Spoils Of War

He recoiled with the pain, but it brought him

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back to alertness. He forced his mind away from the girl and focused on the hail of arrows, which he fended off easily using only his left arm and his legs. He formulated a plan. Following Chain's example with the spear warriors outside the palace, he would wait until the archers ran out of arrows, then charge them. He would kill all but one, and would force that one to lead him to Chiun.

But before the arrows were depleted, an eerie crackling electronic noise filled the room, and a woman's voice said, "Stop."

Immediately the bows were still and the archers slipped silently out the door. When it closed behind them, Remo was left again in the shadowy firelit room, which already had begun to smell of death.

There was laughter in the room, familiar laughter, and soon Remo recognized the woman's voice as Randy Nooner's. "All the girls love you, don't they, Remo?" she asked from four different points in the room, her voice amplified painfully.

"The last one betrayed her master for you. That's quite an honor, you know. The sheik's concubine," she sneered. "She was so sure she could protect you, the little ditz."

"Where is Chiun?" Remo demanded.

"Sleeping peacefully. I wouldn't disturb him if I' were you. He'll be sleeping for a long, long time."

He squinted through the darkness to locate the loudspeakers, which were hidden behind the sheets of silk on the walls. He blinked, trying to ease a growing pain in his eyes. Even the dim candlelight of the room began to burn with a terrible intensity. And the crackling of the speakers . . . Convulsively, Remo covered his ears to block out the sound.

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The movement jolted through his shoulder, reminding him of the arrow wound. It had entered cleanly and gone out the other side—a small wound, insignificant compared with many he had taken—but the pain was worsening fast.

"Uncomfortable, Remo?" Randy's voice crooned. "It's a native poison. Works like strychnine but it's undetectable. No smell, no taste. Sharpens the senses to the breaking point. The old man drank his dose with his afternoon tea. Yours was more direct."

Remo pinched his ears shut to block out some of the booming sound from the loudspeakers.

"This is just the beginning, Remo. It gets worse. Much worse. Listen." Through the crackling of the speakers, Remo heard the amplified shuffling and clanking of gadgets as Randy readied herself. Then his eardrums nearly burst. The ring of a large bell clanged through the room, growing louder with each echo as Randy pumped up the volume on her controls. Remo covered his head with his arms, as if he were protecting himself from falling bombs.

"You should never have looked further than Fort Vadassar," the voice snapped, still shrouded in the echoes of the bell. "You had Artemis. You could have blamed everything on him. That was the point. Instead, you decided to come after me. It was the wrong decision."

"Stop," he cried. "I can't stand the noise."

"Poor Remo. You're so cute when you're vulnerable. Boyish. I like you this way." She laughed again, a high, cruel laugh like a hyena's, which echoed and roared through Remo's ears.

He forced his head up. The sound was deafening, and the light from the candles seared him. When he

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breathed, the incense in the room nauseated him with acrid smoke.

He struggled to his feet, the room awhirl around him, and looked for a weapon. There was nothing.' The pillows, the candles, the incense—everything in the room was soft and pliable. The place was as harmless as a padded cell.

Straining his eyes, he looked at the incense again. The glowing cones were burning in tiny brass lamps. They weighed two ounces at most, but they were shaped in an aerodynamically sound wedge. If he threw them exactly right, weighting his thrust from the middle of his back, at exactly the right angle, he could knock down the loudspeakers and stop Randy Nooner*s laughter from pounding in his ears.

His right shoulder was throbbing demonically. He would have to use his left arm. He tried to aim one of the little lamps at the speaker's base, but the speaker was covered with the silk wall draperies, and the poison that the arrow had carried into Re-mo's body was distorting his vision. The objects in the room appeared to waver and melt together like party-colored spaghetti.

He missed. He stumbled to retrieve the lamp, threw it, and missed again. The effort left him limp and gasping for breath.

Randy's witchy laughter cackled over the speakers again. "The fighter to the end," she said. "It won't do you any good. Your Oriental friend knew that. He didn't struggle at all. He just lay down quietly, the sweet little thing."

"Chiun," Remo whispered. "Hang on, Little Father. I'm coming for you."

It was then that Remo saw the camera. It was poised over the door, hidden in the shadows beneath

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the drapes of silk. Summoning the small strength he had remaining, he weaved his way across the room and stared up at it.

"You found me," Randy said. "Good. I'd like a closeup of you as you die. The fihn will make a good conversation opener when I show it at parties." Her laughter reverberated in Remo's brain. "Can you hear me, Remo? I don't think I'm getting my message across. I want you to die."

Her words rang and cracked as the sound became louder.

"I'm turning up the sound, Remo, so that you'll understand me clearly. Die, Remo."

"Die, Remo. Die, Remo," the distorted, disembodied voice echoed.

"Die."

"Die. Die. Die. Die."

Remo felt a small blood vessel in his ear explode. A trickle of blood trailed down his neck.

"I will not die," Remo said.

Slowly he raised his arms toward the camera as if in salute. Then, using his arms as borders, he willed the area between them into focus until he could see the camera clearly. He shifted his weight slightly to center himself directly below it. Randy was talking, but he did not hear her now. Now the universe was a space between his two upheld arms, and nothing more. Only the television camera above him existed. Nothing more. One by one, Remo removed all other sensations from his mind. There were no memories, no past, and no future. Only the camera.

He closed his eyes. The camera was still there, its presence exerting gravity, the only object in Remo's consciousness. He felt it. He was ready.

His knees bent automatically. His back straight-

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ened. His heels left the floor, and he was springing reflexively as a cat toward the camera. His hands closed around it. It came away from the wall in a tangle of wires and bolts. It rested in his arms, the weapon he needed.

