Skull Duggery

Destroyer 83: Skull Duggery

By Warren Murphy apir

Chapter 1

More than a year after Tiananmen Square, the tanks still rolled through Zhang Zingzong's dreams.

They lunged at him, their caterpillar-tread teeth seeking his feet, his hands, his frail human bones, and he would run. But there would be no place to run, for Zhang was surrounded by T-55 tanks.

It was not the sound of their treads clawing for his bones that awoke Zhang Zingzong at twelve minutes past midnight on a Tuesday evening in the city of New Rochelle, thousands of li from Beijing.

Even as he bolted from sleep, his ears rang with their clatter and the terrible pong polls pong sound that, more than the T-55's, haunted his waking hours.

The room was too bright. Moonlight washing through the thin window curtains was like white neon. It made a distorted triangle pattern on the bedspread and wall.

Blinking his almond eyes, Zhang Zingzong fumbled a pack of cigarettes off the nightstand. He speared out a single one. He took it in his dry mouth. The fibery taste of the American filter scratched his tongue. In disgust, he spit it out and threw off the covers.

Zhang Zingzong perched on the edge of his bed, his brain thick with unresolved dreams, his lungs like concrete wings. As he pulled the nightstand drawer open, he saw why the moonlight was so intense.

It was snowing outside. The flakes fell thickly, like scabs of lunar dust.

A spidery cedar was already heavy with accumulation. Beyond it, housetops were pristine sugar-dusted fantasies.

Zhang Zingzong found his last pack of Panda cigarettes, which he kept sealed in a plastic sandwich bag.

He pulled apart the seal and fished out a single cigarette, noting he was down to four.

He lit it with a Colibri lighter and sucked down the coarse, aromatic tobacco smoke. After two puffs, his head felt clearer and he went to the window.

The ethereal beauty of New Rochelle wrapped in a midnight snowfall held his attention, all thought of Tiananmen Square dispelled by the swirl of countless white flakes.

Then Zhang Zingzong saw the footprints.

They were ordinary footprints. One pair, they broke the even snow on the safe-house walkway like well-spaced intrusions. Although they were fresh, the falling snow was already beginning to soften their cookie-cutter edges.

Something disturbed Zhang Zingzong about the footprints. They appeared to lead from his front door to a long black car that was parked out front. For a moment his concentration shifted from the footprints to the silent car.

Obviously a limousine, it was a model he had never seen. It was not a Lincoln Continental. One had whisked him from the San Francisco airport to the first of many safe houses strung across the United States. He wondered if it was an official car and why his guard had left the house to go to it.

For Zhang Zingzong jumped to a logical conclusion. Except for a single FBI guard, he was the only person in the house. There were footprints leading from the house to the mysterious car; therefore, his guard had gone to the car.

Why had the driver not come to the house? he wondered.

Was something wrong? Would they have to move again, as they had in Paris, San Francisco, and again in that cold ugly city with the odd name, Buffalo? Zhang Zingzong had thought he would be liquidated in Buffalo. Only quick action by the FBI had extracted him from that situation.

Zhang Zingzong was considering getting into street clothes when he took another look at the footprints. His sharp eyes told him something was not right. He looked harder, his eyes squeezing against the harsh moonlight reflecting off the snow until they were like black slits in his white-brown face.

He saw it then. It made the skin of his bare back gather and crawl. He involuntarily worried the short hairs at the back of his neck with a nervous hand.

For the accumulating snow was quickly filling the foot-prints. Soon they would be obliterated. That was not the thing that made a thrill of supernatural fear clutch at Zhang Zingzong's heart, a heart that had not quailed at the sight of tanks rumbling through Tiananmen Square, a heart that had seen what the cruel steel treads could do to human flesh and bone.

What impelled Zhang Zingzong to jump into his jeans and throw on a shirt was the indisputable fact that the footprints furthest from the black limousine were freshest.

Zhang Zingzong did not know what it truly meant. The footsteps were plainly going toward the car. But those nearest it were fast blurring in the gentle downfall. There was no wind, so drifting would not explain the phenomenon.

Except that it meant the owner of them had come to the house from the car. Someone unknown to Zhang Zingzong, perhaps someone unfriendly to Zhang Zingzong.

Zhang Zingzong shoved his sockless feet into his Reeboks and stuffed his wallet into the tight jeans pocket. He breathed through his mouth, in gulps like a beached fish.

Creeping to the closed bedroom door, he put one ear to it. He heard no sounds at first, and then he detected footsteps. Padding footsteps, not like the American FBI agent. Six months on the run had made everything about the man, from his stale breath to his heavy-footed walk, as familiar to Zhang Zingzong as the rose-petal scent of his own wife, who was still in Beijing.

These were not his footsteps. They moved unsurely. Once, a lamp wobbled on a coffee table and stopped suddenly. A leg brushing a table and two quick hands reaching out to prevent the crash of an upset lamp. The image leapt into Zhang Zingzong's mind as clearly as if the bedroom door was transparent.

That settled the last of Zhang Zingzong's wavering indecision. He leapt to the bed and got down on his stomach. Reaching in with both hands, he found his khaki knapsack, the same one that had borne his meager supplies on the long trek to Canton. He yanked it out by the straps, felt the square-edged shape inside, and went to the window as quietly as possible.

The pack on his back, he undid the window latch and shoved the pane up. It rose with barely a scrape, for which Zhang Zingzong was silently grateful.

The storm window was another matter. He did not instantly fathom its construction. Did it lift or pull out? He felt around the edges, seeking a clue, his smoldering Panda dangling from his tight mouth.

He sucked in a breath, tasting tobacco smoke. It reminded him of those precious last four cigarettes.

Zhang Zingzong rushed to the nightstand and grabbed his last pack of Pandas. It was a foolish thing to do, but as it turned out, very fortunate.

Turning from the nightstand, Zhang Zingzong saw the line of light spring to life under the bedroom door.

The boldness of that act told him instantly that his FBI guard was no more.

Zhang Zingzong picked up a wooden chair, and holding it legs-out as he had been taught by the FBI to ward off knifewielding assassins, charged the stubborn storm window.

The stout legs splintered going through the thick glass and the chair back knocked the breath from Zingzong's smokefilled lungs. But it worked. The impact of the chair carried him safely through the glass and into the soft snow.

He jumped up, throwing off shards of glass and dusty dry snowflakes.

His eyes went everywhere, seeking a safe escape route.

The driver's door of the limousine popped open, and an apparition stepped out.

It seemed to be a man garbed entirely in a black uniform. He wore a peaked cap, military style. Its brim shadowed his face as he walked slowly and catlike toward Zhang Zingzong.

He moved with an easy-limbed grace, as if he were in no hurry.

And as he approached, his head lifted, revealing a cruel, certain smile-but only gleaming black where his upper face should be.

"Ting!" Zhang cried. "Stop! Come no closer!"

The man in black quickened his pace.

Zhang stood frozen, transfixed by the half-hidden gaze of the approaching man. His fear was palpable. Unlike the blind tanks, he felt there was no escape from this black devil.

A shot broke his paralysis. It came from inside the house. Hoarse shouting followed. The FBI man! He lived!

"Tom! I out here!"

Another shot. A window broke, and from within the house another voice, guttural and harsh, spoke one word in Chinese: "Sagwa!"

Zhang Zingzong's eyes were pulled from the house back to his stalker. Abandoning his sure pantherlike approach, the man in black raced for the front door, going through it like an ebony arrow.

That was all Zhang Zingzong needed. Slipping and sliding, he ran down the streets of the foreign land of America, where he had thought he would be safe, and was not.

As he stumbled around a corner, he wondered why the guttural voice had called him sagwa. He was a college student.

Chapter 2

His name was Remo and he really, really knew his rice.

"Let me have a bag of that long white, and some brown," he told the blond at the health-food store. "Got any Blue Rose?"

"I never heard of Blue Rose," the blond admitted. She was tall and willowy. Her long straight hair looked as if it had been ironed. Remo didn't think anyone ironed her hair anymore. Not since Janis Joplin.

"Grows only in Thailand," Remo told her. "Has kind of a nutty taste."

"Really?" the blond said, her deep brown eyes growing limpid. "Maybe I can special-order some."

"In that case, put me down for as much as you can get."

"You must like it a lot."

"I eat a lot of rice. A lot of rice. When you eat as much rice as I do, variety is important."

"I'll bet."

"In fact it's critical," Remo went on. "If I had to go on just domestic Carolina, I'm not sure my sanity would survive."

"Sounds tres New Age," the blond prompted.

"It's not," Remo said flatly. "How about Patna? Got any of that?"

"That's another one I never heard of," she admitted. "Are you some kind of rice connoisseur?" "I didn't start out that way," Remo admitted glumly, his eyes scanning the shelves of glass containers with their heaps of hard rice grains. Most of them contained the usual boring domestic lowlands, California Carolo's and Louisiana Rexoro's and Nato's. "Let's see . . .

"How about wild rice?"

Remo frowned. "Not really." He was going to say that wild rice was no more rice than white chocolate was true chocolate. But why bother? Only another rice connoisseur would appreciate the distinction.

"Guess I'll take some short-grain white," Remo said. He pointed at one container and said, "Let me see that one."

The container came down off the shelf and Remo lifted the lid. As the blond watched, he took a pinch of grain to his lips and tasted it carefully.

"Pearl," he pronounced with the authority of a wine taster. "Grown in Java."

The blond's eyes widened in surprise. "You can tell that by tasting?"

"Sure. It has that iron tang. Goes away in the cooking-unless you undercook it, of course."

"I'll bet your wife never, ever undercooks your rice."

"Absolutely correct," Remo said, disposing of the tasted grain in a wicker wastebasket.

The blond acquired a slightly sad pout.

"Since I don't have a wife," Remo finished.

The pout jumped back into her mouth and her lips curved into a smile.

Her reaction was not lost on Remo Williams. He pretended not to notice it as the blond busied herself scooping quantities of rice into clear plastic bags, tying them with twister seals and making small talk.

"Hope you're not planning to carry all these home on foot," she quipped.

Remo jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "That's my car out front."

The blond looked up, her brown eyes curious to see what kind of car a rice authority would drive. Her curiosity froze.

"What car?" she asked.

"The blue one," Remo said absently, scanning rice labels.

"Shouldn't it be waiting for you?"

Remo turned. There was no blue car parked out front.

Came a screeching of tires and a blue Buick Regal suddenly jumped into view, going in the opposite direction it had been pointing when Remo had parked it minutes before.

Hunched behind the wheel was a black man Remo had never seen before.

"Damn!" he bit out. Remo raced for the door as the car picked up speed. The blond followed.

"Should I call 911?" she gasped, her eyes fever-bright.

"No," Remo said grimly. "I'll handle it."

"You will?"

Remo Williams began running. He started off with an easy, joggerlike pace, his bare forearms up, fists not loose-fingered, but tight. His thin, just-this-side-of-cruel mouth was grim.

He hit his stride at forty-five miles an hour, his mouth slightly parted. If he was exerting himself, there was no sign of strain on his high-cheekboned face. Only tight determination showed in his deep-set brown eyes.

He caught up to the Buick at a stoplight.

The driver wore a pea jacket and his hair was razored close at the temples. The name "Shariff " was shaved in bare scalp. He pretended not to notice Remo tapping on his window, so Remo planted his feet the way he had been taught and grasped the door handle firmly, waiting for the red light to change.

The driver-he looked about twenty-two-continued to ignore him as he fiddled with Remo's radio. The arrogance of the youth's nonchalance made Remo's blood boil. He calmed himself, thinking that he was not going to be ignored much longer.

The light turned green.

The driver hit the accelerator.

The rear tires spun, throwing off rubbery clouds of smoke.

The Buick stayed in place. A station wagon directly behind started to honk. With his free hand, Remo waved the car to go around him. His other hand held on to the driver's-side door handle, his feet rooted on the asphalt street as if by Super-Glue.

Remo waited patiently for Shariff to notice him. It was taking a while. The guy jammed the accelerator to the floor. The rear tires spun faster, shaving hot rubber off his treads. They were winter tires, so Remo didn't sweat the loss of tread. Besides which, he'd get satisfaction from the car thief soon enough.

Finally the driver released the gas. He put his nose to the glass and looked up at Remo.

Evidently he was not frightened by what he saw, a skinny dude of indeterminate age wearing-despite the winter chill-a black T-shirt and black chinos, because he rolled down the window.

"You mind?" he said.

"Yes, I do mind," Remo said pleasantly. "You are sitting behind the wheel of my car."

"This?"

"Do you see any other wheel you're sitting behind?"

"This your car?"

"I answered that. Now, you answer this: Why are you driving my car?"

"You weren't using it."

"So you just felt free to steal it, is that it?"

"I ain't stealin' it! Get outta my face with that shit!"

Remo leaned down. He bestowed a friendly disarming smile on the tough's scowling face. "Correct me if I'm mistaken, Shariff, but isn't that a screwdriver where my ignition used to be?"

"What you expect? You forgot to leave me the keys." His tone changed. "How you know my name?"

"ESP," Remo said.

"ESP? How you do that?"

"Do what?"

"That thing you did before. Had the pedal to the metal and I wasn't goin' nowhere. You shoulda been yanked along for the ride. Instead, I'm wastin' time talkin' witchu."

Remo made his voice contrite. "Sorry about that."

"You gonna tell me how you do that, or what?"

"Sinanju."

"Spell it. I wanna buy it, learn it, or steal it. Whatever it takes."

"Actually, it takes about fifteen years and seventy tons of rice just to master the basics. Then you really have to buckle down."

"Don't have that kind of time. Now that I got this fine car, I plan on moving up in the world, Jim."

"The name's Remo."

"Thought you said it was Sinanju."

"I can see why you're stealing cars," Remo sighed. "Sinanju is what I do. It's kinda like . . . fahrvergnugen."

"Say what?"

"You know the TV commercials about being at one with your car?"

"Mighta come across it once or twice," Shariff allowed.

Remo waved another car through the intersection. "Well, Sinanju is kinda like that, except you don't need a car."

"That's good," Shariff said, "because you ain't got a car no more. Now, if you don't mind, I'll be gettin' on my way."

Shariff hit the accelerator. Remo was ready. The black car thief had telegraphed his intentions so loudly he might as well have shouted them.

This time, Remo didn't hold the car in place. He let it accelerate. But he stood his ground, keeping hold of the door handle.

As a result, the Buick described an arc in the slippery snow until it spun into the opposite lane, pointing back toward the health-food store where the blond stood watching him, clutching herself against a shivery wind.

"Why you do that for?" Shariff complained. "Now I'm pointin' the wrong way!"

"Because that way's where my car was parked before you interrupted my life with your sociopathic intrusion," Remo said without malice.

"Was that farfarnugat?"

"You must mean fahrvergnugen, and no, you weren't paying attention. Sinanju is what I do. Fahrvergnugen was only a metaphor."

"Yeah, well, metapor this, sucker!"

A machine pistol jumped into the man's hand.

"Nice Uzi," Remo commented.

"You stupid? This here's a Mac-10. Drive-by heaven."

"All guns look alike to me," Remo said, "and don't tell me you're going to shoot me simply because I want my car back."

"No, I'm gonna shoot you because you're holdin' up my life."

"That's even less of a reason," Remo said, and stuck his index finger into the muzzle of the weapon. It didn't quite fit.

"You think I'm jokin'?" Shariff spat.

"Try me," Remo invited.

Shariff hesitated. There was something in the deep eyes of the skinny guy with the thick wrists, something that said he was not afraid.

"Fahrvergnugen work against guns too?" he wondered.

"Ask Volkswagen," Remo said, forcing his finger into the barrel with sudden violence.

With a crack!, the steel gun barrel split along its top seam clear back to the breech, changing the black man's hesitant expression to one of soul-disturbing doubt. His eyes got wide, then narrowed, then widened again as his thinking processes methodically considered and rejected various explanations for the impossible calamity that had befallen his weapon.

Finally he opened his mouth.

"You broke my Mac!" he wailed. "Why you do that?"

"You were about to shoot me," Remo said politely. "Come back to you?"

"Says who?"

"Every telltale muscle in your dishonest body."

"Prove it. It's your word against mine!"

"And it's my car," Remo said, withdrawing his steel-hard but unexceptional forefinger from the burst gun barrel and placing it to the teenager's forehead.

"What you gonna do with that?" Shariff wanted to know, his eyes trying to focus on the threatening digit. He was getting cross-eyed with the effort.

"That depends."

Shariff gulped. "On what?"

"On how fast you return my car to where I left it."

"Six seconds do you?"

"Make it five."

"Done. Hop in. Give you a lift."

"I'll meet you there. I've seen you drive."

"You got it!"

Remo withdrew his finger. The black man's head snapped around. He fixed his slowly uncrossing eyes on the empty parking space and hit the accelerator.

Four-point-nine seconds later, he screeched to a slippery halt before the store and jumped out of the car as if it were on fire.

He looked back up the street.

"I don't see the dude," he muttered to the blond. "Do you?"

A very, very hard finger tapped him on the shoulder once. He jumped, turning in place.

Standing on the sidewalk, not appearing winded at all, was the white dude whose name was Remo Farfarnugat, or something like that.

"Nice parking job," Remo complimented.

"Thanks."

"You only got one wheel up on the sidewalk."

"I'm going now," Shariff said, starting off.

"Not so fast," Remo said, arresting the youth with a hand on his shoulder.

"Hey, I did whatchu said."

"Let's take it a step further. I need help loading up."

"What do I look like-Jimmy Friggin' Hoffa!"

"Want to compare expressions face-to-face?"

"What you need loaded?"

"In there. Rice. Just put it in the trunk."

The black man went into the store. He came out with his arms full of rice in bags.

Remo opened the trunk for him. He went in for another trip.

"I saw what you did," the blond said.

"No, you didn't," Remo said. But he smiled when he said it.

"Okay, I didn't see what you did. But how did you do it?"

"You've heard of fahrvergnugen?"

"Sure. I drive a Jetta."

"Well, this is super fahrvergnugen."

"Amazing. Teach it to me?"

"No," Remo said flatly.

He felt her hand on his half-bare bicep. "Please?"

Remo looked at her uptilted face, her half-parted, appealing mouth, and considered changing his mind.

He exhaled a long sigh instead.

Gently Remo disengaged the blond's fingers as the youth came out with the last of the rice.

"You sure must eat a lot of rice," Shariff muttered.

"I do," Remo returned. "And if you're standing there with your hand out for a tip, you're gonna freeze in place and the pigeons are going to redecorate your 'do."

"That's the thanks I get for luggin' your stuff all the way to your damn car!" Shariff snarled.

"If you hadn't come along, pal, I'd have done it myself and been home by now."

"Point taken. I'm going."

"Don't stop till you come to a state line or an ocean," Remo called after him.

As they watched Shariff turn a corner, the blond turned to Remo and said bravely, "Where were we?" She bit her lip, waiting for a reply.

Remo said without a trace of feeling one way or the other, "I was about to drive home with my rice and you were about to inventory your cash register for missing twenties. "

One hand flew to her mouth. "My register! Oh, my God!" She bolted into the store.

When, after a moment, she didn't scream, Remo slid behind the wheel and pulled away from the curb. The car bounced violently as the front tire dropped off the curbstone.

Remo pulled into traffic, his face a frown of unhappiness.

He wasn't sure what bothered him more-walking away from an attractive blond or losing a convenient source of rice.

Either way, Remo could never set foot in that store again. She had seen him perform impossible stunts. That made her a security risk. He couldn't jeopardize her life by becoming friendly. Not here in Rye, New York, where he lived and where his boss and the organization for which he worked was headquartered.

There was no telling what Dr. Harold W. Smith would do if Remo Williams started dating a Rye girl. Probably have her eliminated in the name of national security. Anything was possible.

As Remo left the shopping area, he drove past the car thief, who was grumpily trooping down the street. Remo gave him an angry blast of his horn as he drove past, causing the man to jump. Shariff turned, and upon recognizing Remo, dived for cover. His maimed Mac-10 skittered out from under his pea coat.

