Shock Value

"We will do nothing to delay the wretched death you deserve," one of the murderers said.

"It will delay nothing. I ask only that you all stand near me to witness my end. As you can see, I am an old man, and no longer possess the power to fight you. All I wish for are witnesses to my death, so that those of my village will know truly that their Master has been defeated by a force greater than his own."

The ruffians swelled with pride. To tell the people of Sinanju that they had watched the Master die in ignominy and disgrace would satisfy their thirst for revenge.

"Very well, old man," their leader said, and the criminals advanced upon the crag to join the Master.

They did not see, as their aged prisoner had seen, that the crag was brittle and cracked and could not support the weight of many men. The crag broke free with a deafening splinter of rock and falling earth, dashing the men against the stones below. But the Master himself was prepared, and leaped away before the crag broke.

He returned in time to his village, and lived for thirty more years. Until his death, which was as quiet and dignified a passage into the void as any man could wish for, the Master was known throughout the Orient as the wisest of men.

Remo didn't know why the story had come into his head, but it gave him an idea. It offered a slim chance for escape, but more than he'd had a few moments before.

"Throw me a rock," Remo panted.

"A rock?" LePat raised his eyebrows in merriment. "You mean a rope, don't you? Sorry, I'm all out of rescue equipment."

"A rock," Remo insisted. "I'll sink faster."

LePat's expression was puzzled. "You talk as if you want to die."

"If it's going to happen, I'd like to get it over with. Come on, you've won. I know you'd rather see me go this way than with a bullet."

"Don't try to goad me," the little man said. "A bullet's too painless. You won't get me to shoot you."

"You don't have to shoot me. I'm willing to die in this crud. Just throw me a rock to get things moving, okay?"

LePat looked at him for a moment, appraising, then shrugged. "Why not," he said, hefting a slime-covered stone the size of a canteloupe. "Watching you die is becoming a bore, anyway." He tossed it carelessly to Remo.

With the palm of his hand Remo slapped back hard at the stone, putting a lot of English on it with his fingertips. It careened around in an arc, flying in a curve past LePat.

The little man ducked and stared at the flying rock as it whizzed by in its wide circle. "I should have known you'd try a trick," he said, aiming the Walther at Remo. He squinted, his lips curling into a sneer. "I think I'll only wound you. The shoulder, perhaps?" He veered the sight slightly to the right. "Don't hope to die from this bullet, by the way. I'm a considerably better shot than you are. That rock was the wildest toss I ever saw."

Remo said nothing. He was listening to the pitch of the air as the rock reached the farthest point in its curve and came back around, singing.

"Are you afraid, Remo?" LePat taunted.

"Simply quaking."

His throw had been good. The rock was right on target. At the moment when LePat's finger tensed to squeeze the trigger, the rock slammed him in the middle of his back, sending the gun splattering into the quicksand with the falling form of LePat behind it. As LePat stretched out his arms to reach for the gun, Remo lurched forward and grasped both the man's hands.

LePat cried out, his legs scrambling for purchase on the solid ground beyond the quicksand. Remo counted on the man's fear. The harder LePat struggled, the closer he brought Remo to the edge of the quagmire.

It was receding. The iron grip across his chest eased, and Remo could breathe again. The extra oxygen pumped into his arms in a surge of energy. With a monumental effort he pushed himself ahead and clasped his hands behind LePat's back. The little man cursed as he pulled back, saving himself from the quicksand and dragging Remo up with him.

"Thanks a million, pal," Remo said. He set one foot on the bank. Then, going into a deep spin, he swung the man into the air and released him.

LePat screamed as he landed chest first in the quicksand. His arms flailed briefly, like the wings of a trapped insect, and then his breath released in a boil of filthy bubbles. His head disappeared first. The rest of him followed quickly. When Remo left him, all that remained above ground were LePat's shoes, which had come loose and floated upside down on the bog like the footprints of the doomed.

"Circe!" Remo called, running back through the scrub pines. He had found his way to the shoreline, and followed it back to the cave. Now, as he retraced his steps, he spotted the white car.

The place beside it where the girl had lain was empty.

The car. He went back to it and made a quick examination. Just as Circe had said, there was a small transmitter taped to the Opel's underside. With the strength of rage, he hurled the tracker high into the air and into the sea beyond. Then he returned to the place where he'd left the girl.

The ground was cold. She'd been moved some time ago. It could have been the police, he thought. But there were no tire tracks besides the Opel's. There was only one other explanation.

LePat hadn't been alone.

Remo got on his hands and knees in the grass by the car. He widened his pupils to maximum. The action made the blades of grass glimmer with unseen light. And on the grass were spots. They looked like water, but these spots were dark and thick and already beginning to harden. He rubbed some on his fingers and sniffed.

Blood.

She had left a trail for him.

The moon came out for a moment, illuminating the bloodstains to the road, where they continued. Toward South Shore. Whoever took Circe hadn't used a car.

A cloud passed overhead, blotting out the brief light of the moon, and a wave of sorrow passed over Remo. He was not a seer, but he knew when death was near. It was brushing against him now, and he knew that before the night was over, death would fold its dark wings and claim its victory.

?Chapter Fifteen

A shiver of apprehension ran down Chiun's spine. Ever since he heard the shots fired from the island, he, too, felt the wings of death flapping in the night breeze. Remo could take care of himself against bullets. But there was something else on that island, something indefinable and dangerous. It was as if the black clouds that obscured the stars was covering the whole earth, with the spectre of death heralding a new Dark Age.

