Ferris, recognizing half of the word. "Like a welder?"

The Navy man laughed good-naturedly.

"No, not exactly. My team is experimenting with titanium applications. It's a metal," he added, seeing Ferris' blank look.

"What's so great about titanium?" asked Ferris, tasting a rubbery substance that he realized, too late, was squid.

"Titanium is a crucial defense metal. We use it for critical parts of aircraft, submarines, satellites, surgical implants, and other high-tech applications. On the one hand, it's great. It will withstand corrosion, stress, and high-speed punishment. But it can't be worked the way steel or iron is worked. You have to form it in cold state and then machine it. It's expensive, and you lose a lot of it in the process. They call that the 'buy-to-fly' ratio. How much titanium do you have to buy to make that aircraft part? Usually the ratio is 1.5 to 1, which means you lose one-third ofthe metal in fabrication."

"You're really into this stuff?" said Ferris.

"Titanium has other problems. Its melting temperature is too high. Makes it tough to weld-you have to do it in an inert-gas chamber-and practically impossible to forge. When it reaches its melting point, it absorbs nitrogen, causing embrittlement."

"That makes it no good, right?" asked Ferris D'Orr, who thought he was catching on.

"Right. Exactly."

"So what do you do?"

"We're trying to find a way to make titanium take ordinary welding. If we can weld it, we can build aircraft from titanium. Right now, we can only use it for the most critical machine parts."

"Anybody see any pork?" Ferris said loudly, looking in Dr. Dommichi's direction. "Boy, I could really go for some juicy pork chops right about now. Yum yum, my favorite."

The head table pointedly ignored him and he settled for a pasta dish he didn't recognize.

"The metallurgist who can figure it out will make billions," Johnny Testa continued.

"Billions? Maybe that guy will be you," Ferris suggested, secretly hoping it would not be.

"If I succeed, the Navy will get the money. I'll just get the credit."

"That's kinda unfair."

Johnny shook his head. "I won't crack it. All I'm doing is taking high-speed camera films of welding checks. We analyze the way the solder droplets fly off the titanium forms. The real breakthrough will be in solving the hot-forging problem. They're years away from real progress."

"How many ears?"

"Five, maybe ten."

"How many years does it take to become a metallurgist'?"

"Four. But it's been done in less."

"Can you be a metallurgist without joining the Navy?"

"Absolutely. I'll bet some private firm pulls off this coup. Those are the boys who'll make the bucks."

"Where do you go to learn this stuff?" asked Ferris D'Orr, who right then and there was motivated into a career decision.

"I went to MIT."

"That's in Boston, isn't it?"

"Near Boston, anyway."

"Can you be more exact?" asked Ferris D'Orr, scribbling furiously on his linen napkin. "And spell 'metallurgy' for me, will ya?"

The next day Ferris D'Orr broke off with the lovely Dorinda and started hitting the textbooks with a vengeance. He had two years of high school left and he was going to make the best of them. In his spare time he read all he could about metallurgy so that when he got to MIT he'd have a head start. With his luck, some joker was going to beat him to all those billions of dollars.

But no one did. Ferris got to MIT and completed the four-year metallurgy degree in three years. In his senior year, working entirely on his own, he discovered a method of annealing bronze that experts speculated was similar to the method once known to the ancient Egyptians, but now lost. Ferris immediately fell into a top position with Titanic Titanium Technologies of Virginia, one of the most important defense-industry metallurgy firms.

That had been five years ago, thought Ferris D'Orr as he stepped from his car. In those five years he had risen to the position of vice-president of exotic-metals applications at Titanic Titanium. All that time, he pursued his goal in his personal lab. He kept plugging away during the superplastic forming scare, which drastically simplified titanium forming. He had squeaked through the revolution in bonding titanium with spaceage plastics, and the quartz-lamp forging experiments. Still the industry had not solved the ultimate problem of forging titanium.

This morning, Ferris D'Orr thought to himself, he was about to render all those advancements obsolete. "Good morning, Mr. D'Orr," said the security guard.

"Good morning, uh, Goldstein," said Ferris, squinting at the guard's nametag. He made a mental note to have the man fired. He didn't like Jews. They reminded him of his mother.

Ferris D'Orr slipped his plastic keycard into the proper slot and the security door buzzed open, then clicked shut behind him.

In his private laboratory, Ferris got to work. He was excited. This was the day. Or maybe tomorrow would be. He wasn't sure, but he knew he was close. Very close.

Three round billets of grayish-blue titanium stood on a worktable. They bore the Titanic Titanium triple-T stamp. They looked like ordinary lead bars, except for their rounded corners and high finish. If you saw one lying on the street you wouldn't give it a second look.

But Ferris knew that in their way, they represented the ultimate in titanium technology. To get pure titanium in bar form, the metal had to be consolidated from its mined granule form. Even then, the billet was only the raw material. It had to be painstakingly ground, cut, or machined into usable parts, and a lot of valuable titanium was ground away in the process. It could be welded only with difficulty and it could not be melted. With its high melting temperature, heating titanium turned it into a pourable, but brittle, slag that was useless for commercial applications.

The problem seemed insoluble, but Ferris D'Orr had hit upon a solution that was as perfect as it was obvious. In other words, it was brilliant.

If heating titanium to get it into a desired shape created more problems than it solved, then the trick was to melt the metal without heating it.

Ferris D'Orr had explained his idea to the president of Titanic Titanium Technologies, Ogden Miller. "You're out of your mind," Miller said. Ferris reminded him of how he had discovered the method of annealing bronze while still in college. Miller gave him a private lab and unlimited funding.

The result was the titanium nebulizer. Ferris D'Orr wheeled the prototype over to the worktable where the three billets stood on separate trays.

The titanium nebulizer looked like a slide projector on wheels. There were no high-tech dials, frills, or gimmicks. It was simply a black box with a stubby tubelike muzzle mounted on a mobile stand. Ferris pointed the muzzle at one of the billets, which sat in a tray labeled A. Another rested in a tray labeled B. The third lay on the middle tray, which was labeled AB.

He turned on the nebulizer. It hummed, but otherwise there was no indication that it was working. Ferris adjusted two micrometer settings until the numbers matched.

"Vibration frequencies attuned," he sang happily. "Ready, set, go."

He pressed the only other control, a microswitch button.

The billet in the A tray melted like a dropped ice-cream bar.

"That's A," Ferris hummed.

He readjusted the micrometer settings and hit the microswitch.

The billet in the B tray wavered and swam, filling the tray like poured coffee.

"That's B," Ferris sang. "Here comes the hard part." Ferris fiddled with the micrometer settings. Each time he thought he had the vibration settings he wanted, he hit the button. Nothing happened. The melted titanium in the A and B trays shimmered liquidly, The middle billet just sat there.

"Damn," said Ferris. "I'm so close."

"You're close to being shut down," said a voice at his side.

Ferris jumped.

"Oh, Mr. Miller. I didn't hear you."

"Ferris, what's this about your secretary leaving in tears yesterday?"

"We had an argument," said Ferris absently, removing a panel on the side of the nebulizer to get at the inside workings.

"She claims you tried to get into her pants."

"Actually, I succeeded."

"In this very room, from what I hear."

"She enjoyed it. Or so she claimed at the time."

"So you fired her after you had your way with her? Is that it? Stop fiddling with that thing and look me in the eye when I talk to you."

"Can we discuss this later? I think I'm almost there."

"You're almost out the door, is where you are, Ferris."

"Since when is sleeping with my secretary a crime? Almost everybody in this company sleeps with some other worker. At least I don't sleep with members of my own sex.

"We can live with that," Ogden Miller said nastily. "What we can't live with is a discrimination suit. She claims you fired her for religious reasons."

"She was Jewish. She admitted it. If I'd known it beforehand, I wouldn't have slept with her. Or hired her in the first place."

"You'd damn well better have a stronger excuse than that. We have big government contracts that can be taken away over something like this."

"It's not my fault," said Ferris forlornly. "Her last name was Hart. What kind of a Jewish name is that? Scnnebody ought to give them badges, so we can tell them apart or something."

"Someone tried that. I think his name was Hitler. What's gotten into you?"

"Could you stand aside? I think I have the setting synchronized again."

"You're out of sync, Ferris. That's your problem."

"Out of sync," Ferris said, closing the panel. "Maybe that's it. In sync for A and B, out of sync for AB. It might work."

"What might work?"

"Watch," said Ferris D'Orr, replacing the A and B trays with identical trays and placing new billets in each tray.

The tray marked A is alpha-phase titanium," Ferris said as he hit the button.

The billet liquefied.

"So what?" said Miller. "We already know you can melt titanium with a laser. It doesn't matter. The metal's too brittle to use now. It's been exposed to air."

"This isn't a laser."

"Yeah?"

"It's a nebulizer. It doesn't use heat."

"No heat," said Miller thoughtfully, taking a cigar out of his mouth.

"Do you feel any heat?"

"Now that you mention it, no."

"Put your hand in front of the nozzle."

"No, thanks."

"Then hold this button down while I put my hand in front of the thing."

Ferris waved his hand in front of the nozzle. He grinned.

"Microwaves?" asked Ogden Miller.

Ferris shook his head. "They'd cook my hand to hamburger. It's sonic."

"No heat at all?"

"Watch," said Ferris, walking to the A tray. He dipped his index finger in and brought it out dripping liquid titanium.

"Oh my God," said the president of Titanic Titanium Technologies. "I'll get a doctor."

He was halfway out of the room when Ferris got in his way.

"Touch the metal," he said, holding his metal-coated finger under Miller's nose.

Gingerly Miller felt the metal. It was hard, cold. And as Ferris pulled the thin covering off his fingernails, malleable. Definitely malleable.

"Not brittle?" asked Miller incredulously.

"Not brittle at all." Ferris grinned.

"Do you realize what this means? No more superplastic forming. We can pour the billets directly into molds. Like steel."

"Better," said Ferris D'Orr. "We can skip the mill stage altogether. The nebulizer will leach the raw titanium from rock. We can melt and remelt it like it was taffy. "

"This thing will do that?"

"That's not all," said Ferris, pulling a square block off a shelf. He handed it over.

"What's this?"

"Yesterday, it was two rectangular forms. Pure titanium."

"I don't see any weld seams."

"Weld seams are yesterday. Like the 78 RPM record. Or dry-box welding."

"No more dry-box welding?" Ogden Miller's voice was tiny, like a child's.

Ferris nodded. "You can throw them all out-as soon as I lick the alpha-beta-phase titanium problem."

"Can you?"

The two men walked over to the nebulizer. "Something you just said makes me think I can," Ferris D'Orr said as he played with the micrometer settings. "As you know, titanium in the alpha phase has its atoms arranged in a hexagonal formation. When the metal is heated above 885 degrees Centigrade, it's transformed into body-centered cubic beta titanium."

"I don't know that technical stuff. I don't have to. I'm the president."

"But you do know that alpha-beta titanium is the best for commercial use?"

"I've heard it said, yeah."

"This device, through focused ultrasound, causes the metal to vibrate so the atomic structure is, to put it in layman's terms, discombobulated. It falls into a liquid state without heat or loss of material."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that. But alpha-beta titanium won't respond to the nebulizer. I've spent the last two weeks trying every possible vibratory setting to get the same reaction. It's like trying to crack a safe. You know the tumblers will respond if you hit the right combination. You just have to keep searching for that exact number sequence."

"Well, keep searching."