"You pig!" Randy screamed. But Remo did not open his eyes and pushed the sound out of his ears. He positioned himself in the center of the room and permitted the sound vibrations from the loudspeakers to touch his skin without entering his ears. He felt the corner sources of the speakers, and sent the camera spinning toward one, then another, then another. As the fourth speaker smashed to the ground in a fury of sparks, Remo allowed his concentration to dissipate. The speaker groaned once, then was silent.

Remo sank to the floor.

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Thirteen

Quiet.

Remo luxuriated in it. The ringing in his ears stopped. The throbbing from his burst eardrum subsided. His eyes rested on the dim, incense-smoky wall ahead. He pulled his mind back deep into semi-consciousness, away from all thought. There was more in store for him, of that he was sure. There would be plenty of time for worry later. Now he had to rest.

Then the light appeared. It came from nowhere, a blinding expanse of light where the blank wall used to be. It sent him reeling. He blinked and tried to shield his eyes, but the light was unrelenting.

Into it stepped the figure of a man, his shadow attenuated against the yellow-white light. "Come," he said gently. Remo recognized the voice as that of the guide who first escorted him into the palace.

"Where is Chiun?" Remo whispered. "The old man who was with me?"

"Do not ask, my friend. In the Palace of Vadass, it is always best not to ask." His voice was low and sad.

He helped Remo stand and supported him as he

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dragged himself toward the great light. "It hurts my eyes," Remo mumbled, his lips beginning to numb.

"Then do not look," the man said. "Here, to open one's eyes is to look upon pain. One must learn not to see what is too painful to watch."

As they neared the source of the light, Remo noticed fuzzily that the doorway he was walking toward wasn't a doorway at all, but rather the space where the wall once was. The walls must have slid away to form the opening, he thought.

"Where am I going?"

. "The royal throne room. The sheik and his woman await you." Remo looked at the man's face. He had remembered it as a handsome face, but now it was creased and careworn. "You were waiting in an adjoining chamber," the man continued. "You and . . . and the dead girl."

"Who was she? I want to know."

"She was not important," the man said bitterly. "Nothing is important here. I must speak with you no more." They walked the last few steps in silence.

The man left Remo when they entered the throne room. Its walls were covered with gold leaf, its brilliance painful. Remo squinted to see. On the gold walls blazed enormous sconces with dozens of candles, and a candelit chandelier 15 feet wide hung from the ceiling, as bright as the sun itself. The furniture was a mishmash of different styles and periods, the pillage of centuries. All but the throne itself, which stood out in Arabic splendor, framed in ornate gold filigree. The occupant of the throne, if there was one, was obscured by thick curtains of many layers of white silk.

Otherwise, the room was empty. It pained Remo to move, but he took a hesitant step forward. As he

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did, a monstrous pain crashed across his back, and he fell face first to the floor.

"One bows in the presence of royalty, Remo," Randy Nooner said, stepping out from behind him. She was swathed in gossamer veils and held a bronze staff in her hand.

"Chiun," Remo said. "Where's Chiun?"

"You'll see him soon enough. But you're going to answer some questions first. Over there." She prodded him with the staff. He pushed himself to his knees, but a blow across his shoulders knocked him down. "Crawl," she said slowly.

Remo crawled.

Near the throne, Randy sat cross-legged on a Victorian settee. She ripped the veil from her face. "Damn nuisance," she muttered. "I meant the veil, but that applies to you, too. Now, suppose you tell me why you came all the way to Quat, Remo. Ifs not in the tourist books."

Remo said nothing. Randy raised the bronze staff she carried and slammed it into his wounded shoulder. "Talk," she said.

"Artemis was making those recruits desert for you so that you could have your army. The officers who didn't see things your way on those bases were killed. You did that."

"Ah-ah, Remo. I told you long ago that the recruits were doing the killing. It was the truth. Oh, they had a little encouragement from Samantha's communion brew and Artemis's rhetoric, but the boys took care of their officers on their own. Artemis just gave them a taste of bloodlust with the chaplains they offed at those revival meetings of his. He loved Trilling, you know. He lived for it. An inspiration to the men."

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"But he worked for you."

Randy shrugged. "We all work for somebody."

"What about you?" Remo .asked groggüy.

She smiled. "I suppose it wouldn't hurt for you to know now. You'll be dead before the day is over, even if you run away." She stood up and added, "Which you won't."

She strode over to the throne and pulled a tassled cord hanging down the side of the draped area. The curtains swung apart.

Remo blinked in amazement at the sight. On the middle of the great throne sat a tiny man of indeterminate age, his face as bland as a baby's, his black hair cropped close to his head. In his hands he held a glass ball, which he watched with unending fascination, oblivious to the presence of Remo or Randy Nooner. The man gurgled and cooed as he turned the ball slowly. His face broke into a broad smile, and he kicked his feet playfully into the air.

"Vadass the Sheik," Randy announced sardonically, laughter tumbling out of her.

His attention drawn to her, the baby-faced sheik began to cry until the guide who had brought Remo to the throne room appeared with a new toy to distract him. Without a word, the guide closed the curtains and slipped away.

"That's who I work for. Or what I work for, to be exact. He's got the mind of a cabbage." She cocked her head disgustedly toward the throne. "He's forty-three years old, if you can believe that. But he still needs a woman. That's where I fit in. You're looking at the soon-to-be Queen of Quat, baby."

"Why you?" Remo asked, trying to pull himself from the floor and failing.

"He was neglected, the little dear. His brother

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was the sheik, and he ran everything. A year ago, . the brother went to the trouble of executing all of his male relatives to make sure nobody would try to take over the throne—all but Poopsie here, that is. Nobody thought this drooling fool could take over anything."

"Except you." .

She shrugged. "I can't take all the credit. Actually, it was my daddy's idea to have the sheik assassinated and put Poopsie in charge. But he was going to do things the American way, with American advisors and all. It would have given the United States an ally in the Middle East.

"Daddy was going to present his idea to the president, but fortunately he told me about it first. Once I showed him what we could do on our own, Daddy masterminded the rest of the plan. He was the one who picked up on Artemis and found out he was a killer. Daddy figured that a preacher who got off on murdering strangers could do a lot to set up an army, especially if that army had the complete approval of the American people."