And that was another thing. Normally Remo would have killed the thief too. But that might raise a ruckus, and the last thing Remo wanted to do was cause problems in Rye. Smith would probably force him to sell his house and relocate. He had had two decades of relocating. He was settled now. Forever, he hoped.

Once, Remo's aspirations had been simple.

He had been a Newark, New Jersey, beat cop. His dreams were limited to a sergeant's desk, a wife, and a nice suburban house with a white picket fence.

Harold W. Smith had changed that forever. It was Smith, in his capacity as director of CURE, a supersecret government organization that Remo had never heard of then and which virtually no one knew of today, who had engineered a frame so perfect that no one dreamed that Remo Williams, honest foot-slogging Remo Williams, had not killed a certain pusher in a certain alley and dropped his badge beside the body so very long ago.

Remo landed on death row so fast he thought the world had been turned upside down. And that was only the beginning. His life-his true life-began after he'd walked the last mile at Trenton State Prison and sat in an electric chair that sent a jolt through every jumping fiber in his body.

It did not kill him. He woke up later in a place called Folcroft Sanitarium with a new face and a choice so stark he wondered if he had died and gone to some sinister catch-22 hell: Join CURE as its enforcement arm or fry for real.

And although Remo Williams had gotten a second chance in life, his dreams of a wife and family and white picket fence were irretrievably lost.

It had taken most of the twenty years he'd worked for CURE to realize-or accept-it.

Twenty years of training in Sinanju, the fahrvergnugen of martial arts. Twenty years that had taught him to conquer all physical limitations, including absolute mastery of the opposite sex.

Under the tutelege of the Master of Sinanju-the last of a long line of professional assassins going back five millennia-Remo had discovered the thirty-seven steps to bringing a woman to blissful ecstasy. The same knowledge that unlocked the power to hold a car in place despite the best efforts of six sparking cylinders sent out subtle sexual signals that most woman responded to on an instinctive level. And that while Remo simply stood there trying to read rice labels.

The earliest steps could bring a woman to exquisite climax-and leave Remo listening to his bed partner's snores.

This was only another reason why, as the years went on, Remo had stopped bothering. What was in it for him?

Pulling into the driveway of the suburban house he had finally acquired after two decades of anonymously liquidating America's enemies, Remo wore an unhappy expression.

He carried the expression into the kitchen, along with the first two bags of rice, thinking he would gladly trade in part of his abilities for a measure of sexual satisfaction and get back a tiny spark of that old dead dream.

From the other room came the sound of a TV. The Master of Sinanju, enjoying his leisure.

Remo went out to the car, his hurt eyes glancing over to the Tudor-style house next door. The home of Harold W. Smith. It reminded him that this was all Smith's fault.

The thought struck him as he lifted the trunk. He shut it with a metallic slam.

Grimly Remo walked up to Smith's front door and rapped the imitation-brass lion's-head knocker against the door.

The door opened, framing a stoop-shouldered man of advanced years and rimless spectacles. Harold W. Smith looked indecisively in both directions, knuckles tightening on the door. "Remo!"

From behind him, a woman's voice asked, "Harold, who is it?"

That decided Smith. He closed the door behind him.

"Remo! What is this?" His croak was anxious.

"I just have one thing to say to you," Remo told him.

Smith adjusted his glasses. "Yes?"

"This is all your fault."

And with that, Remo turned on his heel and went back to finish carrying rice into his empty home. His supersensitive hearing picked up the frumpy voice of Mrs. Smith asking Harold who had been at her front door.

The answer infuriated Remo: "Just the paper boy, dear."

Remo finished putting the brown rice in the brown-rice cabinet, the white rice in the white-rice cabinet, and the exotic varieties in the others. There were five cabinets over the sink. Four of them were packed with rice in various containers.

With any luck, Remo thought glumy, the supply would last three weeks.

Remo left the kitchen to break the bad news to the Master of Sinanju.

"Little Father . . ." he began.

A spindly arm lifted, dropping a silken sleeve.

"Hush," a squeaky voice said. The figure of the Master of Sinanju occupied a floor space no greater than might a German shepherd.

Before a big-screen projection TV, he sat, his legs tucked under one another in the classic Asian lotus position. His kimono was like a monarch butterfly's wings replicated in silk-orange and black and iridescent.

Remo looked to the screen. He was surprised to see, not a British soap opera-Chiun's latest passion-but a documentary of some sort.

And because the Master of Sinanju was not watching a soap opera, Remo knew he could interrupt without risking a minor rebuke such as a compound leg fracture.

"Little Father, we need to talk," he said firmly.

"Remo!" the Master of Sinanju snapped. His wizened face glanced around, his clear hazel eyes annoyed. They were the only youthful aspect of the dusty lunar map of his features. "Not now!"

Remo folded his arms, his face a thundercloud of unhappiness. He thought about storming out, but he knew better than to escalate an argument he could never hope to win.

He wondered what Chiun, reigning Master of Sinanju, found so interesting. As Remo watched, scratchy archival footage from another time flickered on the screen. A crisp narrator's voice was saying, "Amelia Earhart left New Guinea on her fateful voyage on July 1, 1937, and was never seen again. Many theories have been put forth since her plane was lost over the South Pacific, but the mystery has never been solved."

From the Master of Sinanju came a derisive snort and a butterfly fluttering of his exquisitely long fingernails.

The announcer's overfed face appeared on the screen, looking serious. "We at Ten-Thousand-Dollar Reward believe there is no mystery that cannot be solved," he continued. "Somewhere out there is someone who knows what befell the brave aviatrix on her flight into the unknown. The producers of this program have placed ten thousand dollars in a trust fund to be paid to the first person to provide a credible documented account of Amelia Earhart's fate. If you are that person, call the eight-hundred number on this screen. Now!"

Twin puffs of hair floating over the Master of Sinanju's tiny ears like volcanic steam quivered in anticipation.

Remo detected that tiny warning subliminally. He stepped back in time to escape the explosion of butterfly silk that was the Master of Sinanju coming to full boil.

"Quickly, Remo!" Chiun cried, whirling about. "Fetch the telephone device. We must call this number!"

Remo eyed the Master of Sinanju, his arms flung out like wings, his wispy beard barely visible under his anguished mouth.

And he did not move.

"Did you not hear me, deaf one?" Chiun squeaked. Even with his arms upraised, he looked tiny.

"I hear you fine," Remo said calmly. "Just as you heard me when I wanted to talk to you."

"But the reward!" Chiun cried, his squeaky voice twisting with imminent loss.

"You know where the phone is," Remo said casually.

"But I do not know how to work it properly!"

"Just press the buttons, like any lesser mortal," Remo offered, his hands sweeping to the telephone on a tiny table, the only bit of furniture in the bare room other than the big TV.

"Very well, I will," said the Master of Sinanju, lowering his sail-like arms. He shrank to his normal height, which was barely five-feet-five. He padded toward the telephone on white sandals. His feet made an audible sound only because the Master of Sinanju wished to make his unhappiness known to his pupil.

"But I will not share the reward with you," he warned as he lifted the receiver to his face. Remo noticed with a smile-suppressing tightening of his lips that Chiun placed the earpiece to his prim mouth.

"Don't tell me you actually think you can convince the TV people you know what happened to Amelia Earhart," Remo said.

"I do and I will," said Chiun, stabbing push buttons with a long-nailed forefinger. The nails kept getting in the way-the true reason Chiun did not like using telephones.

"They won't believe you," Remo warned.

"I know where the body is."

"You do?" Remo said, a perplexed frown eradicating his smug expression.

"She was not lost, as many believe," Chiun retorted, one eye on the treacherous, nail-snagging keypad. "No storm claimed her craft-unless the sweet wind that has blown through the centuries is a typhoon."

"Sweet wind? I don't think I like where this is going . . . .

Chiun stabbed the O-for-operator button. He pressed too hard, making three zeros and not two. When he finished dialing, a feminine but mechanical voice said, "The number you have called is not a working number."

"But it was just on the television!" Chiun screamed into the earpiece. "I demand that you connect me!"

The voice repeated the message and the Master of Sinanju hung up huffily.

"These devices are impossible!" he shrieked. He turned to Remo, pointing an accusing finger. "You! I must claim that reward! Name your price!"

"Half," Remo said.

"Too much!"

"Three-quarters!"

"You are going high when you should be going low!" Chiun cried in exasperation. He grabbed his decorative hair puffs as if to yank them out by the roots.

"The more you stall, the higher my price goes," Remo told him, enjoying the rare experience of having leverage over the other man to bring him to this sorry sexless state in life.

"Bandit!" Chiun accused.

"Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will cost you ten percent more," Remo sang out.

Chiun turned his back. "I will not be dragged into this insane negotiation," he said huffily.

"Suits me. You'll never see the reward anyway."

Chiun spun about like a fury. "I will so!"

"Prove it to me," Remo invited, folding his arms. "I'll be the judge."

The Master of Sinanju hesitated. His lifted chin dropped, making the wispy tendril of a beard jump out against his orange-and-black kimono. "How do I know you will not call these people when my back is turned, and claim the reward for yourself?"

"Good point," Remo said. "Why don't we just forget the whole thing?"

Chiun stamped one foot like a petulant child. "I will not! The reward is rightfully mine."

"Why?"

"Because we eliminated the dirty spy of a woman."

Despite the earlier hint, Remo was taken aback by the Master of Sinanju's venomous pronouncement.

"One of your ancestors killed Amelia Earhart?" he blurted out.

"No," said Chiun.

"That's a relief," said Remo. "For a minute I-"

"I did," added Chiun.

"You!"

"It was during a prelude to the Second Idiocy of the Barbarians," Chiun explained. Remo recognized the oft-used euphemism for World War II. "This woman was a spy, working for the Americans."

"Who did you work for?" Remo wondered.

"Why, those she intended to spy upon, of course."

"Not the Japanese?" Remo demanded.

"Possibly," Chiun said in an evasive voice.

"You worked for the Japanese?" Remo said, aghast.

"I said possibly," Chiun admitted in a quieter voice. "It was many years ago."

"The same sneaky, treacherous, unworthy Japanese you revile at every opportunity?"

"Not all Japanese are to be described so harshly," Chiun allowed. "There are a few who are worthy-for Japanese."

"I thought you hated the Japanese."

"I do not hate their money," Chiun retorted, gathering up his autumnal kimono sleeves.

"You don't hate anyone's money," Remo snapped. "You worked for the Japanese. The people who conquered Korea, so-called land of eternal perfection?"

"It was a special case," Chiun said, tight voiced.

"So tell me the story," Remo invited, toeing a tatami mat in front of him. He sat down, folding his legs, and assumed a patient expression.

The Master of Sinanju looked to the telephone. His many wrinkles bunched together in frustration. Then he stalked back to the television and assumed his own mat. He sat down with his back to his pupil.

Remo vented a sigh, got up, and brought his mat around. When he resumed his seat, Chiun wore an inscrutable expression, but his eyes gleamed with his minor victory.

"This was in the starving years," began the Master of Sinanju in a doleful voice. "There was little food. The babies were hungry from sunup to sundown. The Chinese were at war with the Japanese and the Japanese vexed the Chinese. For the House of Sinanju, the finest assassins known to history, there was no work from either of them. I was young then-not that I am not young still-but younger, not yet having seen the majority of the years I have so far enjoyed."

"Get to it," Remo said.

"The emperor of Japan had heard of an American woman who sought to spy in his empire. Word was sent to the village of Sinanju. A man came on foot, and because he was Japanese, he was not allowed to tread our sacred soil."

"Mud, you mean," said Remo, who had been to Chiun's ancestral home, a pitiful mud flat on the West Korea Bay, where the men fished and the fish hid. The women did most of the work of feeding the village. The Masters of Sinanju-a line that stretched back five thousand years-supported them all by working as royal assassins to the great thrones of history.

"I treated with this man and accepted the gold that paid for the flying woman's life," Chiun continued. "That was the difficult part. Accepting Japanese gold. I was forced to wash it. Twice."

"Cut to the chase, will you, Chiun?"

"It was a simple matter then to journey to a place where the aircraft was being refueled and gain passage."

"You were a passenger on Amelia Earhart's last flight?"

"She did not know that-until it was too late."

Remo winced. "So what happened?"

"She experienced what might be called mechanical difficulties and, in the parlance of that time, ditched in the ocean."

"Then?"

"The unfortunate woman drowned, along with her craft."

"And you?"

Chiun's feathery eyebrows shot up. "Need you ask? I did not drown, and therefore I am here to pass on the heritage of the House of Sinanju to you, its latest heir. Ingrate."

"You killed Amelia Earhart," Remo whispered in shock.

Chiun shook his aged head. "No, we killed Amelia Earhart, for it is written in the Book of Sinanju that each Master builds on the work of the Masters who came before him, and each Master's achievements are a gift to later generations. You are Sinanju, Remo. Therefore you have claim to the credit, and the reward. Ten percent and not a penny more!" Chiun said quickly.

"No deal," Remo shot back. "And let's stick to the subject."

"This is the subject."

"No, it isn't. I came in here to talk about my lousy sex life."

"How can something that does not exist be lousy?" Chiun pointed out.

"Exactly."

"I am prepared to talk to you about your lousy sex life, Remo," Chiun offered. "Within the bounds of good taste, of course."

"And for a price," Remo said acidly.

"Five percent of your ten percent. Agreed?"

"No. I don't want to talk about my sex life anymore."

"Your lousy sex life," Chiun corrected.

"My lousy sex life," Remo growled. "I want to talk about you, and what you did before you worked for America."

"I do not work for America. I work for Emperor Smith. Remember this. One does not work for nations, for they shift boundaries with the changing times and speak with no single voice. But an emperor is a different matter."

"Before America, who?"

"Immediately before America, I worked for no one. You know that story, Remo. There was no work. I had no heir, for my wicked nephew, Nuihc, had become a renegade. The village of Sinanju had fallen on evil times. I could find no worthy heir and so I resigned myself to living out the natural span of my years knowing that I was the last Master of Sinanju."

"It wasn't always that way," Remo countered. "If you worked for the Japanese in the thirties, you must have worked for other clients. Fess up. Who?"

Chiun stroked his wispy beard. "Why do you suddenly wish to know this, Remo? We have known each other for many years. Never before have you asked me about my past."

"I never gave it much thought before," Remo admitted. "So who else did you kill?"

"We," Chiun corrected.

"Who? Gandhi?"

"The price was too low and I was too proud to work cheap," Chiun said flatly. "Amateurs got that one."

"Who else?" Remo pressed.

"There were so many. I cannot recall their names," Chiun said evasively.

"Okay, let's try it from another angle. Other than the Japanese, who did you work for?"

"I had clients in my young days, it is true. Some minor princes. No one you would know."

"Hitler?"

"That posturing Austrian?" Chiun spat. "Too late, I was assigned to eradicate that one. I was cheated of my fee."

"By the British or the Russians?"

"By the victim. He heard of my approach and immolated himself. The coward." "I'm not hearing names," Remo said evenly.

"You would not recognize many of them. You are too young. They were before your time."

"Names. C'mon. You're hiding something. For years you've been regaling me with stories of previous Masters, but hardly any of your own. Who'd you work for before America?"

"A Chinese," Chiun admitted.

"Not the thieving Chinese, scourge of the Sinanju collection agency? The one who defaulted on a fifteen-dollar fee in 1421?"

"Not the Chinese. A Chinese. An individual. A mandarin."

"Not an emperor?"

"He was ambitious. This was before the Communists, of course."

"Would I know of him?"

"Not under his true name. But he was known to the West under a silly name, Fu Achoo, or some such nonsense."

Remo made a face. "Fu . . . you can't mean Fu Manchu?"

"See? Even you understand what a ridiculous name it is. It was that lunatic British scribbler's fault. He disseminated all manner of lies and slanders about me."

"You? What are you talking about? I read those books as a kid. I don't remember any Korean assassins in them."

"Precisely, Remo. He changed everything willy-nilly. Where the Master of Sinanju was at work, he improvised Dacoits. I think that was in The Ears of Fu Achoo. Dacoits are always cutting their own fingers off by accident. Poisonous spiders, venomous scorpions, and other insects abound in those ridiculous books. But not one single Korean. I ended up on the cutting-room floor."

"You're mixing your media, but I get what you say."

"It was that so-called author who was mixed up. Imagine a Chinese named Fu Manchu. The Manchus are not even Chinese. They are nomads, like the Mongols. It would be like naming you Remo Apache."

"Little Father, I think you're pulling my leg. Fu Manchu was a fictitious character. He never existed."

"His gold existed," Chiun shot back.

"I don't believe you. You're just telling me this to hide the truth."

"Then do not believe me," Chiun sniffed. "Your lack of faith does not change the truth, only your perception of what is truth and what is falsehood."

"So what happened to this alleged client?"

"He died. Then the hard days began. It was very long ago, and the memories unpleasant. Not like the bird woman,

Amelia. Now, that was a magnificent assassination, the first in the Sinanju line to extinguish both an aircraft and its pilot with a single blow. You see, I attacked the-"

"Save it. It's a depressing thought."

"To the victim, perhaps. But we are Sinanju, Remo. We are never the victim."

Remo's eye sought the floor. He was quiet for several minutes. Presently he lifted his head.

"I am unhappy, Little Father."

"Yes?"

"I am unhappy with Smith."

"The purpose of an emperor is not to make his assassin happy," Chiun intoned solemnly, "only wealthy. It will pass."

"I am unhappy with Sinanju."

"What! Unhappy with the near-perfection of existence? How can this be so?"

"Sinanju has given me many gifts, Little Father," Remo admitted. "The gift of oneness, of correct breathing, of knowing myself more fully than I ever dreamed possible."

"For which you should fall to your knees before me."

"It has also robbed me of my dreams."

"Dreams are for those who sleep," Chiun said joyously. "You have been awakened, Remo Williams. Rejoice in that." His arms lifted in benediction.

"Once I dreamed of a house such as this," Remo said quietly.

"Which you now have-thanks to Sinanju."

"And a wife."

"Take as many as you wish. But keep them in the attic, for they will undoubtedly prattle and complain all day long."

"And children."

Chiun touched Remo's knee tenderly. "You have a daughter. True, this is not exactly a cause for rejoicing, for if the lean times come again, she will be among the first to be sent home to the sea. For as you know, in times of approaching famine, the female babies are always drowned first. The males only after the famine has struck. This way-"

"A daughter born to me by a woman who will not have me because the work I do is too dangerous," Remo interjected. "A daughter I haven't seen in years."

"When you have a son, it will be different. We will train him together, you and I."

"How can I have a son if there is no pleasure in sex for me? How can I have a wife or a family with the work we do, the dangers we face?"

"These are problems each Master must solve in his own way," Chiun said with a dismissive wave.

"But what is my way? I feel empty. I met a woman today, at the rice store. She was interested in me. But I had to walk away from her. She saw me do stuff. And you know how Smith is about security."

"This is bad," Chiun grumbled.

"You understand?"

"Of course. This means I will have to buy the rice from now on. Oh Remo, how could you be so careless?"

"Somebody stole my car," Remo said, annoyed.

"An unworthy excuse. You could have walked the fifteen miles home."

"I walked away from love because I knew it would be too much trouble," Remo said with intensity. "I walked away because I knew the sex would be boring. I need someone to fill the emptiness in my life, and I walked away. Don't you see? I've given up."

"Do you think a woman could fill that void?"

"If I stop believing that one could, I lose my dream."

Chiun considered. "I might be able to show you how to enjoy sex once more."

"For a price," Remo and Chiun said together. Neither man laughed.

"I'll make the call," Remo said instantly.

He got to his feet, but before he took a single step, the phone rang.

Frowning, Remo picked it up. It was either Harold W. Smith or an insurance salesman, he knew. He hoped it was the latter. Smith was a really dull conversationalist.

"Remo," Harold Smith said peevishly. "I need you. At once."

"You have me mistaken for the paper boy." Remo slammed the receiver down. It rang again before he could dial the eight-hundred number.

