Scorched Earth

"Very well, sir," the man said, handing over a pair of clip-on passes. "But you didn't have to break the phone."

"Next time, don't try to cover for your bosses," retorted Remo.

"Nor impede the wrathful agents of the NAACP," added Chiun as the gate rolled aside electronically.

The press, seeing an opening, decided to take a run at the gate, figuring that once they were in, there would be too many of them to throw out.

Remo and Chiun slipped in, and the guard threw the gate into fast reverse. A female reporter got her boobs caught in the closing gate and shrieked a protest that could be heard on the moon-if anyone up there had ears.

This gave the others their opportunity. All the guards converged on the moving wall of press, and no one paid any attention to the pair of NTSB investigators who had been passed through.

REMO AND CHIUN WALKED unnoticed to the accident site. If the BioBubble resembled a glass pancake, this was more like a metallic waffle. Chunks and lumps of unmelted matter protruded from the rehardened crawler that was now spread out like a stepped-on aircraft carrier.

Amazingly they were unchallenged by the emergency crews and frantic blue-coated managers scurrying around. Some wore gas-and-particle-filter masks against the chemical fumes of the destroyed shuttle.

The 165,000-pound space plane was no longer recognizable as the most ambitious feat of engineering ever accomplished by man. Remo recalled that shuttles were so complicated that it was a miracle every time one went up without a hitch. When they landed intact, it was considered another miracle.

Personally, Remo thought, he would rather drive a Yugo against traffic in the Indy 500 than go up in one of those things, but he was risk averse, being only a professional assassin.

"What do you think, Little Father? And don't say dragon."

"I will not say dragon. But I am thinking dragon."

"Don't even think it."

"Too late. I am thinking it."

A beefy-faced manager whose sweat had nothing to do with the humidity of the night noticed them and demanded to know who they were.

Remo did the honors.

The manager read the ID card and exploded, "NTSB? What the hell are you guys doing here?"

"We came for the black box," Remo said in a measured voice.

The manager looked perplexed for all of a minute.

Remo could tell by the dull gleam in his eyes that he was middle management and had no idea if there was a black box, or whether the NTSB could legally lay claim to it if there was.

This conclusion was confirmed by the man's next words.

"I gotta take your request up with my immediate superior."

"You do that," said Remo politely, knowing that his superior would take it to his superior and so on up the line to who knew how many redundant management layers.

By the time a possible no thundered back down the chain of command, Remo figured it would be Christmas again.

Moving among the packed NASA personnel, Remo flashed his NTSB ID card and asked repeatedly, "Anybody see the incident?"

A fresh-faced technician in what Remo at first thought was an Izod smock but quickly realized that impression was merely the result of sneezing without benefit of a handkerchief said, "I did."

"I want to hear all about it," Remo said sharply.

"The transporter was-"

"What transporter?"

The man looked at the gargantuan pile of hardening metal and ceramic, and a dazed expression spread over his face.

"It was incredible. The shuttle transporter is the largest piece of machinery of its type ever built. The shuttle was riding atop her. The most complicated machine ever built riding the biggest one ever constructed. And just like that, it was turned into solder."

"What did it?" asked Remo.

"Lord alone knows. I saw a cone of white light. It bathed the machine, then went away. The heat must have been fierce. Glass melted in the observation room. Glass doesn't melt easily, you know."

"Lately it does," said Remo.

The man went on. "The light evaporated, then came the pressure wave."

"Yeah?"

"It sounded like thunder. But it couldn't have been thunder. What I saw wasn't lightning. Not forked lightning, bolt lightning and certainly not ball lightning. I know lightning. It's one of our biggest concerns when we're taking the spacecraft out of the launch-assembly building."

"Look like a ray to you?" asked Remo.

"If it was a ray, it was the biggest ray ever generated."

"Makes sense. The biggest ray to knock out the two biggest machines ever built, right?"

Chiun nodded as if this made perfect sense to him.

The technician's voice became hollow. "It was also as hot as the surface of the sun. We're finding black droplets we think are the shuttle's heat-resistant tiles. They're supposed to protect the orbiter from reentry heat and are designed to withstand temperatures up to 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit. They came close to being sublimed. That means turned to gas."

"Sounds hot," said Remo.

"We're looking for any carbon-carbon from the nose and leading-edge wing insulation. Carbon-carbon will withstand 1,600 degrees. But so far, there's no trace."

"Sounds superhot," said Remo.

"You know," the technician said, looking up at the red dot that was Mars high in the Florida sky, "I got into the space business because I used to read a lot of science fiction when I was a kid. You grow up, you shake off a lot of wild notions. Space men. UFOs. All that foolishness. But after what I saw tonight, it all came back at me like that past fifteen years never happened. I look up at the stars now and I'm reminded how small we are and how insignificant. Makes a man shiver deep into his soul."

"You shiver for both of us," returned Remo, "I have work to do."

They left the technician staring up at Mars with his mouth hung half-open.

"You will see that I am correct," intoned Chiun, examining the pile of mixed molten metals that had been the Reliant.

"I will admit you're right when there's no other way to go."

"Why stumble through the maze of doubt when the true way has been shown to you?"

"I like doing things my way."

"I give you my permission to stumble about blindly and confused. Meanwhile, I will stand here and guard against malevolent Martians."

"Try to capture the next one alive, okay?"

"If he does not force my hand," Chiun said, thin of voice.

MOVING AWAY from the Master of Sinanju, Remo retreated to get a longer view of the situation. The air was sticky, and interior floodlights made the tall launch-assembly building down the marsh-bordered road look as if it were about to launch itself into orbit.

From farther back, the shuttle was even more impressive somehow. What remained of it.

Remo was thinking that something very, very powerful had done this when he almost bumped into one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen.

She was tall yet shapely. Her long hair reminded Remo of a chestnut mare the way it hung down to the small of her back in a long ponytail, twitching skittishly. The color of her intelligent eyes was mahogany. She filled out her dress exactly the way Remo thought a woman should.

Remembering a promise he'd made to himself, Remo put on his most disarming smile and said, "What's a gorgeous girl like you doing in a place like this?"

"I am not a girl," she said in a severe accent.

"Woman. Sorry. The question stands."

"I am journalist."

"Remo Cupper, NTSB." He flashed his card.

Cool interest made her intelligent eyebrows bunch together. "You are investigating this tragedy?"

"Yeah."

"Then I will consent to interview you. Even though you are impertinent."

Remo frowned. He tried again. "Trade you an interview for a late dinner?"

"I am here to work, not eat."

"I meant dinner as in let's get to know each other."

"I am here to work, not make new friends," the woman retorted.

Remo blinked. Normally women didn't act this coolly toward him. He decided to take the direct approach. "Did I say friends? I really want to jump your bones."

"I do not know this, please."

"I want to kiss you all over."

The woman made a disapproving face. "This does not appeal to me, thank you."

"Suit yourself. But your interview is walking away." And Remo turned to go.

"Wait. I am hasty. I will consent to have Beeg Mek with you."

"What's that?"

"Delicious American fast food."

"You mean a Big Mac?"

"Yes, we will share Beeg Mek and much information. It will be of mutual benefit to us."

Remo shrugged. "It's a start."

"It is the best I will do to accommodate you. What is your name, please?"

"Remo."

"I am Kinga Zongar."

"Nice name for a-"

"I am sometimes known as Kinga the Butch."

"That explains it," said Remo.

"Although I do not consider myself a butch," Kinga added.

Remo blinked. "You mean bitch?"

"Perhaps that is correct term. In my language it is szuka."

Remo frowned. "I don't know a lot of languages."

"Mine is a very fine language. 'Merry Christmas' is said this way-Boldog Kardcsony. "

"I like plain old 'Merry Christmas' better. Let's find a place we can talk."

"You may talk. I will listen attentively and absorb your words."

"It's a start," said Remo.

There was a NASA commissary and it was in full swing dispensing coffee and hot food to carry NASA employees through the long night. In all the controlled excitement, they were not noticed, never mind challenged.

Over black coffee and mineral water-Remo had the water because caffeine affected his system the way speed affects an ordinary person's system-Remo let Kinga pepper him with questions.

"What is your frank opinion concerning this catastrophe?" Kinga asked.

"It wasn't Martians."

"Who has said Martians?"

"The press. You should know that."

"There are no Martians, according to science."

"That's my theory," said Remo, grinning.

Mnga blinked. "What is your theory?"

"That there are no Martians here or on Mars."

"Yes. Of course. But what is your theory as to the shuttle disaster?"

"Something unknown. Maybe an enemy nation."

"Which is most likely?"

Remo shrugged. "Search me. The Russians are pretty quiet these days. But it's somebody out to get our space program."

"This is not logical," Kinga said flatly.

"You got a better theory?" Remo asked.

"The correct English is, 'Do you have a better theory?'"

"Thank you for the elocution lesson," said Remo, wondering why the woman wasn't trying to flirt with him. He decided to start first, just to hone his flirting skills.

"You are stepping on my toe," Kinga said firmly.

"It's called playing footsies."

"The correct term is 'foot.' Where were you educated, please?"

"In an orphanage," Remo replied truthfully.

"That is no excuse for not speaking your native tongue correctly. I myself speak three languages, including Russian."

Withdrawing his foot, Remo said, "You're different than other women I usually meet."

"I am Hungarian by birth."

"Hungarian women all like you?"

"How do you mean by this question?"

"Never mind," said Remo, who decided that as dates went, Kinga Zongar was a wet firecracker. Finishing his water, he said, "Well, gotta get back to my investigation."

Kinga stood up, flinging back her long tail of chestnut hair. "I will observe, if you do not mind."

"If you can keep up, feel free," Remo said, thinking that, on the other hand, it was refreshing to meet a woman who wasn't scratching at his fly like a cat trying to come in on a cold night.

"I can keep up," she said confidently.

WHEN REMO FOUND the Master of Sinanju again, Chiun was moving through the press of technicians and middle managers in a posture that clearly told Remo that he was stalking someone.

Remo fell in behind him, forgetting all about Kinga Zongar.

In his dark suit, Chiun was a shadow with an instinct for other shadows. And with all the floodlights and flashlights, there were plenty of stark shadows between the patches of incandescent light.

Remo moved more openly. Behind him, Kinga asked, "Who are you following?"

"Do you see me following anyone?"

"I see you following a person, but I do not see the person it is you are following."

"If you could, I'd be worried."

On the other side of the giant tower that was the launch-assembly building, Chiun paused.

Remo came up behind him, and Chiun waved him to hold back. Of course, Chiun was aware of Remo, even if he had given no sign until now. He could sense a flea leaping at a hundred yards by the tiny sproing of its legs.

Obediently Remo hung back. "What's up?" he called in a low, carrying tone that would register in Chiun's ears but no one else's.

A thin squeak floated back. "I am following a Martian."

"Where?"

"If I knew the where, I would be ahead of him and await him at his destination, unsuspected," Chiun hissed back.

Remo frowned. He sniffed the air. The only scent that came through the harsh tang of burned metals was human sweat and a faint whiff of what seemed to be chocolate.

"To whom are you speaking?" asked Kinga, peering into the dark blots between shards of light.

"And tell your Russian friend to hold her tongue," added Chiun.

"She's-" Remo started to say.

"Hungarian," Kinga said for him.

Chiun turned, looked at Kinga squarely and sniffed the air delicately. "Russian. But one who has dwelt in this land many years."

"Who said that?" asked Kinga, peering deeper into the shadows.

"That patch of black up ahead," said Remo.

"I see nothing in the patch."

"You heard the voice?"

"Yes. Of course. It sounded like Mickey the Mouse and Donald the Duck speaking in unison."

"Let's hope he takes that as a compliment," said Remo.

"I do not," the squeaking voice from the shadows returned.

And suddenly Chiun was moving on.

Remo slipped up behind him. It was then that he saw the object of the Master of Sinanju's interest.

He looked like a NASA technician. He was stepping back, his head canted, his eyes fixed on the giant ruined transporter-crawler down the long road that stretched between the launch-assembly building and the forlorn tower that was the launch gantry. Clutched in his hand was a candy bar, still in its cream-colored wrapper. He nibbled at the exposed bar of chocolate as he surveyed the damage.

"Nothing suspicious about this guy," Remo said quietly, joining the Master of Sinanju in the lee of a blob that still had a few half-smelted tractor treads sticking from it. It had been dragged here for examination.

"He is a secret Martian agent," Chiun hissed.

"What makes you say-?" Then Remo caught a glimpse of the candy wrapper. Too late to stop the Master of Sinanju, who flitted forward and seized the technician by one unsuspecting wrist.

Chiun's hand clamped down as the technician sank to one knee, his face looking the way Remo imagined his own did when they threw the juice to him in the electric chair.

He jumped, twisted and kept jittering as Chiun's voice lifted in an accusatory tone. "You have been captured, agent of Mars. Confess the name of your warlord, or perish on this spot."

"What-"

Remo stepped in at that moment, saying, "Chiun! Let him go."

"He was sent here by the insidious Mars Incorporated-therefore, he knows what transpired here. Speak, alien one."

The technician squealed like a speeded-up voice recording. "My name is Otis Mine. I'm from Boca Raton. And I don't know what you're talking about."

Remo flashed his NTSB ID and said, "I think there's a little misunderstanding here."

Chiun squeezed harder, and the man's eyes began to bug out. His face became purple and rubbery, his nostrils flaring.

"Behold, his true countenance is revealing itself. See how the eyes protrude unhumanly?" Chiun said triumphantly.

"You're doing that to him," Remo countered.

"I am merely encouraging him to resume his normal appearance," Chiun returned.

"He's going to need plastic surgery if you keep that up."

Stooping, Remo picked up the dropped candy bar. He held it to the moonlight so the bold red letters were visible.

"Is this your clue?" he asked Chiun.

"Yes. This spy is on a world that is to him alien, and he must consume food from his home planet to survive."

"Chiun, this is a Mars bar."

"Yes. From Mars."

"No, it's not."

"Read the small print," Chiun sniffed.

Remo did. "Says 'Copyright Mars Inc.'"

"Proof!" said Chiun, giving his captured Martian another squeeze. He got even purpler.

"Hackettstown, New Jersey," Remo finished. "I'm from New Jersey. And I'm not even remotely Martian."

"Obviously, that refers to the Martian New Jersey."

"There is no Martian New Jersey."

"There is a Jupiter, Florida, is there not?" Chiun demanded.

"But there's no Hackettstown, New Jersey, Planet Mars. Trust me, I used to eat these things when I was a kid."

"That exact same?"

"Well, the wrapper's different from what I remember."

"Hah! Therefore, this is a shoddy counterfeit."

"They're selling these over at the commissary. Okay?"

Chiun narrowed his hazel eyes until they were unreadable slits.

Gently Remo extracted the hapless technician from the Master of Sinanju's fierce clutch.

"Misunderstanding. You can go now."

"But we will be watching you," Chiun called after him in a cold voice.

The NASA technician stumbled away.

His hands retreating into the belled sleeves of his coat, Chiun regarded Remo with thin disapproval. His eyes flicked to Kinga. "Who is this?"

"Kinga. She's a reporter."

"Why is she following you?"

"It's okay. She's the first woman in a zillion years who doesn't want to jump my bones."

"I do not know this phrase," Kinga said. "What does it mean, please?"

"Ya tebya lyublu, " said Chiun.

"Prastee'te?" Kinga replied.

Chiun leveled accusing eyes at Kinga. "She is Russian, not Hungarian."

"I am Hungarian, but I speak fluent Russian."

"Bocsanat," said Chiun.

"Koszonom," replied Kinga. Then in English, "You speak Magyar?"

"Obviously," said Chiun.

"What's Magyar?" asked Remo.

"The Hungarian national language," said Kinga.

"I thought the Hungarian national language was Hungarian."

"Only an American could be so ignorant not to know of Magyar," Kinga scoffed.

"Well, Polish people speak Polish," Remo said.

"That is a different matter entirely. Poles are Slavs."

"How many fingers do I hold up?" asked Chiun, displaying four fingers.

"Negy," said Kinga.

"Not chety're?"

"That is the Russian word. I will reply to your question in Russian if you wish."

"You smell Russian. You smell of borscht and black bread."

"I have eaten these foods, but not recently. I much prefer American foods exclusively since I come to this country. Especially Beeg Meks and chizburgers."

"You will die young and in pain, then," spat Chiun.

"Who is this fulminating little man?" Kinga asked Remo.

"That's Chiun. My partner."

"He is very unusual. Such frankness of speech to a stranger."

Chiun made a nasal sound like a polite snort. He had the Mars bar and was examining it critically.

"This is unfit for human consumption."

"It's chocolate, caramel and nougat," Remo said.

"Fit only for Martian stomachs."

Remo sighed. "Look, we're getting nowhere at this rate. Let's get serious or get out of here. We've seen that whatever did this was the same thing that zapped the BioBubble."

"What do you know of the BioBubble disaster?" asked Kinga suddenly.

"That it was a mercy killing," said Chiun, bustling up. "What do you know of this, Russian?"

"I am Hungarian," Kinga insisted.

"Perhaps. Answer the question."

"I am reporter. I am interested in your theory as to what force or agency is responsible for what has transpired here."

"Martians," said Chiun, turning on his heel.

Remo started after him, calling over his shoulder, "You coming or not?"

"I am coming. I find you both very interesting."

"That's a start," said Remo.

"I do not understand you very well," Kinga said, a plaintive note coming into her cultured voice.

"The feeling's mutual," returned Remo.

"Men are from Mars, women are from Venus," sniffed Chiun. "And if you both are wise, you will remain in your own spheres."

"I hear Mars needs women," countered Remo, grinning.

Kinga fixed them with a look that could only be called askance.

Chapter 18

In a darkened Orlando hotel room, a roll of film was coming out of the portable developer. Once exposed, the film would have far-reaching geopolitical consequences, though no one would recognize this until it was too late to turn back the doomsday clock on humanity.

Travis "Red" Rust took a jeweler's magnifying eyepiece to the contact sheet and was going through each shot looking for the best one.

He got to shot thirteen, moved on, then jumped back so fast and hard he bruised his eye.

When the tearing stopped, he looked at the image with his right eye, then the left, then the right again to make triply sure what he was looking at wasn't an emulsion glitch.

Rust started to reach for the telephone, then thought better of it.

"This is worth more to the networks than to that rag," he muttered. "It's red-hot."

He got to work developing print thirteen.

At the local CBS affiliate, the news director was having none of it. "It's a still picture. We're TV. We need tape. Still pictures make viewers reach for their clickers."

"It shows the exact instant before the ray hit the Reliant," Red said urgently.

"You got the moment of the explosion?"

"No. But I got some great after shots. Shows the thing actually hissing and spitting like a volcano."

"We might be able to use them. Leave them, and we'll get back to you."

"It's the before shot that's important. Everyone knows the Reliant was torched. But no one know what did it. This picture may be the only clue."

The news director got interested. Grabbing the picture, he looked at it and made assorted faces. "What am I looking for?"

"Letters in the sky."

He looked closer and saw the white configurations against the background star constellations just behind the Reliant.

"Those?"

"Yeah. See? They spell out a word, probably in an alien language."

"Looks like plain English to me."

"Look closer. The N is backward."

"Okay, it's backward. And it's a little p not a big P. So what?"

"But the M and the P face frontward," Rust said excitedly.

"I repeat my so?"

"That means it's not an M and a P. Not our M or P."

"What are you saying, Rust?"

"I think this is a signal from Mars."

"Oh, get off it."

"Okay, maybe not Mars, but some language from beyond our earth. Maybe this was a warning. Stop launching shuttles or you're all toast."

The CBS news director cast a skeptical eye in Travis Rust's specific direction. "M, backward N and P say all that?"

"They could," Rust said hopefully.

"They could be the call letters for Martian TV, too.... Who did you say you work for, Rust?"

"I'm free-lance," Rust said quickly.