"That's what the press conference was for," Remo said. "Artemis brainwashed the recruits at the four army bases for you, then you had them revolt and come to Vadassar."

"That's right," Randy giggled. "Now all those newsmen are telling millions of people that Fort Vadassar is a haven for poor, mistreated soldiers."

"Soldiers for Quat."

"They don't know that yet, of course. Vadassar is on file at the Pentagon as a regulation army base, even though the land belonged to me and Poopsie's money paid for the buildings. It was just a matter of changing records. By the time people find out that

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the soldiers at Vadassar aren't working for the American government, it'll be too late to do anything about it. My reports say that a thousand recruits a day are deserting their bases and joining the Vadassar forces. Even civilians are enlisting. By next month I'll have a hundred thousand soldiers ready to leap at my command."

"How does Daddy fit in?" Remo asked, sliding imperceptibly away from her.

"Daddy will see to it that Ouat gets more financial aid from America than India does. That, or we let loose the Vadassar army on the Texas countryside." She cackled with glee. "Can you see the implications of this!" she said breathlessly. "Never before has a foreign power occupied territory on the continental United States. Quat is going to become a world power. With American funds, we can even build our own atomic arsenal. We'll have Uncle Sam by both balls."

She tapped the brass staff on the palm of her hand. "Now you know." She walked closer to him, her steps deliberate. "This is the end, Remo. What a shame. You were so good in bed."

At her signal, a handfuj of uniformed guards burst in and rushed toward Remo. Through his blurred vision, they looked like a hundred, stampeding toward him with monkey faces and thousands of arms. They lifted him like a wave.

The poison was working at its peak. Remo's body felt like rubber, his senses chaotic. He was drifting through corridors and stairwells as though he were flying in slow motion, floating past the walls of stone and wood, the footfalls of the men who carried him as loud as thunder.

After what seemed like an eternity of aimless

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drifting, Remo's head banged against a cold, hard surface. The movement jarred the numbness from his brain and set it on fire. But he would accept the pain, because to feel pain was to know he was alive. Chiun had taught him that.

Chiun. Through his kaleidoscopic vision, Remo saw him, lying like a statue on the stone floor. He reached out his hand to touch him. The old man was cold.

"Chiun," Remo whispered unbelievingly. He couldn't be dead. He couldn't be.

The anger that rose in him turned to hatred, and the hatred brought him to his feet. The hatred electrified his useless shoulder and forced his arm back and ahead, into the throat of one of the guards, as his left hand exploded into the skull of another. There was no pain, because the hatred was stronger than the pain. He kicked a third guard in the groin, sending him flying in a screaming heap. He held another by the hair as he bashed the guard's head into the stone floon.

Then Remo saw the brass staff swinging prettily through the air an inch from his face, and it was too late. Randy Nooner's face was twisted into an ugly mask, her teeth bared, as she brought the staff down. Remo ducked his head. It was all he could do.

And he thought sadly, as the pain of the blow registered and the blackness began to envelop him, that he had failed. He would never see Chiun again.

i

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Fourteen

He was flying.

It was all so familiar somehow—the rarified air, the tether . . . the tether. Ahead of him, a beast of gigantic dimensions glided gracefully on the wind.

He was back in his dream, the Dream of Death, and the dragon of the dream was carrying him away into eternal blackness.

A monumental force from the West will seek to destroy Shiva, the voice in the dream had told him. But now another voice spoke, high and reedy and absolute in its authority. Chiun's voice.

And it said, You are that force, Remo.

Remo stirred in his delerium. "Father," he said.

Silence. He called again. "Father. Father!" he shouted. "Come to me."

/ am with you now, the voice said gently. I am in your mind, where I may help you.

"How?"

Understand you this. You are Shiva, and only Shiva may destroy Shiva. No harm may come to you but by the wavering of your own will.

"We are poisoned, Father."

Your body can withstand the poison. But it can-

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not heal itself without your will. Go into your body and expel the poison from it. Deep within. I will help you, my son.

And Remo felt locking into his mind another force, very strong, very sure. It took him into the depths of his living, physical self, past his weakened muscles, through his organs, diseased by the poison in them. It carried him along the roadway of his bloodstream, cluttered with moving cells and on into the volatile neurons of his nervous system.

This was where the poison had come to rest, among the powerful nerve cells that spurred Remo's senses and reflexes to action. They lay numb and dormant now, their potent electrical charges reduced to fizzling, unconnected sparks. This was where the force brought Remo, and where the voice commanded him to heal himself.

Go within the poison. Eliminate it by your will.

Remo's body shuddered as the strength of Chiun's concentration flowed into his damaged nervous system. He focused on the source of Chiun's thoughts and joined it, and together their combined wills took on an awesome power. Inside the delicate system, translucent ooze seeped out of the sluggish cells into Remo's bloodstream. He gasped as it coursed through his veins, burning like acid. His muscles twitched in spasm from the shock.

The poison entered his heart, and Remo cried aloud with the pain, his unseeing eyes flying open, his fingers clutching empty air.

Father, the pain.

Ahead, the dragon soared to the chilly heights of the stratosphere with Remo following helplessly behind, jerking in agony from the pain.

He was cold. The sky became darker. He was

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growing numb as the dragon carried him toward oblivion.

Let me go, father. The pain is too great, and I am only a man. Forgive me.

You are not a meat. You are Shiva. Withstand the pain and live.

Remo cried out. "Why?" IDs body racked with sobs. "What* s the difference, if you're dead? If s all a joke, Chiun, and I'm tired of laughing. Just let me go.»

Things are not as they appear. If I were dead, 1 would still be with you always. But I live. So must you live also.

"Father," Remo said.

Live, my son.