Smith lay on the bunk where Remo had placed him. His eyelids fluttered. He looked at Chiun groggily.

"Where are we?" he whispered.

"Ah, Emperor Smith. You have come back to us at last. We are on a boat. It is safe here. Remo is on the island."

Smith shook himself awake. "My head," he said, cradling his head in his hands. "It feels like..."

"Like you drank too much?" Chiun offered.

"I beg your pardon? I don't drink."

"You did. Quite a bit, in fact, o illustrious one. You were, as Remo would say, doused."

"Soused," Smith corrected, groaning. "It's coming back to me now. The injection... those pink cocktails. Good God. The printouts."

"They are here. We brought you from that place."

"Thank you," he said, raising himself to his feet. Chiun handed him his clothes. "I can't imagine what would have happened if Abraxas got hold of them."

"You have seen him?"

"No. No one's seen him; just his name. It's been transmitted by satellite into every television set in the world. People are beginning to think that Abraxas is some kind of god."

"The masses are fools, easily duped," Chiun said loftily, averting his eyes. "But surely no one is in danger because of a name on a television set."

"That's just the beginning," Smith said, climbing into his trousers. "He's got a plan— the Great Plan, he calls it, the arrogant swine— to take over the world."

Chiun laughed aloud. "Others have tried that, most worthy emperor."

"He can do it," Smith said earnestly. "I know it's preposterous, but he's got everything organized to the last detail. You'll forgive me if I don't tell you the exact nature of his ideas. It's a matter of national security."

"Of course," Chiun said, trying to sound as if he cared one way or the other about national security.

Smith buttoned his shirt hastily. "What we've got to concern ourselves with now is stopping him before this insanity goes any further. Can we reach Remo?"

"I am not his nursemaid," Chiun sniffed. "But he will show up. Bad pennies always do."

"Very well," Smith muttered. "Then we'll have to do this without him. I'll tell you some of what I know, but I must have your oath never to reveal what I am about to say."

"The Master of Sinanju gives his word," Chiun said, stifling a yawn.

Smith breathed deeply. When he spoke, his voice was weighted with urgency. "Abraxas is planning to reveal himself on worldwide television. He's going to interrupt broadcasts all over the world to announce the Great Plan of Abraxas. If that happens, the people he's hypnotized will support the massive destruction he's going to suggest. It will be too late to stop him then."

Chiun thought. "But how can everyone see him at once? Half the world sleeps while the other half lives in daylight."

"He's projected a time when all the communications satellites orbiting above earth will be in optimum position to broadcast to their widest possible range." He toyed sheepishly with his shirt button. "I did it for him, actually, from the compound's computer center. I— er— wasn't quite myself."

"Perfectly understandable, o worthy emperor," Chiun said. "You were doused."

"Messages have been transmitted from individual satellites telling people when to tune in. He's expecting an audience of a half-billion."

"Interesting."

"A half-billion people is enough to begin a world revolution."

"I see. And when will this announcement occur?"

"On the twelfth. One minute after midnight on the twelfth. That's odd. On the island I seem to have lost all track of time. What date is it today?"

"The eleventh," Chiun said.

"The eleventh?" Smith checked his watch. The color drained from his face. "It's eleven-twenty," he said.

On the South Shore grounds, Chiun regarded the rambling old manor house. "A strange place," he said.

"I suppose so," Smith panted, already exhausted from rowing the rubber raft that brought them from the yacht. Scaling the high fence onto the grounds had not been easy, either. Smith marveled at the uncanny strength of the old Oriental, who must have passed his eightieth year. For him the fence had been a child's barricade, crossed without effort. But then Chiun, he remembered, was special, just as Remo was special. Among the three, Smith alone was vulnerable to fatigue and weakness.

He wanted to rest. His head was still swimming from the effects of the drinks. He would never be young again, and, unlike Chiun, age and mortality weighed heavily on him. "Let's go in," he said.

"Are there no guards?"

"Unnecessary. Everyone here is fanatically devoted to Abraxas, and outsiders don't come in. They claim the place holds evil spirits, or some such nonsense."

"It may not be nonsense," Chiun said quietly. "I do not like the feel of this house."

The interior of the mansion was a labyrinth of small rooms connected by obscure passageways. In the distance were the muffled sounds of voices.

"They all must be in the conference room," Smith said. He glanced at his watch again. "Waiting for the broadcast."

"We do not have enough time to search all the rooms," Chiun said.

"I don't think we have to. If I can get into the computer center, I might be able to stop him from there."

"A machine cannot stop a maniac," Chiun scoffed.

"I'm going to try to get the codes for transmission and scramble them," Smith whispered as they headed down a series of empty, twisting corridors. "You see, the transmissions are beamed off satellites using codes translated into microwave emissions..." He looked at Chiun, whose eyes were rolling. "Never mind," he said. "Follow me."

"As you wish."

The door to the computer room was locked. "Is this a problem?" Smith asked.

Chiun poked it with a fast jab of his index finger. The steel plate surrounding the knob shattered and fell to the floor like shards of glass. "No," Chiun answered.