"If alpha titanium discombobulates when exposed to synchronized frequencies, then might not alpha-beta-phase titanium respond to out-of-sync vibrations?"

"You're the whiz kid. You tell me."

"No, I'll show you."

And Ferris D'Orr got to work.

Ogden Miller, president of Titanic Titanium Technologies, Inc., pulled up a stool and lit another cigar. His face shone like a wet light bulb; his eyes glazed in thought. He had visions of his company dominating America's defense and aerospace programs into the twenty-first century. Perhaps beyond. This was big. It was bigger than big. It was a metallurgical revolution. He had visions of a two-page ad in the next Aviation Week announcing the first one-to-one buy-to-fly ratio in metallurgical history. And it had been created on Titanic Titanium company time. Which meant that Ogden Miller owned it. If it worked on alpha-beta titanium, that is.

Under his superior's watchful eye, Ferris D'Orr worked through lunch. He worked past five o'clock. And he worked well into the evening, setting and resetting the micrometer dials and triggering the nebulizer, without result.

At exactly 9:48 eastern standard time, the billet in the AB tray liquefied.

The two men, their eyes bloodshot from hours of staring at that stubborn chunk of bluish metal, blinked furiously.

"Did it melt?" whispered Miller. "My eyes tell me it did."

"I don't trust them."

"Mine neither."

"Do you want to dip your finger into it, or should I?"

"I want the honor this time."

Ogden Miller walked to the AB tray and carefully touched the cool surface of the bluish material in the tray. It shimmered. It felt cool to his touch, like a very dense pudding. When he lifted out his finger, it gleamed silvery-gray and the puddinglike stuff plopped down into the tray, one fabulous drop at a time.

Ogden Miller looked back at Ferris D'Orr. "AB titanium. You're certain?"

"We did it!" Ferris howled. "We can pour titanium into molds like steel."

"We can forge it, weld it. Hell, we can practically drink it!"

"I think that would be going too far; Mr. Miller."

"Well, Ferris, we can drink champagne, can't we? Get those out-of-sync settings down on paper and we'll celebrate."

"What about that matter?"

"What matter?"

"The secretary."

"Hell with her," said the president of Titanic Titanium Technologies. "Let her sue. We'll settle out of court and still be billions in the black."

"Billions," said Ferris D'Orr under his breath.

"Billions."

Chapter 8

Remo Williams awoke with the rain.

Or rather, the rain woke Remo Williams. He had spent the night in his unfinished future home, sleeping on the hard floor and collecting a few splinters from the unplaned wood. The rain started shortly after dawn, a light sprinkle, and pattered on his sleeping form.

A fat droplet splashed on Remo's high cheek and rilled into his parted mouth. He came to his feet, tasting the cool, sweet drop. It was different from the rain in America, which tasted brackish and full of chemicals. He threw his head back to catch more drops.

Today, Remo decided, he would thatch the roof. Then he remembered that he didn't know how.

Remo reluctantly made his way through the mud to the House of the Masters, which shone like a slick jewel in the rain.

Remo knocked first. There was no answer. "C'mon, Chiun."

He knocked again, and receiving no reply, focused on his breathing. A Westerner, straining to hear better, concentrates on his ears. But that tenses the sensitive eardrums and is counterproductive. By focusing his breathing, Remo relaxed his body and attuned it to his surroundings.

Remo's relaxed but very sensitive ears told him that Chiun was not inside the house.

"Anyone see Chiun?" Remo asked of the two women walking by with burdens of cordwood.

They smiled at him and shook their heads no.

Remo shrugged. He tried the door. It was not locked and he went in.

Everything was as before; heaps of jewels and bowls of pearls were scattered across the floor. On the taboret beside Chiun's low throne there was a piece of parchment. Even across the room, Remo recognized his name, written in English.

Remo snatched up the paper. To Remo the Unfair:

Know that I do not fault you, my son, for the misfortune that has recently befallen me, the Master of Sinanju, who has lifted you up from the muck of a foreign land and raised you to perfection. That you have never thanked me for my sacrifices is of no moment, I do not hold this against you. Nor do I fault you for the manner in which you have stolen the affection of my people. It is their affection to give, and how could they resist the insidious blandishments of one who has been trained by Chiun-whom I know you will refer to in the histories that you will write as Chiun the Great. Not that I am telling you your business. Write the histories as you see fit.

Do not worry about me now that I have gone from Sinanju. I am in the evening of my life, and my work is done. I would stay in the village I have selflessly supported, but no one wants an old man, not even to honor for his great accomplishments. But I did not do the work of my House to be honored, but to continue my line. And now you will take up that burden from my drooping shoulders. May you bear many fine sons, Remo, and may none of them visit upon you the ingratitude and indignities which have been my sorry lot.

The village is yours. The House of the Masters is yours. Mah-Li is yours-although I expect you to honor the traditional engagement period. I do not blame you for casting me aside like an old sandal and lavishing your fickle affections upon Mah-Li-formerly known as Mah-Li the Beast-for she is young like you, and youth never appreciates the company of the stooped and the elderly, for it reminds them of the loneliness and infinnities that lie in store for them. Sometimes deservedly so.

Build your toilets, Remo. As many as you like. Make them big enough to swim in. I grant you my permission. And condoms. Build those too. May the shoreline of Sinanju boast condoms taller than any known in the modern world, as a true testament to the glory of Remo the Unfair, latest Master of Sinanju.

I go now to live in another land-the only land in which I have known contentment and the respect of a fair and generous emperor.

P.S. Do not touch capital. Spend all the gold you wish, but do not sell any treasure. The gold exists for the use of the Master, but the treasure belongs to Sinanju.

P.P.S. And do not place your trust in the villagers. Not even Mah-Li. They are fickle. Like you. And they do not love you, you know, but only covet your gold.

The note was signed with the bisected trapezoid that was the symbol of the House of Sinanju.

"Oh, great," said Remo in the emptiness. He plunged into the next room, where Chiun kept his most personal effects. They were stored in fourteen steamer trunks, all of them open. There were no closets in Sinanju. It was another improvement Remo had hoped to make.

All fourteen steamer trunks were still there. The note, therefore, had to be a bluff. Chiun would never leave without his steamer trunks. Remo checked Chiun's kimono trunk. There were three garments missing, a gray traveling robe, a sleeping robe, and the blue-and-gold kimono favored for wear when Masters met with former emperors.

"He really has gone," Remo said dully.

And it was true. Remo turned out the whole village. Every hut, every hovel, was checked. Chiun was nowhere to be found.

"What does this mean?" asked Mah-Li, after the truth became clear.

"Chiun's gone," Remo said. "He left during the middle of the night."

"But why would he leave? This is his home. He has longed for Sinanju ever since he departed for America."

"I think he felt left out," Remo said at last.

The villagers of Sinanju were distraught. The women wept. The men howled their anguish to the sky. The children, frightened by the sounds, ran and hid. All had the same plaintive cry. All asked the same burning question. All feared the answer.

It was Pullyang, the caretaker, who addressed it to the new Master, Remo.

"Did he take the treasure with him?"

And when Remo barked, "No!" joy filled the village like the lifting of storm clouds.

"Shame, shame on you all," scolded Mah-Li. "The Master Chiun has protected us and fed us for as long as most of us have lived our lives. Shame that you should be so uncaring."

"Thanks, Mah-Li," said Remo, as the villagers slinked away.

"But where would the Master go?" she asked in a quieter voice.

Remo was standing in the mud outside of Chiun's house when the question was asked. The light rain was steadily obliterating any possible trace of footsteps, and the Master of Sinanju, whose step would not wrinkle a silk-sheeted bed, never left a discernible trail anyway.

But, oddly, there were traces visible in the melting mud. A deeper footstep here, a faint thread of gray kimono silk there. Could Chiun be so upset, Remo wandered, that he did not take the usual care in walking?

With the curious villagers trailing behind him, Remo retraced Chiun's path out of the village and up the lone trail through the rocks to the one road leading in and out of the village.

At the crest of the hill, Remo looked down the dirt road, which, at a respectful distance, widened into three black highways, built by the leader of the People's Republic of North Korea, Kim Il Sung, to atone for a transgression against Sinanju made not long ago. One highway ran east; the others veered north and south.

Chiun's sandaled footsteps led as far as the end of the dirt road. Remo saw faint wet imprints of his steps at the beginning of the south highway.

Chiun had gone to Pyongyang, capital of North Korea. And from there, who knew?

What was it Chiun had written? "I go now to live in another land-the only land in which I have known contentment and the respect of a fair and generous emperor." Normally that would have been Persia, but even Chiun admitted that Persia was a mess these days, ruled by priests, not true rulers. China, then. No, the Chinese were thieves, according to Chiun. Japan? Worse. When Remo had eliminated the Pacific rim and Europe from his mind, only Africa and North America were left.

Could Chiun have meant America?

The farmer from Sunchon would have been glad to give the elderly wise man with the stovepipe hat a ride, he said.

"Then why do you not stop?" Chinn asked, walking alongside.

"I have no room in my cart," was the reply. The cart was drawn by a lone bullock. "See? It is full of barley, which I am taking to market."

Chiun, without breaking stride, peered into the square back of the two-wheeled cart. Heaps of barley lay there, soaking up the light rain.

"It is good barley. Do you mind if I walk with you?" asked Chiun innocently.

"If you wish, stranger."

"I am no stranger," corrected Chiun. "Every man knows me."

"I do not," the farmer said reasonably.

And because Chiun was traveling incognito, he did not tell the farmer who he was. Any who wished to follow him would have to work at it. Not that anyone would.

After a time, the farmer noticed that the tired bullock was stepping more smartly. The shower had tapered off and the clouds were parting in the sky. It was going to be a good day after all. Then, realizing that the old wise man had been silent too long, he looked back to see if he still walked beside the cart.

He did not. He was placidly sitting in the rear of the cart. The empty cart.

"Where is my barley?" the farmer screeched, pulling the bullock to a halt.

"You have a defective cart," said Chinn evenly. "It sprang a leak." The farmer then noticed the trail of barley beans-a single ragged line extending down the highway back to the West Korea Bay.

"Why did you not tell me?" The farmer was fairly jumping up and down. His conical hat fell to the asphalt.

Chiun shrugged. "You did not ask."

"What will I do?" wailed the farmer. "I cannot pick them up one by one. I am ruined."

"No, only your cart is ruined," said Chiun. "Take me to Pyongyang airport and I will give you a gold coin."

"Two gold coins," said the farmer.

"Do not press your luck," warned Chiun, arranging his traveling kimono so that it covered the fingernail-size hole that had appeared in the bottom of the cart, just wide enough to let one barley bean at a time fall out, like the grains of sand through the neck of an hourglass. "It is fortunate that I happened to be traveling with you at this unhappy time."

The Master of Sinanju was informed at the People's Democratic Airport that, no, he could not book a seat on a flight to the West. The North Korean airline did not fly to the West. If he wanted to go to Russia, and he had the proper documentation, fine. If he wished to fly to China, that, too, was possible. From Russia or China, he could obtain connections to any other proper destination in the Communist world.

"Seoul," said the Master of Sinanju, still refusing to identify himself. "I can change for a Western flight in Seoul."

The airport guards arrested the Master of Sinanju as soon as the words were out of his mouth. They called him a defector and a lackey of the West.

Chiun's arrest lasted about as long as the epithets hung in the air around him.