And the poison passed from Remo's heart and seeped through the layered tissues of his muscles, cramping them in hard knots of pain. Remo bucked forward, vomiting.

' Then he began to sweat. Rivulets poured from his skin and dripped into pools beneath his feet. He shook from the cold, the perspiration soaking him in the musty chill of the dungeon.

The dragon turned back. Back into warmth, into light.

Live, my son, the voice repeated.

And he was breathing heavily, and the trembling of his hands subsided.

Remo opened his eyes tentatively. They were filled with sweat, which cascaded from his forehead and blurred his vision. Through the stinging waterfall, he saw Chiun's still form lying lifeless on the cement floor.

His voice was a croak. "Chiun."

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He had pained to bring the dragon back from peaceful oblivion to live. For nothing.

His shoulders ached. He followed them upward with his eyes to his wrists, which were shackled and strung by chains to~the ceiling. His feet dangled free, inches from the floor. He was near enough to Chiun's body to see his face clearly. The old man's expression was peaceful and serene. He had accepted death well.

Remo wept.

Then he thought he saw a movement. Remo blinked twice rapidly to clear his eyes. It was Chiun's face. Something about it had changed.

Remo squinted. Was it his imagination?

No, he decided. There had been a change, an imperceptible change, but enough to alter the utter stillness of the old man's repose.

It happened again. This time, he saw it. "Chiun," Remo shouted.

And it happened once more. By fractions of millimeters, Chiun's eyes were opening. No other part of his body moved. Only the eyelids raised infinitesi-mally higher until Remo could see the hazel of his irises. Finally, when his eyes were fully open, the old man bunked slowly.

"Chiun," Remo said, the exclamation a mixture of laughter and fear.

The old man didn't respond. "Chiun?" Remo questioned. "Chiun. Answer me, Little Father. Chiun, do you hear me? It's Remo. Chiun!"

The Oriental's lips parted soundlessly.

"Chiun! Say something! It's Remo."

"I know who you are, dogface," Chiun said.

Remo gasped, his joy overwhehning all the pain

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in his body. "Chiun," he said, almost choking with relief.

"I also know who I am. Therefore, you may cease your incessant wailing of my name, o brainless one."

"I thought you were dead."

"Thinking has never been what you do best, Remo."

Remo looked again at the chains that dangled him helplessly from the ceiling, and blushed with shame.

Chiun floated to his feet swiftly and walked toward Remo, shaking his head and clucking like a disappointed hen. "The worst of it is that this hideous thing was perpetrated on you by Quati, who are possibly the most incompetent warriors on the face of the earth."

He sighed as he inserted a finger between Remo's wrist and the shackle around it and snapped it into fragments. "To be captured at all is embarrassing enough. But to be captured by Quati is unspeakable."

He broke the other shackle, and Remo fell to the floor. "The utter shame of it," Chiun muttered, prodding the wound in Remo's shoulder. He ripped the hem of his robe and bound the cloth expertly around the festering sore. "I will carry this shame with me to my grave."

Remo smiled. "I really thought you were a goner, Chiun."

"As soon I will be. The shame of your capture by Quati will doubtless deliver me into the Void before my time. Let it be on your head."

"Give me all the guilt you want," Remo said brightly. "I'm glad to see you. I was sure—"

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"You were sure. You are always sure. And always wrong. Did I not tell you I was alive? Did I not help you—yet again, may I add—to overcome your weakness?"

"I thought that was my imagination."

"Imagination!" Chiun squeaked. "Oh, the odious pride of you. The insufferable arrogance. After overcoming the poison in my own delicate being, I bring myself to the brink of the Void to rescue you from your unbelievable weakness and stupidity, and you call it your imagination."

"I'm sorry, Chiun. I should have known you'd be allright."

"Your imagination is of the same quality as your powers of reason. At best, they are dangerously inadequate. Do us both a service, Remo. Never think. Take up a new profession for which a brain is not necessary. Become a wrestler. Write commercials for television. But do not think."

"I said I was sorry," Remo pouted.

"Sorry, sorry. Sorry us out of here, if you will, Remo. I have seen quite enough of Quat."

"Okay," he said, looking up a stone stairwell leading to a closed metal door. "I'll need your help."

"Of course." Chiun followed him up the stairs.

The door was connected by two giant steel hinges. With his foot, Remo smashed the lower hinge. As the pieces clanked down the steps, Chiun leaped above him to shatter the top hinge. Remo pushed the door outward with the force of an explosion, sending out a wave of smashing steel that reverberated throughout the palace.

"The throne room's that way," Remo said, pointing. "I'll go down this passage, and you take the opposite route."

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A handful of guards armed with, knives and sabers came running down the corridor at them. With one movement, Chiun sent five of them sprawling into the walls, each leaving his own set of indentations. Remo was heading down the long passageway to intercept another group when the whistle of a knife in motion sounded by his ear. Reflexively, he jutted out his elbow, and the knife tumbled to the floor as the guard doubled over clutching his stomach.

He kicked his way through the crowd as the hard clang of steel hitting the marble floor echoed through the walkways. Another saber slashed savagely at Remo's wound, tearing off Chiun's dressing. It immediately began to throb again, but Remo could not let himself give in to the pain. He took the hilt of the saber and wrestled it away from its owner. The guard jumped away, cursing Remo in his strange tongue.

Finally Remo stood at the portals to the throne room. Randy Nooner looked mildly annoyed to see him. She looked up briefly from the magazine she was reading and without expression called, "Guard."

When there was no answer, her lips tightened in impatience. She called again. "I said guard," she snapped. "What do we pay you guys for? Get over here."

No one came.

Remo stalked closer.

"Guard." Hysteria was rising in her voice. 'Til have you all beheaded, you worthless peasants. Hurry up."

Remo neared, his eyes fixed on hers.

"Guard," she screamed.

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"They're not coming." "Help me, you bastards!"

"They're gone," Remo said quietly. "And I'm not. And you're dead."