"Who's your best client?"

Rust swallowed. "The Enquirer, " he admitted.

Print thirteen went sailing toward the exit.

"Follow it out. No sale."

At the ABC and NBC affiliates, the doors were slammed in his face before Rust could barge past the lobby guards.

"We were warned about you," he was told at both locations.

That left Fox.

At Fox, they were very interested. Very.

"Our ratings on the alien-autopsy special were so high we had to show it all over again the next week," the Fox news broadcaster said gleefully as he shuffled through Rust's stack of photographs.

"Then you'll take it?"

"We've got a news organization now. Of course we'll take it. But it's gotta be a world Fox exclusive. And you come along as part of the package."

"Package?"

"These are stills. I need a talking-head expert to tell the story, and you're the only game in town."

"Twenty thousand bucks," Rust said quickly.

"Deal."

Fox had a news special on the air within the hour. Travis Rust found himself happily sweating on national television, explaining what he was doing in the marshlands outside the Kennedy Space Center, what he saw, what he didn't see and his theory on the alien letters that appeared in the sky before an unknown power had puddled the orbiter Reliant.

The program went out live, and Rust had visions of fame and fortune. Not to mention a career change. The media was always hungry for telegenic experts. Travis Rust would be only too happy to pontificate on the extraterrestrial threat to Earth-a subject on which he was an unqualified expert, having read the National Enquirer every week since 1984.

That was before the three men in the charcoal black suits and impenetrable sunglasses burst in on midtelecast and confiscated every photo in sight. Travis Rust, too.

"Who are you people?" the hapless interviewer was saying as Rust was picked up by his elbows and escorted off camera with his shoe heels barely dragging the floor.

"Government agents," one of the trio barked, failing to display ID.

"They're the men in black!" Travis Rust screamed. "They cover up stuff like this!"

The newscaster followed with a microphone. "What?"

"My Enquirer editor will know! Tell him what happened here!"

And that was the last the public saw of Travis Rust until the world had been dragged to the brink and beyond.

Chapter 19

Dr. Harold W Smith was toiling under the shaky fluorescent lights of Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York. His computer beeped at him, alerting him of a mission-pertinent story moving on the wire.

It was out of AP. They were carrying a report that Fox TV was broadcasting a live interview with a news photographer who had snapped critical shots of the Reliant disaster.

The touch of a hot-key transformed Smith's amber monochrome screen into a color TV set. He got the local Fox affiliate by entering another code.

The picture resolved just as Travis Rust was being escorted from the studio by three faceless men in dark sunglasses and dull black business suits, calling out something about men in black.

"What are men in black?" Smith wondered aloud.

Putting the question aside, he watched as the stammering Fox broadcaster tried to fill the dead air now that he was alone in the studio facing an empty guest's chair that still spun from the velocity with which Travis Rust had been taken away.

"That was Travis 'Red' Rust, being carried off by three men purporting to be from the government. To recap, Mr. Rust snapped what may be the single most important photograph in the chain of events that began with the BioBubble disaster and progressed to the Reliant catastrophe. Just moments before the Reliant collapsed into a bubbling metallic mass, an ominous word appeared in the night sky. Consisting of three letters, two seemingly in our Roman alphabet, but the middle one looking like a reversed N. "

The camera came in for a tight shot of the broadcaster's serious, sweat-dappled face.

"Are these acts of sabotage warnings from a hostile intelligence from beyond our own atmosphere?"

"Rubbish," said Smith, starting to reach for the hot-key that would restore normal computer functions.

Then tape was played of the photo under discussion.

Harold Smith froze. His gray eyes took in the three letters. They blinked. His firm mouth, normally compressed in concentration, made a round, bloodless hole just before his jaw dropped on slack muscles.

"My God!" he croaked.

Blindly Smith reached for the red telephone that connected him with the White House.

THE PRESIDENT of the United States was conferring with his national-security advisers when the call came in.

When he had first taken over the Oval Office and the previous Chief Executive had explained about CURE and the hotline, he said that he had set up a baby monitor in the Lincoln Bedroom two flights above so that when the red telephone rang, he would know it if he were anywhere in the White House.

And the outgoing President had surrendered the portable baby monitor, saying, "It's your worry now."

The thing was ringing now, and the President said, "Excuse me. Been sitting here so long, I gotta pee up a storm."

His advisers were working the phones, trying to discover which-if any-agency was kidnapping journalists on live TV, and hardly noticed. They were pale and haggard of face and baggy of eye. The office TV was flickering in its cabinet niche.

The tiny elevator took the Commander in Chief to the red telephone, which was still ringing. He snapped up the handset.

"Go ahead, Smith."

"Mr. President. There is a strange report on Fox News."

"Yeah. I heard. Some goofball Enquirer photographer."

"I do not think so."

"They're talking up Martians."

"The letters are not Martian, Mr. President. They are Cyrillic."

"What's that?"

"The letters of the Russian alphabet devised by Saint Cyril in the ninth century. They are based on the Greek alphabet, so there are many letters in common."

Smith's voice was low and urgent and more than a little hoarse. The President decided to let him explain.

"They show three letters," Smith continued. "M, a backward N, and a P."

"Yes?"

"In Cyrillic Russian, these letters are pronounced meer. "

"How do you get meer out of 'MNP'?"

"The backward N is pronounced double E. The M is equivalent to our M. But the P is actually an R. "

"I'm with you so far."

"Transliterated from the Russian, 'MNP' becomes 'MIR.' "

"Mir, Mir..."

"The word means 'Peace,'" supplied Smith.

The President's voice brightened. "That's good, isn't it?"

"Mir is the name of the Russian space station orbiting the earth even as we speak."

"Uh-oh," muttered the President. "Are you saying the Russians are attacking our space program?"

"I am saying that in the instant before the Reliant was obliterated, the Russian word for 'peace,' the name of their space station, appeared very high in the sky over the target area," said Harold Smith in a patient but tight voice. "No more, no less."

"Oh, man," the President groaned. "I think I'd rather it be the Martians."

"There are no Martians," Harold Smith said testily.

"I wouldn't be so sure of that," the President confided.

"What do you mean?"

"I was watching the Fox telecast when those three goons claiming to be from Washington came and hauled that photographer off. We've checked with CIA, NSA, DoD, everyone I could think of. They all disavow sending any agents."

"I fail to follow."

The President lowered his voice to a hoarse hush. "Before Rust was dragged off, he was talking about men in black."

"That term is not one I am familiar with," Smith admitted.

"Men in black are these mysterious guys who go around confiscating UFO evidence. Some say they're CIA. Others that they're Air Force." The Chief Executive's voice dropped lower. "A lot of people think they're really space aliens."

"I trust you do not believe the latter theory," Smith said thinly.

"A smart President doesn't rule anything in or out when dealing with national-security issues. Especially one who watches 'The X -Files' faithfully."

"I will look into the Russian aspects of this," Smith said unhappily.

"How?"

"If necessary, I will send my people to Russia."

"I can't believe the Russians would attack us like this. And why advertise themselves?"

"I do not know, but I take some of their recent space activity as very suggestive."

"You mean that shuttle launch last month?"

"Yes. It was strange that they reactivated their shuttle program. Buran 1 was retired after one unmanned orbital flight in 1988. Buran 2 orbiter was placed in storage years ago and never flown until now."

"It was a colossal joke. The thing's so unsafe they don't dare send up cosmonauts in it."

"To the contrary, Mr. President. The fact that the Buran could be launched and returned to Earth safely by robot is an advantage over U.S. shuttle technology."

"None of this computes, Smith. Russians or Martians. Why would Martians attack us? We never attacked them."

"I will get back to you," said Harold Smith, disconnecting.

AT FOLCROFT, Smith searched the net for some link or database that would enable him to fix space station Mir's orbital position at the time of the Reliant disaster. He had a fling it wasn't going to be an easy task, so he called up his best brute-force search engine, set it to autosearch U.S. military data banks and moved on to other tasks.

The phone rang not an hour into this process.

It was Remo.

"Smith. We're at a Holiday Inn near Kennedy. Looks like the same thing zapped the Reliant that popped the BioBubble. But there's no telling what it is except very, very hot. It turned the shuttle's tiles to tar."

"It may be a Russian operation," Smith said.

"Where do you get that?"

"A photographer captured the Cyrillic word for 'peace' in the sky the instant before the explosion. That is the name of the Russian space station circling up there."

"Isn't it a peaceful research station?" said Remo.

"That is the story. But remember that Mir was launched under the old Soviet system. And it recently attempted to dock with the Russian version of the shuttle."

"Last time that thing went up, they deployed a doomsday device."

"Yes. The Sword of Damocles. You and Chiun dealt with that. There is reason to believe the Buran carried a new doomsday device to Mir."

"They'd have to be crazy to attack us."

"Facts do not fit the circumstances completely. I want you and Chiun to stand by."

"Okay. But I have a hot date."

"Excuse me?"

"A date. You know, dinner and-"

"With whom?"

"Her name's Kinga Zongar. She's a reporter with the Orlando Sentinel."

"I disapprove," said Smith.

"Disapprove afterward. I don't think I'm going to get anywhere with her."

"Allow me to run a background check."

"On my date?"

"It is a wise precaution."

"Save it. I like surprises," said Remo, who then hung up.

Smith returned to his multitasking. It was going to be a long night, and he expected nothing to make sense until dawn at the earliest.

Chapter 20

"It's the Russians," said Remo, hanging up.

"I told you she was a Russian," spat Chiun.

"I am Hungarian," Kinga said, an edge creeping into her cultured voice.

"Not her. I just finished talking to Smith. Someone snapped a photo of the shuttle just before it blew. The Russian letters for Mir were up in the sky."

"What is this!" Kinga flared.

"It's on TV, according to our boss," Remo told her.

Kinga turned on the Holiday Inn TV without asking and flipped the channels until she got a report that held her attention.

"All America is asking one question-are these letters in the Martian alphabet?" a newscaster was saying. "If so, did actual Martians barge into this studio and haul off the only eyewitness to their handiwork on earth?"

"If that was true," said Remo, "they'd have hauled your butt out of the room, too."

"Hush," said Kinga, raising the volume until both Remo and Chiun winced from the sensory overload.

Remo confiscated the clicker and lowered the volume.

The broadcaster was saying, "Here again is the world-exclusive photograph that is sending chills up and down the spines of Fox viewers everywhere."

Everyone watched. The screen showed a starsprinkled sky and the distinct white configuration of bizarre letters.

"It is Russian," said Chiun.

"Of course it is Russian," said Kinga. "It means 'Peace.' "

"That's the space-station name," said Remo.

"Space station Mir is not responsible for these events," Kinga said heatedly.

"How would you know?" Remo asked.

Kinga said, "It is inconceivable otherwise."

"You are very positive for a Hungarian," said Chiun, drawing near.

"Easy, Chiun," Remo warned.

Chiun inclined his shiny head in Kinga's direction. "I will grant you the privilege of interrogating this Russian."

Remo stepped between Kinga and the TV and folded his lean bare arms. He was facing Kinga, his dark eyes intent. "What makes you so sure the Russians aren't behind this?" he asked.

"It is illogical. If Mir is sending down death rays, why would they advertise their complicity by painting the sky with their own name?"

"Maybe it's a computer glitch."

"Pish! Mir is not designed to flash its name from orbit."

"Only a Russian would possess such knowledge, Remo," Chiun said pointedly.

"Stay out of this, Little Father," Remo said evenly.

"These facts are commonly available. I am only stating the obvious." Kinga stood up. "I must go now."

"What about our date?"

"I will take rain check. I must file story with my newspaper."

"We're not done yet," said Remo.

"We are done with you," said Chiun, handing Kinga her purse.

She took it quickly. "Thank you. I must go now."

"Goodbye," said Chiun.

Remo started to reach out for Kinga, but the Master of Sinanju deflected his hand with a hard blocking wrist.

After she had gone, Remo confronted the Master of Sinanju. "Why'd you let her just go like that?"

"For two reasons. She is not interested in you the way you are in her."

"I don't know how interested I am in her. She's different from most other women."

"And I have her wallet," added Chiun, producing a kid wallet from up his sleeve.

Remo took it.

Inside there was a driver's license, giving an address in Celebration, Florida.

"You figure we should follow her?" Remo asked Chiun.

"It is devious, but we are dealing with a devious person."

"I didn't see any deviousness in her at all. She was perfectly direct. Too direct, maybe."

"She did not throw herself at your feet."

"So?"

"Perhaps because she is not attracted to you."

"I never met a woman who wasn't attracted to me."

"Perhaps because she is not a woman of this world," suggested Chiun.

"Oh, come off it. A moment ago, you were saying she was a Russian, when she's only Hungarian."

"I said she smelled like a Russian. But her features are Magyar."

"Meaning?"

Chiun's eyes grew hooded of lid. "Perhaps she is a Martian who wears an imperfect mask."

Remo rolled his eyes. "Look, let's see what we find at her place."

"Be prepared to weep if you love this woman."

"I don't love anyone," Remo growled.

"That is regrettably true."

"I didn't mean you, Little Father."

"It is too late to call back the canard," said the Master of Sinanju, breezing out the door one step ahead of his pupil.

Chapter 21

In Cancun's Diamond Resort Playacar Hotel, the occupant of room 33-D sat nervously on the edge of the rumpled king-size bed, his laptop balanced on his hairy-legged lap, his eyes staring at the room TV, which was tuned to CNN. Moonlight streamed in through the half-closed curtains.

On the screen, a steely-eyed anchor sat with a graphic floating beside his silvery pompadour. The graphic showed a starry sky against which floated three letters: "MNp."

The newscaster was saying, ". . . obviously a hoax inasmuch as the purported alien letters are of earthly origin."

"I don't believe it," the man on the bed said.

"A hoax so shoddily constructed that the middle consonant was flopped," the newscaster added.

"Thank God thank God thank God for flopping."

The graphic was replaced by a shot of the shapeless blob of space-age metals and ceramics that was once a U.S. space shuttle.

"At the Kennedy Space Center, NASA officials remain tight-lipped about the loss of the Reliant, which jeopardizes the International Space Station, whose first components were scheduled to fly on the Reliant next year and will not be completed until the year 2001."

"Tough. Build another shuttle."

"With us now, by satellite from his private observatory, is renowned astronomer and exobiologist, Dr. Cosmo Pagan of the University of Arizona's Center for Exobiological Studies. Dr. Pagan, what motive would anyone have for destroying a U.S. space shuttle?"

Dr. Pagan appeared on one side of the split screen, his face sober, his voice sonorous, his speaking cadence strange, the accents falling on improbable syllables and words.

"Brad, we cannot rule out an asteroid strike. A small impactor, not a Tunguska-size bludgeon. Otherwise, we would have lost Florida, and not an unimportant shuttle. You see, striking asteroids pack the punch of a nuclear device. Recently we sky watchers have begun to classify them, threat-wise. They include the aforementioned ten-megaton Tunguskas, hundred-megaton regional bludgeons capable of obliterating a continent, hundred-gigaton, hemisphere-demolishing small extinctors, and the Tyrannosaurus rex of asteroids, the great extinctors."

"How serious is this threat?"

"Quite small. We can expect a ten-megaton impact once every century. So this event, coming ninety years after Tunguska, is about on schedule."

"Earlier in the day, you were quoted by AP as pointing to the ozone layer."

"An ozone-layer rupture is also a possibility," said Dr. Pagan.

"You say this, but the phenomenon appeared in two highly localized spots thousands of miles apart. How would an ozone hole account for both events?"

"Perhaps we are looking at a floating hole in Earth's ozone shield," Dr. Pagan said without skipping a beat.

"In other words, you really don't know?"

"I know the possibilities. The universe is ruled by mathematical possibilities. Billions upon trillions upon zillions of possibilities. I am merely enumerating them. I am a scientist, not a seer."

"Pick a damn theory and stick with it!" the occupant of room 33-D railed at the unheeding screen.

"I see," said the CNN anchor. "Dr. Pagan, let's address the question of sabotage. Who would profit from the shuttle's destruction?"

"Besides my career, you mean?"

The laptop beeped, and the occupant of room 33-D looked down at his liquid-crystal screen.

"You have mail!" the system was flashing.

Calling it up, the man read quickly as the singsong voice of Dr. Cosmo Pagan evaded the question artfully.

To: RM@qnm.com From: R Subject: New problem Last-quarter report is out, and firm lost big. Heads are rolling. Upper management is on our backs for a progress update on ParaSol. And they're looking for you for stockholder-impact report.

"Damn," said the man in 33-D.

He pecked out a reply.

To: R From: RM@qnm.com Subject: Re: New problem Do they know where I am?

He hit Send and went back to watching Dr. Pagan, who had somehow gotten on the subject of comets.

"A comet is nothing more than a dirty snowball locked in a perpetual orbit around our mundane sun. Comets rarely strike Earth. But asteroid strikes are very common. A great extinctor created the Chicxulub crater in Yucatan, which threw up so much obscuring dust it blocked out the sun and set off the eco-chain reaction that killed the late, lamented dinosaurs. I would be more concerned with a nameless asteroid landing on Washington than Hale-Bopp or some future comet that's merely booming by our planet."

"Shut the eff up," the occupant of room 33-D snarled. "Do you want the board to hear you?"

The reply from research and development was succinct: "Unknown."

Then the system flashed the new-mail signal, and it popped up automatically.

To: RM@qnm.com From: Evelyn@qnmxom Subject: Mr. Gaunt Mr. Gaunt asked me to request that you make yourself available for early-morning meeting at your hotel. He is en route.

"Shit! That pencil-necked bean-counter is coming here. What do I do? What do I do?"

On CNN, Dr. Cosmo Pagan was into his biography.

"I owe it all to Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. G. Wells and Ray Bradbury. They all wrote about Mars. Not the Mars that's up there now but the Mars of imagination. The Mars of the human spirit. Someday soon, lowly man will walk on the Red Planet, and that day will be a glorious one. Let me urge NASA to launch a crash Mars-colonization program before mankind succumbs to the next great extinctor."

The occupant of room 33-D grasped the remote control and hit Mute. Dr. Pagan kept talking anyway. He just didn't make any sound.

"I didn't get this e-mail. That's it! I was out. My system is down. I can't be held accountable for mail I don't receive."

Hastily he reaccessed the last R and hit the Reply key.

"Cease all communications until further notice," he typed. "Erase all e-mail from me. We have not been in contact. Don't even answer this. I never sent this message."

Then he folded up his laptop and called down to the main desk.

"I'm checking out. Immediately. Urgent business. Gotta get back to the States."

Packing furiously, he muttered, "Let Gaunt come here. I'll go back to Seattle. It's the last place he'll think of looking. If he complains, that'll teach him to get on an international flight without waiting for confirmation of my whereabouts."

The occupant of room 33-D left without shutting off the TV Oblivious, Dr. Cosmo Pagan continued lecturing a dark, empty room.

"It might interest my loyal viewers to know that geologic evidence recently came to light suggesting that the Chesapeake Bay was created as a direct result of a meteorite impact approximately thirty-five million-that's million not billion-years ago. And just last May, Asteroid 1996 JA-1 missed our earth by a mere 279,000 miles-a near miss on the grand scale of the cosmos ...."

Chapter 22

On the way back to her apartment, Kinga Zongar broke the speed limit in her bloodred Maxima GTE all the length of the Central Florida Greenway.

Somewhere past Kissimmee, a black-and-gold Florida State Highway Patrol car came wailing after her.

Kinga considered her options. She must not be deterred in getting word to Moscow.

On the other hand, if she managed to evade this state person, others would pursue her, arousing great suspicions where none existed.

In the end, it was her long period of relative inactivity that decided Kinga. She pulled over onto the shoulder of the road and sat quietly as the highway patrol car pulled behind her, its roof lights making a discordant multihued web of color in the humid air.