The two security guards found their rifles had jumped from their hands and embedded themselves, muzzlefirst, in the ceiling. Plaster fell on their bare heads. While they were looking up, they required major surgery. Very suddenly.

The head surgeon at the People's Democratic Emergency Ward wanted to know how the two guards had managed to enter military service despite their obvious congenital defect.

They were not believed when they explained that they were not really Siamese twins, born fused at the hip, but the victims of a particularly vicious Western attack. After surgery, they were court-martialed for concealing medical disabilities.

By that time, Chiun had been deposited at Kimpo Air Base in South Korea in a North Korean military craft which had its markings removed. The pilot and copilot, who had volunteered for the mission, swallowed poison upon landing in Seoul, capital of South Korea.

Chiun, oblivious of the fact that he had precipitated a major international incident, stepped off the aircraft and disappeared into the drizzle and fog of midmorning. He was one step ahead of the South Korean and American troops who converged upon the plane.

Hours later, a Strategic Air Command bomber took off from Kimpo on a routine flight back to the United States. Over Hawaii, the pilot and copilot were more than a little astonished when they heard a knocking on the cabin door.

They looked at one another. As far as they knew, the rear of the craft was empty. There shouldn't be anyone in hack.

"Maybe a maintenance worker fell asleep," the pilot suggested.

"I'll take a look," said the copilot, removing his earphones.

When he opened the sealed door, he saw a little Korean in a gray robe.

The little Korean smiled pleasantly.

"You speakee English?" asked the copilot.

"Better than you," retorted Chiun. "I have been waiting patiently for many hours. When are meals served on this flight?"

Chapter 9

In 1949 they had told him there was no hope.

He did not believe them, not even in those early months in the green room. He was in an iron lung then. He was in an iron lung a long time, staring up at the angled mirror in which his seared face stared back as pale and bald as that of a new hatchling.

The doctors had told him there was no hope of his ever leaving that mechanical barrel which kept him breathing in spite of his weakened lungs.

But the face of the brutal Harold Smith stared back at him from the inescapable mirror. His hair grew back, in patches. His eyebrows resprouted. The plastic surgeons-paid for by benefactors from the old days-recarved his melted ears until they were like any normal person's ears, if smaller.

And in time, they pulled him from the iron lung. He had demanded it. At first they refused, insisting that he would die. But he ordered them. In the name of the old days of the Reich that was now never to be, he ordered it. Finally they relented.

And he breathed on his own.

They had not told him he had lost both legs.

"We thought it unnecessary to burden you," the doctor told him. "It is a miracle you are out of that damnable machine at all." His accent was of the old country, of the undivided Germany. He was the only one of the doctors he trusted. The others were good, but they were mongrels, with greasy black hair and skin the color of heavily creamed coffee. They spoke the debased Spanish tongue of Argentina.

"I should have been told." he had railed at them. "Had I known, I would not have allowed myself to survive. Had I known, I would have gone to my grave in peace. What good is my freedom if I cannot walk? I have one good arm. With one arm I could strangle that assassin, Smith. One arm is all I would need. But no legs."

The German doctor had shrugged helplessly.

"You are fortunate to live at all. Be grateful for that." It had taken many years of therapy before he had the strength to sit up in a wheelchair. That was the second step. The third was the year the motorized wheelchair was put on the market. With that, there was no need to be pushed around by nurses. But that wasn't what he wanted.

He wanted to walk. Erect, like a whole man.

The years passed in the hospital outside of Buenos Aires. They gave him a wooden arm with a hook at the end of it. The hook had lasted barely a week. He would wake up in the middle of the night, sweating and screaming, trying to beat back the flames. The hook shattered the night-light, tore the bedclothes, and ripped open the cheek of one of the yelling nurses as she tried to hold him to the bed.

They replaced the hook with a black plastic cap. It was as blunt and impotent as the smooth scar tissue of his groin, where the surgeons had, in those early days, removed the dead, gangrenous organ, and inserted a tiny plastic flange to keep the inflamed opening of the urinary tract from sealing over.

It was an indignity that seemed inconsequential compared with the others Harold Smith had visited upon him in one red-lit evening. It did not matter that he was no different from a woman in that respect. He was still a man in his heart. And his heart lusted for a man's vengeance. An Aryan's vengeance.

They told him there was no hope of walking. Ever. When they introduced the first bionic arms in the 1970's, he demanded one. And got it. He was no longer in the green room he had come to loathe, but in a stucco home near Saita that was paid for by donations from those of Germany who still believed and remembered. "If they can do this with arms, they can do it with legs," he had told his doctor at the time.

"They are working on it," the doctor had told him. "I think they will succeed. It will be a boon for those missing one leg, yes. But for those with none . . ." The doctor had just shaken his head sadly.

"There is no hope?" he had asked.

"There is no hope."

And he had believed him. But the face of the hated Harold Smith kept staring back from every mirror, every pane of glass touched by the Argentinian sun, and taunted him. Eternally young, he had taunted him.

By that time he had established contacts throughout the world. There were people, good Germans, who had left the dismembered ruin of their native country and resettled in America. Some had visited him in his stucco home, to reminisce, to speak of the old days and old glories, glories that might still shine.

"Find Smith," he had begged them. "Do not approach him. Do not touch him. Just find him."

They had not found Smith. The old Office of Strategic Services had been disbanded. Smith had been an employee to the end, but there the trail ended. There was speculation that the man might have transferred over to the new intelligence organ of the United States government, the Central Intelligence Agency, but the old CIA records were impossible to access. There was no Harold Smith listed in the newer records.

"Perhaps he is dead," they suggested.

"No," he had spat back. "He lives for me. He lives for the day my hands clutch his throat. He is not dead. I would feel it if that were true. No, he is not dead. And I will find him. Somehow."

It was then that he finally came to America, back to America. It was a changed place, but all the world had changed. Even he had changed.

In America he had found many Harold Smiths. And so he had set out to kill them all.

He had killed several. It had been easy, but oddly disappointing. None was the right one. And there were so many Harold Smiths. He had begun to despair once more.

Until today.

Now the doctor was speaking words that brought him back to the present.

"There is hope."

"Are you certain?"

"If what you tell me is true, there is hope," the doctor said. He was the latest doctor. Young, brilliant, loyal and one of the finest bionics experts in the country. The doctor had created his three-fingered claw that was superior to anything available from the best American medical-supply houses.

"I have heard about this man D'Orr's discovery. If he's solved the titanium problem, then I can see the day when this method could be applied to bionic legs."

"When?"

"Three years. Perhaps less."

"I cannot wait three years," he said.

He was lying on an examing table, a sheet covering his stumps and the obscene nudity between them. Ilsa stood off to one side. He was not ashamed to let her see him like this, lying like a piece of wrinkled meat on the table. She had seen him like this many times. She dressed him, fed him, and bathed him. She helped him when he had to use the bathroom. He had no secrets from Ilsa-except perhaps his desire for her.

He smiled at her, and she gently soothed his brow with a cool damp cloth.

"We're so close to finding him," Ilsa told the doctor.

"I cannot stop now," he told the doctor. "I have begun my search. What can you do for me?"

"Nothing. "

"What do you need? I will obtain it."

"The technology exists," the doctor said. "The trouble is, it exists in two parts. I can give you anything that modern bionic engineering can provide. But you know the problem. Steel is too heavy for the powering mechanisms that would have to be built into each limb. Aluminum is too light. The legs would buckle under the strains you propose. I could give you legs tomorrow, but they would not be equal to the task. If I had D'Orr's nebulizer, it would be possible to create titanium parts that would work. Otherwise, we must wait for the device to come on the commercial market."

"Then we will get D'Orr's secret," he said, and Ilsa squeezed his real hand tightly.

"I will leave that up to you," said the doctor, replacing his stethoscope in his black bag. "Contact me when you have succeeded. I want to leave here while it is still dark. A man of my reputation cannot be seen coming and going from this place."

"You are a good German," he told the doctor.

There was hope. After all these years, there was hope.

Chapter 10

In his office at Folcroft Sanitarium, Dr. Harold W. Smith rubbed his eyes furiously. Replacing his steel-rimmed glasses, he returned to the mocking video screen.

A light snow was falling on Long island Sound. Smith had no eyes for its quiet beauty.

Moment by moment, unusual reports flashed onto the silent screen. Tapped off wire-service and network newsfeeds, only CURE-potential events showed on the screen. Smith had long ago worked out a system that enabled the dumb, unthinking computer to separate human-interest and other miscellaneous events-the chaff of the daily news-from the wheat, possible CURE priority material. Buzzwords were the key to the program, buzzwords like "death," "murder," "crime." When the computer found those words, it filed those reports.

Smith read each time the screen flashed a new paragraph.

In Boston, a twenty-two-year-old girl was shot twice in the chest in a drug-related murder. The previous week she had escaped a similar attack by unknown persons brandishing an Uzi machine gun.

In Miami, two undercover vice cops were missing for the third day and presumed dead.

In San Francisco, military police surrounded an Air Force transport upon its arrival from the Far East. The pilots claimed they had a mysterious Oriental stowaway, but when the plane was boarded, no trace of the stowaway was found.

And for the fourth day in a row, no one named Harold Smith had been found murdered anywhere in the United States.

Smith brought up the U.S. map on which the trail of the Harold Smith killings was plotted. The line stopped in Oakham, Massachusetts. Cold. No other Harold Smiths had died in that state, as Smith had projected. Or in Rhode Island. Or in Connecticut.

What did it mean?

Had the killings stopped as mindlessly as they had begun? Or was the unknown killer simply still traveling to his next victim? In four days, he could have entirely covered Rhode Island, the smallest state in the Union. Or Connecticut, for that matter.

Unless, of course, the killer intended to bypass those states. Unless he was already in New York State. Unless he was in the vicinity of Rye, New York.

Smith had ordered the security guards attached to Foleroft on high alert, but they were not equipped to handle anything this serious. Folcroft was an ordinary institution, and the guards believed they were guarding an expensive health facility. Smith, with the resources of the United States government at his command, could have ordered Folcroft surrounded by crack units of the National Guard. Navy helicopters could, in less than an hour, be deployed in the air over the grounds.

And by the seven-o'clock news, CURE's cover would be exposed to the harsh spotlight of the media, if not blown entirely. There was no way to hide Smith's intelligence background. A cover-up of his past had been considered during the formative days of CURE, and rejected.

Instead, Smith had simply retired from his CIA position and taken a dull but well-paid job in the private sector. It was done all the time. No one would have suspected Smith's new position as director of Folcroft masked America's greatest secret.

So no helicopters flew the skies to protect Harold W. Smith.

For the same reasons. Smith dared not bring the still-undiscovered pattern of killings to the attention of law-enforcement agencies. In fact, he had spent a good part of the last four days pulling strings to make certain that local police reports on the killings did not enter the interagency police intelligence networks. Computer files were mysteriously erased. Paper files disappeared from locked cabinets.

No, there must be no headlines detailing the killing of Harold Smiths. It would draw attention to every Harold Smith in Smith's age group-the age group of the thirteen murder victims to date.

And so, Harold W. Smith, with the might of the entire United States military at his command, but unable to call the police like any other citizen, worked in his Spartan office, his only protection a Colt .45 automatic in his upper-right-hand desk drawer. His eyes remained fixed on the busy computer terminal. It would tell him when the mysterious killer struck again.