Randy jumped to her feet and picked up the brass staff she kept nearby. "Don't come any closer," she warned.'TU kill you."

Remo chuckled. "Try it," he said. "Remember, I'm not poisoned anymore. Miss Nooner, you can throw your little stick to your heart's content."

In a rage, she flung the weapon at Remo. He moved out of the way, and it clinked harmlessly onto the marble floor.

"I guess that's that," Remo said. He came closer.

"Stop," Randy shrieked, the veins in her neck standing out grotesquely, her red hair tangled over her face. She gestured toward the throne covered by white gauze. "Take him," she pleaded. "The idiot. He's the sheik. You can have the country. Kill him and if s yours. Just let me go."

"No thanks," Remo said pleasantly.

Just then, behind the veiled throne, the curtain covering the wall rippled and parted. Standing in the opening was the guide who had ,£rst brought Remo to the throne room. His face was stony, and he stood perfectly still beside the throne of the idiot king. In his hands he held a short, thick knife.

"Rajii," Randy called, breathless. "Thank God you're here. Kill him, Rajii. Hurry."

The man did not move, not a finger, not an eyelash.

"Kill him," Randy Nooner ordered.

"The girl killed by the arrows was my daughter," Rajii said in a flat monotone to no one in particular.

Randy growled. "She was a traitor." She gestured

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toward Remo. "Kill this man or you will be executed," she said hoarsely.

"And you offered the ufe of my charge, this innocent man with the mind of a tiny child, for your own."

"He's a moron," she spat. "His life is worthless."

"No life is worthless," Rajii said quietly.

Randy sobbed. "Please," she begged. "Please help me, Rajii."

The man nodded. "I will help you in the only way I can," he said, and threw the dagger straight into Randy Nooner's heart.

Her eyes opened wide in astonishment. She raised her hands feebly to remove the knife, but it was imbedded in her chest up to the hilt. As she sank to the floor, Rajii came foward to join Remo before her.

"You ass," she hissed. "He'll kill you, too."

"I know," Rajii said. "May the peace of ages be with you."

Then the sound of death rattled in her throat and she died, her beautiful, cruel eyes blazing with the light from the thousand candles burning in the chandelier above her.

Rajii was the first to speak. "The official documents to the sheikdom are locked in a vault behind the throne," he said. "I will open it for you before you kill me, if you wish."

"Why would you do that?" Remo asked.

"The sheikdom is yours to do with as you like. I ask only that you allow the sheik to live. He is sterile, so there will be no heirs. He cannot harm you in any way. This I beg you. Please grant him his life, for he is innocent of all wrongdoing in this terrible place. Grant me this one request, and I will prepare

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all the documents to declare you regent and official heir. Then you may dispose of me as you will."

Neither of them noticed Chiun move silently beside them. "Who are you?" Chiun asked.

"Only a servant," Rajii said.

"You do not have the bearing of a servant. I ask you again. Who are you?"

The man paused, clenching his jaw, then he spoke. "My name is Rajii Zel Imir Adassi," he said. "The name belonged to one of the wealthiest families of the region. Then Vadass—the sheik's brother —took over the throne and executed everyone who could usurp his power, including the males of all the noble families, and confiscated the fortunes of these families. Mine was among them."

"Then why didn't he kill you?"

Rajii's head hung in shame. "Vadass disliked me particularly because I would not permit him to take my daughter for his sport." He spoke so quietly that his words were nearly inaudible.

"My wife died when she was very young, and I never remarried. My daughter, Jola, was all I had. I treasured her. I wanted to save her for a man who would treasure her as I did."

Remo saw Rajii's hands tremble, and was filled with sadness for the broken man. "So when Vadass began his purge, he first took my daughter to be his concubine, his toy. . . ." He bit his lip and tried to compose himself. "And then, as a prank, he took me as his servant so that I might watch her in her degradation. He said that my job would be to serve his feeble-minded brother, to be reminded always that even this Vadass was master to me.

"But, in believing that every man's heart was as small as his own, Sheik Vadass made a great error.

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For my daughter was still alive, and because of that, I counted myself a lucky man. And the boy became an even greater joy, because with him and his simple ways, I was needed. He will never grow and understand like other men, but he has my love." "Did Randy Nooner know any of this?" "No. They didn't care. When the Americans came—the woman and her father—I knew that the end was near. They took everything by force. They were even worse than Vadass. At least the sheik never used his poor brother, as the American

woman did."

He sighed deeply. "I knew that one day we would all die hi a bloody coup. That day is come. Jola is dead. But the sheik need not die. He has harmed no one, and never will. Please," he said. "My Ufe is no longer of use to me. I give it to you willingly. But I will remember you in all my prayers through all eternity if you will grant my charge his life."

Chiun unfolded his hands from within the sleeves of his kimono. "Show us the documents," he said.

Rajii nodded, defeated, and led them past the throne, where the sheik made happy gurgling sounds inside his curtained domain. Behind the wall draperies stood a large metal vault with a combination lock, next to a broadcasting hookup with a television monitor. It was from here that Randy had observed and tortured Remo with the deafening sound from the loudspeakers. Rajii opened the vault and pulled out several yellowed parchment documents sealed in wax and tied with red ribbons.

"Herein rests the official une of succession," Rajii said as he unraveled the scrolls on a low table beside the vault. "The American woman and her f a-

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ther never saw these. They could never have had a legal claim to the throne. I will amend these to make you the rulers of Quat." He* picked up a quill and dipped it in ink.

"Halt," Chiun said.

"But it will be official. I have the seals."

'1 trust that it will be official," Chiun said. "But we do not wish to be rulers. That is not our place in this life."

Rajii looked, bewildered, from Chiun to Remo. "I do not understand."

"Affix your own name to the documents, and we will witness. You will be regent. You will find a wife and marry and bear children who will become your heirs. And you will pass on to your children your wisdom and loyalty, so that the people of your land need never again starve or suffer for the whim of their sovereign."