"Cut it out, Smith!" Remo snapped, hanging up again. This time it ran again instantly. Remo hung up again and the phone kept ringing.

"How are you doing that?" Remo demanded hotly.

"Phone trap."

"What's that?"

"A lever on the side of my telephone," Smith explained. "It prevents the connection from being severed at your end. The phone company uses them to trace obscene phone callers. "

"So you're going to hold my phone hostage until I do what you say, is that it?"

"I have an assignment for you," Smith said, his voice like lemons being tortured of their inmost juices.

"Stuff it!" Remo said, pulling the phone cord from the wallboard.

"Auugh!" cried the Master of Sinanju. "My reward!"

"Damn!" said Remo, suddenly remembering why he had gone to the telephone in the first place.

"For that," Chiun cried, flouncing toward the door, "you will suffer from a lousy sex life to the end of your miserable days!"

"Where are you going?" Remo called after him.

"To see Emperor Smith. I will have him place the telephone call. I should have considered this in the first place."

"Don't forget my ten percent," Remo called over the sound of the slamming door.

Chapter 3

Zhang Zingzong was holding a pair of queens.

He took a drag on a Panda, expelling smoke out of the side of his mouth. He had lost all his pocket money to the corpulent dealer in the first ten minutes of the poker game. His traveler's checks had gone next. The last one lay in the pot.

Zhang Zingzong eyed it narrowly, his heart racing. The checks had gotten him as far as New York's noisy Chinatown, where he blended in with these alien Chinese who spoke Mandarin in Hong Kong accents or no Chinese at all.

A waiter at the Golden Pagoda restaurant told him where to find the poker game when Zhang Zingzong doubled his tip. It proved to be in the back of the very same Division Street restaurant. Zhang had only to flash his travelerr's checks to be admitted.

Now, scarcely an hour later, his throat burning with a combination of anxiety-produced heartburn and pepper chicken, Zhang looked from his two queens to the last traveler's check, without which he would starve, even in Chinatown.

Zhang gave up three cards, hoping for a full house.

He got a jack, a deuce, and a four back.

Spitting out a harsh curse, he slapped his hand down on the table.

The dealer eyed it with humor. The others broke into amused laughter, displaying gold-filled teeth. It made Zhang wonder if Chinese-Americans had been born with ivory teeth that wore away, revealing their gold hearts.

"You fold?" the corpulent dealer said gruffly.

"I have no more money," Zhang admitted.

"What in sack?"

Zhang's eyes went to the knapsack hanging off the back of his chair so fast the others exchanged glances, taking note of his expression.

"All I have in world," Zhang said quietly, attempting to keep his face stiff.

"Then you fold?"

A drop of hot ash fell from the Panda dangling from Zhang's loose mouth as he considered his answer. With a hoarse cry, he brushed the ash aside before it burned through his jeans.

The cigarette dropped from his mouth. Reflexively, Zhang reached for the pack in his shirt pocket.

The bicycling panda on the package front caught his eye as he fished a cigarette out.

"I have these," Zhang said suddenly. "Genuine Chinese cigarettes. Brought from Beijing." Which was a lie. He'd got them in Hong Kong.

"You are Beijing man?" the dealer asked intently.

"Yes," Zhang admitted.

"You were in Tiananmen?"

"I was."

"You very brave man. These cigarettes not worth squat. But we let you play one more hand."

"Thank you," Zhang said in his formal English. He had found it easier to communicate with the men in English, not their odd Chinese. It was an irony not lost on Zhang Zingzong.

The dealer shuffled the cards. Zhang cut the deck. The cards started whispering around the table, forming four silent piles.

When the remaining deck was laid down, Zhang picked up his cards. They had fallen in order, by suit, which Zhang took to mean good fortune. The king and queen of clubs nestled in his hand.

He got rid of two, picking up a pair of kings. That gave him three of a kind.

"I call," Zhang said.

The dealer folded. So did the man to his right. Zhang grinned. Then the man on the left laid down a royal flush.

Zhang quietly placed his cards on the table. His face was a mask of old tallow.

"You fold now?" he was asked.

"I fold," Zhang said sadly.

"Too bad, Tiananmen man. But you live. Consider that the gods have smiled upon you. You survive Tiananmen and are in US now. Very good fortune."

Smiling woodenly, Zhang reached for his knapsack. He stood up, and noticing the fallen Panda, stooped to pick it up.

The winner reached out to claim the pot. He grabbed up the pack of Pandas with one hand. The soft pack crushed too easily, and his winning smile fell apart.

"Hey, you! Tiananmen man! Only two cigarettes here."

"Sorry. All I have left." "No good! No good! You cheat!"

"I do not cheat," Zhang snapped back. "Those all I had."

"Maybe sack have something I like," the winner said, getting to his feet. He was tall and reedy, his muscles hard from physical labor.

Zhang backed away, clutching his knapsack. "I go now."

"No!"

Zhang bolted for the beaded curtain that led back into the restaurant dining area.

Behind him, chair legs scraped. Feet made whetting sounds on the tile floor. High singsong shouts followed him.

Zhang Zingzong raced into the restaurant, nearly colliding with a busboy. A waiter reached out for him. Zhang swerved just in time, but a dangling knapsack strap snagged a chair. The chair tripped Zhang. He went down.

Fiercely he jerked at the strap. It tore. He bounced to his feet, looking everywhere, seeking the quickest escape. Fear disoriented him long enough for a thick-bodied Chinese behind the cash register to grab him by the shirt collar.

Zhang tried to punch him back, but he kept Zhang before him.

The others caught up and surrounded Zhang Zingzong, hurling abuse at him.

"Cheat!"

"Robber!"

"Chark!"

Zhang Zingzong hung his head and said nothing. Tears started to flow.

The knapsack was pulled from his fingers. He did not resist. What was the use of resisting? He had no money. Where could he go?

The dealer snapped open the flap and rummaged through the knapsack, pulling out and dropping to the floor odd bits of Zhang's clothing.

Then his eyes went wide with interest.

"Ah," he breathed. He pulled out the ornate teakwood box.

The others stepped closer, their faces trembling with excitement. They recognized that this was no tourist-shop knickknack. The workmanship was exquisite, the carvings fine, delicate.

"Where you get this?" the dealer demanded.

Zhang said nothing. He brushed a tear from one downcast eye.

"It is very fine," the dealer said quietly.

"It belongs to China," said Zhang Zingzong.

"It is mine now," the winner said, grinning.

"This is not fair!" Zhang burst out. "It is worth much more than pack of cigarettes!" As soon as he had said it, Zhang regretted his hasty words.

The dealer nodded to one of the others. He went into the back room and returned with the crumpled pack of Pandas. He stuffed them into Zhang's shirt pocket.

Zhang paid no heed. He was watching the dealer fiddle with the lid of the teakwood box. His blunt fingers pressing and worrying at different carvings, coming close to the secret catch, but never quite engaging it.

"How does this box open?" the dealer demanded, looking up in frustration.

"It does not open. It is solid," Zhang told him flatly.

The dealer looked back to the box. He shook it. It felt solid. Still, he refused to accept Zhang's word and resumed fingering the designs, seeking for the box's secret.

The catch click was like a knife in Zhang Zingzong's stomach. The lid popped up unexpectedly.

The dealer almost dropped the box, he was taken so much by surprise.

He peered into the box, his black eyes like oblique knife wounds in his waxy face.

Only the dealer was in a position to see the contents of the box. He saw them for less than a second. The image of the box's contents registered and his thin eyes seemed to explode like twin blasts of surprise.

This time he did drop the box.

Zhang Zingzong dived for it, his captured shirt collar tearing free with the violence of his lunge, leaving the man who had been holding him with only a ragged strip of cloth.

Zhang scooped up the box, pushed the contents back inside, and locked the lid in one breathless motion. He rolled out of the reach of grasping hands. A foot lashed out, scraping skin off his temple. The glancing blow barely slowed him down.

Zhang Zingzong plunged for a table. He upended it. The others recoiled from the crash of platters and flying knives and forks and chopsticks.

Zhang was halfway to the door when it suddenly opened and he found himself looking into the deadliest eyes he had ever seen.

They resembled gray agates, hard and clear. They were not Chinese eyes, although they were Asian. The face that served as their setting was like a parchment death mask.

Zhang stopped dead in his tracks, uncertain what to do.

"You are Zhang Zingzong?" the vision asked in querulous but flawless Mandarin.

"S-Shi," he breathed.

"I am the Master of Sinanju," the Asian intoned, lifting his arms as if in blessing. His draperylike sleeves expanded like wings. He resembled a monarch butterfly emerging from the chrysalis of a human mummy.

"I . . . I do not understand," Zhang stuttered.

"Know this, Zhang Zingzong," the being who called himself the Master of Sinanju said. "As long as you are under my protection, no harm will befall you."

Zhang Zingzong had nothing to say to that.

Behind him, the others were stepping around the upturned tables, their padding feet cracking broken platters into smaller pieces of porcelain.

A voice called out. The dealer's smoky voice.

"Who are you, old turtle?"

In perfect Cantonese, the Master of Sinanju replied:

"I have spoken my title. My name does not matter."

"This isn't your quarrel," he spat. "Go now!"

The Master of Sinanju beckoned to Zhang, saying, "Come to my side, Zhang Zingzong."

Zhang took a single step forward. A fist grabbed a bunch of his shirtback, stopping him.

"I cannot," Zhang whispered.

"Then I will come to you," said the Master of Sinanju.

And with a cry like a screaming bird of prey, the Master of Sinanju spread his monarch wings further and took to the air.

Later, Zhang Zingzong realized that the Master of Sinanju had not sprouted wings. But the combination of outspread arms and wild cry created the illusion of a descending winged creature.

Zhang recoiled in fear of the flapping apparition.

The fist at his back released him. A man grunted. Another screamed in pain. A table splintered under the sudden impact of a falling body. Glass broke.

Zhang looked toward the sounds. He caught a sudden vision of a man flying toward himself at full speed. The man's two converging faces met in a splintering of suddenly red glass.

The man had been sent into a wall mirror, Zhang realized.

Zhang straightened slowly, his jaw hanging open. All around him, his erstwhile captors sprawled in various states of ruin.

The butterfly-garbed Master of Sinanju stood before him, his hands seeking one another in the closing sleeves of his kimono.

"Who are these men?" he asked coldly.

"Cheaters!" Zhang said quickly. "They took all my money in a crooked card game."

"He lies," a voice mumbled brokenly. "He cheated us."

A sandal whipped out, silencing the voice that had spoken.

"Gather your things," instructed the Master of Sinanju, eyeing the clumped form he had just silenced.

Hastily Zhang Zingzong found his knapsack. He stuffed the teakwood box inside, covering it with discarded bits of clothing.

"You have all your possessions?" the Master of Sinanju asked.

"Not my money. In the back."

"Then get your money, Zhang Zingzong."

Zhang went to the back. There he scooped up the pot, taking not only his money but also that belonging to the others. He hesitated, his eyes furtive.

Then he slipped out the back way, into an alley, and pelted toward the street.

He did not know who this Master of Sinanju was, but he could trust no one and would trust no one.

As he ran, some inner voice caused him to look behind him.

Like some vampire, the Master of Sinanju was pursuing him. Panting, Zhang ducked into a stinking alley. He slid on the packed snow, pulled himself up, and kept running.

There was an opening at the other end.

He looked behind him. There was no sign of the black-and-gold-silk-clad figure. But Zhang knew he would never relent. His own footprints in the snow betrayed the route of his escape.

He redoubled his efforts, but then, at the alley's opposite end, the Master of Sinanju floated down, silent, majestic, and so utterly inescapable that Zhang Zingzong simply gave up.

He stopped in his tracks and watched as the diminutive figure of the old Korean approached him, saying, "Why did you run, Chinese? Are you so ignorant that you do not know that there is no escape from Sinanju?"

Zhang had nothing to say to that. He wondered who had betrayed him this time.

Chapter 4

Remo Williams calmed down after the first hour. He spent the second watching TV. By the end of the third hour he was beginning to wonder what was keeping Chiun.

Maybe Smith had let Chiun make his call. He couldn't imagine security-conscious Harold W. Smith allowing the Master of Sinanju to make a call that would undoubtedly lead to Chiun going on television, confessing to the assassination of Amelia Earhart, and probably making cryptic allusions to his secret work for America. But anything was possible these days.

Well into hour four, Remo couldn't resist pulling aside a living-room curtain and looking across the carport to the window of Smith's dining room.

Smith and his wife were seated at a table, eating. Smith looked more like he was taking castor oil by spoon, but that meant little. It was a permanent Harold Smith expression.

Remo saw no sign of Chiun.

Concerned, he reached for the telephone, remembered it was out of commission, and went out the front door instead. He crossed over to Smith's front door, his footprints barely denting the snow.

Remo hammered on the brass lion's-head knocker until the paint began to crack around the its edges.

The door opened a crack. Harold Smith peered out like a spinster with recurring nightmares of the Boston Strangler.

"Remo!" he whispered. "What are you doing here?"

"Looking for Chiun. Where is he?"

Smith paled. "He's not with you?"

"No. Last I heard, he was about to barge into your life."

"That was hours ago. I gave him his assignment."

"Damn," Remo said. "He must have gone without me." Responding to Smith's puzzled expression, Remo added; "We had a fight."

"He mentioned you've been acting up."

"Acting up!" Remo exploded. "Last Chiun was talking, he wanted to go on the Ten-Thousand-Dollar Reward show and confess to bumping off Amelia Earhart."

"He did mention it," Smith admitted. "Do you suppose it was true?"

"I don't know. He also claimed he'd once worked for Fu Manchu. "

"A fictitious character, if I remember my childhood reading."

"You read them too?" Remo asked in surprise. "I always thought spreadsheets were your idea of literary excitement."

Smith said nothing.

"Where can I find him?" Remo said at last.

"New Rochelle. There was an attack on a safe house overnight. A Chinese student who escaped the Tiananmen Square demonstrations is missing, his guard murdered. You and Chiun were to look into it."

"Give me the address," Remo said in exasperation.

Smith rattled off an address from memory, then said, "This is very important."

"It must be, if Chiun didn't nail you for that reward," Remo said sourly.

"I promised to match it if he dropped the matter."

"Let me guess-he made you double it."

"Actually, it was three times the amount. I considered it cheap under the circumstances."

"It would have to be, if you agreed to it," Remo said acidly, walking away. He got behind the wheel of his car and sent it squealing out of the driveway. It was his way of saying good-bye to Harold Smith, the architect of his troubles.

The front yard of the house was cordoned off with yellow barrier tape marked with the letters "FBI."

Remo fumbled through his wallet for an FBI ID, glanced at it to fix his new last name in his mind, and presented himself at the front door.

"Who are you?" A crew-cut agent demanded. He looked like an extra from a 1950's cop show.

"Remo Quiller, special agent."

"Since when?" the agent said, noting Remo's casual attire.

"This is my day off. Had a call to get right over here."

"We've already processed the scene."

"Fine," Remo said, pushing the man aside. "I won't have to keep you long. What happened?"

There was an outline on the floor, in white tape. No blood.

"We had a Chinese student stashed here," the agent told Remo. "Name's Zhang Zingzong. He was snatched last night. Perpetrators unknown. We lost a good man."

"Shot?" Remo asked.

The agent shook his head. "No obvious wounds. Forensics has him now."

Looking around the room, Remo said, "We had a special expert brought in from Washington. I thought I'd find him here."

"You mean the gook?"

Remo turned. "You call him that to his face?"

"Of course not."

"That explains why you're still breathing," Remo said. "Where is he?"

"Don't know. He looked around, then left in a hurry."

"Say where he was going?"

"No, but he was very interested in the agent's body."

"Interested? How?"

The agent unwrapped a stick of Beeman's gum he took from a pocket. "Looked him over quite a while. I tried to stop him, but he nearly took my head off."

"He say anything that would give me a direction to look?"

"Yeah. Whispered something while he was feeling Tom's throat."

"Who's Tom?"

"Chief agent on the detail."

"So what did he say?"

The gum went into his mouth. "Nothing. He was dead."

"I meant Chiun."

"It sounded like 'Sin Achoo.' "

"You wouldn't mean 'Fu Achoo,' would you?" Remo asked slowly.

"I might," the agent said, his words tangling in his gum. "Sounded like 'Sin Achoo' to me."

Remo started. "Not 'Sinanju'?"

"That might've been it. Hard to say. He talked funny."

"I thought you FBI agents were supposed to be trained observers," Remo challenged.

"And I thought you were supposed to be one of us," the agent said, his voice hardening. "Let me see that ID again."

"Here," Remo said, flashing his FBI ID. He lifted it to the agent's face. The FBI man leaned into the card, never seeing Remo's hand reach around to the back of his neck. If he felt the steellike fingers that paralyzed critical spinal nerves, he said nothing about it on the way down to the polished pine floor.

Remo left him snoring out of one nostril. The other was mashed flat against the floor.

Remo drove around the neighborhood aimlessly, wondering what the heck was going on. Chiun had let slip the word "Sinanju" while examining a dead FBI agent. That was not like Chiun. Had it meant he was going back to the village of Sinanju without Remo? It hardly seemed likely. He was upset, but not that upset.

Finally Remo pulled up at a Seven-eleven and plunked quarters into a pay phone. He pressed the one button until he heard ringing. After twenty years of using codes and phone numbers that changed every week, it was a relief to finally have a constant code that Remo couldn't forget. Just press one until a connection was established.

Smith answered. His voice was low and furtive.

"Speak louder," Remo shouted. "The connection must be bad."

"The connection is fine," Smith whispered back. "I'm in the bathroom."

"Sorry to intrude," Remo said dryly.

"It's not that. I am home, so I am using my briefcase phone."

"Oh, right," Remo said, rolling his eyes. "Look," he continued, "I've just been to the so-called safe house. Chiun isn't there. No one knows where he went."

"The missing student must be located," Smith said urgently. A dim voice intruded, calling, "Harold. Who are you talking to in there?"

"No one dear," Smith called guiltily. The sound of a flushing toilet drowned out Smith's next words.

"What did you say?" Remo asked wearily.

"This is an important assignment."

"America is full of Chinese students," Remo retorted. "What's so special about this one?"

"Later," Smith hissed. "Find Chiun or find that student."

"How about I find them both?"

"Yes, yes, of course."

"Any ideas where I should look?"

"None."

"I can't drive in circles for hours," Remo pointed out.

"And you will not find them talking to me from a pay phone," Smith rejoined.

Remo hung up. He got no satisfaction from it, the click of Smith's line going dead a split second before his receiver exploded all over the pay-phone station.

Remo got back behind the wheel of his car and pulled out of the parking lot, wondering where the hell Chiun had gotten to.

Chapter 5

It began to snow again.

The snowfall started gently, but soon quickened into a furious windblown storm, freshening the already gray snow of the previous night's fall and then resculpturing its undulant planes into sharp, angular drifts.

Disgusted, Remo abandoned his pointless cruising of the New Rochelle streets and pointed his car toward the safe house.

Maybe Chiun had returned there, Remo thought.

He drove at a seemingly reckless pace, skidding into turns on locked wheels, bringing his car out of numerous skids with controlled elegance. He was one with his Buick, Volkswagen notwithstanding.

Less than twenty minutes later, Remo pulled up before the safe house. He noticed the low-slung black limo parked out front, and immediately a frown gathered in wrinkles on his brow.

Remo had once been a police officer and still had a cop's habit of noting the makes of suspicious vehicles.

He didn't recognize the limo, even though its massive square grille was pointing toward him. There was no front bumper-just two banks of headlights.

Remo stepped from his car, glancing toward the driver's side of the windshield.

The driver quickly lowered the sun visor, cutting off a clear view of his face. Then he honked his horn. Twice, in an obvious signal.

Remo strode up to the driver's side of the car and peered in, noticing the shiny black buttons of a chauffeur's uniform. Then he saw the man's face.

"Hate to break this to you, pal," Remo said dryly, "but Halloween was two months ago."