Unless, of course, he struck at Folcroft. In that case, Smith would know in a more immediate way. Because Smith would be the next victim.

The phone rang and Smith scooped it up.

"Harold?"

It was Smith's wife. "Yes, dear?"

"It's six o'clock. Aren't you coming home tonight?"

"I'm afraid I'm going to be working late again. I'm sorry."

"I'm worried about you. Harold, about us."

"There's nothing to worry about," Smith said in an unconvincing monotone.

"We're slipping, aren't we? Back into our old ways."

"You mean I'm slipping, don't you?" said Smith, his voice warming.

"I wish you were here."

"I wish I was home too." Out of the corner of his eye Smith saw an entry flash on his video screen. "I have to go now. I'll be in touch."

"Harold-"

Smith hung up abruptly. Turning to the screen, he saw the name Smith. He relaxed when he saw that the item was a news report about a politician, last name Smith, who had been arrested on a bribery charge.

False alarm. Smith thought about calling his wife back, but what did it matter now? She was right. He was slipping back into his old habits, his cold manner.

They had a good marriage, but only because she put up with his long hours, his constant preoccupation, his dry manner. Srnith was a good provider, a stable husband, and a churchgoer, but that was as far as it went. A lifetime of public service had crystallized him into the ultimate bureaucrat. A lifetime of responsibility for America's defense had boiled the juices from him.

When Remo and Chiun were set free from CURE, Smith had found freedom himself. Freedom had made a new man of him. He had grown closer to his wife. After forty years of complacent marriage, they were like newlyweds again.

And it had lasted barely three months, Smith thought bitterly, forcing his thoughts to refocus on the here and now.

Smith did not know who the killer was. He did not know for certain that his rampage through the ranks of Harold Smiths was a hit-or-miss attempt to snuff out Smith's own life. But he had to assume so.

First there was Smith's background. His OSS/CIA history was full of old enemies. There had been CURE-related enemies, but thanks to Remo and Chiun, none of them had lived. No, this matter could not involve CURE. Anyone knowing of Smith's link to CURE had to know enough to locate him with ease.

That made the killer, inevitably, someone from Smith's pre-CURE days, But who? Whoever it was did not know certain important facts.

He did not know where Smith currently lived or worked.

He did not know Smith's full name, otherwise only Harold W. Smiths would be targetted.

But most important, he did not know he was stalking a man who could fight back.

Chapter 11

Boyce Barlow had single-handedly made the town of Dogwood, Alabama-population 334-racially pure. Boyce was very proud of his accomplishment. Dogwood, Alabama, was his hometown, not far from the big city of Huntsville. There were no Jews in Dogwood. Never had been. There were no Asians in Dogwood, although there were a few in Rocket City. As long as they stayed in Rocket City, Boyce Barlow didn't much care about them.

Boyce Barlow was the founder of the White Purity League of Alabama. He had founded it one night in Buckhorn's Lounge, about two weeks after his unemployment checks ran out, while a string band played bad country music on the jukebox.

"This country is going to hell," Boyce told his cousins Luke and Bud.

Luke and Bud each lifted a bottle of Coors in salute to Boyce's righteous sentiment. Luke burped.

"It's getting so a man can't count on worthwhile employment in the land of his birth no more," said Boyce.

"There are other gas stations," said cousin Luke.

"Not in Dogwood, there ain't," Boyce complained. "I can pump gas as good as anyone, but I ain't pumping gas in Dogwood no more."

"Move."

"Shoot, man. I was born here. Can you beat Old Man Shums up and firing a native son like that? I was with him, hell, all of a year and three months. I had seniority. "

"Old Man Shums said you also had your hand in the till."

"So what? I worked there, didn't I?"

"He said you had your hand in the till after closing," Luke pointed out.

"I was drunk," said Bovce. "How the hell's a man supposed to know what he's about when he's drunk? It ain't natural."

"I hear Old Man Shums got himself a replacement," Luke offered.

"Some Indian fella from Huntsville."

"Indian! Damn! That's what's wrong with this country. Too many damn furriners."

"I don't think he's that kind of an Indian."

"What other kind of Indian is there?" asked Bud, who had dropped out of Dogwood Elementary School after the fifth grade.

"There's two kinds. The turban kind and the bow-and-arrow kind," said Luke, who'd come within two months of graduating from high school. "Neither damn one of them any damn good."

"Damn straight," said Boyce. "They're lazy, don't like to work, and they sponge off this great nation of ours."

"Sounds like you, Boyce," the bartender called over.

Boyce threw the bartender a surly look. "When I want vour attention I'll piss on the floor."

"You did that last week."

"And this week I'm considering the other option."

"I had no idea you took in solids," the bartender said dryly.

"Which kind stole my job?" Boyce wondered aloud. "The turban kind or the other?"

"I hear the guy's name is Eagle," said Bud. "John Eagle."

"Must be the bow-and-arrow kind. If it were the other, his name would be John Cow," offered Lake, the historian. "They're big on cows over in India."

"It's un-American," Boyce complained to no one in particular. "Him taking my job like that."

"It's very American," said the bartender, polishing a glass. The bartender polished his glasses to get some use out of them. No one drank beer out of a glass in Dogwood. "The Indians were here before us. That guy's more American than any of you."

The revelation seared into the brains of the drunken trio.

"I think he's right," Luke whispered. "I heard something like that on The Rifleman once."

"Well, he's not white, is he?" demanded Boyce.

"That's right. They're red. They call 'em red men."

"Communists," said Bud, spitting on the floor.

"No, but they're no good neither," said Luke.

"I think we should do something," said Boyce Barlow.

"Do what?" asked Bud.

"Like let's take Dogwood back from the Indians."

"How many Indians we talking about?" asked Luke, who was a cautious soul.

They looked at Bud.

Bud shrugged. "I think there's only one of them."

"Good. We outnumber him."

"Not from what I hear. Them Injuns, they're tough mothers."

"We'll bring a hat with us," said Boyce Barlow, pulling his baseball cap with the Confederate flag down low over his mean eyes.

And that night, the three cousins pulled into Old Man Shum's gas station and yelled for service.

"No need to shout," a deep, rumbling voice said very close by. "I'm right here."

"Where?" dernanded Boyce, sticking his shaggy head out the driver's window of his four-by-four pickup. And then he saw John Eagle. The man stood nearly seven feet tall. He was as wide as a gas pump. In fact they had mistaken him for a gas pump in the darkness, which was why his sudden appearance was so unnerving. "You John Eagle?" asked Boyce Barlow.

"That's right," said John Eagle, leaning down. He smiled. It was a big, friendly smile, but it made John Eagle's wide Indian face look like the front of a Mack truck. "Something I can do for you?"

The three cousins stared at John Eagle with their mouths open and spilling beer fumes.

"He's whiter than us," whispered Luke.

"And he's bigger than us," added Bud. "All of us. Put together. "

"Fill 'er up, friend," Boyce said good-naturedly, vainly trying to match the big man's smile.

Driving off; Bud Barlow broke the strained silence.

"It was a good idea, anyway."

"It still is," said Boyce Barlow. "We gotta make Dogwood a fit place for white Americans."

"And Indians, white ones," added Bud, looking back furtively.

"Who else lives in Dogwood who ain't white?" asked Boyce.

"There's that pumpkin farmer at the edge of town," Luke said. "What's his name? Elmer something."

"Elmer Hawkins," said Boyce. "He's a nigger. Yeah, we can run him off."

"What'd he do?" demanded Bud.

"He ain't white, is he?" said Bovce. "Ain't this the idea? We gotta run off the ones what ain't white."

"But Elmer, he's pushing seventy. And who'd he ever bother?"

"You let one nigger in, soon you got a townful."

"Shoot, Elmer's been living here going on fifty years. He come into town by himself. He's the only nigger we got."

"He's leaving town. Tonight," Boyce said finally. They crept up on Elmer Hawkins' neat shack by moonlight, Boyce Barlow in the lead. It was easy going. There was no kudzu to tangle their feet. Elmer Hawkins' place was about the only open part of Marshall County that wasn't overrun with the indestructible weed. They knocked on Elmer's front door. The windows of the shack were unlit.

"Elmer, open up," Boyce called drunkenly.

When there was no answer after ten minutes of furious knocking; they gave up.

"Must be minding someone's kids," said Bud. "Elmer's always doing nice stuff like that."

"Shut up!" yelled Bovce. "I ain't coming back tomorrow night. I'm in a mean mood now. Tomorrow I might not be."

"Well, I ain't waiting all night, neither," said Luke.

"Who's got a match?" asked Boyce. "We'll burn this nigger out of Dogwood."

"I don't like this," said Bud, but it was too late. Boyce was holding a butane lighter under one corner of the dry wood shack.

The corner darkened, caught, and a line of yellow flame climbed the unpainted wood until there was no chance of putting it out.

Elmer Hawkins came running up the road not many minutes later.

"What's goin' on? What you doin' to my house?" he yelled. He was a lanky old man with peppercorn hair. Boyce Barlow yelled back at him.

"We're running out all the niggers in Dogwood."

"This ain't Dogwood, you fool. This is Arab."

"Ayrab?" said Luke dazedly.

"The Dogwood town line is up the road. What you want to go and burn down my house for?"

"We're getting rid of all the niggers in Arab too," Boyce said smugly.

And he did. But not the way he thought. Elmer Hawkins watched the shack he had lived in for most of his life burn to the ground. He did not get mad. He did not call the police, nor did he press charges. Instead, he hired a lawyer and got even.

The county judge at the trial awarded Elmer Hawkins seven hundred dollars in punitive damages for his shack and an additional fifty thousand dollars for emotional distress. Because Boyce Bariow was dirt poor and unemployed, he could not pay. So the judge ordered Boyce's house-which had been in his family since the Civil War-auctioned off and the proceeds given to the victirn. Elmer Hawkins took the money and bought himself a modest home in Huntsville. There was enough left over to put a down payment on a diner near the Marshall Space Flight Center, where Elmer Hawkins lived out the rest of his days in busy contentment.

"At least I won," Boyce Barlow said when it was over. He was back at his usual table at Buckhorn's.

"But you lost your house, Boyce," Luke pointed out glumly.

"Dogwood is racially pure, though, ain't it?"

"Always was. Elmer lived in Arab, remember?"

"We're not stopping with Dogwood anymore," Boyce said, staring into the dark Coors bottle like a man gazing into a crystal ball. "We're going to expand." Expanding was not easy. The White Purity League of Alabama picked up a few new members who thought it was a crying shame that Boyce lost his house that way, which brought the ranks to exactly six. Because all six were temporarily out of work, dues were a problem.

"How can we expand without any money?" Boyce complained one night at Buckham's.

"We could all go out and get jobs," Bud suggested. He was ignored.

The bartender, who had long ago grown tired of the White Purity League of Alabama holding meetings in his establishment and forgetting to pay its tab, made a fateful suggestion.

"Go on cable TV," he said. "They let any group on the air now. It's called local access or something like that. It's free."

"We don't have cable TV in Dogwood," Boyce said reasonably.

"They do in Huntsville," the bartender countered. And so the White Purity League Hour was born. Within three months its message, "Take Back America," was reaching viewers in twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia. Membership rose from the founding six members to nearly three thousand nationwide. Boyce Barlow bought himself a nice white frame house in suburban Huntsville, a short drive from the national headquarters of the renamed White Purity League of America and Alabama, a former Boy Scout campground Barlow had purchased and converted into Fortress Purity, a barbed-wire compound off Route 431.