When the highway patrolman came striding up in his gray-and-black whipcord uniform, his straw Stetson cocked at a rakish angle, Kinga smiled with quiet pleasure. He was very big for an American. His life would require at least three bullets.

From the drink receptacle between the front seats, Kinga extracted her choice of weapon. A matte-finish Ruger. It was a very satisfying firearm with which to kill enemies.

A touch of the dash button brought the window humming down, and Kinga turned her head so the patrolman could see her flawless womanly face.

"I am sorry to bother you, Officer. Was I exceeding the speed limit?"

Whether the patrolman was disarmed by her polite manner or her refined if unplaceable accent did not matter. He thumbed his Stetson back off his head and drawled, "I'm afraid so, ma'am."

He was very solicitous and polite. So Kinga did him the courtesy of shooting him directly in the face so that he would experience no pain or discomfort in the brief, helpless interval before he struck the macadam in death.

She left him jittering in his insensate death throes, pulling away reluctantly because these wet affairs were always so stimulating. Especially after going so long without them.

Reaching her apartment without further incident, Kinga locked up her vehicle and entered her apartment quietly, so as not to disturb the neighbors who never showed her reciprocal courtesy. But this was America, after all.

The Compaq was running as always. She took the red leather chair and logged on to the net, typing in Cyrillic with professional precision.

To: UncleVanya@shield.su.min From: AuntTamara@aol.com Subject: Findings Preliminary investigation fails to disclose cause of accident in question. National media reporting sighting of three glowing letters in sky prior to event. Media speculating letters of cosmic origin. Clearly they are not, unless extraordinary coincidence at work. Letters are; " MNP."

Further, have made contact with investigators from NTSB, who are not what they pretend to be. One is elderly Asian gentleman with North Korean accent. The other is American companion. Does this suggest anything to you?

Kinga pressed the Send key and waited. Knowing the Russian telephone system, it could be a minute or three days before a response came back. She decided to wait until drowsiness overcame her alertness. It was an exceedingly sultry night, and sleeping would be difficult at best.

Twenty minutes passed before she decided to call it a night. If a reply came, the machine would emit an electronic call that invariably pulled Kinga out of the deepest sleep.

Deep in the night, the chime sounded and Kinga flung off her red satin bedcover before her eyes quite opened. She dropped into the chair, squinting to read the green letters in the humid darkness. As a gesture to modesty, she left the room light off.

The Cyrillic message popped up at the touch of a key.

To: AuntTamara@aol.com From: UncleVanya@shield.su.min Subject: Report Mir story incredible. We have queried Glavkosmos contacts.

Your North Korean possible Master of Sinanju, now known to be in employ of Washington through unknown agency. Request courtesy liquidation. Good luck.

Kinga Zongar smiled in the greenish phosphor glow. It would be the greatest of pleasures to undertake a sanctioned wet affair of such magnitude here in the United States.

Reaching out to erase the message, Kinga hesitated only briefly. The brief interval proved to be unfortunate.

A hand, cool as steel and equally hard, arrested her wrist.

Trained for dangerous contingencies, she stifled a sharp intake of breath and said in a moderate voice, "I am unarmed, as well as nude."

"I noticed," said a friendly, familiar male voice. "Move your head so we can read."

"You! My goodness, Remo. I did not hear you enter."

"But we heard you enter," said the squeaky voice of the elderly Korean, Chiun.

"You have been in my apartment all this time?"

"We almost waved when the highway patrolman pulled you over. But we were in a rush," said Remo in an insolent voice.

"You are staring at my bosom," Kinga said thinly.

"Can't help it. It's in the light."

"I must protest this intrusion on my privacy."

Remo pointed at the screen. "Check this out, Chiun."

"It is in Russian."

"I figured that much out. What's it say?"

"She has been instructed to liquidate me," the Master of Sinanju said thinly. He did not sound so very angry as annoyed in a minor way. This fell strangely on Kinga's ears.

"What about me?" asked Remo in a tone also not angry, but casual in its interest.

"You are not mentioned, lesser one."

Kinga said nothing. Her eyes were on the screen, and her heart was beginning to pound. Another moment, and she would have erased the incriminating message for all time. Now the Cyrillic letters glared greenly at her like burning crystals.

"I would not have harmed you, Remo," she said quietly.

"Why not?"

"I admire you."

"You have a pretty cool way of showing it."

"I am very shy with men."

"Is this why your walls are covered with salacious portraits of women?" Chiun asked, gesturing broadly in the eerie green glow. His face resembled a shriveled lime with thin eyes.

Kinga said, "I fail to grasp your meaning."

The light went on; illuminating the walls. Here and there were hung lithographs and reproductions of studies and paintings. The subjects were all of a single theme. The female form.

"Looks like you have a one-track mind," said Remo, looking around admiringly.

"You are speaking nonsense. These are reproductions of works of fine art. Have you no culture?"

"I don't see any equal opportunity for men."

"A nude man is a vulgar sight. A woman's unclothed form is pleasing to both sexes," Kinga said.

"I kinda like what I see," Remo admitted.

"You are very uncouth, barging into my flat and-"

"Tough. You're pretty rude yourself, coming to this country to spy."

"I am not spy."

"You are not Hungarian, either."

"I will speak the truth. I am half-Hungarian. My paternal parent was Russian. I am ashamed of this because there was a rape involved in my conception. It is very painful to admit this, but it is nonetheless true."

"Let's skip the personal history," said Remo, cutting in. "Who do you work for?"

"I am free-lance. The highest bidders command my allegiance. No other."

"Liar," said Chiun.

"I speak the truth. And now that you have read my instructions, I would like to erase them, please. They are no longer of consequence now that you have seen them."

This time it was the elderly Korean who arrested her reaching hands. But his touch was not steel, but acid. Needles dipped in acid. Injecting Kinga with a deadly venom that burned along the nerves until her lush body lay on the floor quivering.

"Who do you work for, Russian?" the Korean voice demanded through the mounting pain.

"I cannot tell," Kinga gasped through clenching teeth. She tongued a cyanide pill out of a hollow wisdom tooth. The maneuver was surreptitious in the extreme. But it didn't go unnoticed.

The pain redoubled, and her tongue shot out. The pill fell to the rug, and a sandal crushed it utterly, then returned to exerting pressure on her head.

Kinga could hold it back no longer. "FSK! FSK! I am FSK! My control is Stankevitch, FSK!"

Remo turned to the Master of Sinanju. "What's the FSK?"

"I do not know," said Chiun. "But I do know that I am done with this would-be slayer of me."

"She couldn't kill you if she had a neutron bomb tucked in her bra."

"That is not the point," said Chiun, bringing a black sandal down on Kinga Zongar's disheveled head. The heel touched the side of her head, paused, then dipped a quarter inch.

Kinga Zongar's head burst like an erupting melon.

"Chiun! For crying out loud, that was my date."

"You have terrible taste in women," sniffed Chiun, scuffing his sole clean against the carpet.

"She was going to be the first date I've had in I don't know how many years. I didn't even get to first base."

"Nor would you have. She does not love men, only women."

Looking around the room again, Remo said, "I guess you're right. But I gotta admit it was nice having a conversation with a woman who didn't lust after me."

"There are other lesbians, if that is your desire," said Chiun.

"Not funny," said Remo, picking up the telephone and calling Harold Smith by the simple expedient of depressing the 1 button until an automatic relay embedded in the telephone system routed the call to Folcroft Sanitarium via Dixville Notch, New Hampshire.

"Remo?" Smith asked.

"Who else?"

"I have run up against a blank wall."

"On the Russian angle?"

"No, on Kinga Zongar. According to my research, she does not exist prior to 1988."

"Well, she's not going to get past 1996 either."

Smith's voice grew sharp. "What do you mean?"

"Chiun just wasted her."

"With cause?"

"We tracked her back to her apartment, where she got a computer message from someone writing what Chiun says is Russian."

"It is Russian, as was the woman," Chiun piped up.

"Whoever gives Kinga her orders, they ordered her to hit Chiun. They figured out who he was."

"It is obvious who I am, even to Russians," said Chiun.

Turning the phone away from the Master of Sinanju, Remo told Smith, "I'd read you the message on the screen, but it's full of backward N's and R's and upside-down letters I don't recognize."

"Where are you?"

"Kinga's apartment. I think it's going to be available by the first of the year if you're interested," Remo added dryly.

"One moment. I am tracing your call."

Remo hesitated. While he did, he said to Chiun, "Why don't you throw a blanket over her? She's naked."

"She is your date. You cover her nakedness," Chiun sniffed as he read the screen.

Smith came back and said, "I have accessed the computer."

"How'd you do that?"

"The supporting telephone line is listed in Kinga Zongar's name, as is the line you are calling from."

"Oh," said Remo. "Pretty slick."

The line hummed for a moment. Then Smith said, "I am attempting to retrace the e-mail to its sender."

"How can you do that?"

"The e-mail address at the top."

Remo looked. "Which one is that?"

"Top line."

"I see a W, a backward N and a T. "

"It is pronounced like a certain foul English word."

"Which one?" asked Remo.

Smith said, "The W is the Cyrillic Sh. The backward N is pronounced like a double e but transliterates as i, while the T equals our T. "

"I'm a little slow today, Smitty. Care to spell it out for me?"

"Never mind," put in Smith. "The word means 'shield,' and I am coming up with an e-mail account in Moscow."

"She said she was with the FSK, whatever that is."

"The Russian Federal Security Service. It used to be the KGB. But the e-mail account is not coming from the former KGB headquarters in the former Dzerzhinsky Square."

"Probably a blind."

"Unfortunately I cannot get a definite address."

"So we're at a dead end?"

"No. I have it narrowed down to four blocks on Gorky Street. I think it would be useful for you and Chiun to go there and discover what you can."

"Not much of a lead," said Remo.

"According to the e-mail from Moscow, her superiors are attempting to learn what they can about this from Glavkosmos, the Russian space agency. If you find nothing in Moscow, that will be your second stop."

"Sounds pretty thin."

"Nevertheless, it is a direction, and we desperately need a direction right now. Especially with Dr. Pagan giving hourly public theories."

"What's he saying now?"

"Currently he is vacillating between an asteroid strike and a floating hole in the ozone layer."

"No asteroid could have done what Chiun and I saw."

"The American public will have to be educated to understand that. In the meantime, panic is growing and we are making no progress."

"Okay. Next stop Moscow," said Remo, looking to Chiun for his reaction.

That was when he noticed the red smudge on Kinga's index fingernail.

"Hold the phone, Smith."

Remo called out. "Check this out. She was wearing some kind of fake nails."

"Do not remind me of my shame," sniffed Chiun.

"This isn't about you." Kneeling, Remo lifted the cooling hand. It was the color of porcelain. Under the exposed natural fingernail were three letters seemingly tattooed to the cuticle: "WNT."

"Looks like the Russian word for 'shield,'" said Remo.

"Yes, it is the Russian word for 'shield,'" said Chiun.

Returning to the phone, Remo said, "She's got 'shield' tattooed under her fingernail. Smitty, what do you make of that?"

"A recognition sign."

"Her code name maybe?"

"That, or the name of the organization for which she works. Let me consult my data base."

The speed with which Smith came back on the line surprised Remo.

"I have something." Smith's voice was troubled. "Do you recall the event at the Rumpp Tower a few years ago where you and Chiun encountered Russian agents?"

"Yeah. It was the last time we fought that crazy Russian klepto who could walk through walls."

"During that assignment, a Russian thug you captured blurted out the Russian word for 'shield' when asked his affiliation."

"I execute my assignments, I don't commit them to memory," Remo growled. "Remo, it might be useful to throw the word 'shield' around in Moscow."

"Gotta have the Russian pronunciation."

"Sheet."

"What's the matter?" asked Remo. "Got a paper cut?"

The momentary pause on the line made Remo think Harold Smith was fuming in silence. When he spoke again his tone was distasteful.

"Report as needed."

The line went dead.

On the way out, Remo tossed the red satin bed cover over Kinga's lush lines, telling her, "That's the biz, sweetheart."

Chapter 23

It was a long flight to Moscow from Orlando, Florida. The reservation clerk said, "It's a ten-hour trip. You'll have to fly to Berlin, then catch Aeroflot's Budapest flight to Bucharest and Moscow."

"Sounds like it involves a lot of stewardesses," Remo said unhappily.

"I'm sure they'll treat you right," the clerk said with a wink.

"Let me think about it"

"The next available flight leaves in fifty minutes."

"I'll get back to you on that."

Remo found the Master of Sinanju guarding the luggage carousel from thieves. He was doing a good job of it. Nobody was stealing any luggage. Nobody was getting their luggage back, either. The carousel kept going around and around as an angry mob pressed closer and closer like Transylvanian villagers confronting Frankenstein's dying monster.

"What are you doing?" Remo asked Chiun.

"I am protecting valuable property from thieves," said Chiun, swiping the air before him like an angry cougar. The ring of people flinched as one.

"They look like passengers to me."

"Let them prove it. I have seen on television how luggage is stolen daily by thieves pretending to be tourists."

"We don't have any luggage with us," Remo reminded.

"If we strike terror into would-be thieves now, the next time we bring luggage, my trunks will be safe."

"That's a nice theory, but we have to get to Moscow this year," Remo sighed.

"I cannot go to Moscow trunkless."

"Well, we can't go to Moscow until I figure out a way to get there without inciting stewardesses of five or six nationalities to commit crimes of passion against my body."

Chiun stepped in front of a woman who came slithering closer on her belly. She slithered back like a blue-jeaned serpent, hissing in defeated frustration.

"You must control yourself, Remo."

"It's not me who needs control."

"If you knew the secret of harnessing your natural allures, you would not have this problem."

Remo's dark eyes brightened. "Teach them to me?"

Chiun shook his aged head. "You are too young. You have not yet given me a suitable heir."

"There's gotta be another way to do this."

"There is. My way."

Having no other recourse, Remo decided to address the crowd. "Anyone here know a good way to fly without attracting a lot of attention?" he asked.

"Are you a terrorist?" a bright-eyed fat man asked.

"No. I'm just allergic to amorous flight attendants."

"That Tourister is mine. Hand it over, and I'll make special arrangements for you."

"It's a deal."

Remo handed over the Tourister, and the bright-eyed fat man beckoned Remo to follow him out of the terminal. A reluctant Chiun trailed.

After that, there was a mad rush for the carousel, followed by another mad rush for connecting flights and taxicabs.

In back of a moving cab, Remo asked the bright-eyed fat man, "You a travel agent?"

"In a way," he said happily.

"In what way?" asked Chiun.

"I ship people all over the world without a problem. But you'll have to rough it."

"I can rough it," said Remo.

"I will fly first class if you are roughing it," Chiun insisted.

"You can accompany him. I'll arrange that, too," the fat man said in a pleasant voice. Too pleasant for someone who had had his luggage held hostage, Remo thought. But he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"Sounds like half a plan," said Remo.

He was more than a little surprised when the taxi let them off at a funeral home. The gilt sign said Popejoy Funeral Home. "You work here?" Remo asked the fat man.

"I own this establishment," the fat man said proudly. "Bob Popejoy is the name."

"Nice," said Remo in a tone that conveyed another impression entirely.

Inside, Bob Popejoy led Remo to a showroom and said, "Pick any casket from this room."

Then he took up the telephone, dialed a number and said, "Christine, this is Mr. Popejoy. I'd like a Jim Wilson fare."

"Who's Jim Wilson?" asked Remo.

Capping the mouthpiece, Popejoy whispered, "You are."

Ten minutes later, as Remo climbed into a spiffy cherry-wood number with plush scarlet lining and a bottle of mineral water supplied compliments of the Popejoy Funeral Home, the undertaker was explaining, "A 'Jim Wilson' is slang for any cadaver traveling by air. We get a special discount fare, of course. It will be cold in the cargo hold, but with frequent landings, you should be fine. Assuming you don't object to being a dead man." He smiled like a pleasant little cherub.

"I've been a dead man before," said Remo, climbing in as the Master of Sinanju dabbed at his eyes with a flapping sleeve.

"My son," he said in a choked voice.

"I'm not dead," Remo reminded.

"I am merely practicing my grief for the long voyage," the Master of Sinanju said.

THE FLIGHT WASN'T the most pleasant journey Remo had ever taken in his life, but when the casket was taken off the Aeroflot plane and loaded into a truck by workmen who sounded Russian to Remo's ears, he was happy to have arrived.

Considering his destination was Moscow, Russia, this was amazing in itself.

The baggage handlers were very considerate. They pried open the casket to let Remo out. One clutched a pair of pliers.

When the baggage handler in what turned out to be Bucharest, Romania, opened the casket clutching pliers, Remo had assumed he was in Moscow and they were customs agents.

Then he saw the gold teeth cupped in one man's hand and realized they were corpse robbers. Remo scared one dead when he sat up and slapped the man's jaw askew while the others fled into the night.

Remo pulled the casket lid back.

After a while, someone came along and loaded Remo's coffin in the transfer plane.

The gold thieves in the true Moscow were made of sterner stuff. They looked shocked, then one pulled out a Luger and decided that if their victim wasn't completely dead, he would finish the job right here and now in the bowels of Moscow's Sheremetevo II Airport.

Instead, Remo pinched his forefinger against his thumb, placed it a micrometer in front of the man's nose and let go. Ping.

The Russian stumbled back howling. The Moscow coroner cited the official cause of death as severe nosebleed. It would have made the newspapers except the dead man was found piled atop three others who died of acute undescended testicles, a condition that usually meant the testes had not dropped into the scrotum from the abdominal sac after birth. In this case, the testicles were kicked deep into the body cavities of their owners as if they were musket balls, not the other kind. But as this was physiologically improbable, not to mention a medically unrecognized condition, the Russian coroner fell back on a familiar term to mask the inexplicable.

Remo found the Master of Sinanju waiting for him in the Sheremetevo II Airport terminal. This time Chiun wasn't hovering over the luggage dump. He was realigning the fingers of a would-be pickpocket.

The man was on his knees howling as Chiun held his left wrist with his right hand while using his right hand to stretch the felon's fingers as far as the connecting cartilage would allow. Which was an extra inch on the long fingers and a quarter on the pinky. With a flourish, he popped the man's thumb out of its socket and left him clutching the broken ball of pain that was his fist.

"Russia was never like this," Chiun muttered as they claimed a battered green Zhiguli car whose checkerboard stripe denoted it as a local taxicab.

"There's a lot of crime in Russia these days," Remo admitted.

"The Russians need a good czar. Otherwise, they behave like children who do not get along with themselves or others."

En route to the heart of the city, they witnessed two broad-daylight knifings, as well as a man being methodically run over by a Mercedes SL. The man was being held down on the sidewalk by four other men as a fifth backed the car across his chest. Each time it passed over his chest, he expelled a whoof! and spasmed.

Remo asked the cab driver to stop, then sauntered over to assist. He assisted the four assailants out of the suddenly shattered, unworking sacks of bonemeal their healthy bodies had become. It was too late to save their victim, but it was better than nothing.

"What's happened to this place?" asked Remo as the taxi moved on through the gray streets that were choked with the filthy snow mounds of a recent storm.

"Democracy," the driver said. "Is it not wonderful?"

They saw American billboards emblazoned with Cyrillic logos. Remo quickly learned how to spell a wide variety of familiar US. products in the Russian alphabet by guessing what the letters meant.

Snow was piled as high as the second floors of buildings in some spots, and in contrast to his previous visits to the dreary city on the banks of the Moscow River, not a policeman or soldier walked the streets.

"Where's the law in this town?" Remo asked.

"The law of the jungle is the law now. It is wonderful. I make six times the rubles I made before the Soviet system went pfui. "

"Good for you. Just get us to Gorky Street."

"It is coming up. But it is called Tverskaya Street now. What is your exact destination?"

"I don't have one."

"In that case, you will pay double the fare."

"Robber!" flared Chiun.

"Why is it double the fare?" asked Remo.