The driver looked up, displaying a polished black domino. It was molded to his features so that only his lower face showed. He looked like Dracula's chauffeur. Remo almost laughed in his face.

"Go away," the driver said in a thick Asian accent.

"C'mon," Remo said impatiently, knocking on the glass.

"I said, go away!"

Remo's retort froze in his mouth. There was something familiar about the man's voice. He looked closer. The eye holes in his onyx mask were cut in oblique slashes. The dark eyes behind them were almond-shaped. Chinese, Remo thought.

"I don't suppose you're the missing student?" Remo ventured.

Behind Remo, the safe-house door opened. Remo started to turn.

The driver's door opened so quickly Remo had to dance out of its way. He landed on one toe, the other poised to regain his balance on the slippery snow.

His arms went up automatically, ready to defend himself. His foot never touched the ground. Before Remo could react, he was flying.

There was no preattack warning, no jolt of impact. Whatever had happened, Remo had been taken at the absolute moment of imbalance.

He landed headfirst in a snowdrift.

Furious, Remo pulled his head free, shaking off wet snow. He leapt to his feet and whirled, ready to reply to a followup attack.

Instead, the chauffeur was calmly closing the rear limo door on a stooping figure. Remo caught a momentary image of a tall, lean man in a greatcoat and Russian-style fur cap before he disappeared into the limousine interior. The door closed. Grinning with fierce anticipation, Remo flashed for the chauffeur's jet-black back.

Sensing Remo's approach, the limber figure turned. He dropped into what Remo instantly recognized as a praying-mantis-style kung-fu stance. Remo's grin widened. He no more feared kung fu than he did flying Popsicle sticks.

Remo raised a tight fist. His other hand, straight-fingered as a spear, floated up to parry any thrust.

"This will be over in a second, Kung Fu," Remo taunted.

It was.

Remo let fly with his fist. But there was nothing to connect with. His fist slashed through thin air, and kept going. It carried him with it.

Remo landed on his hands and knees. He rolled into his back, his feet up to ward off an overhead attack.

The kung-fu man was coming out of his crouch. The splash of trampled snow at his feet told Remo the story. The diminutive man had slipped between Remo's legs as he had attacked.

It was unbelievable. No kung-fu dancer was that good.

"You're good pal," Remo said tightly.

"I'm the best," the other returned arrogantly. His voice carried a familiar lilt. Remo tried to place it. Somehow, it fit the man's masked look, bizarre as that seemed.

Remo got to his feet in a hurry. The two men squared off, Remo standing tall, the other crouching, his hands weaving invisible patterns in the air before him. His movements were smooth and graceful. He wore a red button over his heart, but Remo had no time to read the slogan on it.

"Got a name?" Remo asked, circling his foe.

"Yes. Death!"

And, venting a high-pitched cry, he executed a flying kick.

Remo saw it coming. Not as soon as he should have, but there was a lot of driving snow in the air.

The kick flashed by Remo's twisting head. He reached out to snag the polished shoe as it slashed by his cheek. Remo took hold and twisted sharply.

Like a worm on a hook, the driver squirmed in the air. The other foot became a piston. It drove against Remo's open chest in a pounding flurry of blows.

The attack was elemental in its fury. The guy had no fulcrum except thin air, but his kicks were as hard as if his back was braced against a stone wall.

Remo kept his ribs tense, protecting his lungs and the precious empowering air inside them.

Inevitably, his opponent lost his balance. Remo spun him by the foot. The guy turned over in midair like a tightly wound rubber band unraveling.

He landed on his stomach in the snow.

Quickly Remo set his heel on the back of the guy's neck. He reached down for the mask.

From within the car, a shrill voice spoke a single word:

"Sagwa!"

And while Remo's attention was drawn to the voice, the prostrate chauffeur turned into a tiger once again.

"Hey!" Remo said. It was a stupid response. But he had underestimated his foe. He should have immobilized him with a fast kick while he was down.

Black-gloved hands grabbed Remo's ankles. Remo set himself. But instead of pulling, the little guy lifted Remo straight up.

There was no countermeasure possible. Remo went into the air. Not high, but high enough for his opponent to gain his feet while Remo was registering his predicament.

Remo received three rapid-succession kicks to the face as he came down. They blurred into a drumlike tattoo, and Remo landed on his face in the snow. Again.

A fourth blow to the back of his neck made him taste snow.

Later Remo realized he must have been out for four, possibly five seconds. But as he experienced it, he spat out wet snow at the same time he sprang to his feet.

The limousine was already backing away.

"Hey, we're not done," Remo called, moving for the retreating grille.

The car stopped suddenly. The driver leaned down behind the wheel, and a tiny section of the grille popped open, disclosing a silvery nozzle.

It began squirting greenish vapor.

There were not many things Remo Williams feared, but gas was one thing he had no Sinanju defense against. You either breathed it and suffered the consequences or you didn't breathe it and escaped them.

Remo had no idea whether it was nerve gas, tear gas, or laughing gas billowing toward him, and he couldn't know until it attacked his respiratory system. Which he definitely did not want.

It was a vomitous green and that was enough.

Remo backpedaled inches ahead of the spreading cloud. When he gained a few yards, he turned around and broke into a dead run.

Behind him, the car shifted into reverse and sped away.

Remo kept going. He ducked around a corner. Somewhere a dog barked and then made a high-pitched yip of a sound. Then it whined and made no more sound.

A car came in Remo's direction, forcing him to leap off the road.

The driver honked once and gave Remo the finger in passing.

"Same to you, buddy!" Remo called after him.

Then, seeing his blinkers indicate a turn onto the gasfilled street, Remo waved his arms and called after him.

"Hold it! Don't go down there!"

The car kept going. It pushed swirls of green gas aside and the driver's honk of response turned into a long wail of a sound. The car struck something with a tinny crump.

Remo took a deep breath and ran back up the street.

Batting away clouds of green, he found the car. It was joined at the bumper with a parked van. Remo got to the driver. Yanking the door open, he reached and found a pulse. It was strong. The man's breath tickled Remo's palm when he held it up to his nose.

When Remo pulled him off the horn, he detected the faintest of snores.

That meant the gas was an anesthetic, not a nerve agent.

Satisfied on that point, Remo ran to his car and gave chase.

The snow was pelting his windshield. As fast as the wipers pushed it aside, more scabrous flakes collected on the glass.

The tracks of the limo were fresh. Few drivers were out in the storm, so Remo had an easy time following the car.

The distinctive tread wove in and around the upscale New Rochelle neighborhood. Remo followed at a decorous pace. As long as the tracks were visible, he figured it was best if the masked driver didn't know he was being followed.

Eventually, the trail led to a side street and turned into a driveway.

The tracks disappeared under a closed garage door.

"Bingo," Remo said. He coasted past the house and around a corner, where he parked.

Remo stepped out into the blinding snow, making unusually faint tracks through several backyards and to the garage.

There was a door on the side of the garage. Remo tried it. Unlocked. He slipped in after listening and detecting no sounds from within.

Remo froze just inside the door.

He was not surprised to find a car in the garage.

What made his mouth suddenly hang open in astonishment was that the car was a white convertible. The top was down. The body was as dry as an enameled bone.

Remo drew a line along the hood with one finger. He picked up grime.

"What the hell?" he muttered.

He dropped to his knees to check the tires. They were also dry. Not only that, but the tread was not the tread he had followed. The limo tread had been serpentine.

"Musta got confused," he muttered. "Damn."

He left the garage and slipped around to the front.

There Remo was further surprised to find the same garage door he had earlier seen and the identical limousine tread vanishing under the door.

Remo went back into the garage.

The white convertible sat there, dry and slightly grimy. Remo went around to the back of the car.

On the stone-tiled floor were the faint wet tracks of the limo's distinctive snakeskin tread. They stopped three feet short of the convertible's rear tires, as if the limo had driven into the fifth dimension. The only other line of demarcation was the edge of one of the stone flags.

"This is ridiculous," Remo muttered in the dim light. He walked around the convertible. There was enough room to pass on all four sides if he turned sideways when he passed a tool-festooned workbench, but definitely no room for a second car.

Frowning, Remo stood in the dimness of the garage and said, "I've heard of locked-room mysteries, but this is a freaking garage and it isn't even locked!"

He made another circuit of the convertible, and finding nothing, hopped into the passenger seat.

There was no black limousine in the glove compartment, not that he expected to find it. But he wasn't about to let any possibility get by him. There wasn't even a registration.

The trunk was empty of everything but a spare tire bolted into a recess. There wasn't even a loose jack or tire iron.

Remo popped the hood and examined the ordinary sixcylinder engine. The radiator was cold to the touch. Gently closing the hood, Remo ran a Sinanju-sharp fingernail on the paint job. He got a flat gray line under the white enamel. He had hoped for black. But the convertible was not the black limo with a seven-second paint job and a new front end.

Remo Williams left the garage scratching his head. He went around to the front and looked at the tire tracks again. They were the same rattlesnake tracks, all right.

"None of this makes sense," Remo said half-aloud. He reached down and grabbed the garage door handle. It turned. He lifted the door carefully and once again beheld the white convertible's rear deck.

The rattlesnake treads continued as wet smears on the garage floor, stopping short of the white car.

Slowly Remo closed the car door and thought about what he should do.

Knocking at the white house was a tempting possibility, but what was he going to say? Excuse me, sir, but have you seen a black limousine drive into your garage and vanish into thin air?

Tearing down the garage walls also tempted him.

Remo decided he wasn't going to do that. Maybe later. It was possible he had gotten confused and followed the trail of the wrong tires. Not that that would explain the vanishing car, but if it wasn't the limo, it wasn't his problem.

Dropping to one knee, Remo scooped up a section of snow-captured tire tread. He carried it back to his car with both hands, trying not to crush it.

He drove back to the safe house with the section of snow melting on the seat beside him, following the rattlesnake tread all the way back to the semicircle of tire tracks that had been laid when the limousine had first spun into a reverse spin after ejecting a cloud of greenish vapor.

The gas cloud had dissipated. The sleeping man was still at his wheel. Evidently it wasn't a very curious neighborhood. Either that or everyone had been knocked out by the gas.

Remo set the captured section of snow next to the tracks. The diamond-shaped scales were a perfect match.

Remo stomped on the tracks in frustration. When that didn't solve the mystery, he decided to further investigate the safe house.

Halfway up the walk, he noticed something strange.

The driving snow had nearly obliterated a set of footprints along the walk, but they were still visible as rounded outlines.

Remo noticed that there where two sets of fresh footprints on the walk. Both were going away from the front door. Remo looked back. They stopped exactly short of the spot where the limousine had been parked.

He bent down. One set of prints was large, the other small. Remo fixed the smaller set in his mind and went back to where he had battled the diminutive chauffeur. The prints were the same. That meant the other prints would have been made by the tall man in the Russian fur hat.

The problem with that, Remo realized after he returned to study those prints, was that the toes pointed toward the house. Not away from it.

Yet clearly the man had left the house. Remo had seen him do exactly that. At least, he had seen him enter the car after hearing the sound of the opening safe-house door.

There were no other tracks on the walk, but the snow was falling so fast that earlier tracks--say, those made an hour or so before-would have been long covered up.

Remo looked back toward the closed front door, his expression falling into its natural frown lines.

Two sets of tracks. One going, one coming, but not the same man. That should mean that someone had entered the house in the last few minutes. However, the collection of snow in the chauffeur's departing tracks meant they had been made before Remo arrived on the scene. There had been no time for the man to enter or leave the house after that. He had been in Remo's sight all along.

"Unless they doubled back while I was chasing phantom tire tracks," Remo muttered aloud.

That didn't fit either, Remo decided. Because the snow hadn't yet obliterated the footprints made during his fight with the chauffeur. These were from about the same time, judging from the filling snow. And there wouldn't have been time for the snow to bury the passenger's tracks.

Yet the only tracks that could have been that man's were pointing toward the house, not away from it.

It made no sense.

But sense or not, Remo knew better than to stand here exposed any longer. He slipped around the side to the back door.

There were no tracks of any kind at the back door, so Remo made some of his own.

Breaking the FBI barrier tape, he eased open the storm door and carefully tried the inner doorknob.

It turned and caught. Locked.

Remo put his ear to the panel. There was no sound at first. Then he heard the sound of a furnace kick in, the dull roar of an oil burner firing up, and a desultorily dripping sink.

No heartbeats, no lungs in respiration cycle, no voices.

No nothing.

Remo popped the knob. It shot out of its socket, driven inward by the hard heel of his hand.

Remo stepped in, every sense alert. He drifted from room to room, finding nothing at first.

In the kitchen, a man sat at the kitchen table. His eyes were open, but his head lolled to one side. His arms were arranged so that his hands dangled between his akimbo knees.

He looked dead. He was the gum-chewing FBI agent Remo had talked to earlier.

Remo touched the agent's carotid artery with a forefinger. Definitely dead.

Noticing a faint discoloration over the man's windpipe, Remo touched it. The trachea felt mushy, as if it had been jellied.

"Sinanju?" Remo whispered in the stillness of the kitchen. His voice shook with disbelief.

He finished checking the rest of the house.

Drawers lay open. Here and there things were noticeably out of place or upended. The house had been searched. Not wildly and carelessly, but methodically and with patience.

Remo went out the front door, snapping the FBI barrier tape with a careless flick of one hand. He wore an unhappy expression as he walked down the walkway.

He was puzzling over the inexplicable footprints, trying to figure them out.

"Let's see," Remo muttered to himself. "The chauffeur came out before I got here. Okay, he's accounted for. But his passenger came out after him. So where are his tracks? And whose are these?" Remo snapped his fingers. "The FBI agent's!"

The thought sent Remo back into the house, where he removed the agent's right shoe.

Returning, he pressed it into one right-shoe mark of the unidentified footprint.

The agent's sole lines overlapped. They were too long and broader at the heel. Disgustedly Remo tossed the shoe into a drift.

"Okay, it's not him," he said. "So it's gotta be someone else." He rubbed his chin, unmindful of the snow collecting in his thick dark hair. It was melting and drops were starting to rill down the back of his neck and behind the ears. He ignored the shivery sensation.

"Let's say they doubled back," Remo said. "The tall guy with the fur hat goes in. But where does he go? He doesn't come out the back. Therefore he's still in the house. So it's the chauffeur who comes out. Trouble is, he never went in-unless he went in over an hour ago. And if he did that, how could I have fought him? Unless he's twins."

The thought caused Remo's eyes to gleam. The gleam faded.

"But if he's twins," Remo muttered in disappointment, "where is the other one? And where are the tracks of the guy I saw get in back of the limo?"

Remo was roused from his puzzle by the distant sound of sirens. He looked up and saw sleepy-eyed people emerging from their homes. They pointed to the unconscious motorist at the wheel of his crashed car.

Remo decided this would have to be a police matter. He wasn't going to solve it.

He got into his car and took off. As he turned a corner, he saw a dog sleeping in a snowbank as if it were a perfectly natural thing for a dog to be doing.

"That explains the dog," he mumbled. "But not the footprints. "

Chapter 6

Less than an hour after his mysterious experience in New Rochelle, Remo pulled into his own driveway in a foul mood.

He went around the front, noticing no footprints on his walkway.

"Chiun's not here," Remo muttered. "Damn."

But as he fumbled for his key at the front door, the chatter of British-accented conversation drifted through the wood.

"What!" Remo keyed the lock open and pushed the door in.

"Chiun! What are you doing here!" he demanded.

Chiun, Reigning Master of Sinanju, did not deign to turn his eyes from the big TV, acknowledging his pupil only with his voice and a tightening of his seamed mask of a face.

"I live here, graceless one," he said. "Now, be quiet. I am occupied."

"I've spent half the afternoon looking for you," Remo shouted back hotly.

"I would think that pleasure would attend the successful conclusion of so arduous a quest, but the white mind is forever a closed book even to one as perceptive as I."

"Don't get snotty with me. Smith said we had an assignment."

"I had an assignment," Chiun sniffed. "You were not a part of my latest agreement with Emperor Smith."

"He told me you soaked him for triple the ten thousand dollars," Remo said, his hands resting on his hips.

Chiun's face wrinkled in disgust. "I would not use the word 'soaked,' " he said haughtily. "I bargained."

"Well, you can leave my ten percent on the kitchen table."

"You are not entitled to ten percent of my labor."

"Why the hell not?" Remo want to know. "No, don't tell me. That's why you went off on your own."

Chiun allowed a faint smile to wreathe his paper-thin lips.

"Perhaps next time you will not hesitate to place important phone calls when I ask this of you," he said sternly.

"Fat chance," Remo retorted.

"Spoken like a true fathead. Now, be silent."

"It's on tape. You can shut it off for a minute."

"It will dispel the mood the players have so deftly striven to create," Chiun pointed out.

Remo looked at the screen. A group of people was gathered in a typical upper-middle-class British drawing room, chatting on in refined tones about a variety of oblique subjects. The word "utterly" was repeated three times by three different actors.

"How can you watch this tripe?" Remo demanded.

"Because the characters keep their clothes on their bodies like civilized persons," Chiun sniffed.

"What about Smith's all-important Chinese student? I assume you were chasing around after him. And where were you all this time?"

"Where any sensitive person who seeks a missing Chinese person would have gone."

Remo looked his question.

"Chinatown, of course," Chiun explained.

"Oh, of course," Remo said archly. "Everyone knows the Chinese are drawn to Chinatown like freaking lemmings to a cliff."

"Something like that," Chiun said vaguely.

"Go on," Remo invited, folding his arms.

Chiun watched the screen as he spoke. "Knowing that this man was Chinese," he continued, "I knew that if he were abducted, it would have been by another Chinese-for who else would place any value in such a person? And if he had become lost, I knew that, even lost in a strange land, he would go there to be among his kind. And being Chinese, he would seek out a Chinese gambling den."

"How'd you figure that?"

"Everyone knows the Chinese are notorious gamblers."

"Well, I don't."

"I do. It is in their nature, along with laziness."

"That's the worst load of crap I ever heard. So you didn't find him and you gave up, and the assignment is unfinished, is that it?"

The door to Remo's bedroom opened and a frightened Asian face poked out uncertainly. He looked at Remo.

"Master Chiun, who this person?"

"What's he doing in my room!" Remo demanded.

"Master Chiun, who is this lofan?"

"What did he call me?" Remo demanded of Chiun.

"He called you a white man," Chiun explained. "Do not be insulted. He is new to these shores."

"I'm not insulted."

"I would be," Chiun said aridly.

The Chinese man repeated his question. "Master Chiun, who is this lofan?"

"This is Remo," Chiun answered, adding, "my valet."

"My ass!" Remo exploded. "You get out of my room! Right now!"

The Chinese man hastily slammed the door shut.

"You have frightened my houseguest," Chiun complained. "Guest! You brought him here? What about security? What about-"

"Smith knows. It was his suggestion."

"Now Smith is giving away my bedroom to any old vagabond who strays into trouble," Remo complained.

"That is not any person," Chiun countered. ""That is Zhang Zingzong. He is very famous, even if he is Chinese."

"Never heard of him."

"That does not mean he is not famous. May I finish watching my program now?"

"You know," Remo said, putting his hands back on his hips, "of all people, I thought you'd be the last one to let a Chinese guy stay under his roof."

"One makes certain exceptions for the privileged."

Remo growled. "Are you by any chance charging him rent?"

"Of course not," Chiun said in an offended tone.

"Good."

"I am charging him room and board," Chiun added. "It is not the same. There is no lease, for example."

Remo threw up his hands. "This is ridiculous. Look, we gotta talk. I just came from that safe house."

"It is improbably named."

"Tell me about it. The FBI guard is dead."

"They are paid to fall in the line of duty. Soldiers love their glory. Who are we to criticize them if they wish to throw away their lives will-nilly?"

"He was taken out by a larynx stroke. Clean, too."

"Many have copied the larynx stroke of Sinanju," Chiun intoned, video-screen light washing his attentive face. "It is regrettable that we do not get royalties."

"Yeah, well, the guy who did it did it almost as good as me."

"Have I not always said your bent elbow would bring you to ruin?"