Barely a year after the groundbreaking of Fortress Purity, a man showed up at the electrified fence. The man was in a wheelchair.

"I want to join your worthy group," the man said. He was old, too old. And he had no legs.

"Go 'way," said Luke Bariow from the gate. "We got standards."

"Ilsa!" the old man called.

A blond girl stepped out of a bronze van.

"Hi," she said breathily. Then she smiled sunnily.

"Hi!" Luke said, staring at her chest.

"Can we come in? Please?"

"Sure," said Luke, who realized that recruitment among single women was distressingly low.

After he had unlocked the gate, he said. "Pleased to meet you. I'm Luke. I'm vice-corporal in charge of security."

"I've never heard of such a rank," said the old man in the wheelchair.

"I made it up," said Luke proudly. "It was either that or admiral of the gate. I liked that one best, but the other was longer."

The old man smiled. His smile was hideous. It was the smile of a rot-toothed corpse. "Of course."

When the old man was brought to Boyce Barlow, Boyce was three thousand dollars in the hole to his poker partners and welcomed the interruption.

"I'm calling the game. We split the pot," he announced suddenly, scooping up two handfuls of money. "What can I do for you folks?"

"You are Boyce Barlow. I have watched your program. We are kindred spirits, you and I."

"You and me is kin?"

"In spirit. I, too, believe as you do. America for Americans."

"Who're you?"

"This is Herr Konrad Blutsturz," said Ilsa proudly. "He is an Aryan. He is like you."

"The hell he is. I got both rny legs," said Boyce Barlow. "No offense," he added.

"I have a gift for you," said Konrad Blutsturz, tossing a book onto the poker table.

Boyce Barlow picked up the book and read the title. Main Kampf," he said aloud.

"The first word is pronounced 'mine,' as in 'yours or mine,' " Konrad Blutsturz corrected. "Not 'main.' "

"Main's how they say it at the China Dragon. You know, chow mein."

"A different language altogether. The words mean 'My Battle.' A great man wrote it."

"Adolf Hitler," Boyce read aloud. "Wasn't he a bad guy."

"The losers are always called that. Had Hitler won the war, there would now be no Jews, no blacks, no inferior peoples living in America, taking American jobs from true Americans and draining the vitality out of this once-strong nation."

"Is that so?"

"His ideas are your ideas," said Konrad Blutsturz. "He was espousing them before you were born. You, Boyce Barlow, have reinvented the wheel. Read this book and see for vourself. When you are done, call me at the number I have written on the flyleaf and we will talk."

Boyce Barlow had read the book. The old man without legs had been right. Boyce Barlow found that the old man was right about many things.

Konrad Blutsturz told them he could triple the membership of the White Purity League of America and Alabama. Overnight.

"You have only to do three things."

"What are those?" Boyce had asked suspiciously. "Starting today, fly this flag from your highest building."

Boyce Barlow took the flag. It was red. In the center was a twisted black crass in a white circle. Boyce recognized the flag; he had seen it in World War Two films. He showed the flag to Luke and Bud.

"What do you guys think?"

"It would look better if it were green," said Luke.

"I like red," said Bud, thinking of the Confederate flag.

"Me too," said Boyce. "Done."

"Excellent. Second, change the name of your organization to the Aryan League of America."

"What's an Aryan?"

"We are Aryans," said Konrad Blutstrarz. "Aryans are the master race, descendants of the racially pure warrior- Vikings. Like Ilsa, here."

They all looked at Ilsa. Ilsa looked back. She smiled sweetly.

"We're all Aryans, ain't we, boys?" Boyce said. "Especially me. How about we call it the White Aryan League of America, though? So the dumb ones don't get confused. "

"I will agree to that," said Konrad Blutsturz.

"And the third thing?"

"Appoint me your second-in-command."

Boyce Barlow had done this too, and, true to the old man's promise, the membership rolls swelled. That they swelled with people who had German last names was at first troublesome to the ruling triad of the newly renamed White Aryan League of America and Alabama. Boyce had insisted on retaining the "Alabama" part, in his words, "to remind folks this great movement began in the heart of Dixie."

One night, while counting up the month's dues, Boyee asked the old man, "Isn't our slogan supposed to be 'America for Americans'?"

"That is our slogan," admitted Konrad Blutsturz.

"Then what are those damn furriners doin' here?"

"They are not foreigners. America is a melting pot. The best of all white nations have come to these shores. German-Americans are as American as any. More so. It is the blacks, the Jews, the Smiths who are to be eradicated."

"The smiths?" asked Boyce. "Aren't they white too? I mean mostly?"

"They are the worst of all. They look white. Their skins appear to be white. But their souls are black, and evil. We will rid America of the blacks and the Jews and other inferior peoples. But first we must crush the Smiths."

Boyce Barlow didn't quite follow Konrad Blutsturz on that last point, but the dues kept coming in and so he did everything that Konrad Blutsturz suggested.

Konrad Blutsturz had showed how to get the White Aryan League of America publicity. Instead of just preaching the word over cable TV, or on street corners where they were hooted and booed, he showed that marching down the streets of American towns, shouting racial epithets, usually brought media coverage. Free media coverage. And when you shouted racial slogans, the races you insulted always shouted back. Sometimes they threw rotten fruit and bottles.

"Do this and we will get sympathy. Provoke the blacks and Jews and Orientals to attack us. We will look good and they will look bad because the networks can not spend more than three minutes of footage on any news event. They will omit our slogans and show our enemies attacking our peaceful march."

And it had worked. All of it had worked. That man Konrad Blutsturz was a genius. He knew everything. And when Blutsturz had insisted that he be called Herr Fuhrer, Boyce Barlow had made it White Aryan League policy. And when Herr Fuhrer Blutsturz had made the finding of one man named Harold Smith the League's top priority, Boyce Barlow had not questioned him. After all. Harold Smith was a black-souled Smith, possibly the secret leader of the coming Smith uprising that threatened to undermine the racial purity of America.

And when Herr Fuhrer Blutsturz ordered Boyce Barlow and his cousins Luke and Bud to personally go to Falls Church, Virginia, after a scientist named Ferris D'Orr, Boyce Barlow asked only one question.

"You want him alive or dead?"

Chapter 12

At first, Dr. Harold W. Smith thought he was hallucinating. He had not gone home the night before. He dared not. First, there was the fear that he would miss some critical report coming over his computers. And then there was the shame. He did not want to face his wife in his current state, as the old Harold Smith, the lemony-faced, cold-blooded Harold Smith who had been ground down by a lifetime of intelligence work. Last, there was the fear that if he went home, he would lead the unknown killer straight to his door, and to his wife.

"Could you repeat that, please?" Smith asked, thinking that lack of sleep had caused him to hear things. Mrs. Mikulka patiently repeated herself, speaking slowly and distinctly through the office intercom.

"I said a Mr. Chiun is here to see you. He's very insistent, and the guards at the gate don't know what to do."

"You did say Chiun?"

"Yes, Dr. Smith. Chiun. What shall I tell the guards?"

"Tell them to escort Mr. Chiun to my office. Carefully. Tell them not to touch him, provoke him, or otherwise get in his way."

"My goodness, is he an escaped patient?" asked Mrs. Mikulka, placing a plump hand to her well-cushioned chest.

"Just do it," said Smith, one harried eye on his computer console.

Minutes later, the guards left their charge outside Smith's office door.

"Oh, hello." said Mrs. Mikulka, recognizing the Master of Sinanju. She had seen the elderly Oriental before. He had visited Smith on other occasions.

"Greetings, lady-in-waiting to the Emperor Smith. Please inform the emperor that the Master of Sinanju, formerly his royal assassin, has arrived."

"I'll do just that," breathed Mrs. Mikulka, wondering if this man was not a candidate for a Folcroft rubber room.

"That man is here, Dr. Smith."

"Send him in. And take an early lunch."

The Master of Sinanju, resplendent in his blue-and-gold greeting kimono, entered the room with dignified ceremony.

"Hail, Emperor Smith," he called, bowing slightly. "The House of Sinanju brings you greetings and felicitations. Great is my pleasure in beholding your wise, your magnificent, your robust countenance once more."

"Thank you," said Smith, whose eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, and whose ashen face looked like a dead man's. "I am surprised to see you."

"Your joy is returned a thousandfold," said the Master of Sinanju.

"Er, you're not working for anyone at the moment, are you? I mean, this is a social call-isn't it?"

"I am between employers at present," admitted Chiun. Smith relaxed slightly. The loyalty of a Master of Sinanju, he knew, stopped at the termination of each contract. There was no telling what Chiun wanted. He might even be here to assassinate Smith himself.

"You're not here about that unresolved matter in Sinanju?" asked Smith cautiously.

"And what unresolved matter is that?" asked Chiun innocently.

"When the Russian business was concluded, I asked you to terminate my life, and you refused."

"Ah." Chiun nodded. "I recall I refused because you had not enough coin to pay. Oh, I am ashamed, Emperor Smith, ashamed to the very core of my being. I should not have refused so minor a boon. In truth, I am here to atone for my error."

"I no longer require your services," Smith said hastily.

"No?" The Master of Sinanju looked disappointed, nearly stricken. "Are you certain?"

"Quite certain. The President has authorized CURE to continue. This releases me from my duty to commit suicide."

Chinn lifted a long-nailed finger.

"This is good," he said. "For the atonement I wish to make has nothing to do with killing you-although I would gladly do so if this were your command. I would do anything the Emperor Smith, in his inexorable wisdom, commands."

"You would?" said Smith, dumbfounded. "Anything?"

"Anything," Chiun said placidly.

"But our contract has been voided. You told me so yourself."

"Clause Fifty-six, Paragraph Four." Chiun nodded. "Which stipulates that contracts between emperors and the House of Sinanju may not be transferred to third parties. You did this, committing the Master of Sinanju to service to Russia. You did this under threat of blackmail by the Russians. Remo has explained these details to me. I bear you no ill for your oversight, for that is surely all that it was. Emperors, of course, cannot be expected to remember all the niceties and details, especially the fine paint."

"I'm glad you feel that way, Master Chiun, but I still don't quite understand what you're doing in America."

"Clause Fifty-six, Paragraph Ten." Chinn smiled. "Under the rubric 'Refunds.' "

"As I recall, a shipment of gold accompanied you on your last submarine crossing to Sinanju. Under the circumstances, I didn't assume we were due a refund. Are you here then to return the gold prepayment?" asked Smith.

"Would that it were in my power," said the Master of Sinanja sadly.

"Then what?"

From the folds of his robe the Master of Sinanju extracted a gold-edged scroll tied with a blue ribbon. Chiun delicately untied the ribbon, causing the scroll to roll open.

"Allow me to read. 'In the event of termination of services, the House of Sinanju is obligated to refund all prepayments, prorated to the term of unfulfilled service.'

"Alas," continued the Master of Sinanju, "Remo, my adopted son, is to wed a Sinanju maiden, and because that maiden was an orphan bereft of family and dowry, and because Sinanju law forbids the House of Sinanju to retain gold that it has not truly earned, I was thrown into a dilemma. I did not know what to do," said Chiun, because emperors sometimes did not know simple words like "dilemma."

"I could not keep the gold. And you had already returned to America when I discovered my lapse. Poor Remo, my son, could not marry his chosen bride because she had no dowry. It was a difficult time. But in my wisdom, I saw a solution to all our problems."