There were only four items in the room: the computer console, a utilitarian chair placed behind it, a television monitor suspended from the ceiling, and the omnipresent camera. Smith sucked in his breath sharply at the sight of the camera. It was stationary. No hum issued from it. He waved his hand in front of it.

"It's not operating," he said finally. "Watch the door."

He sat down at the console. Then, his hands moving like a concert pianist's, he prepared the computer for conversation.

"GIVE PRESENT LOCATIONS OF COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITES," he keyed in.

The screen flashed with a series of coordinates in space. Smith picked the first and locked it into the mode he was using.

"GIVE CODE FOR TRANSMISSION."

"VOICE PRINT REQUIRED," the screen flashed back. "FOR ABRAXAS'S EYES ONLY."

Smith stared at it, feeling numb.

"Do you not like its answer?" Chiun asked solicitously.

"I should have known. The computer's been programmed to screen everyone but Abraxas himself from the data concerning the broadcast."

"Machines are never to be trusted," Chiun said. "We must seek out the false god ourselves."

"There isn't time. He could be broadcasting from anywhere on the grounds." He sat unmoving in front of the computer, his face a blank.

"I will go, emperor."

"Wait," Smith said. "Let me try something." He rearranged the mode on the computer keys.

"GIVE LOCATION OF TRANSMISSION CENTER," he typed.

A blueprint appeared.

"Now it draws pictures," Chiun said irritably.

"This is the layout of the house," Smith said, his eyes scanning the blueprint expertly. When he had memorized it, he turned off the machine and rose. "He's on this floor," he said.

?Chapter Sixteen

The trail of Circe's blood led Remo to the rear of the mansion on South Shore. The sea was visible here, roaring behind the deep shadows of the house. Two areas of the place were lit. One wing was bathed in light, and the dim sound of people talking emanated from the brightness. On the opposite end of the manor, a single light glowed from behind a pair of narrow French windows that opened onto the lawn. It was to these windows, directly, that the bloodstains led.

As he neared the source of light, he felt the shadows swallowing him. The place had an aura of perversion and monstrousness about it that made him shiver. It was as if the house itself were alive, infused with the evil of its owner.

Death, Remo was sure, had chosen this place to fold its wings.

The glass doors were open. Inside, Circe lay on a divan, her eyes closed, the front of her dress covered with blood. By her head was a wheelchair facing a paneled wall opposite the windows. Above its leather back Remo could see the top of a man's bald head.

Remo stepped in silently.

"Welcome," a deep voice called from the wheelchair. It was a strange voice, sounding as if it came from an electronic amplifier. A hand motioned toward the wall. "Your shadow gave you away. But then I was hoping you would come."

The wheelchair spun around at a touch from the man's hand to a panel of buttons on the chair's arm. At once Remo recognized the humming, electric sound he had heard in the cave.

The sight was shocking. Circe had told him about her employer's disfigurement, but nothing had prepared Remo for the creature who now stared at him from across the room. He was a man, or had been once. Both of his legs had been amputated at the hip. The trunk above them was strapped into the electric wheelchair by two long leather thongs. His arms were powerfully built. One of them looked normal, the only normal part of his body. The right arm ended in a two-pronged metal claw.

His face was a mass of scars and metal plates grafted over motley skin that had obviously been burned to the bone at one time. He possessed no hair, not even eyebrows. One eye stared roundly out of the lesions; the other was an empty socket discolored to a deep purple-red. His head sat immobile on his neck, which was collared by a thin band of steel. On the band, in the middle of where his throat would have been, protruded a small black box.

"I am Abraxas," he said. The black box vibrated. "I trust you will forgive my appearance. I do not entertain often."

He pressed a button on the wheelchair's arm, and the metal collar moved his head stiffly to the right. "This is Circe, whom you have already met."

Remo walked forward. "It was you," he said.

"At the cave? Indeed it was. Oh, I wouldn't come any closer if I were you." Abraxas jutted his claw hand over the girl's exposed throat. His head was still facing Circe, but his eye was fixed on Remo. "She's alive, you see, and any move you make will change the situation drastically." He laughed, the sound coming low and distorted from the artificial voice box.

Remo halted. "Okay," he said. "What do you want?"

Abraxas's one eye opened wide in mock innocence. "Why, to talk. I wish to talk with both of you. Wake up, Circe. This is for you, too." He jabbed her flesh lightly with the claw. She came awake moaning. "That's better. We can talk now, can't we, my dear?"

She turned toward Remo weakly, her eyes half closed. "Don't stay," she whispered, struggling for breath.

Abraxas shook with laughter. "But of course he'll stay. The man is your lover." He spat out the word with sudden malevolence. "He doesn't want to see you get hurt. Isn't that right... Remo?" The metal claw toyed with her throat.

"She needs a doctor," Remo said.

"You don't know what she needs!" The wheelchair hummed and glided behind the divan in seconds. "I know. I alone. Abraxas." His mouth twisted. "I made you, Circe. And this is how you repay me."

The girl stifled a sob. Her fingers opened and closed on her bloody chest.

"Don't waste your tears. You have no right to them. Have you ever heard of loyalty, Circe?"

"Leave her alone," Remo said.