"Almost as good as you," Remo added.

The Master of Sinanju wrinkled his offended nose. "I will not be- insulted."

"I speak the truth, Little Father," Remo said with quiet earnestness.

And hearing the suddenly respectful tone of his pupil's voice, the Master of Sinanju lifted a long-nailed finger. The remote control clicked. The VCR ceased its quiet whirring, the picture frozen in distortion.

Chiun rose to his feet.

"The larynx was crushed throughout?" he inquired.

"Like a sponge. There was a small bruise. But it was very small."

"A fortunate amateur," Chiun pronounced sagely. "He has no doubt squandered his entire life practicing that one blow. It is all he knows. In other situations, against a worthy opponent, he would stand helpless."

"I tangled with the guy-at least, I think he's the guy."

"And?"

"I musta had an off day," Remo admitted, quiet-voiced. "He ran me ragged."

Chiun's mouth formed an O of surprise. "Truly?"

"I am ashamed to admit it, Little Father."

"And you should be ashamed," Chiun admonished. "This man was not white, was he? For if he was white, my shame would know no depths."

"I think he was Chinese."

Chiun shook his head sadly. "Almost as had. Are you certain he was not Korean?"

"The eyes were not Korean. I'm sure of that. His voice sounded familiar, but I couldn't place it."

"You knew him?"

"He wore a mask. The funny thing was, even so, I thought I recognized him."

Chiun cocked an inquisitive head. "You recognized the eyes, or perhaps the lips?"

"I don't think so. If you want the truth, I thought I recognized the mask."

Chiun waved a dismissive hand, saying, "Any idiot may wear a mask."

"This was special," Remo countered. "It was molded to his facial contours. Doesn't make sense, does it?"

"You seldom do."

"There's more."

Chiun lifted thin eyebrows and Remo launched into a long recitation of all that had happened to him since he encountered the black limousine. He went into great detail regarding the mystery of the garage, and then told the Master of Sinanju about the impossible footprints.

"Can you explain any of it?" Remo concluded.

Chiun's eyes grew narrow and steely. He said nothing for many uncomfortable minutes.

"I am not making this up, Chiun," Remo said to break the silence.

"You are mistaken," Chiun said solemnly.

"About what?"

"About everything."

"Those footprints are still there," Remo pointed out.

"You are mistaken," Chiun repeated. "You saw no such thing."

"Who are you to tell me what I saw?" Remo asked testily.

"What you saw is impossible," Chiun lectured. "Therefore, you could not have seen it."

"Which are we talking about-the tire tracks or the footprints?"

"All of them. I do not understand this vanishing car of yours, but no one leaves such footprints. No one living, that is."

"Are we talking ghost?" Remo asked suddenly.

"No, we are talking the dead. And the dead do not walk."

"I saw what I saw," Remo said stubbornly.

"And I say to you what I say to you-do not disturb my sleep with such trifles."

"What's sleep got to do with anything?"

"Sleep," said the Master of Sinanju, "has to do with everything." He got up without another word and padded into his room.

Remo reached out and shut off the VCR. He wondered what the heck was going on.

After a few minutes the smell of incense drifted from Chiun's bedroom. From within, Remo heard the quavering sounds of his master singing. He recognized the old Korean prayers, though not all of the words were understandable. These were very old prayers handed down from the early days of Sinanju. They were prayers beseeching the protection of the village of Sinanju from the great Void.

They made Remo shudder.

He decided to do something about the situation. He went to his own bedroom door and flung it open.

"Rise and shine!" Remo called. "Time for answers."

The Chinese man was seated on Remo's sleeping mat, his head bowed as if in meditation.

He turned at the sound of Remo's voice and reached out for his knapsack, hugging it close to him. He slid around on the mat so Remo couldn't see his face.

Noticing the man's back, Remo frowned. "Do I know you?"

"I do not think so. Not know you."

"There's something familiar about you."

"I do not know you."

"You wouldn't by chance have been driving a black limousine this afternoon, would you?"

"Black limousine!" he said excitedly. "Where you see black limousine?"

"Back at the safe house. What do you know about it?" "Nothing," Zhang Zingzong said quickly.

"Oh, bullshit!" Remo retorted. "You know something."

"Know nothing."

"No, it couldn't have been you. You're too tall," Remo decided.

"Not know what you mean."

"Screw you," Remo said, slamming the door shut after him.

Remo went to a closet and pulled out a handful of straw sitting mats and scattered them on the floor of a spare room. The spare room was completely bare of furniture, although one end was cluttered with fourteen stacked lacquered trunks. Chiun's precious traveling luggage.

Remo stretched out on the mats and ran the events of the afternoon through his mind. They were no clearer than before.

From the other room, Chiun's prayers continued like a singsong dirge.

Because he felt tired, Remo drifted off to sleep.

He didn't know how long he slept. He had wanted only to nap, but was awakened by a high-pitched argument in progress.

Remo rolled up onto one elbow. The argument was between Chiun and the Chinese student. It was in Chinese. Remo couldn't make out a word of Chinese.

The argument escalated from a kind of husky back-and-forth to a high-pitched volley of accusations and response.

Chiun was doing the accusing. The Chinese student was hotly denying something. Or everything.

"A little less noise out there, huh?" Remo called through the door.

The arguing subsided for a pregnant minute.

Then it started up again, low and intense, but swiftly escalating in violence and heatedness.

Finally Remo got to his feet and stormed past the suddenly quiet pair and out the front door.

"If this is how it's going to be all night," Remo barked, "I'm going to check into a motel."

He was not stopped by Chiun's voice on his way out, which both surprised and disappointed him. The shouting resumed. It was going hot and heavy as Remo pulled out of the driveway. He laid down a hundred yards of rubber, hoping it would awaken Harold W. Smith, the architect of his misery.

Chapter 7

Remo Williams tossed on the mattress pad.

It was too comfortable. He had left home without his bed mat, which the Chinese student was using anyway. So he had gone to a Motel Six, which he knew from past experience put mattress pads on their beds. And they had left the light on for him.

Remo had stripped the lumpy bed of its coverings and laid the pad on the rug. There, he went to sleep. Years of Sinanju training had made sleeping on an elevated surface as unrewarding as sex.

The pad was too thick, so Remo tossed and turned through the night. His thoughts were of the Master of Sinanju.

Remo had worked with Chiun for two decades now. They had grown close in that period of time, although their relationship had been very rocky, especially during the early years, when Chiun had considered the training of a white an odious task. In those days, CURE security was crucial. As its enforcement arm, Remo was an experiment, one which might be terminated at any time by presidential decree.

In those days, it had been Chiun's responsibility to execute Remo if the order came from Smith. The relationship between Master and pupil had nevertheless flowered under this dark cloud, in part because of the great promise that Remo had shown and in part because of the respect each man had developed for the other.

Until the day, in the midst of a grave US-USSR crisis in which the President had ordered CURE disbanded, Smith had given the termination order to Chiun. Remo had never forgotten that he was partnered with a man who considered assassin's work a high calling, one who would kill anyone anywhere on orders or for the correct amount of gold, and not think twice.

But when the order came, Chiun had refused to execute it. His logic was Byzantine-something about Remo not being the same Remo he had started with-but Remo knew that their relationship had reached a turning point: Chiun would never kill him, no matter who gave the order or what the provocation.

For Remo had progressed beyond simply being a human instrument of US political policy. He had joined the ranks of the House of Sinanju. In truth, he had become one with Sinanju many years before, but it was not until that day that Remo understood he had been fully accepted by Chiun.

But that acceptance hadn't meant getting along. If anything, they fought more frequently, and about less important things. But after that, the edge had been blunted.

Remo thought he knew and understood Chiun.

He had thought the same about Smith until recent events had reminded him that Harold W. Smith-despite his professional demeanor-could be as ruthless and cold-blooded as the Master of Sinanju himself.

Remo decided he could live with Smith.

But still it was a shock to think, as he did now, lying awake on the too-comfortable mattress pad with the pale winter sun peeping through the chinks in the motel curtains, that as long as he had known Chiun, he had not known him fully.

In two decades, he had never thought to ask the Master of Sinanju about his history prior to coming to America. Certainly, Chiun had often spoken of the grim days of World War II, when Sinanju had no clients, and the decades after that, when clients stopped coming to the rocky shore of his ancestral village. North Korea had become inaccessible to outsiders, thanks to the Communist regime. The last potent monarchy had long since fallen. The emerging nations had resorted to guerrilla warfare or mercenaries. Assassins could be gotten anywhere, Chiun had said bitterly, even at open-air markets and Western malls, like so many melons.

Remo had never thought beyond the lesson-and there was always a lesson in Chiun's tales of Sinanju Masters-that this latest Master of Sinanju suffered to train a white only because he had no better offers. But Chiun had had an early career, one that went back to the dying monarchies of Europe and the pre-Communist days of China and the Orient. He must have had clients in those days.

Remo wondered if Chiun had in fact assassinated Amelia Earhart. It was certainly not the worst blot on the Sinanju house, which had liquidated popes and rulers down through history. As long as the gold took teeth marks, the work was worthy. It wasn't for nothing that the motto of the House was "Death Feeds Life."

But those were the previous Masters. It bothered Remo that Chiun had personally done Amelia Earhart. It made him wonder who else he had eliminated.

Remo sat up. He wasn't going to get any sleep anyway, so he padded over to the curtain and drew it open.

The sun was making tiny diamonds on the previous day's snowfall. The snow had been blown into drifts and rills like a desert sandscape of powdered sugar.

Remo noticed a young woman walking through the parking lot toward a red car, jingling her car keys. She noticed Remo standing there and smiled up at him.

Remo smiled back.

She gave him a friendly little wave.

Remo waved back. To his chagrin, she broke into uncontrollable laughter. And at that moment he realized he was standing in the big window stark naked.

Remo lost his smile and ducked into the bathroom, where he showered furiously.

Twenty minutes later he was behind the wheel, navigating through the snow-clogged streets, contemplating that he was a Master of Sinanju now. One day, the village might depend on Remo's ability to terminate a target without regard to the victim's deserving of death.

As long as he and Chiun were technically American agents, that was not a problem. But CURE was only thirty years old. The House of Sinanju had nearly five thousand years' head start. It would outlast CURE. It would probably outlast America. Remo's ultimate duty lay with the man who made him whole, not the nation which had wrenched him out of his comfortable existence and turned him into an expendable element in a global conflict that might mean nothing in a mere thousand years.

Remo grunted as he swerved to avoid an oncoming snowplow.

He was starting to think like Chiun-in the very long term.

The snow-draped hills of the Folcroft golf course hove into view, signaling that Remo was approaching his neighborhood. His house had been built, like Smith's, on the edge of the fairway.

Remo decided it was time he learned more about Chiun's past. He hoped it wouldn't be too painful.

Who knew, if he showed enough interest, the Master of Sinanju might teach Remo how to enjoy sex again.

It was a tempting possibility and it made Remo press the accelerator harder. He leaned into the turns, the big blue Buick literally skiing at times. In other hands, it was a recipe for disaster. In Remo's trained hands, he and the car were one.

The Buick went into a controlled skid at the bottom of Remo's street, came out of it as if pulled by an invisible cord, and Remo suddenly noticed the distinctive rattlesnake tread on the mushy snow before his bouncing hood ornament.

Remo slowed down. He was not surprised to see the predatory black limousine parked in front of his house. He couldn't explain it, but it didn't surprise him.

He braked and popped out from behind the wheel grinning with fierce anticipation.

"Rematch time!" he sang. He strode up to the limo. Unhappily, the driver's seat was vacant.

Remo shifted direction without even pausing and bounded to his front door. He noted two pairs of footprints. One entering the house and the other coming away. The Asian chauffeur had gone in. The other prints matched the inexplicable tracks back at the safe house.

"Good," Remo muttered. "It'll be just him and me."

Grinning, Remo rang the front doorbell so the chauffeur wouldn't know it was him. He could hardly wait to take another crack at that arrogant little guy.

There was no answer after the first ring, so Remo leaned into the buzzer, holding it down.

A voice called through the door.

"Who is there?"

"Avon lady," Remo called back, smiling in recognition of the chauffeur's distinctive clipped accent.

"You lie!"

"Try saying that to my face," Remo called.

The door flew open. The black-masked chauffeur stood there. He looked exactly the same as he had the previous day, down to the red button over his heart. Remo saw it clearly this time.

In black pseudo-Oriental slash letters it said: BRUCE LEE LIVES.

Remo's grin almost burst into laughter.

A fist started for his face. But Remo was ready for it. He ducked to one side and let the force of the blow carry the chauffeur past him.

Just to be sure, Remo kicked at one of the man's moving ankles.

The chauffeur couldn't stop himself. He went right into the mushy snow.

Remo slammed the door after him, locking it. He caught a flash of purple silk from the half-open spare-room door.

"Okay, Chiun," he called, "what the hell is going on here?"

The figure in purple was bent over an open lacquered trunk, ignoring Remo's challenge. Remo had no time to think about what that meant because an unfamiliar voice hissed, "Sagwa! Au ming!"

Remo started to whirl, his surprise on his face. He hadn't detected another person in the house-no heartbeat, no respiration.

Before he could complete his turn, the locked front door exploded off its hinges and came toward him like a flying wall.

Remo stopped it with a hand, braced by a stiff arm. The impact forced him back a half-step, and while the energy was pushing at his stiffened arm bones, he redirected it back toward its source.

To an observer, it looked as if the door had attached itself to Remo's palm as if by static electricity: It hung on his hand for measurable seconds, then rebounded with no apparent force applied. In fact, Remo's hand had suddenly pushed it back.

The door flew back the way it had come. It met the stiff fingers of the black-masked chauffeur's right hand.

The door split as if precut and the halves slammed away. One struck on a corner and bounced like an eccentric wagon wheel.

Remo was already in the air. One foot snapped out in a flying kick.

His opponent copied the action.

The heels of their shoes collided like irresistible force meeting immovable object. They bounced off one another, neither man having gained an inch.

Remo hit the floor, recovering. His eyes sought the third man in the room. He caught a momentary glimpse of a tall figure in a long purple gown in the spare room. He wore a Russian-style fur cap. It wasn't Chiun after all!

There was no time to see more. The chauffeur was circling toward him, body crouched, gloved hands weaving cryptic designs in the air.

"Chiun!" Remo called. "Where are you?"

Remo's voice bounced off the walls. There was no answer.

And then the domino-masked chauffeur made his move.

It was a high leap, executed with a blood-chilling scream.

Remo knew the scream was a device to paralyze him. He laughed. In Sinanju, one attacked in professional silence, not like a banshee.

Remo aimed a fist at the descending crotch. Let the little guy do all the work, he thought.

But the wiry chauffeur reacted to the sudden fist. His gloved hands grabbed a dangling ceiling light, arresting his plunge.

One foot slashed out at Remo's head. He parried it with his waiting fist and danced out of the way of a follow-up kick. The guy had incredible kicking skill. Not Sinanju, but powerful. It was as if his legs were driven by automatic pistons.

Remo looked for an opening. He got one ankle and simply yanked. The ceiling cracked. The light tore free like a molar coming out of a petrified gum.

Remo stepped back and let the man fall with the plaster debris. He taunted him with a laugh, which was a thousand times more unnerving than any high-pitched battle cry.

Off in one corner, the hissing voice said, "He is good."

Remo heard this in the moment the chauffeur took to untangle himself from the ceiling light. It made him pause. He should have taken the chauffeur out then and there, but he wanted to see who was at Chiun's trunks.

Remo turned to the sound of the voice, and in that half-turn, the black-masked chauffeur came at him, low and fast.

Remo backpedaled three steps to give himself kicking room. He miscalculated by a single step. He hit the wall with his back. He cursed.

A foot slashed up for his solar plexus. Remo braced for the impact by stiffening his abdominal muscles, simultaneously bringing his arms down protectively.

The foot never made contact. In midair, the chauffeur had turned like a spring-wound dervish and launched a piledriver punch at Remo.

He brought his hands up and out, fending off the hammering fist. The chauffeur landed and sent an open-hand blow suddenly knifing for Remo's temple.

Remo moved to counter it.

In that moment, the other hand struck his abdomen once-hard and deep, fingers stiff. Remo felt the thrust clear back to his spinal column. The air blew out of his lungs and Remo doubled over, clutching himself, his face naked and defenseless.

In the split second before the grinning face of the masked chauffeur floated before Remo's going-gray vision and a black fist started to travel in his direction, Remo searched the room with his eyes. He caught an imperfect glimpse of a tall purple-silk-clad figure moving closer. For a moment, Remo thought it was the Master of Sinanju.

But he stood watching the tableau with absolutely no emotion on his sere-parchment countenance.

The blow knocked Remo's head back into the plaster wall. The top of his skull went in clear to his nose, and his body went lax, as if all the strength had gone from it.

Then slowly his head began to pull free of the hole, carried by the deadweight of his limp muscles, until he came loose. Remo made a clumsy pile of arms and legs on the bare floor.

The worst of it was that Remo was not unconscious. His eyes were closed, but he heard every sound in the room.

Most of all, he heard the arid voice of the purple figure as he left through the front door.

He was saying, "To think, Sagwa, all that training squandered on a barbarian lofan."

The chauffeur laughed grimly. The door shut after them.

Remo felt himself starting to lose consciousness. He fought it. Waves of darkness seemed to wash over his brain, but he reached into his inmost essence to hold on to consciousness.

It was a struggle. He wanted to surrender to the sweet peace that tried to claim him.

Remo refused. Deep within him, a fire began to burn and a voice from some inner reservoir intoned, "I am created Shiva, the Destroyer; Death, the shatterer of worlds."

For a moment Remo wavered between surrender and consciousness. His eyes burned with a smoldering light. The fire flickered. It was brief. His face warped into a mask of hellish agony.

Then he gathered himself together. He climbed to his feet. Every joint ached.

But when he stood erect, the burning-ember gleam in his eyes subsided, and he was Remo again.

He stumbled to the spare room. Shock was like a kick to his stomach when he saw that Chiun's steamer trunks were gone-all except an empty spare in need of repair. Remo plunged for the door, one arm across his bruised stomach.

Outside, he saw the limousine leave the curb like a silent black shark fleeing a coral reef.

Remo pelted for his Buick. He squeezed in behind the wheel, inserted the ignition key, and got the car started.

He roared after the limousine. It screeched around a corner. Remo slid into the turn right behind it. His maneuvering was ragged. He almost sideswiped a fireplug.

Coming out of the turn, he found himself on a long narrow street.

"You're good, pal," he said, gritty-voiced, "but not that good."

He floored the Buick, gaining on the limo's rear deck. On its jet-black bumper was a sticker: BRUCE LEE LIVES.

"You're dreaming, pal. When I get through with you, you're going to join him."

As Remo closed in, a silvery nozzle extruded from the limo trunk. Remo prepared himself for the expected jet of vapor. It squirted something dark and viscous instead.

Remo saw the spreading patch of oil splatter on the snow, and with a wrench of the wheel he sent the Buick up on the sidewalk.

His right-rear tire hit a patch of the gunk and he had to wrestle to keep the car straight. Every exertion made his stomach muscles cramp. He grimaced and fought to stay behind the wheel. His head began to pound.

The limo took a side street and then a street off that.

Remo did his best to keep up. The snow made it tough. Whereas before, he could use it to his advantage, literally skiing the car, now he was too badly injured to be the absolute master of every turn.

He slipped around corners, once swapping ends and finding his car suddenly pointing the opposite way in a drift.

Remo wrestled the wheel around and resumed the chase. This time he took it more slowly. The rattlesnake tracks were going to lead him, and he began to get a sense of where they were going.

They took a ramp onto Route 95, and Remo followed suit.

On the highway, he began to catch up. Remo stayed in the left lane to avoid any more oil slicks. Whoever had designed the car had built it to thwart pursuit.

The miles flashed by. Once the limo drifted into Remo's lane and he simply slithered out of the way into the right lane.

In response, the limo straddled both lanes, and suddenly greenish gas began streaming from its skin.