"You gave the gold to Mah-Li," Smith said wearily.

"I gave the gold to Mah-Li," said Chiun triumphantly, in almost the same breath. And he smiled. "Truly, you are a mind reader, as well as generous and understanding."

"You came all the way to Sinanju to tell me that you can't return the gold?"

"No, I have come all the way to the wonderful land of America to atone for my error, as I have said."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning my new dilemma," said Chiun. "I cannot return the gold, for I have given it away."

"You have a great deal of gold, Master of Sinanju," reminded Smith.

"True," said the Master of Sinanju. "But I do not have a submarine. Only a submarine is capable of transporting such generous quantities of gold from Sinanju to these happy shores."

It was true, thought Smith. Annually, he had shipped enough gold ingots to Sinanju to pay off the debts of many small nations. And Chiun never spent that gold, according to Remo.

"I can make arrangements for one of our nuclear subs to pick up the repayment," Smith said.

"I cannot allow that," said Chiun. "Why not?"

"It would be unfair. The expense you would incur in sending that vessel would detract from the value of the repayment." Chiun shook his aged head. "No, I would not do that to you."

"We can work something out." said Smith.

"No," said Chiun hastily. "For Sinanju law dictates that all repayments be made in the same coin. No substitutes."

"I would not mind," said Smith.

"But my ancestors would," returned Chiun.

"Then what?"

Chiun paced the office. "I cannot repay in the same coin. It is regrettable, but I am stuck. Therefore, as difficult as it will be, as much as I desire to remain in Sinanju with my adopted son and my people who wept bitterly when I left them, I must fulfill my contract with you."

"I'm sure we can come up with an alternate solution," Smith said.

"I have thought long on this," Chiun said firmly. "This is the only way."

"Things have changed, Master Chiun. CURE is no longer set up for operations."

Chiun waved a dismissive hand. "A mere detail. A trifling of no moment in the magnitude of this event. Lo, my descendants will sing in praise of this hour for generations to come," Chiun said loudly. "After too long a time, the House of Sinanju has been reunited with the most kind, most generous, most able client it has ever known, Smith the Wise."

"It has been only three months," reminded. Smith.

"Three long months," Chiun corrected. "Each day a year, each month an eternity. But at last it is over."

"What about Remo?"

Chiun's pleased expression fled. "Remo is happy in Sinanju. We do not need him. Or he, us."

"I see,"

"You see all," Chiun smiled.

"This could work out," said Smith slowly. His mind was racing. Only days ago, the thought of having to deal with the mercurial Chiun would have sent him reaching for his Maalox, but now, with this Smith-killer matter, Chiun's reappearance might be the best thing that could happen.

"Do I understand that our last contract is now in force once more?"

"Not quite," said the Master of Sinanju, settling on the floor in front of Smith's heavy desk.

And Smith-who knew that when Chiun sat on the floor like that it meant that it was time to renegotiate-grabbed two extra-sharp pencils and a yellow legal pad and joined him on the worn hardwood floor.

"Remo will not be considered a part of this negotiation," began Chiun.

Smith nodded. "That would mean a reduction, retroactive, on the prepayment due to the loss of his services."

"Not quite," said the Master of Sinanju.

"What then?"

"It requires an additional payment above the prepayment."

Smith snapped the pencil in his hand. "How do you figure that?" he said angrily.

"Without Remo, I will have to work twice as hard as before; And I am an old man, frail and in my declining years."

"How much more?" Smith asked tightly.

"Half. Half would be fair."

Smith, who was facing death from an unknown assassin, balanced the cost of Chiun's demands against the probable expense of finding a new CURE director and decided they were roughly equal.

"Done," he said, writing it down.

"And I further require other amenities-lodging and clothes."

"Clothes?"

"Because I came by air; I was unable to carry my possessions with me. I have only a kimono or two, nothing more."

Smith, suddenly remembering the news report of the Air Force transport that had the mysterious stowaway the day before, understood completely.

"I don't know where we're going to find a clothier who specializes in kimonos, but I'll see what I can do."

"Do not trouble yourself. Introduce me to a worthy tailor, and he and I will work out the details."

"Done. Anything else?"

"One last item. Traveling expenses."

"How much?" Smith asked, bracing himself.

"Seven dollars and thirty-nine cents."

"You traveled from Sinanju to America and spent only seven-thirty-nine?"

"It was the strangest thing. No one asked me for money. But the American flight did not serve meals for some reason and I was forced to dine in a restaurant before sojourning here to Fortress Folcroft."

And the Master of Sinanju smiled innocently.

"I imagine you'll require living expenses until I requisition the gold," Smith said wryly.

"I was not going to mention it, but yes," said Chiun.

"I'll get you an American Express card."

"American . . . ?" said Chiun, puzzled.

"Gold card, of course."

"Of course." Chiun beamed. He had no idea what Smith was babbling about, but was willing to agree to anything that involved gold.

When they had finished amending the old contract and initialing the changes, the Master of Sinanju signed with a flourish.

"And now you," he said happily, turning the contract over to Smith.

Smith scrawled his signature, wondering why Chiun seemed so delighted. Usually upon signing even the most generous contract, he acted like he had been victimized by Smith's sharp trading. And why had Chiun willingly left Remo back in Sinanju? Could there be a problem between the two of them? As soon as the thought entered his head, Smith dismissed it. Remo and Chiun were inseparable. But then, why were they separated?

When Smith finished, Chiun rose to his feet like smoke arising from an incense burner.

"I am at your service, O just one. Merely point and I will cut down your enemies like the wheat in the field."

"As a matter offact, I do have a problem."

"Name it," said Chiun.

"It's difficult. It involves another assassin."

"There is no other assassin," retorted the Master of Sinanju. "Speak the wretch's name and I will place his head at your feet by the setting sun."

Just then the phone rang. Smith looked up. It was the direct line to Washington the dialless phone which connected the President of the United States with CURE. Smith reached up stiffly and pulled the red receiver to his ear.

"Yes, Mr. President?"

"We have a problem, Smith. I don't know what you can do without operatives, but maybe you can advise me."

"Excuse me, Mr. President, but we do have an operative. "

"We do?"

"Yes, the old one."

"Older one," Chiun whispered, tugging on Smith's sleeve. "I am older than you and Remo, but I am not old."

Smith coughed noisily. "Yes, Mr. President. You heard me correctly. We have just finished negotiating for another year of service."

"I thought he had retired," said the President, "and that he was upset with us over the matter with the Soviets. After all, his pupil did die during that one."

"He's sitting before me even as we speak," said Smith uncomfortably.

"Younger than ever," Chiun said loudly.

Smith clapped a hand over the receiver. "Hush. The President still thinks Remo is dead.

"Stricken by grief at the loss of my only adopted son, I will nevertheless bear up under my burdens and deal with the enemies of America," Chiun added.

"That's enough. Don't overplay it." Having lied to the President about Remo's supposed death, there was no way Smith could admit to the truth-that he had fudged the facts to cover for Remo. As long as this President served in the Oval Office, he must never learn that Remo still lived. That discovery would expose Smith as unreliable and could pull the CURE operation down around Smith's head.

"All right," said the President. "I won't ask questions. Here's our problem. A fellow named Ferris D'Orr has just escaped a kidnapping attempt. D'Orr is important to America. He's discovered a remarkable way of cold-forging titanium. I think you know how important that is to our Defense Department. Why, this process could cut so much from next year's defense budget that we could fund a lot of the programs that Congress is now trying to stifle."

"Who is responsible?"

"That's just it. We don't know. The Soviets, the Chinese, hell, it might even be the French. They've got a pretty fair space program going now. Who is behind this doesn't matter so much. We've just got to protect D'Orr."

"I'll put our special person right on it."

"Good man, Smith. D'Orr is being transported to a safe house in Baltimore. It's the penthouse of the Lafayette Building. Keep me informed."

"Yes, Mr. President," said Dr. Harold W. Smith, hanging up the phone. To Chiun, Smith said, "That was the President."

"So I gathered," said the Master of Sinanju, who, now that he was under contract, felt no pressing need to gush over Smith. "Something was said about work."

"What I began to tell you can wait," said Smith, knowing that the threat to his own life was a personal matter, but that national security was CURE's prime directive. "I'm sending you to Maryland."

"A lovely province," said Chiun.

"Yes. Someone has attempted to kidnap Ferris D'Orr, a metallurgist."

"The fiends," cried Chiuua, "kidnapping a sick man like that."

"Sick?"

"He is a metallurgist, correct? He is allergic to metals. The poor wretch. Imagine never being able to touch gold, or hold coins in his hand. He must be beside himself."

"A metallurgist is someone who works with metals," said Smith, getting to his feet.

"Ah, an artisan."

"Not quite. He's invented a process for melting titanium, an important metal."

Chiun shook his head slowly. "There is only one important metal, and that is yellow."

"Titanium is important to America.'

"Is it yellow?"

"No. I believe it is bluish, like lead."

Chiun made a face. "Lead is not a good metal. Lead killed the Roman Empire. They used it for their plumbing. Romans drank water from their lead pipes and lost first their wits, and later their empire. No doubt they had lead toilets too. Toilets will bring down a civilization faster than pestilence. Even the mighty Greeks would not have been able to survive the onslaught of toilets."

"Titanium is important to America," Smith repeated, ignoring Chiun's outburst.

"Oh? It is valuable?"

"Very," said Smith. "It is used for jet-engine parts and in space-age technologies."

"If it is valuable, why waste it on machines?" Chiun asked. "Why not make beautiful urns of titanium instead? Or statues of worthy persons? I am certain I would look wonderful in titanium."

"Protect D'Orr, and if anyone comes after him," Smith said wearily. "eliminate them."

"Of course." said the Master of Sinanju. "I understand perfectly."

Chapter 13

Remo Williams had walked most of the way to Pyongyang, capital of the People's Republic of Korea, before he saw his first automobile.

It was an imported Volvo. Remo stepped out into the middle of the highway and waved his arms for the car to stop.

The car slowed. The driver took a long look at Remo and drove around him.

Remo ran after the Volvo. The Volvo picked up speed. The driver of the Volvo looked at his speedometer. It read seventy. But the white man in the black T-shirt was still in his rearview mirror.

When the running white man drew up alongside the Volvo, there were tears in the driver's eyes. There was no way this could be happening. The white man must not be a western spy, as he had first thought. He had to be an evil spirit.

"I need a ride into Pyongyang," Remo yelled at the driver.

It was then that the driver knew of a certainty that the white being must be an evil apparition. Not only was he keeping pace with a seventy-mile-an-hour automobile, but he spoke Korean. Western spies did not speak Korean. Korean ghosts spoke Korean, however. Among other things they did, like pass their intangible hands through solid objects and pluck out the hearts from the chest cavities of the living.

"I said I need a ride into Pyongyang," Remo repeated. When the Korean did not reply, Remo tapped the window on the driver's side until the glass spiderwebbed and fell out.

The Korean had the gas pedal to the floorboards by that time. The white ghost was still running even with the car. There was no escape.

The white ghost had said something about needing a ride. Why a ghost who could run in excess of seventy miles an hour would need an earthly vehicle did not matter. Nor did the fact that the Volvo had cost eight years' salary. The ghost was demanding the car, and there was no escaping him. Therefore there was only one thing to do.

The driver braked the Volvo, plunged out through the passenger's side, and stumbled into the tall grass. The white ghost did not pursue him.