"I . . ." Rajii said, astounded. "Surely, I cannot—"

"You will," Chiun commanded. "It is the only way. Quat has been a plaything for incompetents long enough. You can try. That is all we ask. If you fail . . ." He shrugged. "Quat has been failing for centuries."

"I don't think Rajii will fail, Little Fattier."

"Perhaps not," Chiun said. "He who possesses a heart will always find hope to fill it." He smiled kindly and bowed to Rajii.

Rajii returned the bow. "May I ask you a question, sire?"

"You may."

"It is the same one you asked of me. Who are

you?"

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"I am the Master of Sinanju, and this fellow is my ... as you say of your sheik, Remo is my charge."

The sheik belched in the background. "I really appreciate the comparison," Remo said.

"I have read of you in the legends of other lands," Rajii said respectfully.

*'Quat has never been worthy of the services of my ancestors before. But perhaps you will rule differently. If so, and you find your domain in need, you have my permission to call upon my services."

"Thank you," Rajii said. "I am deeply honored."

"For free," Remo added. "Oof." He caressed the spot on his ribs where Chum's elbow had attacked luce a viper in the night.

"For a reasonable fee," Chiun corrected.

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Fifteen

Senator Osgood Nooner was having a nightmare.

It had to be a nightmare, because sensations such as the pain he was feeling just didn't happen in real life.

There he was, the People's Senator, tucked away in the safety of his bed, feeling his skull being crushed to powder'by a thin young man with thick wrists who looked disturbingly familiar.

He knew it had to be a dream because when he opened his mouth to scream, no sound came out. It was a classic indication.

Then he realized that he wasn't screaming because the underwear he had tossed on the rug for the maid to pick up in the morning had been stuffed into his mouth.

"Hi," the stranger said.

Nooner tried to place the face, but couldn't

"The reporter at the Vadassar press conference," Remo reminded him.

The senator's rounded eyes glimmered with recognition.

"Well, I just wanted you to stop worrying about

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us nosy reporters. I'm not going to print a thing about you."

Nooner nodded, trying to seem appropriately grateful.

"See, Senator, I'm not really a reporter at all."

The-senator's eyebrows arched inquiringly.

"I'm an assassin."

Slowly Nooner's eyes closed, and he thought he was going to faint.

"Do you know why I'm here?"

The senator gulped, swallowing some cotton lint and a loose string.

"I want you to write a letter."

A whinny of relief sounded from Nooner's nose. He nodded enthusiastically, eager to demonstrate his willingness to write whatever craziness the stranger had in mind. One phone call to the president in the morning, and everything would be straightened out, possibly with this nut behind bars.

Remo held fast to the senator's head while he rummaged in the nightstand with the other. "Now, here's a paper and pen," he said patiently, as though he were talking to a small child. "You just write what I tell you, okay?"

Effusive nodding.

"Okay. Address this to the director of the CIA."

For a moment, the senator shot Remo a glance from the corner of his eye, but a new pain in his head brought his attention riveting back to the page. He wrote down the director's name and address.

"Very good," Remo said. "Now you write down that all the Pentagon files on Fort Vadassar are false, and that you were responsible for tampering with the records. That ought to be good for a couple of years in the pokey, don't you think?"

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The senator's pen hesitated in the air.

'That is, unless you'd rather be murdered right here and now by me. I think I've already told you that's my profession."

Nooner wrote vividly of the replaced files.

"Now put down that the property Fort Vadassar is on belongs to your daughter, who's been in on the whole scheme from the beginning."

With a shrug, the senator did as he was told.

"And that you hired Artemis Thwill to drug the troops at those army bases and have the chaplains killed."

Senator Nooner banged his fist on the nightstand and shook his head adamantly. Soon a sensation having the same effect as the sound made by a razorblade on a chalkboard streaked down the side of his face.

He wrote.

"Let's see," Remo said. 'What else?" He drummed his fingers on the top of Nooner's shining bald head.

Finally free of Remo's grip, the senator whirled around and yanked the stuffing out of his mouth. He opened it to call for help. Suddenly Remo's fingers grazed the senator's throat, and Nooner uttered a sound like the tail end of a scratchy record.

"Help," the senator wheezed.

"Whazzat?"

"What the hell do you want from me?" Nooner asked, his voice a passable impersonation of Marlon Brando playing the Godfather.

"I want a confession, Nooner, so that the blame for this fiasco falls where it belongs." Remo smiled, pleased with his eloquence. "Sit down," he ordered.

When Nooner sat, Remo pinched a cluster of

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nerves on his neck, which paralyzed every muscle in the senator's body except for those of his writing arm. "Okay," Remo said. "So far you've tallied up ninety-nine years or so. How about including the Quat story—how you had Vadass assassinated, how you planned to marry off your daughter to the retarded sheik, how you imported the commanding officers at Fort Vadassar from Quat. Hey, I'll bet they're illegal aliens, too. Senator, you're going up the river for a long time."

The senator's whole right arm trembled, but he wrote down the information.

"Now, for the grand finale, let the CIA in on your plans to control the United States with your zombie deserter army. And don't forget to mention that you engineered the massacres at those four army bases to get your recruits. That ought to wow 'em out in Langley."

Nooner wrote until the final period was placed near the bottom of the page.

Remo released him. "Is that all?" the senator asked.

"Put down that you swear the above to be true and verifiable, then sign your name. I saw that in a movie once. It made everything legal or something."

"All right." He signed his name with a flourish. "What are you going to do to me?"

Remo folded the paper and placed it in an envelope. "Got a stamp?"

The senator pointed at a desk. Remo placed the stamp on the envelope, addressed and sealed it, and put it in his pocket. 'Til mail it, just to be sure," he said with a wink. "To answer your question, I don't know. I was planning to kill you, you know, but you've been so cooperative and everything. Besides,

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sending you to jail for three hundred years or so might be more interesting. If you're dead, nobody will care much whether you were guilty or not."