It looked like the engine had caught fire, except the vapor was green. Remo hastily shut every vent on the car. He took a deep breath and held it.

He hoped it was the same kind of gas as before. A nerve agent-especially the kind that worked through the pores-would kill him within seconds, he knew.

Remo held the road and his breath as the greenish streamers tore past his windshield.

A thin haze of green vapor seeped into the car. Remo ignored it. He felt no telltale skin tingling.

Eventually the gas gave out. When it was gone, Remo ran down every window and waited until the cold air had scoured the Buick's interior clean of gas before finally inhaling fresh air.

The limo picked up speed.

"Looks like you're out of tricks, pal," Remo said tightly.

Remo settled down for the ride. The overhead signs started to say "New Rochelle." Remo wasn't surprised.

The limo pulled onto an exit marked "Glenwood Lakes."

There the chase turned frenetic again. Once, Remo caught a glimpse of stern almond eyes in the narrow rear window. They regarded him without mercy or care.

On an angular turn, Remo lost control of his car, piling into a drift. He raced the rear wheels, and the car refused to budge.

Angrily Remo got out and simply lifted the car's rear tires onto better traction. His efforts transformed his face into a mask of pain-induced sweat.

He had lost sight of the limo. He decided that might be a good thing. It probably meant the driver thought he had lost Remo.

Remo took a side street. He recognized the neighborhood from the day before. With luck, he might beat the limo to the garage.

He hoped it was heading toward that same garage.

It was, Remo saw as he came up a parallel street. Through the breaks between the houses, he saw the limo slide around a corner on Storer Avenue. It had made better time than he had anticipated.

Remo pulled around the corner just as the limo nosed up to the garage. The door began opening automatically, obviously activated by a radio command.

The limo lurched inside. The garage door began to accordion down like a Japanese bamboo curtain.

Remo parked, got out, and ran for the door.

Three steps told him that he wasn't in running shape. He slowed to a trot, his lungs burning with transmitted pain.

The garage door clicked shut. Remo grasped the handle, feeling the last vibrations of an electric motor.

The door wouldn't budge. Remo went around to the side.

That door was unlocked. He pushed it in.

Inside, he was confronted by the taunting sight of a white convertible sitting dusty and inert.

There was no sign of the black limousine.

Remo didn't waste time. He plunged out and hit the side door of the adjoining house like a cannonball on legs.

He found the house sparsely decorated, but in an unmistakable Asian decor. He ran through the house, ready for anything.

There was nothing. Every room was empty.

Remo made three circuits of the house before he finally gave up.

The garage was as he had left it. He checked for tracks. As before, faint wet smears of fresh rattlesnake tread stopped short of the convertible's rear bumper.

Remo stood looking at those tracks for a long time.

Then all life, all energy, seemed to drain from his hard face. Woodenly he stumbled back toward his own car.

He squeezed in behind the wheel and reached for the ignition key.

He lost it then.

His eyes rolled up in his head and his bruised face hit the steering column.

The horn gave out a long blast that startled the entire neighborhood, but Remo Williams didn't hear it.

He was dead to the world.

Chapter 8

Remo Williams knew where he was before he even opened his eyes.

The smell gave it away. It was a combination of hospital disinfectant and Pinesol.

Folcroft Sanitarium, the cover for CURE.

A familiar lemon-lime after-shave was sour in Remo's nostrils.

"Hi, Smitty," he croaked.

"Remo, it's Smith," Harold Smith hissed.

"Would I say, 'Hi, Smitty,' if your name was Jones?" Remo retorted without humor.

Slowly he opened his eyes. The light hurt like needles.

"How long?" he asked the hovering face of Harold Smith.

"You were brought here four hours ago."

"Chiun?"

"I tried to notify him. He is not at your home. In fact, it has been vandalized."

"I know," Remo said. "I was one of the vandals."

"Remo, before the doctor returns, I must have your report."

Remo shut his eyes again. A kaleidoscope of images tumbled in his mind's eye-the vanishing limousine, the inexplicable footprints, and the tall man in the fur hat.

"I don't know where to start," he admitted.

"Where is Zhang Zingzong?" Smith demanded.

"With Chiun."

"And where is Chiun?"

"For all I know, he drove a big black limo straight into the Twilight Zone."

"I do not appreciate your humor at normal times," Smith lectured, "and especially not now.

"I'm not joking, Smith. I don't know where Chiun is. The last I remember, I was getting into my car outside that weird garage."

"You were found on a residential street in New Rochelle.'

"Yeah, there. I followed the limo. It went into the garage. But it wasn't there when I went in. That was the second time that little kung-fu acrobat pulled that trick on me."

"Who?"

"The chauffeur with the mask," Remo said.

"Are you delirious?"

"Check the garage if you don't believe me. The limo isn't there."

"You are not making any sense," Smith clucked. "I will come back when you are again yourself."

Remo opened his eyes. He reached out and took Smith by the wrist. He squeezed. Smith's face twisted with the pain.

"No time," Remo said tightly. "You gotta take me back there. I gotta find Chiun. I think he's left."

"Left CURE?" Smith said huskily.

"CURE. America, everything. I don't know yet. We had a fight, but I can't believe he'd throw everything we had away over a lousy fight. It must have something to do with that dingdong Chinese student."

"Zingzong," Smith said. "His name is Zhang Zingzong."

"Whatever. He and Chiun were fighting all last night. They made such a racket I checked into a motel. When I went back this morning, the limo was there, but most of Chiun's steamer trunks were gone. You know he never takes that many unless he's planning to go back to Sinanju. Then I got the stuffing kicked out of me by that kung-fu bozo."

"You, Remo?"

"Hate to admit it, but he was good."

"I will undertake a search for Chiun. Please let go of my wrist."

"I said," Remo added, squeezing so hard Smith's forehead broke out in a sweat, "there's no time. Screw your computers. Take me back to that garage. The limo went in there. It's gotta still be there, or it's not anywhere."

"Very well," Smith said stiffly. "The doctor thinks there is no internal organ damage. But are you up to walking?"

"Help me up."

Unhappily Smith allowed his shoulder to be used as support. Slowly he eased Remo up to a sitting position.

"Where are my clothes?" Remo asked, grimacing.

Smith handed him a pile of clothes and primly turned his back while Remo painfully slid into them.

"Lead the way," Remo said, getting to his feet with arthritic difficulty.

"Are you certain this is wise?" Smith asked doubtfully.

"Screw wise. We can't waste time."

Remo let Smith drive. He regretted it as soon as they pulled into traffic. Smith drove like a maiden aunt. He slowed down at every yellow light, stopping dead and looking both ways before proceeding through stop signs, and observed the speed limit as if his car would self-destruct if the indicator touched the fifty-six-mile-an-hour mark.

"Will you please pull over and let me drive?" Remo pleaded.

"No," Smith said firmly. "I do not wish to be ticketed."

Remo was sprawled in the back seat of the old car, trying to stay comfortable. It hurt to shout. So he stopped shouting.

Finally Smith called back.

"I believe it is this street," he said.

Remo sat up, looking around.

"Yeah," he said. "Dead ahead. The white garage by the Spanish-style house."

Smith brought his battered car to a crawling stop.

Smith got out and opened the door for Remo. Remo had to be helped out. He hated letting Smith help him, but saw no choice.

Remo walked to the garage door on his own.

"See the tracks?" Remo said, pointing.

Smith nodded, seeing the rattlsnakelike treadmarks in the snow. It looked like two rattlers had slept side by side.

"Okay, let's go around the side," Remo suggested.

"Is this safe?"

"Screw safe. You'll understand when we get inside."

Remo pushed in the door and waved Smith into the cool dim garage interior. The windows were grimy, cutting off outside light.

What little light there was fell on a tiled stone floor, and there was no sign of any car, black or white.

"You mentioned a black limousine," Smith pointed out.

Remo's expression was loose with doubt. "I meant a white convertible."

"Well, which is it?"

"You don't understand, Smitty," Remo said. "The black limo drives in here, the door closes, but by the time I get inside, it's turned into a white convertible. Linda like Cinderella's pumpkin."

"I see no car."

Remo walked toward the garage door.

"There were tracks here. You can still see them. They were the limo tracks, not the convertible's. I compared the treads."

Smith said nothing. He looked at Remo through his rimless spectacles as if in pity.

"Don't look at me like that!" Remo shouted. "I swear it happened twice. The limo goes in and vanishes into thin air."

"I see no evidence of any such phenomenon," Smith complained.

"No shit," Remo said testily. "That must be why the dictionary lists 'disappears' as a synonym for 'vanishes.' "

Smith was looking at the floor. He knelt and felt the ground. His hands came away with a smear of oil.

With a disdainful expression he extracted a white handkerchief from one pocket and dry-wiped them clean.

"There must be a light somewhere," he said absently.

He found one and turned it on. Weak yellow light washed the garage interior. It came from a dangling bare bulb.

"That helps," Remo said sourly. "Now we can see the limo that isn't here better."

"Did you notice the floor pattern?" Smith asked severely.

"How could I?" Remo snapped back. "The convertible took up most of the interior."

"Look."

Remo looked. The floor was broken into rectangular sections. But certain crisscross lines were deeper than the others. They formed a long rectangle slightly larger than an automobile.

"Why didn't I figure this out before?" Remo said acidly. "It just slid through the cracks like an unemployed cockroach."

Smith looked at those grooves. "If what you claim is true," he told Remo, "and not hallucination-"

"It is. True, that is."

"Then there is a logical explanation for this," Smith added grimly. "And I intend to find it."

Smith began to move around the garage, looking at the walls and feeling under the workbench.

"What're you looking for?" Remo asked.

"A secret catch or button or some similar device," Smith said absently.

"You're joking. Didn't that stuff go out with dime novels?"

Smith said nothing. He found nothing, either.

"Maybe it's behind the tool rack," Remo said, pointing to a perforated pegboard on which tools were hung.

Smith joined Remo at the panel. They tried to lift it free of the wall but it wouldn't budge.

Smith began removing the tools and placing them on the floor. One refused to budge. A torque wrench.

"Here, let me help," Remo said, reaching for the torque wrench. It wouldn't budge for him either.

"How the hell is it attached?" Remo wondered, twisting at the ratchet. It made a clicking sound, but refused to lift free.

Then, from far below there, a great motor started to whine.

"Now what?" Remo blurted, stepping away from the open floor.

For the rectangular outline in concrete started to tilt upward. The far side dipped into the ground. The near lip lifted free. It was a section of the floor and it was revolving.

As they watched, the reverse side of the concrete slab presented itself like a shark rolling to the surface.

It brought with it the white convertible.

The hidden servomotor ceased its deep-throated whir. The convertible sat there mutely.

Steel claws extending from floor slots released its bumpers, front and rear, and retracted into the recesses below. Camouflaged panels snapped flush with the floor.

When the last clicking died, there were no seams showing, except the deeper outline of the slab itself.

"Incredible," Smith said huskily.

"I've seen something like this before," Remo muttered.

Smith turned doubtfully. "You have?"

"Yeah. But I just can't place it."

Smith looked at Remo with concern.

"The answer is obvious," he said. "The black limousine entered the garage and then the device was activated. The cars merely switched places, possibly with the passengers still inside."

"You make it sound so simple."

"It is simple," Smith returned. "Once you apply logical thinking to the matter."

"Yeah. Well, come on."

"Where are we going now?" Smith demanded.

"I have these really fascinating footprints to show you."

Smith followed Remo out of the mysterious garage, which was mysterious no longer.

Chapter 9

Dr. Harold W. Smith could not explain the footprints in the snow of Remo Williams' front walk.

"Well, come on, Smith," Remo taunted. "You can do it. Just apply a little logic."

Smith absently wiped his glasses with a handkerchief. He lifted them to the pale winter sky and winced. The right lens was smeared with engine oil. He found a clean spot on the handkerchief and scoured it again.

Remo had led Smith into the house upon their arrival, taking care to approach by the lawn, not the walkway. The house was empty. There was no sign of Chiun or the Chinese defector. And with the exception of a single empty steamer trunk, all of the Master of Sinanju's belongings were gone. There was no note.

"Start from the beginning," Smith said thoughtfully.

"It's just like it was at the safe house, only here there are two sets of their tracks, both coming and going."

"Yes," Smith said slowly, drawing out the word.

"This is the chauffeur," Remo said, indicating the smaller prints. His breath clouded the cold air.

"You are certain?"

"Absolutely. I saw his heels close up. They were aiming for my face every two seconds."

"Perhaps we should erase those prints," Smith suggested.

"Why?"

"Occam's razor. Pare away the extraneous facts in order to see the problem more clearly."

Remo fetched a broom from the kitchen. He swept the chauffeur's footprints clean. He was feeling more limber. He was also preoccupied with this latest mystery and wanted to solve it more than he cared for the racking pain in his muscles.

"Now, these are Chiun's sandal prints," he said when he was done. "See? They leave, but don't return."

"Erase them."

That finished, Remo said, "I think these are the Chinese student's tracks."

"Are you sure?"

"He was wearing sneakers. These are the only sneaker tracks."

"Do it."

Remo scoured those prints away, careful not to obscure any remaining footprints.

"Now we have two sets of tracks left," he said confidently.

"The tall man in the fur hat," Smith offered.

"That's what I say. He goes in and he comes out, right?"

"Obviously."

"But look," Remo said, kneeling beside one set of prints. "These are stamped over the other set, so they were made last. Right?"

"Obviously."

"He was in the house when I arrived; therefore, he had to be the first one to go in-before me, before the chauffeur, but after Chiun and Zingzong left."

"I see what you are getting at," Smith said, his face tightening.

"The footprints going into the house were made after the ones going out."

"That's impossible," Smith snapped. "He had to enter the house before he could exit it."

"That's usually the way it works, yeah," Remo admitted.

"Perhaps there are prints in back, or he entered through a window."

"That's what I wondered back at the safe house, where he left only one set of prints, but no go."

"We cannot eliminate any possibility without verifying it ourselves."

"Let's go."

But there were no footprints in the rear of the house-unless bird tracks counted-and there were none near the back door, which was partially blocked by a steep drift.

They returned to the front of the house in dejected silence.

Standing over the confusion of footprints, they stared at them in a lengthening silence as the brittle wind blew snow off nearby roofs.

"You say there was only one set at the safe house?" Smith ventured.

"Yes," Remo said distantly, still looking down at the snow. "Going in. Not coming out. They had to belong to the tall guy in the fur hat. I saw him enter the limo."

"What did he look like?"

"I only caught a glimpse. He kept to the shadows. But I'm sure he was the guy in purple I caught rifling Chiun's trunk."

"How could there be only one set going in if he had come out?"

Remo gave Smith a frank look. "That's what I want you to explain."

"I cannot," Smith admitted. "In fact, I fail to understand how there would be only one set of his prints, no matter in which direction they ran."

"That part I can explain," Remo said. "He must have gone in before yesterday's snowstorm. They got covered up."

"But you claim the tracks going in were visible after the storm."

"During it, actually. It had to be the other set that was covered up."

"Which would have been the tracks leaving the car. But you saw this man enter the limousine during the storm. What you describe, Remo, is a physical impossibility."

"So are these," Remo pointed out in a dull voice. "The freshest tracks lead into the house, but he's not in there."

They regarded the tracks in another pained silence.

"I cannot explain it," Smith said at last.

"Well, here's another one for you," Remo put in. "When I entered the house, I didn't sense him until he spoke. It was as if he had no heartbeat, no respiration, no physical presence. But I could see him."

"You are not claiming to have seen a ghost?" Smith wondered.

"I'm not claiming anything," Remo said quietly. "But you see the same tracks in the snow I do." "I give up," Smith said. He started off to his car.

"Where are you going?" Remo asked, following.

"To Folcroft. Our only lead is Chiun."

"But he disappeared."

Smith turned. "Have you ever known the Master of Sinanju to go anywhere without creating a disturbance?"

"I've never known him to stay in one place and not create a disturbance," Remo said truthfully.

"Then we will find him," Smith said confidently.

Remo limped to the car and climbed into the back.

His ribs hurt as Smith pulled away from the curb. He ignored the pain. It was the worry in his heart, the sick hot pain of loss that bothered him most.

Chapter 10

The entrance to Folcroft Sanitarium was a wrought-iron gate set into stone posts. Each post was topped by a lion's head. The lions looked as forbidding as props from an old Frankenstein movie.

"Sit up," Smith called back.

Remo had been scrunched down in the back seat because the bumps hurt less than if he sat up.

"Why?"

"The guard," Smith said, slowing down as he approached the gate. "I don't want him to become suspicious."

"Screw him. You run Folcroft, not him."

"Please," Smith said edgily.

Groaning, Remo pulled himself up by the coat hook.

"Anyone ever tell you you're a pill, Smitty?"

"Don't call me that. Smitty."

"I've been calling you Smitty since day one," Remo reminded him.

"And I have been objecting since that day," Smith muttered, braking carefully. "Just don't let the guard hear you."

"Good morning, Dr. Smith," the guard said. He looked to Remo. "Nice afternoon, isn't it?"

"Peachy," Remo said bitterly.

"I have some paperwork to catch up on," Smith told the guard apologetically. "Unimportant paperwork," he added quickly.

"Then I won't keep you, sir," the guard said, tipping his cap.

"Smart move," Remo said as they slid into Smith's private parking slot. "You really stressed how suspicious this is."

Smith got out and opened the door for Remo.

"Will you need assistance?" he asked Remo.

"I'm ambulatory," Remo snapped back.

Remo stepped out, surprised at how much it hurt to walk. He let Smith close the door.

Together the two men walked into the Folcroft lobby.

A lobby guard took note of them and said nothing. They went to the elevator and up to Smith's second-floor office.

Leaving the elevator, Remo fell in behind Smith and noticed Smith walked with the suggestion of a limp in his right leg. Remo keyed his breathing down and brought up the creak of cartilage against bone that told him Smith's right knee was the problem.

"Have that knee checked lately, Smitty?" Remo asked as Smith unlocked his office and ushered him in.

"My semiannual physical is not for another seven weeks."

"Wasn't what I asked," Remo said.

Smith said nothing. He went directly to the oak desk and eased himself into the cracked leather executive chair.

Feeling under the worn desk edge, Smith hit a concealed stud. There came a click, and a concealed panel rolled back on the desktop.

The familiar computer terminal hummed up as if on command. A keyboard unfolded, offering itself to Smith's age-gnarled fingers. They set to work.

Remo tried sitting on the edge of the desk. It hurt, so he settled for standing. He watched from over Smith's shoulder.

"What are you doing, Smitty?" he asked, watching a series of texts flash on the screen. To Remo's eyes, the glowing letters were visible as clusters of bright green pixels. He had to step back to see them for what they were-words and sentences.

"I am doing a key search," Smith told him.

"Forget keys. Find Chiun."

"I am not literally searching for a key," Smith explained. "A key search is a global data search keyed off specific data parameters. I am inputting Chiun's physical description and certain behavior patterns unique to the Master of Sinanju."

"Don't forget his fourteen steamer trunks," Remo said.

"Thank you." Smith typed in "large steamer trunks" under the rubric PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES.

When he was done, Smith tapped a control key.

The screen winked out and the terminal hummed. Lines of text flashed on the screen faster than the human eye could register them. Remo caught momentary sentences. "Asian drug suspect gunned down in Newark." "Bruce Lee and Elvis spotted in San Francisco airport." "Vietnamese boat survivor killed by drunk driver."

"The system is running through all news feeds," Smith explained, "seeking any Chiun-configuration pattern."

"What if he hasn't made the news?"

"The key search will run until he does," Smith said flatly.

"Then why are we waiting like we expect an instant answer?"

"Because we may get one."

The screen stopped flashing. The message SORT COMPLETE appeared. Under that was a blinking BUBBLE SEARCH Y/N?

"What's a bubble search?" Remo wanted to know, as Smith tapped the Y-for-yes key.

"A brute-force search. The key search has isolated over six hundred possible Chiun sightings."

"That many?" Remo said in surprise.