"I charge for unnecessary directing to a nonspecified destination," the cabbie said amiably.

"Well, it's only kopecks," said Remo.

The cabbie snorted. "Kopecks are valueless. Rubles rule Russia now."

They turned onto a long thoroughfare near a snow-burdened park where the familiar arches of McDonald's were a bright spot of color in an otherwise drab area. There was a line that stretched around the block to get into the fastfood restaurant.

"Gypsies buy Beeg Meks to resell in the park," the driver volunteered. "Is the new Russia not great?"

"It is not," snapped Chiun.

The driver lost his smile. "State your destination."

"Anywhere around here," said Remo.

"Oops. I now charge you triple."

"Triple? Why?"

"Imprecise directing of driver. It eats into my efficiency. Time is rubles. You are costing me rubles."

"Fine. See that gray stone building? Drop us in front."

The cabbie obliged by U-turning through blaring traffic and bumping up on the slushy sidewalk without regard for scattering pedestrians.

Turning in his seat, he began counting up the fare with the aid of his fingers.

"Let me see, fifty rubles for basic transportation. Double for misdirection and inefficiency, and a surcharge of ten percent for friendly conversation. Tip is extra, of course."

"You charge for conversation!" Remo exploded.

The cabbie beamed. "It is the American way, is it not?"

"No, it is not. U.S. cabbies don't charge for conversation."

"In this, I am mistaken. It is the Russian way."

"Let me show you the American way," offered Remo. "Here's your money, and here's a reminder of the old adage that says 'Be nice to tourists.'"

And reaching forward, Remo handed the man his steering wheel, which came off its column with a brittle snap.

They left the cabbie bellowing about the exorbitant price of spare parts in capitalist Russia.

Walking the slushy length of Tverskaya Street, Remo told Chiun, "See anything that looks suspicious to you?"

"Yes," said Chiun.

"Where?"

"That place," said the Master of Sinanju, pointing to a basement place of business with a faded-gilt sign over the glass door that said Iz Tsvetoka.

"What's that mean in English?"

"'From the little flowers.'"

"What's so funny about that?"

"In Italian it would be 'Del Floria.'"

Remo frowned. "Sounds familiar. But I don't see the connection."

"You will," said Chiun, turning abruptly to pad down the stone steps. The door chime tinkled when he padded in, Remo a half step behind him.

Pausing, Remo saw that it was a tailor shop. A frazzle-haired old man was bent over the steaming 1950s-style pants presser. He looked up querulously and said, "Do'bree den."

Chiun replied in a volley of fluent Russian, and the frazzle-haired old man suddenly pulled a pistol and tried to kill them.

Chiun ducked the first bullet and let Remo handle the second. Remo sidestepped it easily, flying across the scarred counter, disarming the old man with a casual slap that left the attacker clutching a hand seemingly turning scarlet from sunburn but which was actually hemorrhaging at every capillary.

"Sukin syn! Sukin syn!" the old man screamed. "He is calling you an offspring of a female dog," Chiun said.

"I get the idea," Remo responded, rendering the old man unconscious with a neck squeeze. "Why the hell did he try to kill you?"

"Because I commanded him to take me to his leader."

"Leader. As in Martian?"

"As in the organization for which he maintains this flimsy blind."

"How do you know this is a blind? It looks like a regular tailor shop."

"Look around you. Is it not familiar, Remo?"

Remo glanced about. It was small, cluttered and smelled of steam and starch. In the back was a fitting room closed off by a red curtain. The curtain was the only splash of color in the dank little shop.

"Yeah. Now that you ask, it is."

"Unless I am mistaken, you will find a button concealed on the steaming device. Press it."

Remo checked out the pants presser. "I don't see anything..."

"Make steam," suggested the Master of Sinanju.

Reaching for the wooden knob atop the machine, Remo depressed it. The machine squeezed a pair of blue serge trousers and spurted steam. When he looked up, the Master of Sinanju was pushing the back wall of the fitting room around on a pivot as the red curtain finished falling back in place.

"Wait for me."

The steel panel clicked shut in Remo's face before he got to it. It resisted his touch, so Remo smacked it with a palm, and something snapped. After that, a fingertip sent the panel spinning freely.

Slipping through, Remo found himself in a reception area where a blonde in a maroon shirt and red turtleneck was bunkered down with an AK-47. She began spraying rounds in Remo's direction while flashing red wall lights and a warbling electric horn filled the area with noise and sensory confusion.

"She is yours," said Chiun, stepping out of the way so the bullet stream directed at his balding head snapped at Remo instead.

"Why is she mine?" Remo demanded.

"She is Russian, and you yearn for romance."

Chapter 24

Harold W Smith was trying to reassure the President of the United States in a calm voice.

It wasn't easy. The President seemed to be pulling in three directions at once.

"CIA is telling me they're checking with their cosmic bureau."

"Their psychics, you mean," Smith said dryly.

"The National Reconnaissance Office is trying to reconstruct the orbital situation over Cape Canaveral when the Reliant melted down. And the National Security Agency has just handed me a classified document assuring me that the letters in that damn photograph are Russian for 'Peace.'"

"I have confirmation that the Russian space station was nowhere over the Reliant or the BioBubble when they were destroyed," Smith said.

"So it's not the Russians."

"My people are looking into that angle."

"Then it is the Russians."

"I have no facts. I am following leads."

"I need results. What's next? This thing could hit the White House-or Congress." The President hesitated. "Actually that wouldn't be so bad. Melt it down and start over again."

"Mr. President," Smith said, clearing his throat.

"Just kidding," the President said sheepishly.

"I am tied into the U.S. Space Command's SPACETRACK system."

"What's that?"

"SPACETRACK tracks orbiting satellites and debris. It is part of the early-warning system against enemy ICBMs and performs the added function of safeguarding our shuttle fleet from orbital collision."

"There's a lot of space junk up there. Have they got anything new?"

"No, Mr. President. But their system shows conclusively that the Mir space station was not in a position to inflict the destruction we have witnessed thus far."

"So it's not the Russians."

"I am not saying that," Smith said carefully.

"Then what are you saying?" the President said, his hoarse voice exasperated.

"I am saying that we cannot and should not jump to any conclusions until we have sufficient facts."

"What happens if this thing strikes again?"

"If it is the intention of this unknown agency to strike again, we have no defense against it. But there is an upside."

"What's that?"

"A third strike will show us the pattern, if there is one."

"Someone's hammering our space program, Smith."

"Theory. And a theory is not a fact," Smith reminded him.

"Keep me informed."

"I suspect if there is another strike, you will know before I do," said Harold Smith.

"In that case," the President of the United States sighed, "I guess we have no choice but to keep watching the skies."

Chapter 25

The chattering stream of bullets came at Remo Williams-like a smoking, slow-motion squirt of water, but in reality the rounds were moving at supersonic speed. Remo's highly trained eyes read them in slow motion.

The first gleaming bullet floated toward his face. Smoking, its tip looked as smooth as a tiny lead skull.

Dropping under the stream, Remo allowed the rounds to flatten against the pivoting panel at his back. Under the hammering lead, it spun madly right, then left, then right again as the cursing receptionist swung her stuttering weapon from side to side.

There were many Sinanju techniques for dealing with hot lead. Chiun had taught Remo the basics, which had not changed since the days of the old Chinese muzzle-loaders. In response to the proliferation of automatic weapons, Remo had come up with a few innovations of his own.

The AK-47 carried thirty rounds in a clip, with another thirty in the backup clip duct-taped to the one in the receiver.

Remo counted the shots, and when the last one smacked into the jerking panel, the AK ran silent. The receptionist yanked out the old clip. She never got to flip it around and jam its mate in.

Remo was unexpectedly towering over her as he brought his palms together over the smoking muzzle.

The clap made the Russian girl blink. In that blink, Remo sidestepped so swiftly he seemed to vanish from sight.

She would have sought him out except that the AK was for some reason jittering in her hands as if attached to a working vibrator. She shook with it. Then, before her shaking eyes, the muzzle disintegrated.

She swore in venomous Russian.

Remo put her out of action with a tap to her forehead that made her brain bounce around the inside of her skull so hard it stopped functioning, a bruised, bloody sponge.

Reinforcements showed up in the form of a trio of Russians wearing dark suits enlivened by bright red ties.

"Cron!" one shouted.

Over the years, Remo had been attacked by enough Soviet agents that the Russian word for "stop" was as familiar to him as the English. He pretended to raise his hands in surrender.

"Anybody here speak English?" he asked.

No one volunteered that he did. Instead, they stepped forward with their Makarov and Tokarev pistols trained on his stomach. Remo decided the hell with it and jumped them.

His knees bent so imperceptibly there was no warning until his feet left the floor as if on springs.

Remo cleared the twenty feet between the reception desk and the trio of Russian agents before they could process the sensory information that they were under attack.

He might have teleported himself, except instead of materializing in their midst, he dropped down on them from above.

Landing in the splayed-spider position, Remo took out all three with short-armed punches and slap-kicks. Their guns clanked to the floor, unfired, dragging their dead owners down with them.

Dancing away, Remo turned to the patiently waiting Master of Sinanju and asked, "Aren't you going to help?"

"I found this place. I have earned a respite from this hectic assignment."

"There's nothing hectic about this assignment."

"You are making a great deal of noise for one whose task is yet to be completed."

As if to demonstrate Chiun's comment, another panel rolled aside to disgorge a pair of thick-skulled Russians wearing black uniforms stripped of any insignia.

"Point taken," said Remo. "I come in peace for all mankind," he told the pair, who clutched foldingstock Kalashnikov rifles.

They seemed to understand English because they hesitated.

One asked a harsh question: "What do you do here, Amerikanski? This is simple tailor shop."

"My mistake. I thought it was Shchit headquarters."

The pair exchanged glances, their eyes got sick and they mumbled unhappy excuses in a mix of English and Russian before taking their muzzles into their mouths and yanking back on the triggers.

Like watermelons under a chopping machine, their heads disintegrated and they fell dead.

"Check this out, Chiun," said Remo. "Guess I was right, after all. They liquidated themselves because their cover was blown."

Chiun floated to the panel and kicked it in, disclosing a long stainless-steel corridor marked by a ceiling-mounted security camera.

"They're going to see us coming," Remo warned.

Chiun nodded firmly. "This is good. It will encourage fear in their craven hearts."

"I wasn't thinking of that. Smitty'll have puppies if our faces are broadcast all over Moscow."

The Master of Sinanju considered.

"I will show you a trick you do not know, Remo," Chiun said thinly. He shook his head from side to side and kept shaking it until his pupil caught on.

Together, they crossed into the bowels of the organization that had ordered their destruction.

Chapter 26

Colonel Radomir Rushenko was wolfing down a good proletarian lunch of red caviar on black bread chased down by a glass of warm kvass when the red light on his desk started to go bap-bap-bap-bap.

The light happened to be buried under a sheaf of telexes from his operatives scattered about Russia and abroad, so the blinking light went unnoticed. The bapping was muffled, and at first Rushenko didn't hear it through the meaty sounds he made while consuming the overflowing sandwich.

A telex from Kazakhstan, where a Shield operative watched over the Baikonur Cosmodrome, had his attention.

Unable to develop reliable information at this time on recent Mir activities. Station not believed to be testing weapon.

Another telex from his mole in Glavkosmos was more substantive:

Widely believed here that recent Buran launch, reported to be test of new Mir docking coupler, was subsidized by commercial fee. Kremlin disinformation suspected. Unknown what was launched, by whom or for what purpose.

Rushenko frowned heavily. This suggested a foreign contractor.

The insistent bap-bap-bap of the desk alarm penetrated his thinking processes, and he swept the telexes away, scowling.

It was the intruder alarm. It meant only one thing: a penetration.

And penetration here in the most secret stronghold in holy Russia could mean only one of two things: the traitorods Russian police. Or worse, local mafiya biznesmeny intent upon extracting ransom from what was outwardly a legitimate business. It was absurd how these hooligans operated in the new, licentious Russia. Twice in the past, it was necessary to liquidate mafiya interlopers selling "protection." Yet still they came. Such things were inconceivable in the good old days of Red rule.

Engaging his intercom, Rushenko got his chief of security.

"I have an alarm. What is happening?"

"Two men have penetrated the outermost circle, comrade Colonel."

"Only two?"

"We have six casualties. Reinforcements are on the way."

"I am on my way," Rushenko said, rising from his chair so hastily his sandwich toppled to the floor. His shoes crushed a glop of red caviar into the red rug, and he tracked it down the corridor, whose scarlet ceiling lights proclaimed a highest-urgency penetration, and stormed into the security room.

It was a nest of TV monitors and radio equipment in a very confined space. Even for Shield, Moscow floor space was at a premium.

A Ukrainian in the uniform of the old Red Army but without insignia of rank was punching up views of the reception area, the second line of defense. This was the first penetration of the tailor-shop cover.

Rushenko winced to see crack former Spetsnaz commandos lying in their own blood alongside the latest heroine of Mother Russia. There was no sign of their assailants.

"Where are they?" he demanded, his hands turning to fists.

The security man tapped a screen on the second tier of monitors. "There, comrade Colonel."

Rushenko squinted. Two men were moving down the corridor. No sooner had he laid eyes on them than they vanished from sight. A pointing finger directed his gaze to another monitor that picked them up as they walked into an ambush.

The ambush consisted of two Spetsnaz kneeling at either side of the corridor terminus.

Rushenko smiled grimly. "They will not get past the outer ring alive."

"They should not have gotten into the outer ring in the first place," the security chief said tightly.

"Where are their weapons?" Rushenko asked suddenly.

"They have none."

And Rushenko lifted an eyebrow thick as a woolly caterpillar. "What is wrong with this camera?"

"Nothing."

"Their faces are two blurs."

The security chief adjusted the monitor. Try as he might, the faces of the interlopers couldn't be clarified, though other details were quite sharp.

"It does not matter," Rushenko grunted. "They will be dead soon."

The faceless duo slipped up the corridor. The camera showed the two commandos lying in ambush, prepared to whip their weapons around the corner and spray the stainless-steel corridor in a withering cross fire.

"All that will be left is blood and bio-matter for disposal," the security chief agreed.

As the moment of truth neared, Colonel Rushenko and his security chief involuntarily tensed. The two strange ones walked along casually, as if entering a cafeteria. Had they no inkling of the danger? Or did they imagine this would be an easy penetration?

The instant the two commandos jerked around their positions, Rushenko breathed, "Now!"

The AKs erupted, spewing a cross fire, back and forth, back and forth, so that a ball bouncing randomly down the corridor would have been shot to pieces.

Unfortunately the exact moment of truth was the same moment the pair jumped over the kneeling commandos. They landed in perfect synchronization, on one foot only, while the other kicked backward with studied viciousness. Both feet caught an unwary commando at the back of his head.

And both commandos crumpled atop their quieting weapons. One fallen hero managed a last defiant trigger squeeze. Unfortunately all he got for his trouble was a burst through the soft tissues under his own chin, which made his face fall off like hard frosting from old cake.

The two interlopers vanished around another corner like a pair of blur-featured ghosts.

"Why are there only two?" Rushenko queried suddenly.

"Perhaps," the security chief returned thickly, "two are all that is necessary."

"Seal the passage."

"Da. " A finger depressed a stud, and bulkhead doors dropped down on either end of approach corridor 4. They were almost into the middle ring. It was too dangerous to allow them to penetrate farther.

"It is done," said the security chief.

"Let them suffocate for lack of air."

A switch was thrown. Pumps began sucking up the corridor's already stuffy air.

The two seemed to understand their plight without consultation. They were very good. Just watching them, Rushenko realized they were trained agents.

"These are not mafiya, " he muttered.

"FSK?"

"If so, they are men who are worthy of Shield. Their loss is regrettable."

The intruders were at the inner steel door, touching it with their fingers, as if taking the metal's temperature.

The corridor was miked. The security chief turned up the volume.

He got an exchange of unfamiliar words.

"What language is that?"

Colonel Rushenko shook his head. It was not Russian. Nor American English. It was strange. The last thing he expected was a foreign agent. For if the Kremlin did not suspect the existence of Shield, what other nation could acquire that forbidden knowledge?

"I have changed my mind," he said. "They must be interrogated before liquidation. Open the inner door."

Before the order could be executed, the taller of the two punched the door at a point at the level of his head. The door rung out like a badly tuned gong. The entire installation shook for the briefest of moments.

It was very disquieting. A human fist should not affect steel that way.

Then, as the door shivered in the aftermath of the blow-clearly shivered-the tall one struck it again.

It jumped clear of its frame as if a great electronic magnet had repelled it.

"I am witnessing the impossible!" Rushenko blurted.

"I am activating the next line of defense, comrade Colonel."

The next line of defense was deadly in its simplicity.

Floor vents began leaking kerosene, with its unmistakable odor. The ceiling water sprinklers suddenly ignited like upside-down hurricane lanterns.

One began to drop sparks. Soon, they were all dropping rags of flame that touched the steel floor without consequence. But the kerosene was spreading now ....

Grabbing the microphone, Colonel Rushenko barked into it. "If you wish to live, throw up your hands in surrender!"

The two ignored his voice.

Rushenko turned to his security aide. "Is this getting through?"

"Da. Perhaps they do not speak Russian at all."

"Then what would be their purpose in penetrating this installation?"

"Perhaps they are lost tourists?"

Colonel Rushenko tried English next. He never finished his warning.

The two began turning off the ceiling lamps by the simple expedient of leaping up and squeezing the sprinklers shut. It was miraculous in its sheer simplicity. One went to one end of the corridor. The other stationed himself at its opposite end.

Methodically they reached up and took hold of each steel aperture in turn. The audible crunk of the metal surrendering to their crushing grips came back through the sound system.

Meeting in the middle, they closed off the last dripping flames just as the kerosene pool began meeting in the middle.

Nimbly, they leaped over these until they reached the innermost door. This time the shorter of the two breached the barrier. His method was to spin in place and lash out a foot that sent the door screaming from its frame to bang on the floor.

"They are not human," the security chief of Shield gasped.

"They are human," insisted Colonel Rushenko. "They merely require special deaths before they will consent to die."

"You no longer desire them alive?"

"I desire them very much alive. But I am no fool. They are unconquerable. We must concentrate on proving them not to be unkillable."

"The next corridor is a dead end," the security chief said.

"Thank you for that information," a squeaky voice said in perfect if old-fashioned Russian.

"Damn you! You left the connection open!" Rushenko roared as the two took the right branch, not the left.

"This is not good," the security chief said, cutting off the circuit. "That branch will take them to the inner circle."

Rushenko stood unmoving for nearly a minute, his dark Kazakh features working. "It was Korean," he muttered.

"What?"

"They spoke Korean," he said bitterly. "I should have known who they were before. But now I know. We must abandon this installation."

"We have countermeasures remaining in inventory."

"I am a fool. If these two have knowledge of us, however slim and imperfect, others do, too. We must evacuate. Give the command."

"Yes, comrade Colonel," said the shaking security chief as he broke a key from a neck chain and inserted it into a panel. He turned it with a harsh twist.

A Maxon blared over and over.

"Come," said Colonel Rushenko, tearing from the room.

Racing deeper into the Shield installation, he returned to his office. The paper-strewn desk stood as it had before, its red light going bap-bap-bap-bap like a spitting thing.

Reaching into a desk drawer, Rushenko found a catch and yanked it. The desk lifted mechanically and rolled aside, disclosing a concrete well and immaculate pine steps going down into shadow.

"What about the others?"

"They have their secret exits," Rushenko hissed. "Or their cyanide pills. Come."

Rushenko led the other into the tunnel, and the desk began returning to its spot, dropping back into place, its shadow overwhelming them.

"Are there no lights?" the security chief complained.

"The tunnel goes in one direction. Just follow my voice."

From behind them came a fierce splintering, joined with the complaint of gears and machinery under terrible stress.

A crack of light appeared back the way they came.