"Keep out of this," Abraxas hissed. He turned back to Circe, the claw dangling over her face. "I'll tell you about loyalty. When I was a young man, you performed a service for me that enabled me to carry out the work of my destiny— a destiny that was planned for three thousand years, ever since Abraxas, the all-god of the ancients, disappeared into oblivion. He had given up trying to sway men in their corruption, you see. He didn't have the power. But I have." He bent low over her. "I have! Out of the rubble of this body, I created Abraxas anew, Abraxas the perfect god, the giver of life, the force of good and evil, because it was my destiny to do so. For your part in preventing my destruction at the hands of my father, I have given you the world. The world!" he shouted.

"I took a servant from the slums of Corinth and gave her a mind. You have traveled the world and lived in splendor. You have received the finest education possible. You have been privy to information that will shape the future of mankind. I have repaid my debt to you, Circe. All I required of you was your loyalty."

He breathed heavily, the claw scraping against her white skin in a sensual rhythm. "Others give their loyalty willingly. At this moment, millions are waiting for just a glimpse of Abraxas. I am their leader. They are depending on me to protect them from their enemies. Enemies like you, Circe. For those who are disloyal to Abraxas are the enemies of all mankind."

"I... I should never have saved you," the girl said, weeping. "Your father was right. You should have been destroyed."

"It was not my destiny," Abraxas said softly, craning mechanically toward her face. "It was my fate to live and rule all the people in all the lands of the earth, just as it was my fate to be betrayed by a woman with the lusts of a common slut."

"That's enough," Remo said, stepping forward briskly. Without warning, a thin, bright fiber of electricity shot out from the base of the wheelchair. It struck Remo in the leg, sending him sprawling, dazed, across the room. Circe screamed.

"Do you see how easily life is ended?" Abraxas continued in the same soft voice. "In one moment, the man you thought would save you has ceased to exist. Abraxas gives life, and he takes it away." He raised the claw, crying in despair. "Oh my beautiful, sullied enchantress!"

The claw came down. The body on the divan jerked convulsively, a fountain of blood pouring from her throat.

Remo heard a strangled wail come out from the depths of his soul.

Feeling as if he were dragging himself out of some hideous nightmare, he pulled himself to his feet and staggered toward the other end of the room. Against the wall, he could make out the blurred figure of the creature in the wheelchair.

"You're still alive," the magnified voice said with some surprise.

Remo struggled to focus. Below him lay the woman he had made love to an hour before. Her throat was ripped out brutally. Her eyes stared upward in final terror. The flesh of her face was still warm. It couldn't be, he thought, his brain a confused mass of pain and crazy images: Circe huddled in the cave; Circe lying beneath him, her flesh hot and provocative; Circe asking for help, her face lit by the flame of a flickering candle. What was this thing, this slaughtered beast lying dead in front of him? And the man in the wheelchair, a blur, hard to reach...

"You'll die for this," he said evenly. "I swear you'll die." Drunkenly, still shaken from the electric shock, he lunged for the wheelchair.

A cloud of white smoke hissed from the chair and filled the room.

A moment later, Abraxas was gone.

?Chapter Seventeen

Smith and Chiun both heard Circe's scream. The smoke was clearing from the room as Chiun rushed in through the door to the hallway. Remo was standing near the divan, his eyes fixed on the dead girl drenched in her own blood. His hand was touching her face. He neither moved nor acknowledged the old man.

"What has happened?" Chiun said. "Who has done this thing?"

Remo didn't answer. He lifted his hand from Circe's cheek and closed her eyes.

Smith arrived, panting. "This is it," he said. "This is the room—" He took in the scene. "Oh, no," he said softly, going over to the girl.

Remo stepped away. Then, moving wordlessly along the walls, he smashed every panel systematically, splintering the wood with blows so powerful, they shook the floor.

"Come to your senses," Chiun snapped abruptly.

"I have," Remo said. "The bastard was in a wheelchair. You would have seen him if he'd left through the door. Remember Big Ed?"

"Big Ed?" Smith asked.

"A hoodlum in Florida," Chiun said. "He used a false floor to escape from us. But this—"

"Circe did say something to me about the house being full of secret passageways," Smith said, looking over at the dead girl. "Did you know her, Remo?"

"Yes."

"I did, too." Smith walked over to her body.

"Forget it," Remo said harshly. He smashed through a panel into dead space. "Here it is. Help me, Chiun." In less than a minute the boards were cleared away.

The opening led into another chamber, also empty, covered with soundproof tiles and hung with a half-dozen black-screened television monitors. A moving camera was stationed in the corner. On the far wall was a digital chronometer that kept time to the second. It was 11:52:45.

"But this room wasn't even on the blueprint," Smith said, bewildered. "I'm sure of it. It pinpointed the location of the transmission area as the room we just came from."

"What are you talking about?" Remo growled as he tapped the walls. "Abraxas said something about showing himself to the world."

Smith explained about the projected midnight broadcast. "He can't be permitted to transmit that message," he warned.

"Look, I want him, too," Remo said levelly.

Suddenly all six of the monitors hanging from the ceiling flashed into focus. On them were a half-dozen closeups of the disfigured face of Abraxas. He was smiling, his scarred lips twisting grotesquely around his teeth. Smith gave a sharp cry at the sight.

"Admirable, fellows," Abraxas said, the voice box at his throat quivering with sound. "Especially the young one. Why, you should have been killed back there, Remo. Massive electric shocks do that, you know."

"I think you've done enough killing."

"Perhaps." He shrugged. "However, I think that after my broadcast, three new burials will be in order. Four, if you count Circe. Pity."