"I did say 'possible,' " Smith returned coolly. "I've assigned probability numbers to each sighting. The bubble search will cause the high-probability sightings to bubble to the surface and the low-probability ones to sink back into memory for later retrieval."

Remo watched. He saw no bubbles. Instead, there was a SEARCH COMPLETED message, and in numerical order, text digests of various sightings appeared.

They read them together.

Twenty minutes later, they reluctantly concluded that none of the high-probability sightings were of the missing Master of Sinanju.

"Where could they have gone?" Remo wondered.

"Anywhere. That is the problem."

"No, I mean where could he have gone that he didn't dismember a stubborn cabdriver, annoy a waitress, or nearly kill a bellboy for dropping one of those damn trunks of his?"

"I do not know," Smith admitted glumly.

"Then I guess we wait until he causes the inevitable ruckus," Remo said, folding his lean bare arms.

Smith returned to the key search.

"No time. I will attempt to locate Zhang or the masked chauffeur."

"Don't forget the tall guy in back."

"Description?" Smith asked, fingers poised to input.

"Oh, about six foot, maybe taller. He was bending to get in when I first saw him. Wore a long coat, and later, a purple silk gown."

"Knee- or ankle-length?"

"Lower," Remo said thoughtfully. "Almost like one of Chiun's kimonos. I don't remember seeing his feet."

"You mentioned a fur cap." Smith prompted as they keyed.

"Hat. One of those Russian-style things. What do they call them?"

Smith thought a moment. "Ah, astrakhan," he said, inputting the word. His fingers stopped in mid-word.

Remo leaned closer. "Yeah?"

"Odd. You've described a person very familiar to me, but I cannot recall who it is."

"He didn't look familiar to me. The chauffeur, yes. Zingzong, too, but only from the back-if that makes any sense."

"I am not surprised. No one in the West knows what Zhang looks like from the front, but he may have the most famous back in modern history."

"Care to clue in an intrigued assassin?" Remo wondered. "One moment. Would you assume the tall man in the astrakhan hat was Asian?"

"I assume so, yeah, but I don't know that I can cite you any reason to think that. Come to think of it, he's pretty tall for an Asian, if he is one."

"Hair and eye color?"

"Got me. Didn't catch either."

Frowning, Smith completed the sparse description and initiated another key search.

"So who is he?" Remo asked as Smith leaned back, watching the search.

"We won't know until the search is completed," Smith said.

"I mean Zingzong."

"Zhang Zingzong is-or was-a student at the Beijing School of Iron and Steel."

"Sounds charming. I'll bet finals are pretty noisy."

"He escaped to the West only a few weeks ago, after months of being sheltered by Chinese citizens sympathetic to the pro-democracy forces over there."

"One of the student leaders?"

"No. In fact, his role in Tiananmen was insignificant. Do you recall, Remo, the Chinese man who stopped that line of T55 tanks a few days after the massacre?"

Remo blinked. "Him! That was Zingzong?"

"Yes. He escaped China to Hong Kong and from there to the West."

"Are you sure? I mean, I hate to say this, but I wasn't impressed by the guy at all. He reminded me of a scared rabbit. How do you know it's the same guy?"

"Our intelligence resources within China identified him early on. We facilitated his escape from the mainland. He is very brave. It was a dangerous escape."

"I'll take your word for it," Remo said vaguely. "So why are we so interested in him?"

"He is a global symbol of Chinese resistance. One who, if the old-guard regime falls, may be in a position to be inserted into the leadership vacuum. We are keeping him safe until that time."

Remo grunted. "Great job you did."

"Word must have leaked. There were several attempts to abduct Zhang, which I find very odd."

"Not to me," Remo shot back. "Chinese leaders who would crush their own with tanks wouldn't exactly hesitate to kidnap a defector."

"That is the odd part. This has not their stamp on it. I would have expected an execution or assassination, not abduction. Ah. "

Smith leaned forward, seeing the SEARCH ENDED message.

The subsequent bubble search assigned a number-one priority to an obituary for a Chinese restaurant owner.

"Dead end," Remo grunted.

"No, we have another avenue. The owner of the New Rochelle house. But that will have to wait until tomorrow."

"Why tomorrow?"

"Because the registrar of deeds for Westchester County is not open on Sunday," Smith said crisply.

"You don't have that stuff in your computer?" Remo asked in surprise.

"The Folcroft data banks are massive, but they do not contain data not accessible through computer hookups," Smith said with more than a trace of regret.

"This doesn't make sense," Remo said. "How did those guys know Zingzong was stashed in my house?"

"No doubt the same sources that betrayed the three previous safe houses. You have to understand, Remo, that the Chinese have the largest espionage apparatus in the world. Their eyes are everywhere. The FBI has been unable to trace their leak."

"You're giving up too soon."

"The key search is running. Something will turn up."

"Chiun can't cross the street without attracting attention."

Smith frowned. "I agree, but . . ."

"What is it?" Remo asked.

"That boat of his," Smith asked. "Where is it moored?"

"The junk?" Remo said. "I asked him about it once, and he said he'd gotten rid of it."

Smith's face fell. "Too bad."

"I didn't believe him, though."

Smith reached for a blue telephone.

"What are you doing?" Remo demanded.

"I am about to call every marina on the eastern seaboard, until I locate that junk. What is its name?"

"Jonah Ark. That was the name when we got it. Someone told Chiun it was bad luck to change a boat's name, so he kept it."

It took four calls until Smith found a lead.

"The Jonah Ark?" the Port Chester harbormaster asked him. "Yeah, sure. She set out this morning."

"Did the captain say where he was going?"

"No. But they couldn't go far. Had only a crew of two. One an old fella. Asian. That ship needs a six-man crew, minimum."

"Thank you," Smith said, hanging up. He returned to his computers, saying, "The ship left this morning. I'm ordering a satellite search." "Through this cloud cover?" Remo said, nodding to the picture window behind Smith. The clouds were like a lead blanket hanging in the sky.

"No choice."

It took an hour for the transmission from the orbiting KH-11 recon satellites to travel from space to a relay point on the continental US and, by a circuitous route, to Harold Smith's computer screen. The results were not encouraging.

"Nice overhead shot of these clouds," Remo said bitterly. "Oh, look! There's a break. Is that Cuba?"

Smith said nothing. His lemony face was dour and disappointed.

Remo started to pace the floor, his face worried.

After a moment, keys began clicking. Remo came back to the desk. Smith sensed his unspoken question and answered it.

"I am alerting the Coast Guard, Air Force, and all law-enforcement agencies to watch for any sign of our quarry."

"How do you do that without it pointing back to you?"

"Through surrogates," Smith said simply, as if Remo had asked how Smith balanced his checkbook instead of for an explanation of how one man, unknown and possessing nothing more than a sophisticated computer system, could simultaneously set in motion the vast security resources of the United States simply by inputting clicking computer commands. When Smith was through, he leaned back again.

Chapter 11

The junk Jonah Ark was discovered becalmed off Key West three days later.

Word was flashed to Harold W. Smith at Folcroft Sanitarium that a Coast Guard vessel had located and boarded the junk, finding her deserted.

Dr. Smith reached for the telephone to inform Remo Williams. It was another in a long series of dead ends. The house in New Rochelle had been a rental. The owner, located in Denver, had explained he had rented it through an agent. The agent's address proved to be a mail drop.

More puzzling had been the owner's response to Smith's query about the strange garage with the revolving floor.

"What garage?" the owner had said.

Smith discovered a variance for the garage. The builder-Blue Bee Construction of Hong Kong-proved to be a blind.

As Smith waited for Remo to answer his phone, he reflected that a massive effort had been undertaken to trap Zhang Zingzong. It involved vast resources and support personnel. According to the FBI, known Chinese security operatives were not especially active. But who else could have managed all this?

Remo's voice came on the line. "Yeah?" He sounded tired.

"The Coast Guard found the junk," Smith reported.

Remo's voice brightened. "Great."

"Not great. It was abandoned. I think deliberately, to throw off pursuit."

"Us?"

"Anyone."

"Smith, we gotta find them," Remo said urgently. "I've been hanging around Chinatown so much I've got a monosodium-glutamate headache just from breathing the air."

"I have reason to believe we shall have a lead within a day, perhaps sooner."

"How?"

"I'll keep you posted," Smith said, hanging up.

He returned to his terminal, his lemony face unhappy.

Harold Smith could not very well tell Remo Williams that even as they hunted desperately for clues to Chiun's whereabouts, down in Virginia, National Security Agency linguists were painstakingly translating an audio recording of an argument between the Master of Sinanju and Zhang Zingzong, which had been picked up by a microphone concealed in Remo's television set.

The bug had been planted by Harold Smith to monitor the unpredictable Remo and Chiun. It was the latest in a string of such eavesdropping devices. Most had been found by Chiun. This one had managed to escape his notice.

Smith called up the still-running key search.

There were no concrete Chiun sightings anywhere in his news-gathering outreach area. Smith was surprised by two new Bruce Lee sightings, one in Honolulu and the other in Hong Kong. He had noticed quite a few of them over the last several days. Almost as many as Elvis sightings.

Smith dismissed the reports. He wished that it were feasible to put out a global watch for Zhang Zingzong, but to do so would alert the Chinese government that Zhang was abroad. Smith dared not assume Beijing was not already aware of this. And to put out the watch notice would jeopardize the defector, wherever he was.

He consoled himself with the knowledge that if Zhang were in Chiun's company, he was safer than if he were in the brig of a US submarine lurking under a polar icecap.

A bapping red light ignited a control key.

Smith stabbed it. The NSA emblem came up. It was a Code Gray-the code for Smith's translation request. The NSA linguists never realized they were not responding to an emergency Defense Department interagency request.

Smith hit the scroll key. Text began to unfold.

It was a very raw transcript. The translation team had been stymied by Chiun's Korean pronunciation of Mandarin Chinese words. Chiun had evidently been speaking in the rapid, squeaky tone he used when excited. There were numerous bracketed notations denoting untranslatable passages.

One unmistakable fact emerged from the wreckage of the translation.

The Master of Sinanju had departed for Beijing, China, in the middle of the night, long before Remo's encounter with the mysterious occupants of the black limousine. The hectoring Chiun subjected the hapless Chinese student to as he was forced to carry Chiun's steamer trunks to a waiting string of taxis went on for twenty minutes. The last sounds on the tape were the click of the light switch and the closing of the door.

There had been other aspects of the tape that came through, but they offered Smith no more of a clue as to the Master of Sinanju's motivations than that final click. A bargain had been struck between Chiun and Zhang. And a certain name had been repeated several times.

Smith put in a call to Remo.

"What have you got?" Remo demanded, his voice tense.

"A note in a bottle," Smith told him.

"Where?"

"I do not have physical possession," Smith said evasively. "It was discovered washed up in the Gulf of Mexico. It said, 'Please help me. He is taking me back to Beijing. I do not want to return to China.' "

"Zingzong?"

"Yes. Are you up to going to Beijing?"

"Wait a minute," Remo said sharply. "How do you know this isn't a wild-goose chase to throw us off?"

"You said Chiun and Zhang argued before they disappeared."

"Yeah, but-"

"Do you happen to recall a certain name repeatedly mentioned?"

It was all Chinese," Remo pointed out. "I wouldn't know a name from a dame."

"Did you hear the name Temujin?"

"Yeah," Remo admitted. "Several times. I thought it was some Chinese swearword Chiun was using on the other guy. "

"The Chinese seldom curse," Smith said. "It is a Khalkha Mongol word meaning 'ironworker.' It is the given name of Genghis Khan. Have you ever heard Chiun mention him?"

"You mean sweet Genghis?"

"Sweet?"

"He gave the House of Sinanju a lot of work in the old days." Remo's voice darkened. "How did you know Chiun mentioned him?"

"We'll discuss this later," Smith said quickly. "We must find Chiun and recover Zhang. You are going to Beijing."

"Okay," Remo said. "I'm going to Beijing. Last time I was there, they were calling at Peking."

"And the last time I was in the Chinese capital," Smith said, working his computer keyboard, "it was known as Peiping. "

"I have the feeling I'm not going to like it, whatever they call it," Remo growled.

"I'll make the arrangements. But there is something you must appreciate, Remo."

"What's that?"

"We are in a strained state of relations with the People's Republic. The current President has placed a high price on maintaining those relations."

"Maybe too high," Remo growled.

"Not our responsibility," Smith returned. "The Chinese government has known since your last visit there that the Master of Sinanju works for America and that he has an American pupil."

"So what?"

"So this. While you are in China, you must avoid any incident in which you betray your Sinanju training. It could lead to an international incident."

"Too bad no one clued Chiun in on that."

"I cannot do anything about Chiun," Smith said, brittle-voiced. "If and when you find the Master of Sinanju, get him out of the country as quietly and circumspectly as humanly possible."

Remo's snort of derision was like a burst of static over the phone line. "It would be easier to overthrow the Old Guard in Pek . . . I mean Beijing," he said.

"Please, Remo."

Remo sighed. "Just tell me where to go," he muttered.

"By the time you reach Hong Kong, I will have your travel documents processed. Check in at the Beijing Hotel. You will be contacted by an operative friendly to the West. The code name is Ivory Fang."

"Sounds like a regular welcome wagon. What's his Chinese name?"

"I do not know. Ivory Fang will be expecting you."

"All right, I'm on my way."

The phone went dead. Smith returned to the computer. He returned the NSA transcript to memory and input the name Temujin.

Perhaps if he refreshed his knowledge of the reign of Genghis Khan, this would begin to make sense.

He wished he had not been forced to tell Remo that falsehood about a note in a bottle. A more plausible story would have allowed him to bring up that other name the translation had repeatedly mentioned, Wu Ming Shi.

According to the translators, Wu Ming Shi was Mandarin for "nameless." Yet it seemed to appear in the context as a name.

A Military Airlift Command C-130 ferried Remo to San Francisco. There he transferred to a civilian flight to Hong Kong.

There was some problem at the Hong Kong offices of LUXINGSHE, the Chinese International Travel Service. Remo had to resist the urge to turn the blank-faced mainland Chinese officials on their heads and kick-step on their clucking tongues. But he remembered Smith's admonishment not to betray his Sinanju affiliation to anyone, including his pro-Western contact.

So Remo waited patiently for the customs agent to affix the all-important red stamp to his false visa, which was in the name of Remo Loggia. Under "Object of Journey to China," Remo had written, "To get out as fast as possible."

His humor was not appreciated.

Finally he was allowed to board the CAAC flight, finding the seats too narrow for even his lean-by-Western-standards build.

The 727 lifted off, flying so close to a Hong Kong highrise that Remo could see into the top-floor windows. He caught a brief glimpse of a Wiseguy episode, thinking that it would probably be the last sight of American culture he would see for a long time.

Perhaps a very long time. China was a big place. And the Master of Sinanju was an expert at not being found.

Chapter 12

The ticket agent insisted in a bored, impassive voice that there were no soft-seat tickets left.

"I insist upon soft-seat tickets," said the Master of Sinanju in a low voice.

The Chinese ticket agent was contrite.

"The train is nearly full," he said in polite Mandarin. "Foreign tourists have all soft-seat tickets."

"I am a foreign tourist," Chiun retorted haughtily. "I am a Korean."

The ticket agent shrugged, as if to say that while Koreans might possibly be deemed foreign, they are not otherwise significant.

The Master of Sinanju whirled on the student, Zhang Zingzong.

Zhang was standing apart, his eyes worried and glancing often toward the green-uniformed People's Armed Police officers who moved through the human swarms circulating through Beijing's Xizhimen train station. His pockets were stuffed with cigarette packs purchased at a local concession.

"You!" Chiun hissed. "Speak to this stubborn man."

Zhang pretended not to hear Chiun's rising voice while he lit a Blue Swallow cigarette. Waiting passengers in the crowded station were staring at the Master of Sinanju's colorful purple-and-red kimono.

A man had fallen asleep on his luggage. People were stepping over him as if it were a common thing to find a man asleep on the floor, which in congested Beijing, it was. He woke up to the sound of Chiun's voice, shuffled sleepily, and turned over.

Zhang Zingzong kept his face averted. Perhaps the police would not notice him. He feared being recognized more than he feared the Master of Sinanju's wrath. But only by a small margin.

"If you do not assist me, Zhang, I will shout your name to the very heavens," Chiun warned.

Zhang's eyes went wide. He reached out for the Master of Sinanju's brilliant robes. It was like grasping fire that did not burn. The silk retreated from at the approach of his fingers, as if sensing them.

"Please do not do that," Zhang begged. "I will do as you say."

"Who is this man?" the ticket agent asked suddenly.

Over Zhang's protests, the Master of Sinanju whispered into the agent's bent receptive ear.

The ticket agent looked to Zhang sharply. His eyes flew open.

"You!" he hissed. "You tank man!"

"The very same," Chiun said firmly.

"No!" Zhang said. "Not me. Not me!"

"He is very modest," Chiun confided to the ticket agent in the manner of one old friend speaking to another.

"Can you prove this?" the ticket agent said to Chiun.

The Master of Sinanju responded by spinning Zhang Zingzong around, presenting his trembling back to the ticket agent.

That satisfied the ticket agent. He said, "Ahhh," and with great ceremony produced two soft-seat tickets.

"These being held for foreign diplomats," he explained, low-voiced. "They can ride hard seats. Go, now."

To Zhang Zingzong's astonishment, he was whisked to the waiting train.

They found their seats, which were soft and for a crowded Chinese excursion train, relatively comfortable. In contrast to the rest of the train, their car was occupied by Western tourists and a few local cadres in gray Mao suits.

Presently the train began huffing out of the station. It was a steam engine, painted black with red piping. It cleared the station and picked up speed, heading northwest to the town of Badaling.

Chiun sat by the window. He watched the communes and market towns flash by. The clicking of the train wheels over the rail links became monotonous.

Beside him, Zhang Zingzong said nothing, which pleased the Master of Sinanju. He did not enjoy Zhang's company, but he dared not let him out of his sight. The Chinese man had already tried to escape twice. Once by leaping from the junk in the Gulf of Mexico, and again in Cuba, from which they were able to obtain a direct flight to Beijing.

Chiun looked over to the Chinese. He had placed his knapsack on the seat divider between them and laid his head on it. He was already asleep.

Chiun sniffed in disgust at the foul cigarette smell on his breath, but at least it kept the man's face turned away from the ever-passing PLA soldiers who went up and down the aisles, examining the train passengers with hard unflinching eyes. Not even the tourists were spared their basilisk glares.

A frumpy European woman looked over the back of her seat and caught Chiun's eye. "Dui-bu-qi, waigong," she began, reading from a Chinese phrasebook. "What town are we passing?"

"Why ask me?" Chiun replied stiffly. "I am no Chinese tour guide. And I am not your grandfather."

The woman blinked. "You speak English?"

"Obviously," Chiun said, turning his face to the rock quarries outside the sooty windows.

The woman persisted.

"Isn't China amazing? There are so many people!"

"The same is said of rabbits," Chiun muttered.

Zhang Zingzong stirred. His shaggy head brushed the Master of Sinanju's kimono. With a look of distaste on his parchment countenance, Chiun pushed him away.

Zhang twisted about, his head ending up on the outside seat rest.

The Master of Sinanju was so relieved not to be subjected to the Chinese man's nicotine breath that he thought no more of it until a PLA soldier, swaggering down the aisle, stopped at their seats. He loomed over the unsuspecting Zhang.

The PLA soldier turned his butterball face this way and that, trying to discern Zhang's face clearly.

The Master of Sinanju pretended not to notice, but the reflection of the soldier in his window held his cold hazel eyes.

"You!" the soldier grunted at Chiun. "You know this man?"

"Bu," Chiun said flatly, and returned to his window.

The soldier looked at Zhang again, his face tightening in concentration. Then, removing a rubber truncheon from his belt, he smacked Zhang Zingzong over the head without preamble or warning.

"Dog's eyes!" he shouted in Mandarin. "I know your face!"

Zhang recoiled in his seat, his eyes blinking.

"I am only a worker," Zhang protested meekly.

"Show identification!"