"I only wanted a ride," Remo Williams said to himself. He shrugged as he got behind the wheel of the Volvo. The keys were still in the ignition. He got the car going.

Remo drove slowly, his eyes on the road. The faint images of sandaled feet showed from time to time. A mile down the highway, the trail of footprints abruptly stopped. It was replaced by a string of barley beans that seemed to stretch, single file, all the way to the capital city.

"Chiun," Remo said under his breath.

An hour later, Pyongyang was framed in the bugsplattered windshield. It was a city of imposing white buildings with a stone torch-the North Korean version of the Statue of Liberty-dominating the skyline.

Remo drove through the checkpoint because he was in a hurry. Red tape always annoyed him anyway. He was not stopped, because he was driving a foreign car. Only high-ranking members of the North Korean government drove foreign cars. Or any cars, for that matter.

Pyongyang was not like Moscow. It was not like Peking. It was not one of the drab Communist capitals that give the Eastern bloc a bad name. The buildings were immaculate. Gorgeous trees lined the banks of the Taedong River. Happy children marched, singing, to school. Workers marched, singing, to work. Nobody walked anywhere in Pyongyang. Everyone marched and sang. The difference was, the children sang because they enjoyed it. The adults sang because not to sing carried criminal penalties. Many marble statues of the Great Leader, Kim Il Sung, dotted the spacious parks, and dozens of posters of him smiled benignly from the sides of buildings.

Remo, who had met Kim Il Sung, knew the statues and posters were a lie. They showed a black-haired and rosy-cheeked politician, when in fact Kim Il Sung's cheeks had fallen in, he wore spectacles, and his hair was the color of soiled cotton.

As Remo drove around the city looking for the airport, he was amazed at the wide and very modern street system. "There were five lanes, but very few cars. The only cars were occasional Volvos or Toyotas. For some reason, none of the autos used the center lane. To save time, not that there was much traffic in the first place, Remo drove down the center lane.

He had not gone very far when one of the little white military police cars began to chase him. The officer waved him over to the side of the road.

"Where's the airport?" asked Remo in Korean.

"Over! Over!" the officer yelled hack.

Remo, figuring he could get directions to the airport faster by obeying, obliged.

The officer came up on him with a drawn pistol. "I wasn't speeding, was I?" asked Remo politely.

"Out of the car," the officer said. "Out!"

Remo got out. The officer got a clear look at him for the first time. He yanked his whistle free of his tunic and blew on it furiously.

"What's the problem?" Remo wanted to know.

"You are under arrest. Driving down the lane reserved for the official use of the Leader for Life, Himself, Kim Il Sung."

"You gotta be kidding," said Remo. "He's got his own freaking lane?"

"And for being an unregistered foreigner," the officer added, blowing on the whistle again.

The officer nudged Remo with the muzzle of his pistol. That was a mistake.

Remo plucked the pistol from the man's fingers before he could react. He held it up before the man's widening eyes.

"Watch," said Remo. "Magic." He closed one hand around the pistol barrel and rubbed it very fast, and when he took his hand away, the muzzle began to droop like a limp rubber hose.

Remo handed the man back his weapon.

The officer blinked incredulously. If he pulled the trigger now, he would unquestionably emasculate himself. "Sinanju?" he stammered.

Remo nodded. "I'm the new Master."

"White?"

"Not entirely. It depends on who you ask."

The officer bowed. "I am at your service."

"I like your attitude. I'm looking for the older Master, my teacher."

"He has been here. There was great trouble at the airport. He caused difficulty with the officials there. No one knows why. He had only to ask, and we would have obliged him. But he refused to identify himself."

"Where is he now?" Remo asked.

The officer shrugged. "They say he was flown to the unfortunate South. No one knows why. Paradise is here in the North."

"If you're the Leader for Life, it is," said Remo. "How about a police escort to the airport?"

"At once," said the officer.

At the airport, they were more than delighted to assist the new Master of Sinanju, white or not.

The chief of airport security smiled his delight until a nerve in his cheek started to twitch. He softened the smile into a less stressful expression.

"When's the next flight out of here?" Remo asked.

"Moscow or Peking?"

"Neither," Remo said. "I'm heading for America, I think. "

"You should know," said the head of security, "but I regret I cannot accede to your wish, as much as I would like."

"Why not?"

"The People's Democratic Republic cannot afford to lose any more pilots transporting Masters of Sinanju to unfriendly places."

"Did Chiun kill them?"

"No, they committed suicide upon landing. They knew that the South is a terrible place. They chose to extinguish their lives rather than live without the beneficence of Himself, our glorious leader."

"Tell you what," Remo offered. "Give me one pilot and I'll make sure he comes back. Fair enough?"

The security chief shook his moon face.

"Not possible," he said. He knew that the next pilot might not believe the official propaganda and decide that South Korea was a place worth living in, after all. "What is possible?"

"A land escort to, say, ten miles north of the thirty-eighth parallel. You could walk from there."

"I'm used to curb-to-curb service," said Remo, picking up a brass spittoon from beside the security chief's desk and squeezing it until it squeaked. He placed the mangled remains in the security chief's hands.

"I will drive you personally," the Korean decided suddenly, feeling the sharp metal edges cut his palms. Hours later, the security chief's enclosed jeep came to the barbed-wire fortification that North Korean policy claimed was designed to keep the devils of the South out of the People's Republic. In fact, it was there to keep the people of the North from spilling down to freedom.

"I leave the rest to you," said the security chief.

"Thanks," said Remo.

"I wish your teacher had been so reasonable. If only he had identified himself, we could have come to some realistic accommodation."

"I think he wanted to be followed."

"Then why maim two of our soldiers instead of revealing himself?"

"I think he wanted to be subtle," said Remo, melting into the trees.

Chapter 14

Everyone knew that Ferris D'Orr was in hiding. The whole world knew that the federal government had placed him in a safe house ever since the first announcement that Ferris D'Orr, discoverer of the secret of cold-casting titanium, had been the target of a kidnapping attempt.

And the whole world knew, thanks to the ever-present news media, that the safe house was not a house at all, but a penthouse in downtown Baltimore.

"This is correspondent Don Cooder, reporting from outside the Lafayette Building, the probable-but not definite-location of the safe house where FBI agents have secreted metallurgical genius Ferris D'Orr, the man who may revolutionize defense applications of titanium. Can you confirm any of that for me, Field Agent Grogan?" the newsman asked, shoving his microphone into the face of a big stone-faced man in a blue jacket with the yellow plastic letters FBI on the back.

"No comment," said the FBI man. He cradled an automatic rifle in his arms. Behind him, the glass entrance to the Lafayette Building was sealed off by wooden sawhorses. Other men, all wearing FBI jackets and brandishing firearms, loitered outside the doors. Overhead, a helicopter flew in noisy circles. The letters FBI were stenciled on it too.

The whole FBI team had been moved into the street only an hour ago.

"Our information is that Ferris D'Orr has set up a laboratory in the penthouse suite, where he is continuing his work," the newsman persisted. "Can you confirm that?"

"No comment," the FBI man said laconically.

"Then explain for me, if you can. Agent Grogan, why there is a highly visible FBI presence in front of this building at this particular time."

"To control the media. We weren't called in until you people practically stormed the place."

"Are you saying that you are not here to protect Ferris D'Orr, possibly the most important scientist in America today?"

"I know what Ferris D'Orr is," Agent Grogan said testily. "You don't have to give me the man's whole history. And yes, I am categorically denying that my team is guarding Ferris D'Qrr. I just finished explaining to you. Here it is again. We're on station to control the media. You don't muster a force like this to guard a safe house. That's like hanging out a shingle that says 'Hostage for Rent.' "

"But you're not denving that Ferris D'Orr is hiding twenty floors above our heads in fear of his life?"

"No comment," said FBI Agent Grogan, rolling his eyes heavenward.

"How about the attempted kidnapping of Mr. D'Orr? Are there any leads on that?"

"You'd have to talk to the district supervisor on that one."

"But you expect another attempt, do you not?"

"No comment."

The newsman turned toward his cameraman and fixed the videocam with a steely gaze.

"There you have it, ladies and gentlemen of the audience. Not quite proof positive, but certainly a revealing indication, that scientist Ferris D'Orr is being held in protective custody on this very block. What does this say about our governinent's ability to protect important members of the defense community? Is security so lax that just anyone can uncover a so-called 'safe' house? A discussion on these disturbing questions and a special background feature, 'Titanium and Your Taxes,' will air on a CableTalk Special tonight at eleven, ten central time. Until then, this is Don Cooder, CableTalk Network News, Baltimore."

After the news crews had gone home, confident that they had satisfied the American people's pressing need to know that a man crucial to America's defense future was safely-if no longer secrety-protected by the FBI, a taxi pulled up before the Lafayette Building and a man stepped out.

The man was barely five feet tall, Oriental, and wore a gray kimono, and he informed the FBI agents that they could go home.

"You are no longer needed now that I am here," the little man said in a pleasant, squeaky voice.

When FBI Agent Grogan politely requested the citizen's name, the citizen waved him away. And when the FBI man attempted to lay hands on the Oriental, he found himself clutching air.

"Stop that guy," he yelled to the guards at the door. Five FBI agents barred the door. There was a sudden flurry of movement, a flash of gray, and a sound similar to that of coconuts being cracked together.

Five highly trained FBI agents sank to the pavement, their eyes glazing, their heads bobbing on their unsteady necks after the old Oriental had knocked their heads together in sets of two.

Agent Grogan lunged for the old Oriental. The Oriental turned, and Grogan had a momentary glimpse of two yellowish fingers coming at his eyes. That was usually enough time for the human blinking reflex, one of the fastest reflexes in nature, to react. In this case, the fingers were swifter than the blink and Agent Grogan found himself sitting on the street clutching his face. Tears streamed between his fingers and he could not see.

The squeaky voice called back, "Remind me to kill you later."

A few minutes later, the district supervisor arrived, trailed by a battery of camouflaged agents.

"What happened here?" he demanded.

Agent Grogan stumbled to his feet, stabbing at his tearing eyes with a handkerchief.

"I think he poked me in the eyes," he said. "A little guy. An Oriental. Did you get him?"

"No-but he obviously got you. All of you."

"We've got to stop him."

"No, we don't. We've got to go home. We're relieved."

"Relieved! By who?"

"By the little Oriental who played Moe to your Six Stooges. Don't ask me to explain. I don't understand it any more than you do. But the word came from the top. Let's call it a night."

The next morning, when the network news returned for more no-comments, it found every trace of FBI presence mysteriously gone. They instantly assumed Ferris D'Orr had been removed to an even more secure safe house, and frantically scattered to chase it down, so that the American people would sleep better in the knowledge that he was still in safe hands. In their quest for truth and a higher ratings share, they neglected to do a simple thing. They forgot to enter the building to confirm that Ferris D'Orr had, in fact, been moved.

Ferris D'Orr could not believe his ears.

"One man?" he yelled. "One man is supposed to protect me? Are you crazy? Do you have any conception of how valuable I am to our Defense Department right now?"

"Yes, sir," said the FBI field supervisor. "I understand my superior received word of the change from the Secretary of Defense himself."

"Why would he do a crazy thing like that?" cried Ferris. "Wait a minute. What's his name-Somethingberger, right? He must be Jewish. That's it! This is a Zionist plot, isn't it?"

"I'm sure the Secretary of Defense knows what he's doing," the FBI man said.