"You're not going to make any broadcast," Remo said.

Abraxas laughed. "I beg to differ with you. In seven minutes, the god of the new order will come to his people. The name they have been calling in worship will show himself. Not a lovely face for a man, you may say, but sufficiently fearful for the god of good and evil, don't you think?"

"You're a fraud and a murderer," Smith said.

"Ah. The righteous Dr. Smith. You were the thorn in my side I never counted on. Whoever would have taken you for a troublemaker? Well, no matter. My computers were loyal to me even if you weren't."

Smith looked up to the monitor in amazement.

"Oh, yes, I saw you, through a hidden camera, in the computer center trying to unscramble my transmission codes. Very amusing. And the blueprints, as you see, were false. My whereabouts are out of your reach. In fact, nothing that you, or your genius with computer software, or the remarkable endurance of your young friend Remo can do could ever touch the all-seeing mind of Abraxas."

"You actually believe that garbage of yours, don't you?" Remo said.

"I have every reason to believe it. I am invincible, you see." His face stared at them eerily from the monitors. "I have planned for everything."

"The floor," Remo shouted. He was on his hands and knees, bending over the tiled floor. "There's another passageway here." He ripped off the tiles. Beneath them was a floor of solid cement, etched with a four-by-four-foot square.

"Very good," Abraxas said. "This is indeed the entrance. It is powered by a three-thousand-pound hydraulic lift. The cement itself weighs half a ton."

Remo grunted as he tried to slip his fingers into the hairline crack separating the trapdoor from the rest of the flooring.

"As I was saying, I have planned for everything. Dr. Smith, why don't you try to unscramble my transmission codes? I give you permission."

"You know the access to them is limited to your voice print," Smith said.

"The code is triple zero three one eight zero."

"But why..."

"Because I enjoy the edge of challenge. And because, even with help, you still cannot stop me. I told you, I have planned for everything."

A small noise sounded, low and musical at first, then rising higher in pitch and volume until it became a piercing, painful shriek.

"Everything," Abraxas whispered before the word was drowned in the terrible noise.

"What's that?" Smith shouted, covering his ears.

The noise grew worse. Smith fell to his knees, convulsing. In an instant, Chiun was at his side, dragging him through the broken wall. He took Smith into the other room to the door and flung it open.

The noise stopped.

A crowd of people, delegates from the conference, waited outside. At the sight of Smith, they burst into jeers and angry shouts.

"Everything," Abraxas cackled from the monitors.

"Traitor!" the former secretary of state screamed.

"Betrayer!"

"Heretic!"

Through his blurred vision, Smith recognized the advertising man named Vehar. He stepped forward out of the crowd, hefting a rock, and flung it at Smith. The blow took him on the side of his face, scraping off the skin.

"Get me to the computer room," Smith said.

"Yes, emperor." Chiun lit into the crowd like a moving propeller. Vehar spun upward and landed against the corridor wall with a splintering thud. Others threw rocks, but Chiun deflected them with whistling motions of his hands. "Go," he said softly. "I will protect you."

Smith limped away toward the computer room, like a man twice his age. The wound on his face wasn't deep, but the pain made his head throb.

"Triple zero one three eight zero," he chanted aloud. The eardrum-shattering sound had made him dizzy. Vomit rose in his throat. He forced it down, pushing himself ahead, one foot in front of the other. "Triple zero one three eight zero."

Behind him Chiun was warding off the stampede of delegates, shielding the two of them from their crude weapons. When at last they reached the computer center, Chiun held up a hand to the crowd. "Hold," he ordered. "I am Chiun, Master of the Glorious House of Sinanju, and I warn you— come no farther, or fear for your mortal life."

"He's nothing but a crazy old man," someone shouted from the rear.

"Yeah, and a gook, too."

Vehar pushed his way through the crowd. His jacket was torn. The crystal of his watch was shattered from its impact against the wall. He stepped ahead of the group now, his eyes filled with hate.

"Say, grandpa. I don't think you're so tough."

"Do not use threats lightly," Chiun said. "You should have learned your lesson."

"You got lucky," Vehar said. From his pocket he pulled out a small pistol. The crowd gasped. "And now you're going to get unlucky." He took a quick step forward.

"Forgive me, emperor, but this is necessary," Chiun said. He twisted in the air and, in one deft motion, cracked Vehar's spine and then his skull. The body arched wildly, then fell. Vehar's fingers were still wrapped around the gun.

Smith stood at the console, his eyes riveted on the lifeless body on the floor.

"Work," Chiun commanded the man he called emperor.

"You have four minutes," Abraxas announced, as if Remo were a contestant on a game show who couldn't come up with the right answer.

Remo didn't pay him any attention. He was scrabbling at the cement, his fingertips bloody. Already he had broken off almost enough small pieces to gain a handhold. That was all it would take. But the trap was flush with the floor, and the cement, he guessed, was at least a foot thick.

"Let me save you the effort," the voice said smoothly. "Even if you do get through the trap door— which you won't— you won't be able to reach me. I am an invalid, you see, and don't possess the normal use of my limbs. For this reason, I have had to invent certain architectural designs to assist me. The room you're in is one; I had the trap built. But the room where I am is much more sophisticated. It is closed off from the passageway by a special electronic door housing a million volts of electricity. No one can survive that kind of shock, Remo, not even you. Oh, you surprised me time and again with you strength. The electric jolt from my chair, the high-frequency noise— not a wince from you. Very commendable. But I assure you, the entrance to this room is much more deadly than the parlor tricks I have shown you thus far. Much more. Am I clear?"