Rushenko turned. The light elongated and began chasing them.

"Hurry!"

They ran. They didn't hear any pursuing footsteps, so when the security chief happened to look back over his shoulder, he was shocked to see a tall man, the blur of his face like a death's-head, just three paces behind.

A thick-wristed hand took him by the back of his neck and dissolved his eyes with a two-fingered blow that penetrated his brain.

Colonel Rushenko heard the ugly death thud and decided against looking back.

It didn't matter. A cool hand arrested him by squeezing the back of his neck. His still-running feet made futile whetting sounds, then stopped.

"I told you I'd be right with you," a cool voice said.

Colonel Rushenko reached for his side arm. He got it out, but it was snatched out of his clutches. He next reached for the cyanide pill in his inner blouse pocket.

A hand clamped his wrist, got the pill and powdered it before his disappointed eyes.

"Nice try," said the taller of the two interlopers. His face was still a blur. It made Rushenko's eyes hurt to look at it.

"What is wrong with your head?" he asked.

"Oh, sorry." And the man shook his head once. Miraculously the features cleared. Deep-set eyes looked at him without mercy.

Colonel Rushenko realized the truth then. The man had been vibrating his head somehow at a speed that defied the human eye and TV cameras to read it. It was wonderful technology, whatever it was.

"How did you know that was a poison pill?" Rushenko asked as the cyanide powder finished dropping from the man's open fist.

"That's where my superior keeps his."

"You are US. agent, obviously?"

"You are head of Shield."

Rushenko quailed inwardly. Shield was known!

"I do not know these Shield. It is an American word," Rushenko insisted.

"Suppose I say Shchit?"

"Then I would tell you you are a vulgar Amerikanski. We say govno. "

The American gave Colonel Rushenko's cervical vertebrae a squeeze, and Rushenko found himself walking backward. His legs were moving involuntarily. No, that was not it. They were moving voluntarily.

But it wasn't of the colonel's own volition. It was the American's.

He was walked back like a puppet up the wooden steps to his ruin of an office. The desk was a shambles. Somehow the bapping light continued to signal its now-useless warning.

"This is the headquarters of Shield," the American said flatly.

"This is Radio Free Moscow. We are Communists."

Then the American began peeling Colonel Rushenko's fingernails off, one by one. He did it with casual cruelty.

"We want to know about the thing that hit our shuttle."

"I know nothing of this!" Colonel Rushenko sobbed, amazed at how swiftly he was reduced to blubbering.

"Kinga told a different story."

At that point, his left thumbnail came off. The false one. Under it was the real one, and under that his Shield tattoo. A tattoo that should have meant nothing to anyone who wasn't a Shield operative.

The other interloper stepped into the room then. Colonel Rushenko saw that he was Asian. His nationality was unclear. Dressed as he was, the man might have been from one of the former Asiatic republics. Remembering Kinga's last report, the colonel felt the saliva in his mouth dry like warm rain on a hot rock.

"You are the Master of Sinanju."

The little old man bowed serenely.

Rushenko addressed Remo. "And you are-what?"

"Tour guide. What about the thing that got our shuttle?"

"This was not our operation," Rushenko said with a trace of regret.

"Then whose was it?"

"This is unknown to us. We are investigating."

"Why would you investigate a U.S. problem?"

"Because someone is attempting to blame Mother Russia for this matter, of course. Why do you think?" A finger and a thumb reached out and squeezed Colonel Rushenko's thumb. The tip turned red, then purple, then popped like a Concord grape. It was exceedingly painful to behold, never mind endure.

"Lose the attitude," the American agent requested.

"Da. It is gone," Ruskenko gasped.

"I want to hear about Shield."

"It does not exist," Colonel Rushenko said.

The squeezing fingers drew additional blood.

"It has no official existence, I meant to say," Rushenko gasped. "The Kremlin does not even know about us."

"That's better. Who sanctioned it?"

"No one. I created it."

The Master of Sinanju came up, his hazel eyes interested. "Why?"

"To safeguard Mother Russia until Soviet rule is restored."

"You could have a long wait," the American said dryly.

"But it will be worth it," said Colonel Rushenko fervently.

"Okay. Enough of Shield. We gotta get to the bottom of this thing."

"I agree. I have operatives at Glavkosmos and Baikonur looking into this even as we squabble."

"We will await these reports," said the Master of Sinanju.

And Colonel Rushenko found himself sitting back in his red leather chair, into a gooey mess that he belatedly realized was a puddle of red caviar. He was relieved. He thought he had soiled his trousers.

The old Korean sifted through the desk papers, reading classified telexes with a casual air before ripping them to shreds and wastebasketing them.

"How did you find this place?" Rushenko asked at one point. "Kinga did not know its location."

"We traced the e-mail back."

"It has no listed address."

"We got the street. After that, it was easy."

"How so?"

The American jerked a thumb at the preoccupied Korean. "He recognized the cover."

"I have watched American television, too," said the old Korean blandly.

"What show was that, by the way?" Remo asked.

"Ask Uncle Vanya."

Remo snapped his fingers. "I get it now. I never watched that one much. Too farfetched."

While they waited for incoming reports, the American with the thick wrists passed the time by stacking the bodies of defunct Shield agents about the room.

"What killed them?" Rushenko asked.

"Sloppiness," sniffed the Master of Sinanju.

And Colonel Rushenko understood. They were liquidated by the finest assassin of the modern world. It was no wonder his security levels were so ridiculously pregnable.

The calls poured in over the next two hours.

The American lifted the receiver to Colonel Rushenko's mouth each time, squeezing his neck threateningly with his free hand. Colonel Rushenko felt obliged to answer in his normal tone of voice.

"Comrade Colonel, there is news out of America."

"Yes?"

"Our mole in the American CIA reports that SPACETRACK has isolated the orbital device responsible for the strange accidents in America."

"Yes?"

"It is dubbed Object 617 in their catalog of objects in the near cosmos."

"Yes, yes."

"It went into orbit a month ago. The orbit is polar."

"Who launched this infernal thing?"

"We did."

"Again?"

"It was the payload of Buran 2."

"The Kremlin launched this thing?" Rushenko roared.

"That is what the CIA believes."

Colonel Rushenko looked to the dead-eyed American with his own eyes going sick. "The fools in the Kremlin have gone mad. There is no reason for this, no logic."

"Tough. We got what we came for."

"And you have served your purpose," added the Master of Sinanju.

"If you kill me, I cannot help you," Rushenko said thickly.

"Who says we need your help, Russian?" said the Master of Sinanju.

"Your interests are my interests. I wish to get to the bottom of this affair, too."

The two US. agents exchanged glances. The old Korean nodded, and the pressure of death left the throat of Colonel Rushenko, who understood that if he was to live, it wouldn't be for long.

For the most deadly killers in all of humanity owned him like a dull puppet of wood and strings.

Chapter 27

The call took ninety minutes using the Moscow phone system.

"It's the Russians," Remo told Harold Smith.

"I have checked with SPACETRACK. The orbits do not coincide with Mir."

"It's not Mir. It's something launched by the Russian shuttle. This is out of Shield."

"Then there is such an organization."

"Yeah. Unofficially. It's some kind of holdover from the Soviet period. The guy who runs it says the Kremlin doesn't even know it exists. Sound familiar, Smitty?"

"Who gave you this information?" Smith pressed.

"The guy who runs it. Say dos vedanya to-what's your name, by the way?"

"Colonel Radomir Eduardovitch Rushenko," said the colonel, between sucks of his wounded thumb.

"Better known as Uncle Vanya. Smitty, this info came by way of the CIA. Our CIA."

"They have a mole in the CIA!" Smith sputtered.

"You act surprised. Lower Slobovia probably has moles in the CIA these days."

Smith cleared his throat. "No intelligence coming out of the CIA is reliable these days," he said dismissively.

"According to the mole, SPACETRACK has a fix on this thing."

"If SPACETRACK has such a fix, why has this not been reported to the White House?" Smith countered.

"Maybe SPACETRACK knows a hot potato when they smell it," Remo suggested.

"Hold the line open."

"Good idea. If we get disconnected, it could be Valentine's Day before we can reestablish contact."

Harold Smith put them on hold, and Remo turned to Colonel Rushenko.

"My boss says hi."

Colonel Rushenko said nothing other than to grit his teeth. Then he remembered the mushy feeling in the seat of his pants.

"I am sitting in caviar," he said.

"Lucky you. Some people only fall into clover."

"I do not mean this metaphorically. I am sitting on my lunch."

"Enjoy it. Lots of Russians are starving these days."

"Yes. Thanks to the corrosive poison of capitalism."

"Your throwback opinion doesn't exactly count."

"Thank you for bringing this to my attention," Colonel Rushenko said acidly.

AT FOLCROFT SANITARIUM, Harold Smith called a major at SPACETRACK, representing himself as General Smith with the US. Space Command.

"Yes, General?" said the major at SPACETRACK.

"We have a rumor here that you people have something in inventory whose orbits coincide with the BioBubble and Reliant mishaps."

The man on the other end of the line made a brief choking sound, as if a chicken bone had just been expelled from his throat.

"I have nothing on that in this office, General Smith."

"Connect me with an office that has this information," Smith said tartly, recognizing a bureaucratic shuffle when he heard one. "Just a sec."

The line clicked, buzzed, then went dead. When Smith redialed, it was busy. The busy signal was angry and insistent in its way.

Hanging up, Smith logged on to the SPACETRACK active data base, and got a real-time snapshot of what SPACETRACK had from its many ground-based radar stations. On his desktop monitor, the gigantic image was squeezed down too small to read. Smith blew up the different grids one by one until he found Object 617.

Smith knew little about celestial navigation. He recognized that the object had a polar orbit. This meant it executed a continuous loop from the North Pole to the South Pole and back again every ninety minutes. Since the earth rotated under it, it passed over virtually every spot on earth at one point or another, and if maneuverable, could be made to overfly any point on the globe. Usually this was a certain signature of a spy satellite.

Smith punched up the file on Object 617.

What he saw made him gasp.

It was logged in as having been inserted into orbit a month before, deployed by a Buran shuttle, classified by Space Command as a recon satellite of unknown purpose and marked for periodic observation.

Optical images taken by GEODES-the Ground-based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance element of the Air Force Maui Optical Station-showed a dark ball framed by struts painted a stealth gray.

If this was a spy satellite, it was of a configuration and purpose that baffled Harold Smith. For one thing, there were no observable lens apertures. Logging off, Smith picked up the blue contact phone that connected him to Remo in Moscow.

"Remo, Object 617 exists. It's in the SPACETRACK inventory as a spy satellite. The Russian space shuttle did deploy it. That is confirmed."

"So I guess we need to talk to the Russian shuttle people."

"This will be difficult."

"Oh, I don't know," Remo said airily. "Our good friend Colonel Rushenko here has offered his help."

"Be certain to convert our new friend to a neutral posture at the end of this phase of the mission."

"Already thought of that," said Remo, hanging up.

"Thought of what?" Colonel Rushenko asked.

"Our boss just sent his regards."

"You cannot deceive me. I am to be liquidated because I know of you."

"Hey, you'd do the same for us. In fact, you tried pretty hard."

Rushenko made a fist with his fleshy face. "I have nothing more to say. Other than that, I have not finished my lunch and I am very hungry."

"No time," said Remo, picking him up by the scruff of his thick neck.

"There is candy in my desk."

Shrugging, the American rifled through the contents of the cherry-wood desk until he pulled out a brown wrapper. "This looks familiar," he said.

"It is a candy bar."

Remo showed the wrapper to the Master of Sinanju. Chiun squeezed his eyes at the red letters that spelled "Mapc."

"What's this say?" asked Remo.

"Where did you find this!" Chiun hissed.

"Belongs to Colonel Klink here."

"The word is the same as your 'Mars.'"

"No kidding." Remo looked to Colonel Rushenko. "This is a Russian Mars bar?"

"I normally detest American products, but Russian chocolate has seriously deteriorated since the collapse."

Remo stripped the wrapper, pocketed it as a souvenir and trashed the rest.

"I desired that," Colonel Rushenko protested.

"Might have been poison."

"Who would poison good chocolate?"

"The same manner of cretin who would consume fish while they are but eggs," said the Master of Sinanju in a distasteful tone.

And steely constricting fingers brought unwelcome unconsciousness to Colonel Rushenko's unhappy brain.

Not to mention his growling stomach.

Chapter 28

Bartholomew Meech watched the computer screen in his sprawling lab where monitoring systems pulsed and beeped and the incessant rain made the windows swim, blocking out the oyster gray world beyond them.

He drained a cup of heavily sugared Starbucks black coffee and hoped the screen wouldn't beep. But he knew it would. Then it did, and flashed, "You have mail!"

Meech brought it up.

To: R From: RM@qnm.com Subject: I'm back Just blew back into town. What's the latest?

Meech composed his reply with caffeine-shaky fingers.

To: RM@qnm.com From: R Subject: . . . . I killed a man. The NASA crawler driver.

The reply hit the screen a moment later:

Not your problem. You're only a cog in the corporate machine. Go to confession on your own time. On company time, you do what the firm requires. What's Pagan saying now?

Meech replied:

He's talking up asteroids again. And ozone holes. But it's not what Pagan is saying. It's what the press is saying. They're blaming Russia now. We've ignited a global incident.

The response:

Great! We need to throw up more smoke, keep the Russians from figuring things out and throw the blame back on the Martians. Hit Baikonur. Hit it hard.

Bartholomew Meech shook and shook as he read the green glowing words. Then he composed his reply: "What about Russian casualties?"

He knew what the reply would be before it appeared: "They're only vodka-swilling peasants. This is our jobs. Go to it."

Bartholomew Meech came out of his chair heavily and prepared to fulfill his responsibilities to his employer. His glasses were as steamy as the windows that looked out over a fog in which a gigantic, saucer-shaped object ringed with illuminated windows seemed to float disembodied in a gray drizzle like the advance guard from another world.

Chapter 29

For the head of Russia's most secret counterintelligence agency, Colonel Radomir Rushenko was very open.

"I myself did not prefer to call my modest ministry Shield," he was saying.

"We do not care," said Chiun as the Yak-90 airliner droned over Soviet central Asia en route to Kazakhstan.

"I wished to call it Rodina, which means 'Motherland.'"

Remo yawned elaborately.

"But there was already a television program by that name. I did not wish confusion. Nor did I like the program. In fact, I do not much like Russian programming these days."

"Let me guess," said Remo. "Too many American imports?"

"Yes. How did you know that?"

"It's the same thing the French and Canadians keep complaining about."

"They are quite correct in their complaints."

"Didn't stop you from ripping off 'The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,'" Remo contended.

"It was a very clever cover."

"Chiun caught on right off."

"Did you?" Rushenko asked Remo pointedly.

Remo changed the subject. "What's the real purpose of Shield?" he asked.

"As I have said, to preserve the union."

Remo blinked. "Union? What union?"

"The Soviet Union. What other union is of historical consequence?"

"We have a union in America, too, you know."

"Then you sympathize with the aims of Shield."

"Not really."

"But now we are on the same team. Like Solo and Kuryakin, da?"

"We are on the same team, nyet," said Remo.

"Which organization do you belong to?" asked Rushenko.

"Who says we belong to anyone?" Remo retorted.

"It is obvious you are not CIA."

"Why is it obvious?"

This time Colonel Rushenko smiled elaborately. "Because if the CIA employed the House of Sinanju, FSK would know this. And what FSK knows, Shield knows, too."

"Who put those moles in the CIA?"

"I refuse to say categorically. But I will admit to having moles in the FSK."

Remo reached forward and took Colonel Rushenko by the back of his thick, black-stubbled neck.

"Let's try answering this question again, shall we?" he prompted.

"Yes, of course."

"Name names."

"I do not know these names."

Remo made a buzzer sound. "Wrong answer. Prepare to be defenestrated at thirty thousand feet."

And Remo jammed the Russian's face against a window so he could get a clear view of every foot of the deadly drop.

"I know code names," Rushenko sputtered. "For these moles were KGB moles we acquired. It was decided not to pry into personalities. Just accept intelligence reports."

"How do you know they weren't CIA double agents? Or FSK turncoats feeding you false information?"

"All information coming from the CIA is assumed to be false or unreliable," said Colonel Rushenko.

"Why's that?"

"They persist in using psychics."

"So why gather it?"

"It is useful to know what the CIA thinks it knows. As useful as knowing what it correctly knows."

"You know, I'm glad I'm just an assassin. This spy stuff sounds confusing."

"It is a man's game," Colonel Rushenko said with dignified satisfaction.

"It is foolishness," Chiun broke in. "Information does not matter. Only who rules, who lives and who dies."

Rushenko nodded heavily. "That, too, is important. But who rules in the modern world often depends upon intelligence."

"There has never been an intelligent Russian ruler," Chiun said pointedly as he watched the wing for signs of structural flaw. "Otherwise, Russia would never have fallen into such ruinous chaos time and time again."

"This democratic experiment will end soon. There will be a new regime. Just like the good old days."

"A czar will emerge if a strong man with Romanov blood can be located," Chiun countered.

"We are not speaking the same language," Colonel Rushenko said, deciding that it would be impossible to pry secrets from these two.

The copilot came back to announce that they were nearing their destination. "Leninsk is but twenty minutes away," he said in English because Remo had insisted all conversation take place in English so there would be no misunderstanding.

It had been like this since they had taken Colonel Rushenko to the Sheremetevo II Airport, woke him up and told him to use whatever pull he had to get them to Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Colonel Rushenko was so pleased to find himself still among the living that he complied by whistling up a Yak-90 by telephone. This was the third leg of their trek, and at every refueling stop the Shield colonel seemed to have ready agents willing to do his bidding.

They tightened their seat belts, which were simple hemp ropes.

Once again Colonel Rushenko apologized for this embarrassment but such was the state of post-Soviet Russia, or as he called it, "this regrettable interlude."

Below, the snow-dusted steppes of central Asia rose up to meet them and Colonel Rushenko once again waxed expansive. "I will give you a good example of disinformation. The copilot has told you we are approaching Leninsk."

"Yeah?" said Remo.

"But Leninsk is three hundred kilometers from Baikonur."

A slim nail touched Colonel Rushenko's carotid artery.

"Choose your next words with care," Chiun warned.

The colonel instantly broke out in a cold sweat. He found his voice after two swallows. "You misunderstand. This is no trap. I am merely making a point."

"Make it," suggested Remo.

"When Gagarin became the first man in space, TASS informed the world of the proud fact that he was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome. This is what credulous Western media picked up. Ever since, the West has referred to the launch point as Baikonur Cosmodrome, but it is not in Baikonur at all, but near Leninsk, another place entirely."

"So?"

"This was never corrected. Which proves the West are a pack of fools."

"Spoken like a man clinging to a broken fantasy," said Remo.

"The Soviet Union will rise again."

"Not if a good czar rises first," said Chiun.

The Yak dropped lower, its engines straining. Remo took a second glance at the slipknot snugged against his midriff. In the flat distance, the most prominent landmark of Baikonur Cosmodrome showed-a gantry complex of squat, girdered towers. Support buildings ranging from broad hangars to white monoliths of blank sheet metal were arrayed around the gantry area. There were two runways-one very long and the other seemingly endless.

"Do you know that I am a Kazakh?" Rushenko asked Chiun as the noisy engine straining made the cabin rattle alarmingly.

"It is written on your brutish face."

"Thank you. Kazakhs belong to the same ethnic family as Turk and Mongols and Koreans. There may be some of your blood in my veins."

"I may search for it after I have slain you," said Chiun in a thin voice.

Colonel Rushenko shut up. He grabbed for his armrests. One broke off in his hand. He hid it under his seat in shame.

The plane was lifting on one wing as it banked into a steep approach turn for the extremely long Cosmodrome runway.