"Are you Jewish?" Ferris asked suddenly, suspiciously.

"Sir?"

"I asked you an important question."

"Well, actually, no."

"Yon probably wouldn't admit it if you were."

"I have my orders," the FBI supervisor said stiffly. "Now, if you'll excuse me . . ."

The FBI supervisor led his men away, shaking his head. It had been a while since he'd seen such rabid religious hatred. Funny thing was, the guy looked Jewish himself.

After he had left, Ferris D'Orr dazedly sank into a chair. His face was drained of color.

"You poor man," said the Master of Sinanju, entering the room. "Let me help you."

"Who? What? How did you get in here?"

"The elevator," said the Master of Sinanju, pushing the titanium nebulizer into another room.

Ferris jumped to his feet. "What are you doing? Where are you going with that?"

The Oriental stopped momentarily. "I am Chiun, reigning Master of Sinanju. You are Ferris?"

"Ferris D'Orr. "

"You are a metallurgist?"

"That's right."

Chiun nodded. "I am removing the offending metals from this room. It is a good thing I am here. Those who guarded you before me should have known better than to leave you alone with the cause of your illness."

"What illness?" demanded Ferris D'Orr, blocking Chiun from leaving the room with the nebulizer.

"You are a metallurgist. You said so."

"We've been through that."

"You are allergic to metal. I am removing the metals."

"I didn't ask for a cleaning person," said Ferris D'Orr haughtily. "Certainly not one who can't speak the language. "

"I was speaking English before you were born," Chiun said. "But I will not hold your insult against you. You are obviously in a weakened mental state from this cruel exposure to metal. Look at this room. It is filled with blocks of metal, all ugly and dull and useless."

"This is my laboratory,' said Ferris D'Orr, trying to shove the nebulizer back into the room. For some reason, it would not budge, even after he pushed with all his might. It was as if the device was bolted to the floor.

"You are beginning to sweat, poor man. Come. It will be better if I take you into the next room."

"I don't want to go into the next room!" said Ferris D'Orr, and although the old Oriental only took his wrist between two delicate fingers, Ferris found himself pulled into the next room as if by a tow cable.

"I have a very dangerous guard coming to protect me," Ferris warned after he was gently but firmiy deposited on an overstuffed chair. "This man is so dangerous he's replacing a crack team of FBI agents. So you better get outta here, pal."

The Master of Sinanju, receiving a compliment, bowed and allowed the faintest of satisfied smiles to etch his features.

"I am Chiun. I have only today returned to your wonderful land, which I see with new eyes. I will therefore allow you to call me Chiun, as other Americans familiarly call one another by their first names."

"Wonderful. But my warning still goes. This guy is a killer."

"I am that guy, the killer," said Chiun.

"You?"

"Me."

"I never saw a killer who looked like you."

"You never saw a killer who killed like me," Chiun said reasonably.

"What do we do now?"

"You have a television set?"

"Right behind you."

The Master of Sinanju turned. "I see no such thing," he sniffed.

"The cabinet. It's a projection TV. You lift it by the handle. "

Puzzled, the Master of Sinanju walked over to a false wood table with a hand slot on the top, He reached in, and the hinged top lifted, exposing not the glass tube of the usual TV set, but a large white screen. Then the Master of Sinanju saw the familiar knobs. He pressed the On button.

The news appeared on the screen and Chiun quickly changed the channel.

"What are you doing?"

"I am trying to find one of my beautiful dramas of happier days. I did not bring my tapes with me, alas."

"Beautiful dramas?"

"Is Edge of Darkness still shown?"

"I think it was canceled."

Chiun's face wrinkled. "It was probably the violence. It had fallen far from the heights of Mrs. Lapon's hysterectomy, and the unfortunate drug addiction of her son, who she mistakenly believed was fathered by her ex-husband, and not Darryl, the doctor."

"Who's going to protect me while you watch the soaps?"

"Me, of course."

"And what am I supposed to be doing?"

"Sitting here recovering from your unfortunate exposure to ugly metal objects."

"You're going to guard me and watch soaps at the same time?"

"Masters of Sinanju are ambidextrous," said Chiun, flipping the channel selector in search of something familiar.

"Masters of what?"

"Sinanju,"

"Sinanjew? You don't look Jewish," said Ferris D'Orr.

"That is because I am not Jewish."

"Good. I don't like Jews."

"My ancestors would agree with you. They never got any work from the House of David. Herod was another matter. "

A round balding face appeared in the big TV screen just in time to receive a thrown grapefruit.

"Ah, they are on TV too," Chiun said pleasurably. "I saw them before in a movie. They must be very popular."

"Them? Those are the Three Stooges, aren't they?"

"They are wonderful," said the Master of Sinanju, settling onto the couch. He arranged his kimono skirts modestly se that they covered his legs.

Ferris D'Orr watched as the three men on the screen hit one another over the head with an assortment of blunt objects, chased each other through a house, and climaxed their antics with an ink-squirting duel.

The Master of Sinanju cackled happily. "I love them. They are so . . . so . . ."

"Stupid," Ferris supplied.

"So American," said Chiun.

"You like American stuff, huh?" asked Ferris D'Orr. "

American stuff is an acquired taste, I know, but I am trying. "

"Well, if I were you, I'd get a change of clothes. You dress like a sissy."

The Master of Sinanju restrained his anger at the white metallurgist. No doubt he was still suffering from his exposure to the laboratory.

"Alas," he said. "I have only one decent kimono left. Do you know a good tailor?"

"There's gotta be at least one decent one in this city."

"After this is over, we will visit him."

"Can't," said Ferris D'Orr. "I'm supposed to stay here. This is the safe house, remember?"

"Where would you feel safer," countered Chium, "alone in this house where killers can walk through the door with impunity, or on the street with the Master of Sinanju?"

Ferris D'Orr remembered his inability to budge the nebulizer and how the funny little Oriental had dragged him out of the lab with no apparent effort.

"No contest. I'll call a cab," he said.

Chapter 15

The phone rang on the desk of Dr. Harold W. Smith. Smith jerked away from his video screen. It was the regular line, not the direct connection to the White House. Smith looked at his watch. It was after eleven p.m. That meant his wife.

He decided to ignore it.

But when the phone continued to ring, shattering his concentration, Smith relented.

"Yes, dear?"

"Who is she?" Mrs. Smith demanded, her voice clogged with emotion.

"Again?"

"The other woman. You can't hide it anymore, Harold. First you develop a sudden interest in me, now you're out at all hours. Is it your secretary? That Mikulka woman?"

In spite of himself, Harold Smith burst out laughing. "Harold? What is it? Are you choking? If you're choking, hand this phone to whoever the tramp is. Maybe she knows the Heimlich maneuver."

"I . . . I'm not choking," Harold Smith said uproariously. "I'm laughing."

"You sound like a machine gun having convulsions. Are you sure that's laughter?"

"Yes, dear, I'm sure. And there's no other woman in my life. But thank you for thinking that. You've made my day."

"It's night, Harold. Almost midnight. I'm in bed. Alone. Just as I've been alone for the last week. How long can this go on?"

"I don't know, dear," Smith said in a more sober tone. "I really don't."

"Stop tapping those infernal computer keys when I'm talking to you."

"What? Oh, I'm sorry."

"You really are working, aren't you?"

"Yes, dear," said Harold Smith, turning away from the screen. But only slightly.

"It's serious, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Harold Smith. "Very serious."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Relief surged through Harold Smith. "Yes, I do. I reallv do. But I can't."

"You know that I know. You don't have to pretend anymore."

"Shhh, this is an open line," said Harold Smith.

"I'm sorry. But you know what I'm talking about."

"Yes, I do. And honestly, if I could talk about it, you would be the one I'd be talking to. But the nature of my work-"

"Harold, there's a big wide-open space right beside me. I'm patting it, Harold. Can you hear me patting it?" Her voice was low and soothing.

"Yes, I can," Harold Smith said uncomfortably.

"I wish you were in this big wide empty space right now."

"I will be soon. Please believe me. I will be home as soon as I possibly can. It will be like it was."

"Like it has been-or like it used to be? It feels like we're settling back into old patterns. Me the undemanding wife and you the upright husband whose work comes first-always first. I'm not sure I could stand going back to that life, Harold."

"No, that isn't happening, I promise."

"I love you, Harold."

"I know. I feel the same way,"

"But you can't say the words, even after all these years. Those three simple words. Can you, Harold,"

"Some things don't have to be said."

"Call me. Soon."

"Good night, dear," said Harold Smith quietly, and hung up. He wished she hadn't used that sexy voice. It made him yearn for her again. But to protect her, Harold Smith had to keep his distance.

Smith returned to his computer. He felt a renewed burst of stamina. It had been so hard these last days, cooped up in his office, shielded by the Folcroft security guards, who were starting to wonder if they were truly on alert to keep a deranged patient from escaping-as Dr. Smith had told them-or to keep someone out.

Talking to his wife, Smith had felt his pent-up frustration drain away. He returned to his computer terminal, a faint smile tugging at the dryish corners of his mouth. His wife thought he still secretly worked for the CIA. For years, he had kept the true nature of his job at Folcroft from her. But intuitively she knew. She had known for a long time. She didn't, however, suspect CURE's existence. As long as she didn't, Harold Smith would continue to let her believe she was merely the long-suffering wife of a dedicated CIA bureaucrat. And admire her for that.

Smith pushed the thoughts of her from his mind and returned to the problem at hand.

Over and over, he had run test programs on the pattern of the Harold Smith killings. Over and over, there had been no correlations-no common background features, no family relationships, no patterns of criminal activities. Nothing tied the Harold Smiths together except that they were all named Harold Smith, were males over sixty, and had disappeared or died in grisly circumstances.

The evidence was circumstantial, but it was compelling. It looked like the work of a possibly insane serial killer. Certainly normal law-enforcement agencies, if they ever learned of the pattern, would come to that conclusion.

Dr. Harold W. Smith knew that he was the killer's real target. He knew it with a certainty that bordered on the psychic. He knew it because of who he was, and he knew he was next on the killer's route.

The waiting was becoming a problem. Smith wished the killer would find him, just to get it over with. Just to learn the identity of his enemy.

Smith decided to attack the problem from another angle. He ran a logical extraction program and began entering facts.

Fact 1: Unknown killer knows name of target.

Fact 2: Unknown killer knows approximate age of target.

Fact 3: Unknown killer selects targets as he travels, probably by road.

Query: How does unknown killer locate his targets? The computer busily searched its files, correlating data faster than any machine but the number-crunching supercomputers owned by the Pentagon. After a minute, answers began to scroll up the screen, each rated by probability factors. Smith selected the least likely probability for a control test.

The least likely probability indicated that the unknown killer selected his targets from local phone books. Smith asked the computer to sort the names of the murdered Harold Smiths into two categories: those who were listed in local phone directories and those with unlisted numbers. As an afterthought, he added a third category, those who did not own phones or were not listed under their own names.

Smith stared for a long moment at the computer's answer.

All thirteen victims were listed in the local phone directories.

"It's too simple," Smith told himself. "It can't be." But it was. Smith had been operating on the assumption that the killer was some highly trained intelligence agent who would use sophisticated resources and experienced methods to execute his goals. This was too crude, too amateurish, too random. It would take months, even years, before the unknown killer reached his objective. Conceivably, he might kill every Harold Smith in the target group before reaching the right one. If then.