"You're an ass," Remo said. With a sharp jab he wedged his left hand into the small crevice he had made. It was tight. The cement rubbed his fingers raw.

"A most worthy opponent," Abraxas said with a certain warmth. "Alas, I have to leave you. I would have liked to see your progress, as well as your untimely end. Unfortunately, my broadcast is due to begin. The world is about to undergo the most profound change since the discovery of fire, and I go to lead its people into the new age. So farewell, my doomed adversary. Enjoy your stay in eternity."

He turned profile to the camera. The face was not so much that of a god as of a gargoyle, Remo thought, a repugnant creature about to spread its slime over the earth.

The monitor faded to black. Remo was alone.

?Chapter Eighteen

The chronometer on the wall read 11:58:36. Less than three minutes to go.

He dug his hand deeper into the broken cement. The raw flesh scraped, down to the bone, it seemed. He stifled the urge to cry out with the pain.

11:58:59.

Circe. Abraxas had called her his enchantress. But the girl lying dead in the next room had been nothing but a madman's pawn, discarded without thought, murdered with the casual brutality of swatting a fly.

I don't want to belong to him anymore, she had said. Still, she had kept the name he had given her.

Remo didn't even know her real name.

So this is how it ends, he thought. The twisted trail leading from another death of another pawn named Orville Peabody ended here, with the girl dead and the monster she had hoped to escape safe behind his electric walls.

"You won't belong to him," Remo said. "I promise you, Circe."

He had made a promise to her before, and had not been able to keep it. In shame and rage, he wrenched his arm upward. He felt two bones in his hand crack and give under the weight of the cement, but the slab loosened. With a spray of dust, it spat out of the floor, crashing on the other side of the room.

Beneath the removed cement was a twelve-inch pole extending so far downward that its base couldn't be seen. The hydraulic lift.

11:59:01.

There was no time to find how to operate it. Remo guessed that the controls were on Abraxas's wheelchair, anyway. Keeping his broken hand carefully out of the way, he wrapped his arms and legs around the pole and slid into the darkness.

The bottom was dank and suffocating, exuding the same musty smell of the cave where Remo had lain with Circe. It brought back memories so recent and painful that he felt them physically, like pinpricks in his chest.

But he wouldn't think of her now. He couldn't permit himself the luxury of self-pity.

From the pinpoint opening at the top of the empty shaft, he guessed that he was more than a hundred feet below ground level. He searched in the darkness of the narrow square for a passageway, trying to enlarge his pupils enough to catch what faint light there was.

He saw nothing. No opening, no electric door, no route to Abraxas. Only the blackness of a four-by-four-foot prison.

Panic crept up on him. What if Abraxas had been lying? True, the cement trap in the floor had been just as he'd described, but a mind as sick as Abraxas's was capable of devising an elaborate obstacle like the trap to serve as nothing more than a diversion for intruders. It was possible that Abraxas was nowhere Remo could reach him before the precious minutes were up. On the other side of the house, perhaps... or the island.

I have planned for everything.

More than a minute had passed since Remo began his descent down the lift shaft. Abraxas would have to be reached soon, or not at all. If Abraxas had tricked him, as the sickening feeling in the pit of Remo's stomach told him he had, time had already run out. The world would belong to Abraxas, and Circe— beautiful, scarred enchantress— had died for nothing.

"You idiot," Remo spat out at himself, kicking the cement-lined wall. His foot swung into air.

Air.

He bent down. It was there, the passageway. Abraxas, in his vanity had told the truth. There was a route leading out of the lift, but it was less than three feet tall— designed for a man in a wheelchair.

Flushed with excitement, he ran, stooped, through the dark corridor. There was utterly no light here. Racing blindly, like a bat, he followed the tunnel, ticking off the seconds in his head.

58. 57. 56.

He pumped his legs harder. The pain in his hand throbbed sharply with each footfall. For Circe, he said to himself. Not the poor suckers watching their televisions, waiting for God to come to them like some glorious prime-time evangelist; he didn't give a damn about humanity. It was for Circe alone. Dead, defeated Circe, who had begged for help and got none.

His breath came quick and ragged. The passageway was long, longer than he'd pictured the house to be. He'd gone nearly a half-mile as it was, and still nothing lay ahead but more blackness and the growing heaviness in his chest.

What accounted for that, he thought, heaving. He never breathed hard. Not even during his exercise runs under Chiun's supervision, in which he forced himself to run at full, leg-wrenching speed over hills so tall that vegetation disappeared at their peaks, had he lost his wind. But now, in this tunnel, he was gasping for breath like a chain smoker in the Boston Marathon.

Still running, crouched and cramping, he attuned his senses to the pressure of the air. He felt it in his ears. Slowly, every fifty feet or so, the pressure increased infinitessimally.

He was running downhill.

And there was a smell permeating the damp cement lining of the tunnel, something pungent, vaguely fishy....

His head shot up with a start. He was heading south, far beyond the reef of the island. What he smelled was the sea. He was underwater.

And going deeper. Abraxas's transmission center was somewhere in the depths of the ocean, protected against unwanted visitors by a million volts of electricity.