"We will be using the same runway the Buran uses," Rushenko said expansively. "For our shuttles land at the same place they are launched from-a feat the West is incapable of."

"At least our shuttles carry live people," said Remo.

"Which is unnecessary, for robots are capable of most shuttle operations."

A moment later, Rushenko's eyes were drawn to the western horizon.

"Look. A sun dog!"

Remo and Chiun jerked their heads to their respective windows, Chiun taking care to touch Colonel Rushenko's throat with a deadly fingernail in case this was some Russian trick.

In the high sky, a hot ball of yellow light burned.

"I do not recognize this," said Chiun.

Rushenko said, "It is what is called a sun dog. A reflection of the solar orb upon ice crystals high in the atmosphere. I have never seen one like this, however."

A column of intolerably incandescent light sizzled past their ship a second later. It struck the ground with a dull boom.

Buffeted by a blast of heat, the Yak actually turned over once. Only their seat belts kept them from bouncing off the ceiling.

The ship righted itself with agonizing slowness, then came level. The engines found their normal pitch after an uncertain blooping.

"What has happened?" muttered Rushenko, holding his throat.

"Looked like a big beam of light," said Remo.

"The breath of the sun dragon," said Chiun, his wrinkled face touching the window to peer below.

"You mean sun dog," said Colonel Rushenko.

"He means sun dragon. And don't ask."

"Proklyatye!" Colonel Rushenko exploded. "Look!"

Below, there was a round, smoking hole where a long blue hangar building had stood a moment before. Remo had been looking at the building before the sun dog appeared. Now it was thoroughly obliterated.

Smoke rose from the black patch, but not much. It was as if whatever had burned down from the daylight sky had so scorched the earth that there was almost no natural fuel left to give off smoke.

"I am without words," Colonel Rushenko said thickly.

"What was it?" asked Remo.

"Mother Russia has been attacked."

"This is Kazakhstan," Chiun reminded him.

"Yes. I am sorry. I forget. It is my home soil, but no longer part of Russia. Still, the impossible has happened. The United States have launched a terroristic strike at an ally of Russia. This can have one certain consequence. Total war. We are mortal enemies again. Not that we were not before."

And Colonel Rushenko turned completely pale under the weathered Kazakh skin. He looked like a man no longer concerned about preserving his own life because no one's life had any value now.

Chapter 30

There was an Mi-8 helicopter waiting with rotors turning slowly as the Yak-90 came to the end of its rollout. The crew piled out as fast as they could and ducked under the fuselage, where they waited with chattering teeth and shivering limbs for another bolt from the endless blue sky of Kazakhstan.

Remo, Chiun and Colonel Rushenko stepped off casually, their eyes fixed on the same unthreatening sky.

"No clouds," said Remo. "Couldn't be lightning. Though it boomed like lightning."

"It was a sun dragon," said Chiun.

"I saw a sun dog," insisted Colonel Rushenko.

"A sun dog's never been known to burn a building down like that one," Remo argued.

"No," admitted Colonel Rushenko.

"Then shut up."

"It looked solar."

Remo looked at him. "What?"

"I said solar," repeated Rushenko. "A great but terrible beam of sunshine."

Remo's eyes went to the sun. It burned as it always had. "It's one theory," he admitted.

They were waved into the helicopter by a man in an insignialess Russian uniform. He had a side arm.

Remo relieved him of it by the simple expedient of yanking his belt off and throwing it and the holstered weapon as far as he could.

When it landed, a tiny puff of dust almost two miles west, the Russian soldier decided not to object to his uncavalier treatment. Meekly he climbed aboard, and the helicopter lifted off in a clattering halo of sound.

"What has happened here?" Colonel Rushenko asked the man.

"The shuttle complex is no more."

"Both shuttles?"

The man nodded grimly. "Nothing but burning dirt remains."

Colonel Rushenko looked to Remo and said, "I do not comprehend this."

"I do. Somebody's covering up."

"Nonsense. A cover-up would not require the destruction of the Russian shuttle fleet."

"Some fleet. They fly once and are mothballed forever."

"Overfly the site," ordered Colonel Rushenko.

"I will allow this," said Chiun.

The helicopter skimmed low. Emergency crews were moving toward the blast site with all speed. As they came to the zone of scorched area, they slowed, then slewed to a rolling stop.

"The ground must be real hot," said Remo.

"Of course it is hot," Rushenko flared. "Everything that stood upon it is now gone."

"I mean really hot. The tires on their trucks are melting."

Colonel Rushenko peered through the Plexiglas and saw the tendrils of gray smoke curling up from the front tires of the vehicles that had ventured into the charred zone. Soldiers were jumping from their trucks, running a few paces then hopping back, their boot soles smoking.

"Better not land," Remo warned. "Unless you want a serious hotfoot."

"We do not need to land. It is obvious what has happened here," Rushenko said tightly.

"Not to me."

"A solar weapon was used. Obviously the West is more advanced in their Star Wars technology than we dreamed."

"It wasn't us."

"You are the only superpower remaining. Except, of course, Russia. Who else would have the technology and the will to attack Russia?"

"Kazakhstan," corrected Chiun.

"Thank you. My question remains unanswered," said Colonel Rushenko.

"No way would we hit our own shuttle to test a superweapon," Remo said flatly.

"Hah! The contrary. It is a brilliant maneuver. A masterpiece of Western disinformation. No one would suspect Washington of complicity in its own disaster."

"You sound like an old Cold War rerun."

"I live for the next Cold War," Rushenko admitted.

"Don't count on seeing it," said Remo. "Put this thing down," he added.

Colonel Rushenko gave the order in Russian, which Chiun verified.

The helicopter dropped down at the edge of the charcoal zone. Remo got out, and the waves of residual heat brought sweat popping out on his face and bare forearms. No sooner had they broken through the skin than the same heat waves turned them to faint wisps of steam curling up lazily.

Feeling the body moisture draining from his body at an alarming rate, Remo retreated a few paces and, as the heat began to abate, he approached again.

The area of scorched earth was a perfect circle, the edge sharp as crop circles. Concrete lay fused and cracked, riddled with glass specks and bubbling patches of tar here and there.

There was no sign that a giant hangar had stood here, housing Russian's grounded shuttle fleet. People had died here. Remo could detect the faint smell like burned pork-only it had human constituents. Whoever had been burned, they left behind no bones and no mark of their passing other than a pungent vapor.

Returning to the helicopter, Remo said, "You know what this looks like?"

"What?" asked the Russian.

"Like a giant magnifying glass was focused right on this spot."

Colonel Rushenko laughed at the thought.

Chiun said, "And you scoff at sun dragons."

"Well, that's what it looks like to me," said Remo.

The helicopter carried them to the operations building, where Colonel Rushenko found the Kazakh official who nominally controlled the site. In fact, it was a joint Russian-Kazakh command now that the former Soviet Union had found itself in the embarrassing position of having their primary space center sitting in a foreign country.

The Russian representative refused to accept Colonel Rushenko's request for information. But the Kazakh was only too happy to cooperate with a fellow Kazakh national.

They were shown to a windowless, soundproof room, and Colonel Rushenko spoke urgently as Chiun monitored the exchange of Russian and Kazakh for dark glimmerings of impending treachery.

Colonel Rushenko asked fewer and fewer questions as the exchange wore on. He got noticeably paler, though.

"This is unbelievable," he said as he faced Remo.

"Spit it out."

"According to this man, the Buran payload was not a Russian or an American satellite, but the product of a third country entirely."

"What country?"

"Paraguay."

DR. HAROLD W SMITH was shouting across more than a dozen international time zones.

"What?"

"Paraguay," shouted Remo.

"What did you say?"

"I said the Paraguayans hired the Russians to launch that thing up there!"

"What thing?"

"The space thing!" Remo shouted.

"Perhaps you should redial," Colonel Rushenko suggested helpfully.

"It took me an hour and a half to get this connection," Remo shouted back. "I'm sticking with it."

"Sticking with what?" Harold Smith yelled.

Remo bellowed, "Listen, Paraguay launched that thing!"

"Remo, you are breaking up."

"It melted the Soviet shuttle fleet."

Colonel Rushenko smiled nostalgically at the American's lapse.

Smith's voice grew shrill and nasal. "What?"

"The shuttles are all vaporized."

Harold Smith's reply was drowned in the cannonading boom that followed.

All eyes went to the nearest window.

Off to the north stood the spidery launch gantry, where the big Energia rockets lifted the Buran fleet aloft, approximately once every eight years.

The gantry stood in the column of searing light. It hurt the eye to look at it. The air made a dull boom, then the light seemed to withdraw back into the heavens.

There was no gantry on the spot where it had stood.

Instead, there was only a grayish haze of smoke that was being pushed outward by a spreading heat wave.

Even through the sealed window, they could feel the heat wave overtaking the operations building. Window panes crackled in their frames.

"That's never happened before," Remo said worriedly.

"What are you saying? It happened only ninety minutes ago," said Rushenko.

"It's happening twice in the same place. It's never happened twice before."

Chiun allowed a flicker of worry to touch his seamed visage. "This is not a good place to be. The dragon seems especially angry at us," he intoned.

"I do not accept the existence of dragons," said Colonel Rushenko bravely.

"Believe it or not, that thing up there is trying to wipe out all trace of Baikonur," said Remo.

"Leninsk. And I agree with you. We must go."

The helicopter shuttled them back to the Yak. The crew was back inside the aircraft, hiding in assorted lavatories.

Remo got them out and into their seats, and they took off into the sky ahead of a third white-hot column of sizzling heat from the sky. It was followed by another thundering boom that shook the aircraft.

Out the windows they could see what remained of the sprawl that was the Baikonur Cosmodrome complex.

There were three patches of blackness. All of identical size. In a staggered row.

"Almost makes you believe in angry Martians," said Remo.

"Perhaps they are spelling out a message," said Chiun.

"Get off it."

"I am only glad to be out of it," sniffed Chiun as the Yak screamed for higher altitude and more distance from the smoking cosmodrome.

They watched through the window as long as it was possible to watch.

There was no fourth cone of light. No one was disappointed.

"Sure hope Smith understood what I was saying," said Remo.

"Who is Smith?" asked Colonel Rushenko conversationally. "Your Mr. Waverly, perhaps?"

"Remind me to kill you later," said Remo.

Colonel Rushenko subsided. But he made a mental note of the name Smith. Probably an alias. But Americans were so devious it was best not to discount anything they said.

Chapter 31

The destruction of the Baikonur Cosmodrome and the Russian shuttle fleet hit the Kremlin with all the force of a nuclear detonation.

In the old days, it would have led to the highest state of alert. The old Strategic Rocket Force would have been placed on alert, their SS-20 and Topol-M missile crews put on prelaunch posture.

But this was post-Soviet Russia.

It took an hour for the first report to reach the Kremlin. Another hour to bring the leadership up to speed. A third to argue over a response.

By that time, everyone from the president of Russia to his defense minister was thoroughly drunk.

"We must have someone to blame," the president said, pounding the table with his hammy fist.

"America!" an adviser bellowed.

"Da. America."

So it was decided America was to blame.

Then the call was put in to the Strategic Rocket Force to go to maximum alert and to be prepared to launch a retaliatory strike at an instant's notice.

"At whom?" the general in charge wanted to know.

"Who else? America!" the defense minister bellowed drunkenly.

"But they will strike back with overwhelming force, obliterating us all."

This was considered on an open line with another bottle of Stoli being the only casualty.

"You make a good point. Target a portion against China, too."

"Yes, General," the Strategic Rocket Force commander replied, gulping.

With that settled, the Russian leadership went back to drowning their sorrows. Somewhere in this, someone remembered to call Major-General Stankevitch at FSK.

"General Stankevitch, I regret to inform you that Baikonur Cosmodrome has been obliterated by the same superweapon that has struck America two times this week."

"Then the U.S. is not to blame."

"You are mistaken. There is no one else."

"What?"

"There is no one else to blame but the US. They have the technology. We do not. Your task is to prove this."

"What if it is a lie?" asked Stankevitch.

"Prove that, too. But you must hurry. The fate of mankind and the Motherland depend upon learning truth. Go now. Learn things. Assemble facts. Report immediately."

And to Major-General Stankevitch's utter horror, the phone went dead with an audible bonk. No one hung up. The handset had simply fallen from a drunken fist.

Quietly the General replaced the butter-colored receiver on his end and sank into his chair.

He had the most difficult decision of his life to make. And if he made the wrong one, mankind was doomed.

Clearly, he thought, reaching into the locked bottom drawer of his desk, it was time for a drink.

Chapter 32

The President of the U.S. received the report from the National Reconnaissance Office of the National Security Agency by telephone.

"Sir, it appears that Baikonur Cosmodrome has been destroyed by the same power that obliterated our shuttle."

"Then it can't be the Russians," the President blurted.

"Sir?"

"The Russians wouldn't target their own space center, would they?"

"That's a jump we at NRO are not prepared to make," the NRO director said guardedly.

"Why not?"

"Could be a diversionary tactic."

"Explain."

"They hit two of our targets, then hit Baikonur to throw us off the scent."

"But their own space center?" the President asked incredulously.

"Why not? Except for Mir, Russia's space program is all but defunct."

"The cosmonauts up on Mir can't get home if there's no place to launch their Soyez ships from," the Chief Executive argued.

"They still have Krunishev."

"Didn't he die a long time ago?"

"You're thinking of Khrushchev, Mr. President. I was referring to the Krunishev Space Center."

"Oh, right."

"It's possible the Mir cosmonauts are on a suicide mission," the NRO director continued. "If they don't ever return to Earth, they can't tell what they know about the operation."

"I don't buy it," the President snapped.

"We only report what our satellites find, Mr. President."

The President called Harold Smith with the news. Smith listened carefully then said, "My people were at Baikonur when it happened," Smith said.

"And you didn't tell me first! I had to hear it from NRO?"

"I did not want to precipitate a crisis," Smith explained calmly.

"It's already a crisis!"

"Now that you have been officially informed, yes, it is. Your advisers are trying to convince you this is a Russian superweapon."

"It could be."

"Their counterparts in the Kremlin are doubtless telling your Russian counterpart it's a US. superweapon."

"Ridiculous!"

"Both theories are ridiculous. But the two nations are so used to pointing the finger of blame at one another, all it will take for a global face-off to commence is one man giving the launch order."

"My God! Could the Soviets be doing that now?"

"Probably. And they are no longer the Soviets."

"But they're still the Great Bear of the North. And that means I'd better get NORAD up to speed."

Harold Smith's lemony voice was resigned. "You would be derelict in your duty if you did not, Mr. President."

The Chief Executive's naturally hoarse voice turned to gravel. "When I took the oath of office, I thanked my lucky stars that I had become President in the post-Cold War period."

"There are no eras that are not dangerous, Mr. President."

"Keep me abreast. I mean it this time. I have to make a painful call."

"Good luck, Mr. President," said Harold Smith.

WITHIN THE HOUR, America's nuclear arsenal was placed on the highest state of readiness: Defcon One.

This was not lost on the Kremlin, who then ordered their Strategic Rocket Force to go to the next state of readiness. High Red.

When informed that there was no higher or redder state of readiness above the one in which they had already been placed, the president of Russia belched and said, "I will get back to you on this quandary ...."

And the planet Earth spun on while, orbiting it, a closed ball of stealth-colored material waited for the next signal from its unknown master.

Chapter 33

When they landed at Sheremetevo II Airport in Moscow, Remo Williams told Colonel Radomir Rushenko, "Have this thing refueled and ready."

"Ready for what?"

"The flight back to the States."

"You are going back to the States? This is impossible. It will not be permitted."

"You're our insurance that it will be," warned Remo, leaving his seat.

The Master of Sinanju accompanied Colonel Rushenko to make the arrangements while Remo fed kopecks into an airport pay phone. After a half hour of trying, he failed to get through to America.

Returning to the aircraft, he informed Chiun of this unhappy fact.

"We will call from a city possessing a telephone that works," Chiun said, eyeing Colonel Rushenko unhappily.

"We should have never become friends," Rushenko lamented. "When we were enemies, we had motivation. Our phones worked. Our armies were feared and our space program was the envy of the entire world."

"The Communist world," said Remo.

"The entire world."

"Who went to the moon and who didn't?" countered Remo.

"The moon is only a rock. We had our eyes upon Mars."

"Why Mars?"

"It is the Red planet, is it not?"

"No," interjected Chiun. "In my language, it is Hwa-Song, the Fire Planet."

Colonel Rushenko shrugged. "It is the same thing. I can tell you this now because the world may soon end, and if it does not, Russians will not be going to Mars without space vehicles anyway. But when the U.S. achieved the moon landing, a twenty-year plan was drawn up to claim Mars for USSR. It would have been the ultimate expression of Soviet technological superiority. Anyone can land on the barren moon only three days away. But Mars, it is an authentic planet. We would have seized it, controlled the cosmic high ground and mocked you from its red glory."

"What happened to this twenty-year plan?" asked Chiun.

Rushenko shrugged. "What always happens. The quotas were not achieved, and it became a thirty-year plan, a forty and so on until it was forgotten."

"You can have Mars, too. I'm sick of Mars," Remo growled.

"No one will go to Mars now. It is a pity. All our dreams are rust and dust. Yours as well as mine."

"Save it for the funeral," said Remo.

"Whose?"

"Yours if you don't get off the subject."

Colonel Rushenko subsided. The Yak took off, heading west to Europe and the first refueling stop that had a working telephone.

Chapter 34

Dr. Cosmo Pagan was in his element. For some, that element was the earth. Others, the sky. Still others, the oceans of the world.

Cosmo Pagan's element was nothing less than the media.

The phones would not stop ringing. It didn't seem to matter to anyone that he gave confused and contradictory theories to the strange events that were troubling the blue earth.

It certainly didn't matter to Cosmo Pagan. People read only one newspaper a day these days-if that. And they watched only one newscast a day. Since most people were creatures of habit, they stuck with what they liked.

Thus, Cosmo Pagan was simultaneously informing newspaper readers and TV viewers that the inexplicable events dominating the headlines were a direct consequence of ozone depletion, random asteroid strikes and the possible impact of cometary fragments from a hitherto-undiscovered invisible comet bypassing Earth.

The comet theory seemed to go over biggest. At least, Pagan got the most media requests to tell the world about the dangers of passing comets.

He got other calls, too. A zillion lecture offers. A bunch of new book offers. PBS was on the horn, too. They wanted to do a special on life on other planets. It was Cosmo Pagan's favorite topic. He had become an exobiologist chiefly because until proof of actual extraterrestrial life came along, he could just make stuff up. He didn't even need factoids.

Cosmo accepted all offers. Except one.

"Dr. Pagan," an anxious man asked. "I can't identify myself or my employer, but we're looking for a man just like you. You'd be our in-house consultant and company spokesman."

Cosmo Pagan didn't need to know the who or the what. He had only one concern. "How much?"

"A million a year."

"I love that number! It's a deal."

"Great," the suddenly relieved voice said. "But understand this will be an exclusive. You couldn't speak publicly on any subject in your field. In fact, we insist that you immediately halt all public statements on any subject until the contract is drawn up. Especially this asteroid and ozone scare-talk."

"Out of the question. I don't do exclusives. Goodbye "

The man kept calling back, upping his offer. But Cosmo Pagan was no fool. If his face wasn't before the public, he had no public. No public, no publicity. No publicity, no career. He stopped taking the nameless man's calls and got down to the serious business of informing his public.

This time Pagan asked that his wife, Venus, interview him for CNN. In fact, he demanded it. The last guy had asked hard questions. And since Venus Pagan was still pretty sharp looking for her age, it was nice to show her off once in a while.

The interview was conducted in his private observatory by satellite hookup. Cut down on commuting costs that way.

"Dr. Pagan..."

"Call me Cosmo. After all, we are man and satellite."

Venus Pagan smiled with professional coolness. "In your view, are comets dangerous?"