Zhang hung his head. "I have none," he admitted. "It was stolen."

The truncheon went under Zhang's chin, forcing his face up to the light. "Liar!" the PLA soldier hissed.

Zhang said nothing. His hand groped for his knapsack, wedged between the seat divider and his side.

The Master of Sinanju surreptitiously stabbed the hand with a single sharp fingernail. Zhang winced and his hand withdrew.

The PLA soldier saw none of this. He took Zhang by the shoulder and pulled him to his feet.

"You will come with me, man without identity."

The commotion attracted a great deal of attention in the tourist-class car. There were a few muttered protests.

"How can they do that?" a middle-aged man said to his wife. "Just take a person away like that?"

"What I don't understand is, why doesn't he stand up for his rights?" the wife returned.

"Someone should do something," another person added.

Everyone agreed that the man's rights were being trampled upon and someone should do something.

But no one did. The train rolled on.

While the passengers' attention was on the poor figure of Zhang Zingzong, the Master of Sinanju took up the abandoned knapsack and placed it under his seat.

Then he floated out of his seat and up the aisle, after the PLA soldier.

Two cars forward, he came to the hard-seat section, crowded with Chinese passengers. The seats were narrower and without cushions. People sat on one another's laps and on luggage in the aisle, eating from cardboard food containers and drinking warm tea from plaid-design vacuum bottles.

They scrunched out of the way as the PLA soldier marched the silent and teary-eyed Zhang Zingzong toward the engine car.

The Master of Sinanju negotiated the aisle with silent deftness. Few saw him approach, for their eyes were on the unfortunate captive. Chiun breezed past them like a ghost in fiery raiment.

After he had passed, no one could help but notice him, however. For his costume was alien even to China.

Behind the engine was a car dominated by a curtained booth where a khaki-uniformed woman sat behind a microphone and tape-deck system, broadcasting a mix of native folk songs and foreign music to the hard-seat section of the train.

A knot of soldiers was loitering by the booth, laughing and joking with the woman.

Zhang Zingzong was ushered into the official car and slammed down on a rude wooden bench.

He sat there, head downcast, hands folded between his knees, submissive under the hard, accusing glare of his captors.

The other soldiers gathered around. Angrily they began hectoring Zhang Zingzong in high, truculent voices.

Then the Master of Sinanju appeared in the rattling car.

One soldier noticed him only because he turned away to light a cigarette. His eyes narrowed at the sight of the aged Korean.

Face placid, the Master of Sinanju beckoned to the soldier.

The soldier hesitated briefly. He pocketed his unlit cigarette and strode up to the Master of Sinanju.

"What you do here, old tortoise?" he demanded.

"Please," Chiun said in flowery Mandarin, "do not shout at this unworthy one, for my ears are very old and sensitive. I have something of importance to impart to you concerning that murderer." Chiun indicated Zhang with a fluttery fingernail.

"He is a murderer?"

"There is a body in the car behind us," Chiun hissed.

"Show me!" the soldier said, tight-voiced.

The Master of Sinanju swirled his skirts turning around. He floated down the aisle, the soldier stepping on feet and knocking over luggage as he stumbled after him.

Chiun stopped before a luggage alcove.

"In here," he said, drawing the curtain aside.

The soldier looked in, holding on to the edge of the alcove as the train rattled along.

"I see no body," the soldier said.

A shiny knuckle connected with the base of the soldier's skull. He collapsed without a sound.

The Master of Sinanju folded the soldier's legs so that they did not stick out. He let the curtain fall.

Then, his face innocent, he padded back to the official car.

There, they were still haranguing Zhang Zingzong.

The Master of Sinanju selected a soldier and tugged on his green sleeve. The soldier bent down and accepted the Master of Sinanju's breathily urgent words whispered in his ear.

He followed him back to look at the body promised to be there. It was the last sight he beheld before his brain died.

He had short legs. Chiun hooked the PLA-issue boots to restraining straps, so they stayed out of sight.

At first, the next soldier did not believe that there were two bodies in the next car. He turned to his comrades and repeated the old Korean's claim.

"This old one says there are dead passengers in the next car."

The soldiers gathered around the Master of Sinanju.

"How could this be?" one said skeptically. "Someone would have complained before this."

"I am sorry," said the Master of Sinanju, spreading his vermilion-and-lavender kimono sleeves. "Did you think I said the next car? I meant the last car. My Mandarin is poor."

"The last car is empty, but for luggage," he was told.

"There are two bodies there."

"I do not believe you."

"PLA bodies," Chiun added blandly.

That did it.

After a hasty exchange of words, they decided to follow the old Asian to the last car. One man-the one who had arrested Zhang in the first place-agreed to stay with the prisoner. He was not happy about it. He wanted to see the bodies too.

The Master of Sinanju allowed the PLA soldiers to go ahead of him. They stampeded through the rattling, swaying cars like a caterpillar of many unsmiling heads.

The train began rounding a sharp turn, forcing the chain of stumbling soldiers to grab at seat backs and overhead racks.

Eventually they made it to the rear car, carefully negotiating the bumping steel platforms which joined the caboose to the rest of the train.

The soldiers burst in. Seeing nothing in the gloomy caboose, they proceeded to toss luggage around and upend packages, looking for the bodies.

One turned an angry face in the direction of the Master of Sinanju who stood serene on the bouncing platform between the cars.

"Where are the bodies!" he demanded.

"I am looking at them," intoned the Master of Sinanju. And he stamped his foot once. The coupling below cracked with a clank, separating the caboose from the train.

The soldiers were abruptly thrown off their feet as the last car lost momentum and slowed.

Then the caboose rolled backward. It gathered speed until it hit the sharp turn the train had just negotiated.

It jumped the rails and turned over twice, throwing off bits of iron and wood and luggage. And broken green bodies.

Pleased the Master of Sinanju began to work his way back to the front of the train, where the final soldier's body lay, ripe for the harvesting.

Chapter 13

The moment Remo Williams stepped off the jetway ramp and into the congested Beijing airport, it all came back to him.

A sea of Chinese faces swam before him like biscuits with eyes and mouths. It wasn't, as the old expression went, that they all looked alike. It was that the Chinese people, used to centuries of obedience, presented similar inoffensive masks to the world their expressions uniformly bland.

Styles of dress were looser than the last time Remo had been to Beijing. The ubiquitous Mao jacket was obviously passe. Remo spotted only six upon arrival-all on older men. And the women wore dresses, not baggy khaki pants. Remo was surprised how Western they looked.

Remo eased into the crowd. People gave way, smiling the identical smile of the East. One that was brought up like a shield in the face of trouble as well as pleasure.

Remo towered over the Chinese throng, even the ever-present baby-faced soldiers. Eyes followed him curiously. He moved past the ticket counters, searching for an exit sign.

Every sign was in Chinese. He frowned. He couldn't read Chinese.

Remo stopped, uncertain what to do. Between the lack of visual clues of the faces surrounding him and the alien calligraphy of the language, it was like being on another planet.

Even in countries where Remo couldn't read the language, there were clues. A Spanish word similar to an English one. A half-remembered French phrase. Here, Remo couldn't even connect with the letters.

While he was puzzling out what to do next, a slim Chinese woman in a blue brocade jacket and slacks came up to him and bowed with her head.

"Fang Yu," she said in a breathy voice.

"Uh, you're welcome," Remo returned. "Speakee English?"

The Chinese woman straightened, smiling broadly. It made her eyes light up like those of a child.

"Fang Yu is my name, and I speak excellent English-or so I am told by other American tourists I have encountered."

"Great," said Remo in genuine relief. "I need to get to the Beijing Hotel."

"I will be happy to escort you," said Fang Yu.

"That's kind of you," Remo said. "But if you'll just dump me into a taxi, I'll manage from there."

"Not at all, Mr. Loggia."

Remo blinked. She knew his cover identity.

"Okay, let's go," he said suddenly.

They found a modern moving walkway and stepped aboard. Remo looked Fang Yu over. She was short, small-boned, and delicate without seeming fragile. She wore her glossy black hair in a modern shag cut. Her makeup was tasteful and yet alluring, her small lips very red.

She wore round tortoiseshell eyeglasses. They made her resemble a delectable almond-eyed owl.

"You said your name is Fang Yu," Remo said casually.

"Do you like it?" she asked, giving him a shy smile.

"Not bad. Yu. Would that by an chance mean 'ivory'?"

"No," she answered without skipping a beat. "It means 'jade'. It is my personal name. My family name is Fang. In my country, unlike yours, we place our last names-what you call surnames-first."

"Oh," Remo said. His sudden change of expression alarmed Fang Yu.

"Is there something wrong?" she asked, touching his bare arm suddenly.

"No," Remo said quickly. "Do people call you Yu?"

Her returning smile was eager. "You may call me Yu if that will please you."

"I'll bet you hear a lot of 'Hey, Yu' jokes."

"A few."

They stepped off at the end of the moving walkway and Remo saw his first English-a multilingual sign in which CUSTOMS was the third word from the bottom.

"I will take you to your luggage," Fang Yu said.

"Didn't bring any," Remo told her.

It was Fang Yu's turn to look perturbed.

"No luggage?"

"Hate the stuff."

Fang Yu stared at Remo curiously. Then she shrugged and together they went down the corridor to Customs.

"Wait here," she told Remo. She went to a counter and filled out a form in Chinese. She returned and handed it to Remo.

"Present this with your visa and passport to the man in the last station," she told him. "I will meet you on the other side."

Remo went to the last station. The customs inspector had the sleepy eyes of a melting Buddha. He looked at Remo for a long time after examining his documents. He stamped Remo's passport with such sudden violence that Remo had to suppress his Sinanju reflexes. He almost neutralized the man.

Joining Fang Yu, Remo asked, "What did you write on that form?"

"That the stupid Hong Kong airline people lost your luggage and you were very upset."

"Oh. "

Outside, the Beijing air was snappy and cold, the sky gray. Coal smoke and diesel exhaust mixed in an unappealing bouquet. Snow clotted the ground in dirty gray patches that had been pounded into submission by uncountable Chinese feet.

A cab whisked them into Beijing traffic, which consisted of trucks, pedicabs, the rare automobile, and moving flocks of the stripped-down Flying Pigeon bicycles which were as common on Chinese streets as the Volkswagen Beetle used to be in America.

Fang Yu was issuing sharp directions to the driver. Her Chinese was quick and guttural, not at all like her breathy, polished English.

As they moved through a rickety residential neighbor hood, Remo could smell cabbage, although the cab windows were closed. The scent brought back half-buried memories of Remo's last visit, when he and Chiun had recovered the Sword of Sinanju from a Chinese museum.

Remo pushed all thought of the Master of Sinanju from his mind. A truck trundled by, its flatbed overflowing with piled cabbage.

Cabbage lay stacked in the tiny alleyways. Apartmenthouse balconies had become cabbage sheds. Bicycles flew by, cloth sacks heavy with hard spherical burdens hanging off handlebars.

"Cabbage must be on sale this week," Remo remarked.

"It is winter," Fang Yu remarked quietly. "In winter, we eat cabbage for breakfast and dinner."

"Rice for lunch?"

She shook her glossy hair. "Cabbage."

"Chinese people must love the stuff."

"No one loves cabbage," Fang Yu answered. "It is for winter eating, not for pleasure. It is December now. By February the price of cabbage will be five times what it is now, three times what it was in October. Only the foolish buy winter cabbage in winter." She shrugged. "But there are many poor fools in China these days."

Eventually they reached the Beijing Hotel. Remo waited with folded arms while Fang Yu haggled with the front desk. Many strange glances were cast in his direction. Since he wasn't the only American in the lobby-the Beijing was popular with Western tourists-Remo waited until they were in the ascending elevator before asking Fang Yu a question.

"What was the problem?"

"No luggage," Fang Yu said aridly. "It is very suspicious. You may be reported to the local cadre. Please inform your superiors that the next time they send an agent, he must bring luggage-even if it is filled only with towels."

"Wait a minute. Are you Ivory Fang?"

Fang Yu said nothing. She led Remo to a simple white-painted hotel-room door and opened it with her key. They entered.

It was not much different from a Western hotel. The decor was subdued. The rug was peach, the bedspread yellow.

"I asked you a question," Remo said as Fang Yu pulled the draperies open. She pushed aside the sliding glass door and stepped out onto a balcony. Remo joined her out in the cold.

Down below, the vast expanse of Tiananmen Square lay open to their eyes. The square was only sparsely populated. Most of the walking figures looked like tiny Gumbys. PLA soldiers.

"Yes, I am," Fang Yu said quietly.

Remo started to speak. Fang Yu silenced him with a slim finger on his lips. Her scent was in his nostrils suddenly. It was very, very faint. Possibly even a natural scent. Remo liked it. She smelled of dying roses.

"What are you looking at?" Remo wondered.

"I have never seen it from such a vantage point," Fang Yu said in a dreamy voice.

"The Kentucky Fried Chicken fits in real well," Remo remarked dryly.

When there was no reply, Remo said, "Were you there? When it happened?"

Fang Yu looked down at the square, saying nothing for a long time. Presently she whispered a low question.

"Do you know the sound a human head makes when it is crushed under the treads of a tank?"

"No," Remo said truthfully.

"Pong," Fang Yu said distantly. "Pong. A hollow kind of sound-as hollow as the souls of those who drive the tanks and the butchers who give the orders." She spat out the word "butchers" with sibilant vehemence. She turned suddenly.

"We have to assume this room is bugged. We will speak of important matters later. Where do you wish to go?"

"I don't know yet. I have to find a man. A Korean."

Fang Yu's eyebrows lifted like commas.

"He's on his way to Beijing, if he's not already here." Remo continued. "He may be with a Chinese, a young man."

"How will we know these two?"

"The Korean is over eighty, and he will wear a kimono. Probably of silk, and travel with several steamer trunks. Where he goes, he will cause great commotion. He's very excitable. His voice squeals."

A notch appeared between Fang Yu's slim eyebrows. "You make this Korean sound like Old Duck Tang."

"Who's that?"

"You know him as Donald the Duck."

"I think you've zeroed in on his personality," Remo said dryly. "Exactly."

"I will look into this," she murmured at last. "You will wait here. Are you hungry?"

"I will be."

The notch disappeared. "Then I will take you to a most excellent Chinese restaurant," she said, smiling again. "You will savor it very much. The food is what you Americans would call scrumptious."

Remo closed the sliding door after her, shutting off the clattery hum of Beijing traffic. He hadn't even noticed the sound until it was gone.

"I will return at eight," Fang Yu called over her shoulder.

"I'll be here," Remo said. He watched Fang Yu slip out the door, enjoying the undulant sway of her slim hips.

Suddenly, locating the Master of Sinanju didn't seem as urgent as it had been.

Chapter 14

There was a great commotion at the Badaling train station when the excursion train from Beijing pulled in, minus its red caboose.

In the soft-seat cars, the commotion manifested itself as a repeated forlorn cry.

"What about my luggage?"

"We search for passenger luggage," the unhappy Head of the Train said in his stilted English. He looked worried.

The Master of Sinanju arose from his nap and hectored Zhang Zingzong to take down his lacquered trunk from the overhead rack.

Zhang struggled with the heavy trunk, but in his heart he was grateful. There had been fourteen such trunks when they set forth. The others had remained in Havana, to be called for when they reached their unknowable ultimate destination.

Zhang Zingzong had no idea what their ultimate destination was, but he knew that what he carried in the teak box in his knapsack whispered of a thousand footsteps to come.

The Master of Sinanju following like a silken votary, Zhang carried the trunk out to the platform. He signaled for a rickshaw and loaded the trunk aboard. It filled the entire rickshaw seat.

"No room for us," he told the Master of Sinanju.

Chiun lifted a spidery hand. Another ricksaw rattled up, pulled by a heavily bundled man who might have been a young fifty or an old thirty. Beijing winters took a lot out of the men.

Chiun gathered up his skirts and settled into the open seat. Zhang started to climb in. The Master of Sinanju stopped him with a warning nail to his sunken chest.

"You will stay with my trunk," he said firmly, "and see that it is not stolen."

"We have few thieves in China," he protested indignantly. "Thieves are beheaded here."

The Master of Sinanju looked around him haughtily. "I see many heads," he said, "but I also see many thieves."

"No thieves," Zhang repeated.

"All Chinese are thieves," said the Master of Sinanju, staring straight ahead, his cold hazel eyes unwavering.

Zhang climbed onto the steamer trunk, wincing at Chiun's sharp admonishment not to scuff the lacquer.

"Wo-men yao qu Wan-Li-Chang-Cheng," he spat at the driver.

The rickshaws started up through the cabbage stink of the city street, leaving the excursion train behind. PLA soldiers swarmed over it like green mites over the corpse of a fire-blackened centipede.

They were passed by lines of tour buses on the way to the Great Wall of China.

The hilly terrain all around them resembled a bleak snow-swept lunar landscape. Here and there sections of apparently flexible stone battlements undulated into view.

The eyes of the Master of Sinanju grew bright as he recognized sinuous sections of the Great Wall of China.

"Faster!" he called to his driver.

The lazy Chinese drivers, of course, did not move faster, he noted. If anything, the obdurate ones slowed their lackadaisical pace.

The Master of Sinanju arranged his kimono skirts impatiently. Soon, he thought, soon.

The rickshaw pulled up to the tourist parking area in the lee of the Great Wall.

It towered twenty feet high, and was broad enough for horsemen to ride its stone-paved road-for the wall was as much are elevated road as it was a barrier--five horses abreast.

It dwarfed the people milling under it, as well as the many tourist buses.

The Master of Sinanju stood up in the rickshaw, his hands grasping the opposite wrists in the concealment of his joined kimono sleeves, and surveyed the Great Wall's lines.

This was the section that was open to tourists. The inner wall was despoiled by a modern brick parapet and handrail. Chiun wrinkled his nose. Was this what the Chinese had come to? Offering up their mightiest monument for the edification of big-nosed foreigners? Were US dollars so bright that they would allow even their supposed enemies to walk along its dragonlike spine?

Chiun cast his eyes east, where the wall had been desecrated by vandals. It lay in ruins. To the west, the wall was a vanishing small thing coiling through the Yanshan Mountains.

"Come," said the Master of Sinanju.

Zhang Zingzong dropped from his perch. Without waiting for word, he heaved the big trunk off the rickshaw seat and set it on the cold stone ground.

The Master of Sinanju bestowed a single dollar bill upon the eager Chinese drivers. He was astonished that they accepted the paper money without first holding out for gold.

Even their avariciousness had fallen on evil times.

"What will we do with this?" Zhang demanded, pointing to the trunk. The rickshaws were being turned around, their drivers seeking new customers.

The Master of Sinanju looked around.

"It will be safe on top of that bus." He was pointing to an empty tourist bus with an overhead wire luggage rack.

Zhang Zingzong laboriously carried the trunk over to the bus and clambered atop. He knew from recent experience what the Master of Sinanju would do next.

No sooner had he gotten to the top and leaned over than the old Korean reached down and took up the trunk by one brass handle. He jerked upward. Under this slight manipulation, the trunk seemed to become weightless. It rose floatingly, and Zhang had to scramble to grab the brass handle that was suddenly before his nose.

He wrestled the trunk onto the luggage rack and then clambered back to Chiun's side.

"What happen if bus goes away before we return?" he asked, looking around in case PLA soldiers had seen them.

The Master of Sinanju said nothing. He went to a rear tire and one sandal swept out. The tire expelled air with a firecracker report. The bus listed to one side. The Korean disappeared to the other side. Another report, and the bus settled further.

The Master of Sinanju returned, saying, "Show me the way, Chinese."

Zhang Zingzong started for the wall, going up the steep railed parapet to the top.

The tourists were a mixture of Chinese and foreign nationals. Chattering of Young Pioneers, wearing identical red kerchiefs, they strolled by under the watchful eyes of a woman with her hair pulled back into a tight bun.

They walked calmly, Chiun ignoring the looks he received from Chinese and foreigners alike. They stepped over a thin break in the wall to one of the unrestored sections.