26. 25. 24.

Then he saw them, the doors rising out of the blackness like steel monoliths. He could never beat his way through them without electrocuting himself. Even the ways he'd learned for dealing with electric fences wouldn't work with voltage of the magnitude Abraxas had described.

He was unarmed. He looked around helplessly. A piece of cement, maybe, thrown fast enough, could puncture the steel doors, but how much time would that take? He had lost most of the skin on his hand trying to pry loose a small piece of the flooring in the house. It would take even longer to chip a large enough hunk off a smooth wall. Besides, he thought, the hand was broken now. It would be next to useless. No, there was no way through the doors.

Well, one way....

He swallowed. Kamikaze had never been his forte. If anything but the soles of his shoes touched those doors, he'd fry in seconds.

He jarred to a halt some twenty feet away from the massive doors. From the size of them, he calculated it would take some six thousand pounds of thrust to break through the electrified metal. Given his weight, that meant that he would have to travel at roughly half the speed of sound to slap on enough pressure to break them down.

Nobody, not Remo, not even Chiun, had ever moved so fast even at full height. Remo was doubled over in the squat passageway. He would have to run, skittering, like a crab.

Impossible, he decided. It was too big a risk. He'd never live.

He crouched back into the passageway where he'd come, trying to think of alternatives. He forced his mind to a blank. But this time no legends came, no cryptic stories carrying hidden solutions. There was only Circe's face, crying out in the darkness.

Abraxas had won.

"Help me," Circe had said, her remembered voice echoing a memory of a face flickering in candlelight. He had promised to help. Now she was dead, the promise broken.

"Help me..."

12. 11. 10 seconds.

"What the hell," Remo said. Maybe he had lived long enough, after all.

He spun around quickly, before he had time to change his mind, and charged the doors.

His arms hung at his sides like an ape's, flying upward behind him as he gathered speed. His feet burned, literally. The heels of his shoes gave off thin wisps of smoke. He felt the flesh of his face flattening, distorting with the speed.

8.7.6.

Another image came to mind to replace Circe's face. It was something he'd seen on television once, news footage of an airplane wreck on the Potomac. In the film, a man in a crowd watched from the river's edge as the plane went down. He was an ordinary man, from the looks of him, Mr. Average, football on weekends, maybe a few rounds of cards with the boys on Thursday nights. Nobody would have taken him for a hero.

With the other passersby, he watched the plane crash and burst into flames. Like the others, he heard the screams of the dying. He may have felt pity; the others surely did. Or he may have gone a little crazy at the moment when he took in the sight of the icy river tainted with human blood. No one could say. But what he did at that strange, pivotal moment was so peculiar, so brazen, so unreasonable, that the whole country stopped what it was doing to watch, stunned, as the man did what everyone else had been too sensible to do: He jumped in.

He jumped into the freezing, debris-littered water, without any thought for what would happen during the next moment, to rescue a woman who would have died without him.

He lived.

Remo would not live, he was almost sure of that. He was better trained than the man standing on the river's edge, and in a condition superior to any athlete's. But the odds were still a million to one against him that he would approach the exact speed at exactly the right time, that the impact would be perfect, that the handicaps of a broken hand and excessive air pressure and a snail's posture wouldn't hinder him.

And, somehow, it didn't matter.

Suddenly Remo knew how that man on the river's edge felt, knew as surely as he knew his own name, during that dive into the icy water. There was no heroism involved, no glory, no anticipation, no fear. There was only the air in front of him, and the nerves in his muscles snapping automatically, and the moment he had thrust himself into, pure and free, unconnected with either future or past, moving, soaring, stilled in time.

The doors loomed up ahead of him. Remo grinned. It was going to be one hell of a fine way to go.

Five feet in front of the doors, he propelled himself into a horizontal triple spin. His knees bent instinctively. His hair crackled behind him, lighting the dark tunnel with bright sparks. Then, working purely on reflex, he set himself up for the blow.

The moment had come.

Three. Two. One.

The doors flashed with a boom like a dynamite explosion. Abraxas, seated in his wheelchair facing the camera, looked up in horror.

The room was round and domed. One huge curving window covering half the enclosure looked onto the ocean floor, where primitive dark sting rays fluttered near sponges and red fire coral.

Remo never stopped moving. Rolling into the circular room, he crossed to the curved window in a fraction of a second.

The light on the camera glowed red. Abraxas forced himself to turn toward it. "My— my people," he whispered weakly, his eyes on Remo.

Remo threw himself against the glass, kicking out with every ounce of strength he could muster. All he saw now was Circe's face, smiling at him from the past. So there was a past again, he thought. And a future. He had lived.

The moment was over.

The glass of the windows starred and burst outward with the impact from Remo's hurtling body. The sea, in a fury, rushed into the transmission dome.

He eased his way through the current, his breath suspended. The water, at this depth nearly as dark as the tunnel, burst into blinding light as it reached the electrified doors and set them to fizzling in a wild fireworks display.

In the sudden brightness he saw Abraxas, first screaming in terror as the ocean rushed toward him, then pitching with the force of the water. He gripped the arms of his wheelchair as it sputtered and bled white sparks. His one eye rolled back into its socket, the eyelid quivering spasmodically as the metal plates on his face and neck blistered and bubbled and steamed in the water. The last thing Remo saw of him was the black voice box falling from its brace.