"When Halley came around in 1910, a lot of people thought so. They threw end-of-the-world-comet parties. Spectrographic analyses of the comet's composition showed traces of cyanogen gas, and for a while people worried our planet would be gassed to death when it passed through Halley's tail. Gas-mask sales boomed. But long-period comets like Halley and Hale-Bopp don't come very close to earth spacially speaking."

It was in the middle of his dissertation that the first satellite images of the Baikonur Cosmodrome disaster were broadcast. It was supposed to be a military secret. But in the post-Cold War world, commercial satellites had the same global overviews as spy satellites. The brief bidding war for the pictures was won by CNN. The photos were rushed to the hot studio in midtelecast.

"Dr. Pagan. I mean, Cosmo."

"Call me honey, angel."

"We've just been handed satellite images taken of Baikonur Cosmodrome in Russian Kazakhstan. It's been scorched in three places. These images resemble satellite photos we've seen of the Bio-Bubble and Reliant catastrophes. Can you shed any light on this latest event?"

Dr. Pagan accepted the photos, which were also broadcast in a floating graphic insert beside his head. He got very pale very fast.

"I might be mistaken," he said, "but there appear to be three impact sites-if that is what they are-which suggests to me cometary fragments. Asteroids don't travel in packs."

"No comet fragments were found here in the U.S.," Venus probed gently.

"This may be a broken-comet phenomenon we are witnessing. Understand that Earth is always revolving. As was the case with Jupiter when those fragments struck. Though they entered the Jovian atmosphere in a straight line, they impacted in a string along the planet's surface because Jupiter moved between each impact. A similar string of eight ancient impact craters across the Plains states has recently come to light. They're lakes now."

"If this is a broken comet falling to earth, could other pieces be speeding toward us now?"

"Yes," Dr. Pagan admitted unhappily, "they could. And there's no telling where they could impact. Even on me."

He looked sick at the very thought, and his fear was not lost on the American public he sought to reassure.

"Did you know that the number of scientists scanning the heavens for deadly asteroids is about the size of the staff of a McDonald's restaurant?" he added in an uneasy voice.

AT FOLCROFT, Dr. Harold W Smith was baffled. He was running on sheer nerve and Maalox as he grappled with the threat that seemed now to be directed at the space programs of two nations.

He had told the President that the third strike would suggest a pattern. It did. One that suggested a rival space-faring nation.

That left the Japanese, the French and the Chinese. Of these possibilities, the Chinese seemed the most likely culprits. But the technology-whatever it was-seemed beyond Chinese capabilities. This, in turn, made Smith flash on the Japanese. They were working on a space-shuttle program of their own. The first test flight had ended with the HYFLEX prototype sinking into the Sea of Japan. It was possible that that failure caused Nippon Space to turn to Russia's shuttle fleet for lift.

But what would their motive for attacking the U.S. be?

Smith was reconsidering French Ariane involvement when Remo called from Budapest with a possible answer.

"Have you looked into the Paraguay thing yet?" he asked.

"What Paraguay thing?" countered Smith.

"People at Baikonur told us a Paraguay company hired that last Russian shuttle flight."

"Paraguay?"

"Want me to spell it?" asked Remo.

"No, and why are you shouting?"

"Habit," said Remo, lowering his voice. "The company is called ParaSol. One word. Capital P as in 'Paraguay.' Capital S-o-l. That's all I know."

Smith attacked his keyboard. "I am researching it now."

Remo's voice took on an awed quality. "Smitty, we were on ground zero when that thing hit three times."

"What did you see?"

"A hot time. Looked like a giant magnifying glass scorched the ground."

Smith paused. "You think it was solar?"

"We saw a sun dog before it struck."

"Solar..." said Smith.

"Mean anything to you?"

"A breakthrough in solar power could explain such a thing. The extreme, concentrated heat. The relatively compact size of the orbital device. If it takes its energy from the sun, it would need little in the way of on-board power."

"My money's on solar."

On Smith's screen, up popped a block of data.

"I have something on ParaSol," he said.

"What's it say?"

Harold Smith's voice sank. "The data is in Spanish. I will have to have it translated."

"Get to it."

"Hold the line, please," Smith replied, trying to type while cradling the blue handset against his shoulder and right arm. His rimless glasses slid off his patrician nose, and he miskeyed something, erasing his entire screen.

"Damn."

"What now?" asked Remo. "I gotta go soon. They're about done refueling the Yak."

"Where is your next refueling stop?"

"Wherever they'll let us set down. We're not particular."

"Call me from there."

"Will do," said Remo, hanging up.

Smith went to work recovering the data. In the middle of the automatic translation, his system alerted him of another broadcast of consequence. It came on automatically as Smith had programmed it to.

He found himself watching Dr. Cosmo Pagan lecturing the nation on comets.

"All comets come from a stellar marvel called the Oort Cloud way beyond our solar system. Our sun's gravitational pull yanks them toward it, and they slingshot around back into deep space. As they approach the orb of day, the pressure of solar winds on these dirty snowballs-as we astronomers like to classify them-creates the long ghostly tail that is so wondrous to behold. Hale-Bopp's tail promises to be the most spectacular of the century once it reemerges from its solar sleep. We are living in very interesting times, galactically speaking, with all these near-Earth objects booming by and falling to Earth."

Smith was logging off when the camera went to the woman interviewing Pagan.

She was an attractive, fortyish brunette. But Smith's bleary gray eyes weren't on her face, but on the identifying chyron at the bottom of the screen.

It read Venus Mango-Pagan.

The name Venus Mango rang a clear bell in Smith's steel-trap mind. Returning to his system, he punched in the name and hit Search.

He got his answer immediately. The name Venus Mango had surfaced on the phone records of BioBubble director Amos Bulla a number of times. All incoming calls. None outgoing. Many calls over a period of four years.

Smith brought up the file with precise finger pecks. The calls went back to the time the BioBubble had changed from a prototype Mars colony to its later, ecological-research incarnation. Exactly.

Smith's earlier search had revealed that Venus Mango was a CNN science correspondent. That simple fact had eliminated her as a possible BioBubble backer. Journalists are not usually wealthy people.

With a frown, Smith saw that he had been too hasty in his judgment. He had not delved deeply enough to learn that Venus Mango was the latest wife of Dr. Cosmo Pagan.

Energized by his discovery, Smith went in search of Dr. Pagan's financial records.

He found a flock of bank accounts, one of which showed large wire transfers going back to the BioBubble change of ownership. All to BioBubble Inc. The name on the account was Ruber Mavors Limited. Red Mars.

"Dr. Cosmo Pagan controls the BioBubble now," said Harold Smith in a voice of dead-level certainty.

He called back the CNN report.

Dr. Pagan was saying, "Of course I don't yet rule out a floating ozone hole. I'm an exobiologist, not a prophet. As for the Martian theory, I'm not partial to it because I like to believe that if there are Martians, they'd be friendly toward us Earthlings. Are we not going through the same eco-crisis that ravaged their beautiful world eons ago?"

Pagan smiled like a man in love.

"Still, you can never tell. In the interest of covering all permutations, I would like to share some interesting Martian trivia, if I may. The Soviets were the first to attempt to soft-land a probe on Mars. Their Mars 3 and Mars 6 spacecraft both mysteriously stopped transmitting before touching down on the Martian landscape. No one knows why. At the time, some thought mischievous Martians were responsible. Viking I transmitted back pictures of a Martian boulder that seemed to have the Roman letter B chiseled into it. Since then, we've captured some very puzzling images, including pyramids and what looked like a great Sphinx-like stone face looking coldly at us from the stark Martian surface."

"Do you yourself believe in Martians, sweetie?"

"If there are sentient beings on the Red Planet," Cosmo Pagan said solemnly, "they may have been driven underground by some great cataclysm such as an asteroid strike or the depletion of their own ozone shield. And these mysterious letters being reported in the sky may be a friendly warning to us Earth men. One day soon, we should get up there and find out."

"He's trying to throw America off the track," said Smith. "And whatever he's up to, it's pushing the planet toward nuclear confrontation. And this fool does not even suspect it."

Smith watched the segment to the bitter end, wishing he could drive his bony fist into Pagan's smirking face.

He was not normally subject to such violent impulses, but there was nothing he could do until Remo checked in again.

One positive thing had emerged. He now had a direction to point his Destroyer in. And a target.

Chapter 35

Over Paris, they were refused clearance to land, and while they loitered over Orly International, French Mirage fighters chased them away.

Madrid wouldn't take them.

Nor would Lisbon.

Finally, as a humanitarian gesture, the British cleared the Russian Yak-90 to land at London's Gatwick Airport.

The landing gear touched the tarmac just as the fuel-starved engines went cold. They rolled to an unpowered stop and were instantly surrounded by crack SAS commandos and ordered to evacuate the aircraft, for they were all being detained by the crown.

This prospect raised Colonel Rushenko's lagging spirits considerably. "Do you hear? We are being detained!"

"Don't think it doesn't mean you're not going to the boneyard of history," Remo warned.

"If you kill me here, you will be arrested for a capital crime on British soil. I have done nothing to you."

"You ordered us liquidated," reminded Chiun, looking out at the emergency vehicles, behind which crouched the dark bereted SAS with their Sterlings and their flat pistols.

"Did you know that the British have a very secret agency called the Source?" Rushenko offered.

"They can't thread a needle without sticking themselves," Remo said dismissively.

"Oh. You did know..."

"For years."

"What is your secret agency called?"

"It's not called anything. It doesn't have a name."

"That is a very smart agency. I only wish I had realized this option sooner, then you would never have found me."

Remo was going from window to window, looking outside over each wing. Challenger tanks were now blocking the Yak's nose and tail so it couldn't move in any direction.

"I'm not getting off this plane," Remo said after sizing up the situation.

"Someone must tell these cretins that we are charged with saving the world," said Chiun.

"That, too," said Remo. "But I was thinking that once we're off this plane, the only way home is on another plane. One with stewardesses. I'm not going through that again."

"What is wrong with stewardesses?" asked Colonel Rushenko.

"They're going through a phase right now."

"Phase?"

"They want to pop my buttons."

"That is a very peculiar phase."

Remo and Chiun huddled, and when they returned to the seat where Colonel Rushenko crouched so his head was not a target for SAS marksmen, Remo announced, "You're surrendering."

"I am not to be killed?"

"That's between you and the Brits. You're surrendering, taking the blame and telling the British all they need to hear so they let us fly on."

"What could I possibly tell them that would convince them to do this?" Rushenko wondered aloud.

Remo cocked a thumb at the Master of Sinanju standing behind him wearing a satisfied expression.

"That he's a passenger."

"I see," said Colonel Rushenko. "Of course, the British know the Master of Sinanju works for America. That may very well impress these people, who are not easily impressed."

Chiun smiled thinly. "This was my idea. For it is said that the highest master is he who does not need to fight."

"It is a brilliant solution," Rushenko said, visibly relieved.

"You're only saying that because you think you'll live," said Remo.

"The British will not kill me, for I will remind them that we are now ideological friends."

"You may tell them what you wish," said Chiun, stepping aside so that the Russian could scuttle to the main exit.

Remo slapped Colonel Rushenko on the back between the shoulder blades so hard that Rushenko's breath was knocked out of his lungs. He had to clutch the air-stairs rail going down. He managed to make it to the ground, hands held high, while he waited for SAS commandos to jump him.

Which they did with typical British reserve. They slapped him to the tarmac, chipping a front tooth. His hands were pinned behind his back, and he was handcuffed and dragged to the shadow of an armored BMP.

There, he gave in to interrogation so quickly that he wasn't believed.

"I am telling you I am in the company of the Master of Sinanju, who works for America, as I know you know."

"Likely story," a brush-mustached SAS major clipped.

"It is the truth."

A decision was made to storm the plane. Four commandos. They went up the air-stairs, paused at the cabin door, which was still hanging open, and tossed in flash grenades.

They went in firing.

And they came out flying, minus their weapons and wearing their birthday suits, to tumble all the way back to the ground in complete humiliation.

"I told you I spoke true," Colonel Rushenko said after the commandos were retrieved by armored car. "Do you believe me now?"

Reluctantly the SAS major did. The tanks were ordered off the runway, and the Yak was refueled.

It returned to the skies approximately the time Colonel Rushenko breathed a sigh of relief that kept on going, much to his growing astonishment. He couldn't stop exhaling, for some reason. He felt light-headed. His vision darkened.

By the time his captors realized he had succumbed to heart failure, there was nothing anyone could do for him. He was quite blue. And then quite dead. Quite.

OVER THE ATLANTIC, Remo snapped his fingers.

"Forgot to phone Smith."

"Emperor Smith may wait. It will gladden his heart that we have returned to safeguard his beleaguered shores."

"Hope he dug up something useful, or we went a long way for nothing."

"Smith's oracles are almost infallible."

"Speaking of failure, Colonel Rushenko should be worm food about now."

"If you struck the Blow of Delayed Peace correctly . . ."

"Right between the shoulder blades. He'll never know what snuffed him."

"It serves him right for ordering my death," Chiun sniffed. "It was inconsiderate, not to mention foolhardy."

"Wake me up when we're on the ground." And Remo dropped off to catch some much-needed rest.

Somewhere over the dark Atlantic, he awoke to find the Master of Sinanju looking out into the night sky.

"Star gazing?" he asked.

"I am watching for the sun dragon."

"Feel free."

"Sun dragons and arrow stars are harbingers of disaster, Remo."

"Show me a time when there weren't disasters. Comets don't affect events on earth. That's as squirrelly as astrology."

"Spoken like a true Virgo," sniffed Chiun. His nose was to the glass, his hazel eyes questing.

A thin line of light against the night caused his eyes to open up. Then they subsided.

"What was that?" asked Remo.

"Only a dung star."

"A what?"

"You would call it a meteor."

"Why is it called a dung star?"

"Because it is known to Koreans that so-called meteors are but the falling dung of true stars. And not to be confused with sun dragons."

"Korean astronomy sounds as screwy as astrology-"

"You will speak differently should you confront the sun dragon."

"Never happen."

Chiun's eyes became reflective. "Remo, you asked me if there were any legends attending the reign of Master Salbyol. There was one."

"I'm listening."

"It was prophesied that when the sun dragon next returned, the Master at that time would ascend into the Void to do battle with the awesome beast."

"Reigning Master or just Master?" asked Remo.

"The prophecy omitted that stipulation. But obviously Salbyol had to have meant Reigning Master. For he is the more important of the two."

"So you figure you're going to climb into the Void to fight a comet?" said Remo.

"Sun dragon. But that is not what worries me. For those who enter the Void, as you know, do not return to the living." Chiun's voice was hollow. "Remo, I am not yet prepared to die."

"How did Salbyol come up with this prediction?"

"How else? By consulting the stars."

Remo snorted. "If Korean astrology is anything like Korean astronomy, you don't have a thing to worry about."

Chiun grew deep of voice. "You are wrong. For I have felt the hot breath of the sun dragon, and you have felt it, too," said the Master of Sinanju, padding off the the rear of the cabin to be alone with his unspoken thoughts.

Remo let him be. He figured they'd both cross that bridge when it presented itself to them.

Chapter 36

At the SPACETRACK nerve center in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, all eyes, electronic or otherwise, were on Object 617, which was just sweeping down from the North Pole on its periodic polar path.

This time its orbit would take it over western Europe. Its last two orbits had covered the flat heart of the Asian republics on Russia's eastern flank, where SPACETRACK had no ground cameras and NATO had no eyes.

It was while Object 617 was approaching France that its radar signature abruptly shifted.

"Major, it's moving," a radar technician said.

Any eye that wasn't on Object 617 now shifted to track it on the giant projection screen with its Mercator projection of Earth's orbital envelope. Over eight thousand objects, ranging from one yard in size to space junk as small as a pea, each tagged by a green ID number, were displayed and accounted for. Object 617 had been designated a highest priority, and its radar blip was flashing red.

Amid the sea of phosphor green objects, it stood out like a bloodshot eye.

Object 617 was changing position. Its path was taking it toward the U.S. Eastern Seaboard.

"That thing is maneuverable," the major growled.

"It's also coming into GEODES acquisition range, sir."

GEODSS was the ground-camera backup to SPACETRACK's radar net. Grabbing a dedicated line, the major put in a call to his counterpart at GEODES.

"See if you can grab it," the SPACTRACK major told the GEODSS major.

"Will do, Major."

At GEODSS headquarters, secure international phone lines were worked until the word came back.

"Finland has it, Major. The picture is coming in now."

GEODSS had its own giant screen, and the feed displayed the mysterious orbital object as it shifted over the Atlantic.

"Will it pass over the continental U.S.?" the GEODES major barked.

A technician shook his head. "Not this orbit. But on the next, for sure."

"How long?"

"Give it ninety minutes."

"I gotta tell the President," said the GEODES major, grabbing another dedicated line whose plastic contours felt slick under his perspiring palm.

THE CALL FROM GEODSS did not go directly to the White House. It had to go through channels. After twenty minutes, an Air Force general at the Pentagon told the secretary of the air force, who called the secretary of defense, who took the intelligence to the President personally. Getting through District of Columbia traffic ate another twenty precious minutes.

The President sat heavily in his chair in the Oval Office at the end of the defense secretary's grim recitation.

"Will it pass over Washington?" he croaked.

"It can."

"Do we know what it is yet?"

"No. It's just a dark ball. But in its present orbital orientation, we can see only the Earth-facing side of it."

"We're going to have to shoot it down," said the President. "We can't wait for it to strike again. We have to shoot it down."

"We can't," snapped the secretary of defense.

"What do you mean, can't?"

"Not without starting a war with the Russians."

"If it's a Russian satellite, the war has already started."

"We don't know that."

"If it's not Russian, then why should they care?"

The secretary of defense wore the face of a man who has discovered himself trapped in an inescapable box.

"The technology exists. We have an antisatellite missile that can be rigged up for launching from a high-flying F-15. Or maybe it's an F-16. We just have to attach a special launch rack. But deployment of weapons in space is specifically prohibited by the START treaty. "

"It is?"

"Absolutely. The Russians are cosignatories on that treaty. If we violate it, all of space may be militarized. And given the shifting geopolitical sands over there, don't think there aren't a pack of Kremlin hard-liners only too happy to start a new arms race in space."

"Maybe that's it," the President breathed.

"Sir?"

"Maybe they want to provoke us into attacking this doomsday satellite. To get us to violate START so they can militarize space."

"It's a theory ...."

The President took his graying head in his hands and hung it in agony. "All we have is theories. And the doomsday clock is ticking. What if they're out to attack Washington?"

"If they are, we're sitting ducks here. There's no defense except a preemptive strike." The secretary of defense paused and in a voice made thick by controlled emotion, asked, "Mr. President, are you ordering such a strike at this time?"

The President of the United States stared at his own dazed reflection in the desk surface a very long time before he opened his mouth to answer.

IN Moscow, Major-General Iyona Stankevitch of the FSK put down his third glass of vodka and buzzed his secretary.

"Bring me the Cosmic Secret file. At once."

Then he downed another stiff belt. He intended to drink all the vodka possible in the few short hours he and the world had left to enjoy.

Chapter 37

LaGuardia wouldn't take the Yak-90. Nor would Kennedy International Airport.

"Divert to Boston," Remo told the nervous Russian pilot.

"We have barely the fuel to make it to Boston," he protested.

"Perfect."

"Why is that perfect, crazy one?"

"Once you tell them we're out of fuel, they've gotta let us land," explained Remo.

"They could force us to circle until we crash."

"You're thinking of the Russian response. This is America."

Over Logan International Airport, they orbited for what seemed to be an eternity.

"Look Remo, there is our home!" Chiun squeaked.

Remo looked out the window. Below, Quincy Bay sat gray and flat under overcast skies.

"I don't see it," said Remo, not really wanting to.

"See the very blue house?"

"How could I miss it? It's Superman blue."

"Follow the winding road north."