The two men sat staring at each other for what seemed to both of them like a long time. "Tell you what I'm going to do," Remo said, slapping his thigh. "You call the director of the CIA at home right now and tell hún everything in the letter, and I won't kill you."

"How do I know I can trust you to keep your word?" the senator asked.

Remo smiled. "You don't. Now you know how your constituents feel."

Wearily the senator picked up the telephone and dialed. He greeted the sleepy voice at the other end of the line with a monotonal rendition of the contents of his letter.

"Whaaat?" the CIA director said, yawning. "What kind of crap is this?"

'Tell him that if he doesn't send a team to pick you up within five minutes, you're going to blow up his house," Remo whispered.

Nooner gave him a disgusted look and parroted the words back into the phone.

"Well, okay, Ozzie, if that's the way you feel about it. I'll get a car over there right away. You just hang loose, okay? Okay?"

"Sure," Nooner said, and hung up. "Satisfied?" Remo nodded. "And just in case you think you can get away with saying you were forced to lie under duress, the president is personally going to order an investigation of you in the morning. You've left tracks, Senator, and this letter points to the trail. Bye bye."

He waved and placed one leg outside the window.

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"I'll hunt you down," the senator threatened. "You'll be exposed for the crackpot you are. I'll be cleared in a minute."

Remo slapped his forehead. "Oh yeah. There's one thing I forgot to tell you. Just slipped my mind, I guess."

"Whaf s that?"

"I don't exist," Remo said, and slithered down the face of the building minutes before the CIA car arrived.

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Sixteen

It was high noon on the parade grounds at Fort Va-dassar. Chiun grumbled and complained all the way up the barbed-wire fence.

"Is Emperor Smith never satisfied?"

"We just have this one last little job to do, Little Father, and we're done with the assignment." Remo paused at the top of the fence to get an overview of the base. "After this mess, I'd say we were entitled to a couple of weeks of R and R in the sun. The tropics, maybe. Jamaica, or Martinique—"

"Or Sinanju," Chiun said dreamily. "The sun shines nicely in Sinanju."

Remo cleared his throat. "Maybe Smitty'11 put us on another case."

"What else remains to be done here? We have eliminated the false priestlet. We have eliminated the red-haired woman. We have eliminated the senator. What is left?"

"We have to eliminate this army," Remo said grimly, watching Fort Vadassar's 100,000 recruits in drill formation. "They deserted in herds after the press conference."

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"But you said the newspapers would retract their statements today."

"That's not going to stop these zombies," Remo said. "They've been brainwashed. Anybody who tries to disband this army is asking for war."

He looked out over the parade grounds. The number of soldiers had swelled to fill the base, and all their faces bore the blank, burned-out stamp of Randy Noonefs control. Each platoon on the grounds was at least 8,000 men strong and led by top Quad officers, their telltale sabers dangling from their belts.

Remo shook his head as the officers shouted their commands. Each of the thousands of men in each platoon obeyed in perfect robot precision.

"Tahiti. If we get through this, we deserve no less than Tahiti."

"Sinanju," Chiun insisted.

"We'll talk about it later." Remo let go of the barbed wire and dropped to the ground. "Let's start in the officers' mess. If s lunchtime."

The officers' dining room hardly qualified as a mess hall. Silken draperies adorned the walls, and ornate filigreed brass outlined both entrances. Candles lit the room, their flickering light seemingly in rhythm with the droning ancient music in the background. The hearty laughter of men rang out over the babble of Quati spoken at the tables. On a small stage, a rotund woman in harem costume gyrated seductively. Other women similarly clad made the rounds of the tables, offering drinks and honeyed desserts.

Spotting Remo and Chiun in the doorway, two of the officers rose and asked them to state their business. Remo stuck a finger through one man's left

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temple. "That's my business," he said. Chiun dispatched the other officer with a swift kick to the crotch, causing the man's legs to part near his navel.

In an instant, the place was in an uproar. The woman hid, screaming shrilly. The men rushed toward Remo and Chiun, their sabers bared.

One by one they fell, their swords flailing wildly in the air. Remo and Chiun worked a double inside line attack, systematically knocking down the crowd of officers as though they were dominoes. When they had completed the inside line near the far entrance, they doubled back in an outside line, obliterating the rest.

"Your elbow was bent," Chiun snapped.

"Save it, Little Father. We've got too much work to do."

"It is important. Without a straight arm, it is possible to maim without killing. That is both cruel to your target and dangerous to you."

Remo was abashed. "I'll remember next time, Chiun," he said. "There's no time to check the bodies now. We've got to get to the parade grounds before someone shows up here."

"Very, very dangerous," Chiun said, visibly angry. They left through the back entrance.

Beneath the rubble of broken bodies, a hand moved slightly. It pushed to remove the weight of five men piled on top of it, but could not. The hand snaked slowly between the bodies as the owner of the hand gasped and panted for breath. Then the hand shot out past the topmost corpse, a little flag signaling the life Remo's faulty elbow had spared.

The man pulled and writhed his way past the grisly load bearing down on him. He was in great

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pain. Nearly all his ribs were broken. Occasionally his lungs would fill up, and he coughed and spat blood. He was dying.

Still, he wrestled with the remains of his fellow officers, trying not to look at their bizarre positions and blank stares.

For the first time in his life, he missed Quat.

An eternity beneath the bodies. Then air. The man passed out for seconds at a time. But between the blackouts, he crawled.

He crawled to the door and scratched at it like a dog until it opened from his feeble efforts. He crawled outside, where he could still see the small outlines of the two strange men, the American and the old Oriental, who had come from nowhere to kill the Quati at Fort Vadassar. They were heading for the parade grounds. They wanted the rest of the officers. They were professional killers, of that he was sure. But the younger one had been sloppy with him. He had made a mistake, a tiny mistake, a fraction of an inch, but enough to spare the officer's life for a few minutes. He would use those minutes now to see that the assassins paid for their mistake.