Then the lightning stopped, and a ray floated lazily into the wreckage.

?Chapter Nineteen

Smith was still working frantically at the computer console when Remo arrived back at South Shore. Chiun was standing in the corner, banging at the static-filled television monitor overhead.

"Worthless machine," he grumbled. "No dramas. No news stories. Not even a variety show featuring trained dogs. Only an ugly man being drowned. Probably a commercial."

"What's up?" Remo asked.

"I couldn't scramble the codes in time," Smith said despairingly. "The world got a full ten seconds of Abraxas getting electrocuted underwater. I don't know how the president will ever live this down."

"The president?" Remo said. "What about me? The TV murderer."

"You weren't recognizable," Smith said. "All anyone could see was a blur. How did you get to him, anyway?"

"Well, it was..." he began. But the moment had passed. It was over. It would never be the same again, and no one would ever understand what it had been like. "It was a piece of cake," Remo said.

A printout clacked out of the console. "I've sent word to the president about this mess by tapping into the White House computers. This must be his reply," Smith said. He read the printout silently, his face falling. "Helicopters have been dispatched to take out the delegates. Er, I'll have to explain about the casualty. The advertising man."

Smith raised a pencil. "We'll call it an accident. The mental health of the delegates can be proved to be unstable at this point, I think."

"An accident? An ac—"

"The two of you had better leave the island quickly," Smith said. "No one will believe what they say about Chiun, but I don't want him spotted."

"One does not need to see the Master of Sinanju to recognize his technique."

"Hmmm." Smith looked stricken.

"What's the bad news?"

"Oh, no bad news," Smith said quietly. "The White House press secretary has sent out a bulletin to the news media calling Abraxas's broadcast a hoax. Someone's even confessed to it. Some independent film producer or something."

"Maybe it'll get his name in the papers," Remo said. "But what about the bad vibes Peabody and the other zombies caused? You said the United Nations was up in arms."

Smith took a deep breath. "It seems that problem is solved, too. New terrorists have come in to replace the assassinated leaders. The countries who were accusing other world powers of sabotaging their images are back to working on the terrorist problem again."

"Back to normal, huh?"

"Normal," Smith muttered, more to himself than anyone else.

"Of course it is normal," Chiun said. "Chaos must be maintained to balance order. It is the inviolate principle of Zen. Good and evil, yin and yang. It has existed long before the fraud who called himself Abraxas."

"What about Circe?" Remo asked suddenly.

"I'll arrange to have her buried. We won't be able to attend the funeral, of course."

"Then who will?" Remo asked. "No one even knew her name."

The room fell silent. At last Smith spoke. "It will be a civil burial, I imagine."

"You mean a pauper's burial. Something for the bums nobody cares about."

In the distance, carried over the sea, could be heard the faint drone of helicopters.

"A special plane is coming to take me to Washington," Smith said crisply, dropping the subject of funerals. His silence spoke louder than words. After all, there's nothing anyone can do about her now. "I suggest that the two of you head back toward Folcroft as soon as possible. Can the boat you took me on get you as far as Miami?"

"It'll get us as far as Trinidad," Remo said. "Also Haiti, Puerto Rico, Guadelupe, Barbados, Jamaica..."

"Out of the question," Smith snapped.

"I have a broken hand."

"We'll see to it at Folcroft." He rose to turn off the computer console.

"I also have your plans to rip off the IRS," he said.

Smith looked over to him, gaping. "What are you saying?"

"You heard me. It was happy hour with the dictator of the world, remember? Either Chiun and I cruise the seas until my hand gets better, or the Internal Revenue boys get a little present from Harold W. Smith."

"That's blackmail!" Smith sputtered.

"Hey, nobody hired me for this job because I was a nice guy."

"You're walking a thin edge, Remo."

"Tell it to the judge," Remo said.

Once outside the computer room, he touched Chiun's arm. "You go back to the ship, Little Father," he said. "I've got something to do."

The old man's face creased. "Do not punish yourself, my son. Some things cannot be helped."

"I know," Remo said.

He walked back to the room where Circe lay. Her body had stiffened in death. The long scar on her face stood out darkly against her white skin.

"Enchantress," he said, lifting her gently.

He carried her through the French windows to the grounds outside, breaking easily through the wire fence surrounding South Shore. The clouds had passed, and the night sky was again illuminated by the sparkle of a million tiny stars.

He took her back to the cave where they had loved together. Inside, he dug a grave deep in the cave's recesses, where the scents of moss and the sea belonged.

"Good-bye, Circe," he said, and kissed her on her cold lips. For a moment they seemed to come alive again, warm and loving. But the sensation vanished, and he laid her body to rest.

He covered the burial mound with colored stones and a starfish he found at the ocean's edge. Then he stood back, proud of his work. The grave was a small enough monument to the girl with no name, but it was for him, too. For one day, he knew, he would also be an unknown body with no identity. Like Circe, he possessed none in life. His death, surely, would be just as anonymous as hers.

And so he buried her for both of them.

He walked out of the cave slowly. At the entrance, he thought he heard something and turned back, but the place was silent. Fitting for a tomb.

It was not until he was well away, walking through the mild surf of the darkened beach, that it came to him again, soft but unmistakable, the work of the wind and the sea in the echoes of a rocky inlet marked by a starfish: music.

The cave was singing, and its music was a siren's song.

the end