Remo did. And there was the fieldstone monster Chuin had dubbed Castle Sinanju.

"Too bad we can't parachute out," he said.

"We will be out of fuel soon," Chiun remarked.

The number-two engine stalled out at exactly that point.

Remo rushed to the cabin. "What's going on?"

"We are out of fuel," the pilot reported.

"You were supposed to tell the tower before we ran out, not after."

"I am dizzy from all this circling. I forgot."

"Can you put us down okay?"

"If the other engine does not conk."

In the next moment it did.

"What do I do now?" the pilot moaned.

"Can this lame duck glide in?"

"It is a jet. It glides exactly like a brick. Not at all."

"Then ditch," said Remo, flinging himself back into the cabin.

They came down in Quincy Bay with flaps down and the Russian pilot praying as the choppy water skimmed under their settling wings.

Remo had moved to the cabin's rear, knowing that a nose-in landing would demolish the front of the plane but not necessarily the rear. Chiun stood with him, expectant.

It was a good theory. In practice, the Yak pulled up at the last minute and pancaked, breaking the fuselage exactly in the middle like a loaf of Italian bread.

Cold seawater rushed in. Remo and Chiun let it slosh over them. Not that they had much choice. G-forces kept them from moving.

The Yak's tail sank first. They let the water take them in its cold, unforgiving grasp. The shock to their systems was like being seized by a clamping vise of ice.

The tail struck the seafloor, creating a cloud of dark sediment. They swam out, finding the Russian pilot kicking and flailing aimlessly.

Remo pulled him to the surface, where all three men treaded water for as long as it took them to recharge their lungs with cold oxygen.

The Russian looked around with stunned eyes. "I am in America?"

"Congratulations," said Remo.

"Does this mean I am not to die?"

"No," said Chiun. "We have to kill you."

"Yes," said Remo. "You got us here alive. You get to live. Just keep your nose clean."

"Right now I am only concerned with keeping it warm. The rest of me, too."

Chiun struck out for the shore. Remo tugged the Russian along and, once on the ice-crusted beach, sent him on his way with a shove.

"Remember, you never saw us," Remo warned.

"I care only about filling my belly with chizburgers and registering for warfare."

"It's called welfare," Remo said wearily.

TEN MINUTES LATER, Remo and Chiun were entering Castle Sinanju.

"Good thing I talked you out of taking your steamer trunks, huh, Little Father?" Remo said to Chiun as he stripped off his icy T-shirt.

"I was very wise to make the correct decision. Your counsel had nothing to do with it," returned Chiun before he disappeared into another room to change.

Remo had the kitchen telephone and was putting in a call to Folcroft.

Harold Smith answered breathlessly. "Where are you?"

"Home," Remo said casually.

"Home?"

"You'll read about it in the morning paper. We had to ditch in Quincy Bay."

Smith made a strangled sound. "I have made progress," he said after regaining his composure.

"Good."

"But not on the Paraguay angle. On ParaSol, a shell company, which shut down only two days ago. I have a search spider tracing its parent company through international data links. In the meantime, I have discovered who was funding the BioBubble."

"Yeah?"

"Dr. Cosmo Pagan."

Remo kicked ice off his toes. "How does he figure into this?"

"That is your assignment, Remo. I have correlated Pagan's theories. No matter what he predicts, he always returns to the Martian hypothesis. It is clear to me he is generating a media smoke screen for reasons of his own."

"Think Pagan's controlling it?"

"Until I have a firm lead on the Parasol connection, it is the only avenue open to us. Remo, go to Tucson and interrogate Pagan. The BioBubble has been in financial difficulty since he took control. He may have had it destroyed for insurance reasons."

"Doesn't explain the Reliant," Remo challenged.

"Pagan is antishuttle."

"Okay," Remo said slowly. "That doesn't explain Baikonur."

"The Russian space-shuttle fleet was hangared there."

"How antishuttle can a guy be?"

"Pagan believes in a Mars mission, Remo. My information is that he suffers from a rare form of bone cancer. His days are numbered. It may be he wanted to accelerate a Mars mission. In some warped way, Pagan could see a Mars landing as his final professional achievement and his cosmic legacy."

"Sounds wacky."

"Move quickly. Moscow has placed its nuclear forces on the highest state of alert. And Washington is responding in kind."

"You know, this reminds me a lot of that trouble a few years back when the ozone layer was getting holes knocked in it and the Russians thought it was us trying to fry their missiles."

"I had that same thought. It is another example of how dangerous technological breakthroughs can be in the nuclear age."

"We're on our way to Tucson," said Remo, then hung up.

The Master of Sinanju came down from upstairs, wearing a splendid bone white kimono with black piping.

"Nice traveling outfit," Remo complimented.

"It is not for travel," said Chiun.

"Then you'd better change. It's back to Arizona for us."

"Smith has work?"

"Cosmo Pagan is Ruber Mavors. Smith wants us to shake him until something falls out."

"At least it will be warm in Arizona," said Chiun.

"Let's hope it doesn't get too warm," Remo responded.

Chapter 38

Dr. Cosmo Pagan had friends in high places. And not only the stars and the comets of the galaxy.

He had friends in NASA, despite his critical opinions. As well as in the Air Force and other organizations where the heavens and what went on in them was of professional interest.

Someone at Cheyenne Mountain called to whisper, "There's a mystery object in low Earth orbit."

"Is it cometary?"

"No. Man-made."

"Oh," said Dr. Pagan, who only cared about manmade space objects if they were going some place interesting. Earth orbit was like taking a cruise to nowhere. Literally.

"It'll pass over the continental US. tonight. If it stays on its current path, it will overfly your area."

"Why should I care?" asked Dr. Pagan in a bored voice.

"Because SPACETRACK thinks this is the thing that hit the Reliant. "

The bored quality dropped from Pagan's manner like clothes falling off a hooker.

"Can you slip me coordinates?"

The coordinates came over the line in a hushed voice, and then the line went as dead as outer space.

Dr. Pagan rushed to his thirty-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain refractor, punched the right ascension and declination into the on-board guidance computer, hit the "Go-to" command and waited patiently while the control motor toiled as it oriented the tube toward the northern quadrant of the night sky, the observatory dome rotating so the slit lined up with the scope.

He was very interested in seeing what had caused the BioBubble to collapse into viscous glass and steel. Very.

While he waited, he pulled a candy bar from one of his jacket pockets without looking. Absently he bit the wrapper off and chewed off a hunk of chocolate, caramel and nougat.

"Nothing like a Mars bar," he murmured. "Unless it's a Milky Way."

Chapter 39

Finding Dr. Cosmo Pagan's Tucson home was easier than Remo had ever imagined. Harold Smith told him it was, on a secluded hill off Route 10, south of the city.

The house was shielded from view by ponderosa pine and cottonwoods. But the private observatory showed clearly on the hill. It was as red as Mars, and it was crisscrossed by black lines suggesting Martian canals.

"If this isn't the place, I'll eat my hat," said Remo.

"You do not wear a hat," said Chiun.

"Good point. Boy, if there were Martians living among us, I'd expect them to live in a creepy place just like this," said Remo as they pulled into the long circular driveway.

They got out. Lights burned throughout the house. It was painted a very sedate maroon that looked almost brown in the dark. A carport protected a red Saturn and a vintage Mercury Cougar.

"Front approach works for me," said Remo.

Chiun girded his jet black kimono skirts, saying, "I fear no Martians."

At the door, they simply rang the bell.

Mrs. Pagan answered, took one look at Remo's FBI ID and said, "He's in the observatory. Quarter mile back in the woods on the hill. You can't miss it."

"You got that right," said Remo.

As they got back into the car, Mrs. Pagan called out, "Will you tell him those people from QNM keep calling?"

"Sure."

"Tell him they doubled the consulting fee again."

"Sure thing," said Remo.

The observatory looked even more like the planet Mars as they walked toward it. Its scarlet hue glowed under the light of the moon. The top was a bluish white, like a polar icecap.

"This guy worships Mars like the ancient Greeks," said Remo.

"The Greek did not call it Mars, but Ares," Chiun said.

"What did the Koreans call it again?"

"Hwa-Song. The Fire Planet."

"Good name."

"It is also considered an ill omen when in the sky."

"I'll keep that in mind," Remo muttered as they picked their way through a stand of cottonwoods.

The shuttered slit was open in the great red dome, and they could see the black end of the big telescope peering up at the night sky.

"Looks like Pagan is Mars gazing. I say we just walk in."

"You may walk in. I will enter another way," said Chiun.

"Be my guest."

With that, Chiun was absorbed by the surrounding murk.

The door, Remo discovered, was not locked. It gave at his touch.

Carefully Remo eased into the cool, dark dome, all his senses alert. He sensed only one presence. That made it simple.

Letting his eyes adjust to the dim interior, Remo saw the long telescope tube resolve itself first. Then the man seated on a tall stool at the narrow end of the telescope.

Remo was approaching when, without warning, Dr. Pagan suddenly recoiled from the eyepiece of his telescope.

The stool upset. Remo moved in, caught man and stool, righting them while Dr. Cosmo Pagan flailed his corduroy-clad arms wildly.

"Easy," said Remo.

Pagan grabbed his chest and pumped air into his lungs. "I just saw-saw-"

"What?"

A squeaky voice from above said, "Me."

Remo looked up. "What are you doing way up there, Chiun?"

"Looking down."

And the Master of Sinanju leaped from the open aperture and slid down the telescope tube on both feet to alight with the ease and grace of a settling black moth.

"I thought a space alien was looking back at me," Cosmo Pagan muttered as he dusted off his arms. "Who are you two?"

"FBI," said Remo.

"What does the FBI want with me?" Pagan said, frowning.

Remo peered through the eyepiece. "I don't see Mars."

"I don't always look at the Red Planet, you know. And you're both trespassing. Please leave. I don't do autographs. It's beneath me."

Taking his eyes from the scope, Remo looked Pagan dead in the eye and said, "We know you're Ruber Mavors."

Pagan swallowed hard and said, "That's Latin for 'Red Planet.'"

"It's the name you go by when you're pumping money into the BioBubble. We need to know why."

"I don't have to tell you anything."

"Wrong answer," said Remo. And the Master of Sinanju reached up to take Pagan by the back of his neck. Chiun constricted his bony, long-nailed fingers.

Cosmo Pagan sank to his knees before Remo, his face contorting and turning red as a beet. "I'm a world-renowned astronomer and exobiologist," he gasped.

"Right now," Remo said, "you're doing a pretty good impersonation of a Martian."

Pagan's features turned rubbery. "You can't do this to me."

"Why not?"

"It's un-American. I'm a cultural icon. I have tenure."

"Why'd you take over the BioBubble? Let's start there."

"Someone had to. They were jettisoning the Mars-colony phase of the project. It was the only thing keeping Mars before the public eye. I had to save it."

"The Mars-colony idea went south when the Russian space program cratered," Remo countered.

"You're thinking in human terms. In geologic time, a Mars landing is just around the corner. It's just that we twentieth-century molecule machines won't live to see it.

"Speak for yourself, white," said Chiun, relenting enough that Pagan returned to a pinkish complexion.

"I got behind it to keep the dream alive. No matter what it took."

"Including pumping in oxygen and hot pizza?" said Remo.

"Whatever it takes. It was my project and my money."

"And when it became a laughingstock, you just fried it."

"That wasn't me!"

"Prove it."

"I don't have the kind of money and technology to put that thing up there," Pagan protested.

"What thing?" asked Chiun thinly.

Pagan swallowed.

"Hah!" said Chiun, squeezing harder. "The truth, Man of Mars."

Pagan got even redder. His veins began to pop until his face started to display an unmistakable Martian cast. A Mars bar fell out of his pocket.

"That is the truth," he gurgled. "All I know about the thing up there is what a friend at SPACETRACK told me. NORAD thinks it's an enemy satellite of some kind."

Remo looked past Dr. Pagan's reddening features to Chiun's severe ones, and they both came to the same conclusion based on a reading of Pagan's hammering vital signs and inability to withstand pain.

"He's telling the truth," said Remo.

"Of course I'm telling the truth. Why would I destroy my own dream?"

"We heard a Paraguayan company paid to have that thing launched through the Russian shuttle. Know anything about that?"

"Did you know Buran really means 'blizzard'?" said Dr. Pagan.

"What does that have to do with anything?" Remo growled.

"I get paid heavy consulting fees for spouting neat factoids like that," said Pagan, retrieving the fallen Mars bar and pocketing it.

"Not interested," said Remo. "Let him go, Little Father."

"Thank you," said Dr. Pagan, adjusting his corduroy jacket and giving his red turtleneck a shake.

Remo eyed the jersey and remembered the Shield secretary in Moscow who'd tried to kill him with an AK-47.

"Ever hear of Shield?" he asked.

"No. I've heard of the ozone shield, though."

"How about Shchit?" asked Chiun.

"Who hasn't? Although I personally shun language like that."

"He never heard of Shield," said Remo.

"If that's all you two want, I want to see that orbital device for myself. It's due to fly by pretty soon."

"Be our guest. We have better things to do."

"Up Uranus," muttered Dr. Pagan, climbing atop his stool and planting his right eye to the telescope eyepiece. By the time Remo and Chiun reached the door, he was all but oblivious to his surroundings.

"By the way," Remo called from the open door, "your wife asked us to give you a message."

"What's that?" Pagan asked absently.

"The QNM people keep calling. They doubled your fee again."

"Tell them I'm not interested."

"You tell them. We're FBI, not messengers," said Remo, shutting the door.

They walked back to the car in silence and got into it.

On the way back to the highway, Remo said to Chiun, "Everywhere we go, we hit a dead end."

"We should be looking for Martians."

"If this keeps up, I might start agreeing with you. But I still think we're dealing with something solar."

"When are you ever correct?"

"Some of the time," Remo said as they pulled onto the highway and raced back toward Tucson and a flight he wasn't looking forward to.

Chapter 40

At SPACETRACK headquarters in Cheyenne Mountain, they watched Object 617 skim over the Eastern Seaboard in silence. And then gave a collective sigh of relief.

No one's sigh was greater than the U.S. President's slow, hot exhalation of released tension.

He had been about to have the thing shot down when CURE Director Smith had called to reveal that he now suspected Dr. Cosmo Pagan of being the mind behind the device.

"Pagan? I can't believe it!" the President had said.

"It is unproven. But my people are on the way to deal with him."

"They won't kill him, will they?"

"His survival depends upon his complicity."

"He's a very popular guy. I read all his books."

"I will keep you informed, Mr. President."

Leaving the Lincoln Bedroom, the President had returned to the Oval Office and his defense secretary. "We stand down. For now."

"I can't disagree with that decision," the defense secretary said, visibly relieved.

Object 617 passed harmlessly overhead, and World War III was placed on temporary hold. Even if the planet never suspected it.

When it came back on its next orbital sweep, it had shifted again. Farther west this time. It was overflying the American West now.

All who were privy to this intelligence relaxed even more. The area it was passing over was relatively unpopulated. Montana to Arizona. There were missile silos there, all in sparsely settled areas. Most were slated for dismantling anyway.

"We may get a break," the secretary of defense reported to the President. And they waited.

BARTHOLOMEW MEECH WATCHED his monitors, his face the exact color of sun-bleached oatmeal, as he moved the small joysticks controlling nitrogen thrusters far, far above his ground station.

Behind him, his computer screen displayed a message.

To: R From: RM@ qnm.com Subject: No call back The SOB can't be bought and won't shut up. It's up to you.

AT GEODSS, THEY WERE getting real-time optical feeds on the object. It showed as a dark ball, half in eclipse, the other half illuminated by the stark, high-contrast moonlight of space.

But as it swooped low over Salt Lake City, abruptly it flowered.

The dark struts that embraced the black ball of unknown material extended like a spider awakening. Hardly visible in its stealth mode, when it was partially open the inner core shone bright as a new-minted quarter.

"What in God's name is that?"

No one could venture a guess.

Then the stealth sphere unfurled into a great disk.

And in the center of the disk, three sharp-edged black letters showed clearly: "MNp."

Then the overhead screen filled with such intolerable white light that the technicians were forced to pinch their eyes shut and look away.

Chapter 41

It was Chiun who spotted the letters in the sky first.

"Remo! Behold!"

Remo braked and got out.

He saw the three letters that meant 'peace' in the Russian language, and then he was dropping to the ground covering his head and eyes because he knew what was coming next. Chiun followed suit.

They heard the boom as the world turned bright through their pinched-shut eyes, and they remained on the ground as a sizzling pressure wave rolled over them, scorching and wilting nearby foliage as if touched by a demonic exhalation.

"Stay low, Little Father," Remo warned.

"It has passed," said Chiun.

"There may be a second hit."

There wasn't. Remo and Chiun jumped up at the same time. They looked back down the road and saw the up-curling smoke from the hill on which Cosmo Pagan had been. The hill was still there, but not the trees and observatory. It looked like a smoking compost heap.

"It got Pagan," said Remo.

"Why?"

"That," said Remo, "is the question of the hour."

They drove back as far as they could. A circumference of about a sixteenth of a mile had been turned into black burned sand and earth. Glass had formed in smoking lumps. A few surviving old-growth tree stumps smoked like cauldrons. It was very hot. They couldn't get as close as they wanted.

But they got close enough to know that Dr. Cosmo Pagan, his house, his observatory and his wife had all been turned to mingled smoke and fumes that was now rushing up to meet the stars.

Overhead, a tiny dot of light hurtled past. The three ironic Cyrillic letters seemed to dwindle and shrink. Then they were gone, and so was the fleeting dot of light.

In the hot silence of the Arizona night, Remo Williams mumbled words he never expected himself to speak. "Maybe Martians are behind this after all," he muttered.

"You have just taken the first path to wisdom," intoned Chiun.

"Which is?"

"Agreeing with me," said the Master of Sinanju.

Chapter 42

Dr. Harold W Smith took the news well, given the extraordinary circumstances.

"Pagan is dead?" he blurted.

"Zapped," said Remo.

Smith's mouth turned to metal as he absorbed the import of Remo's telephone report. He had a paper cup brimming with water at his elbow. He swallowed it in one gulp. Then, as an afterthought, took two generic-brand painkillers with one extrastrength AlkaSeltzer.

His stomach bubbled and fizzed as he groped for a response. "Pagan must be connected to Object 617."

"He swore he wasn't, and believe me, if he was, Chiun and I would have wrung it out of him."

"Why would the power behind the device seek to kill him?"

"Your guess is as good as mine, Smitty. But we're at another dead end."

"We cannot accept defeat. We are dealing with a man-made phenomenon. It must have a solution."

"Unless it's Martian-made," said Remo.

"There are no Martians."

"We know it's not the Russians or Pagan or the Pentagon. And I'll bet the ranch it's not the Paraguayans-or whatever they're called."

"Perhaps Pagan was silenced because he was getting too close to the truth," Smith said slowly.

"Earlier you were saying he was behind it because his theories were all over the sky."

"Hmm," said Smith.

"It is not the Russians," declared Chiun.

"We already know that, Little Father," Remo said.

"Russians would know how to spell 'peace' correctly," added Chiun.

"What is that?" asked Smith.

"Nothing. Just Chiun putting in his two cents."

"The word in the sky is not Russian," said Chiun. "Tell Smith this."

"You hear that, Smitty?" asked Remo.

"Yes."

"He heard, Chiun. Now leave it alone. Smitty's trying to think."

"Put Chiun on," Smith said in a suddenly urgent voice.

"Why?"

"I want to hear what he has to say," said Smith.

Shrugging, Remo surrendered the line to the Master of Sinanju.

"Repeat what you just said, Master Chiun," asked Smith.

"I saw the letters in the sky. They did not spell peace."

"What do they spell?"

"Nonsense. The P was not a Greek P."

"What was it?"

"It looked like a P. But an inferior p. The others were capital letters. The P was not. Its tail hung too low."