He crawled to a small building the size of-an outhouse and fumbled in his pocket for a key. Vomiting blood, the officer placed the key in the door and turned it. The door opened to a narrow stairway.

He wouldn't be able to crawl down the steps. He wouldn't last long enough. So he held his breath and propelled himself forward, bouncing down the wooden stairs like a withered, bleeding beachball. If he lived for five more minutes, the strangers would be dead. Five more minutes.

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"They'll listen to anybody," Remo said. "If we knock out one unit at a time, I think we can control them without a lot of casualties." He looked at his watch. "Smitty said he'd have troops here in twenty minutes. If the officers are gone by then, the recruits ought to go peacefully."

"Where will Emperor Smith send a hundred thousand men?"

"Who knows. But he wants them deprogrammed, not dead. We take out only the officers, right, Chiun?" Remo asked apprehensively.

"He is a very generous emperor, but none too intelligent, I fear. A hundred thousand enemy soldiers may not take to captivity with docility."

"The country will be up in arms if we kill the recruits," Remo said, trying to sound persuasive. "It's not really their fault they're in this place. They got suckered into it. They are Americans, after all."

"No one forced them to come here," Chiun said drily.

"Look, Smitty says don't kill the recruits. That's the assignment, like it or not."

Chiun shrugged. "It is obvious that the emperor is quite mad," he said. "But a contract is a contract."

The officer blacked out at the foot of the steps. He spat, but his lungs were weakening fast, and he couldn't remove all the blood that was building up in his throat. He was strangling.

An inch at a time he wormed toward a square on the wall. The entire building had been constructed around the contents of that square, and the officer would reach it. It would be his final act of vengeance against the two intruders.

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T

At the base of the wall, he curled his fingers and edged them up the wall. He had lost his sense of pain. He felt as if he were inside a vacuum as his blood streamed down the front of his shirt. He hated the American stranger now more than ever. He hated him for killing his countrymen, but more than that, he hated him for the wound he carried, which was so painful that it was beyond pain. It would have been better by far to have died with the rest.

The square. He had reached it. With a bitter smile, the officer stuck a fingernail into the edge of the square, and the small door opened easily. They would die now, the intruders.

With his last trembling effort, the officer pulled the red lever inside the square on the wall, and the wail of 40 sirens screamed in alarm throughout the base.

Overhead, the stampeding of a thousand feet thundered out of the barracks. On the parade grounds, the officers looked about them, their weapons drawn. Remo and Chiun stood in the midst of an army of well-trained, well-armed soldiers, who turned to face them, one platoon at a time, in eerie synchronization, as the first of their commanders shouted the order: "Kill."

The officer at the alarm switch let his hand fall heavily to the floor. With the last of his breath, he laughed.

"Kill." The command seemed to echo from flank to flank. "Kill." "Kill." "Kill."

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Moving as a unit, the blank-faced soldiers raised their M-16's to shoulder level.

"Halt!" Remo said confidently. In an aside to Chiun, he whispered, "I told you, they listen to anybody."

A bullet whizzed past Remo's head.

"Hey, what happened? You guys are supposed to stop."

The commander of the platoon sneered. "Now they listen only to us," he said. "My apologies." He raised his right arm. "Fire!" he called.

Chiun leaped into the middle of the nearest platoon, his long robes billowing. Remo followed. He didn't know what Chiun was doing, but this was no time to ask questions.

The old man was running through the platoon at nerve-shattering speed in a strange elliptical spiral pattern. As Remo followed in his wake, the soldiers in the platoon lost aim and turned, confused, upon one another, each blank stare confronting another expressionless face, their rifles clanking together as Chiun wound the formation of recruits into a dense, ever-tightening mass.

"Not with me," Chiun hissed. "Opposite. Reflect me. The ellipse within the ellipse."

What in the hell is that, Remo wondered, although he obeyed unhesitatingly. He swerved into a curve exactly mirroring Chain's movements, creating along with him a complex, orbiting double helix within the flank of soldiers. When the platoon was crushed into a chaotic group of men struggling to move like fish in a net, a strange thing happened. The mass began to move.

Suddenly Remo saw the impenetrable logic of

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I

China's words: The ellipse within the ellipse. For slowly, with each orbit Remo and Chiun made in opposite directions, they were moving the bewildered soldiers toward another platoon without ever exposing themselves to bullets outside the cramped mass of recruits. Inexorably, the platoon meshed, amoebalike, into the next, creating a rampaging confusion that made it impossible for the soldiers to fire.

"Kill them," a Quati officer screamed as he was spun helplessly into the teeming fray. Chiun made a tour near the officer and flicked a fingernail at his chest. The officer dropped. When the growing mass of recruits moved in its perfect ellipse toward the third platoon, the officer remained, trampled, on the spot where he fell.

The mass grew to cover nearly two acres, a beehive of restless, pulsating activity, as Remo and Chiun pushed the mindless unit toward another, their weapons at the ready.

They were on the verge of absorbing the fourth platoon when the commanding officer, a colonel, shouted an order and the platoon scattered to form a circle around the huge, bumbling entity Remo and Chiun had created.

"Fire!" the colonel commanded. The soldiers surrounding the group fired randomly into the mass. The recruits on the periphery dropped instantly.

"They're killing their own men to get to us," Remo yelled. But Chiun did not respond. Instead, Remo noticed a change in the pattern. On Chain's side, the unit bulged and receded like a bubble, absorbing each soldier within firing range one at a time. Remo repeated the pattern on his side, keeping the mass tight while he formed the tentacles that

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reached out to pull the soldiers on the outside into

it.

There were two platoons left. As Remo moved, he saw the two commanding officers signal one another, and the platoons turned to face one another.

At a second command, they marched resolutely together, forming one large unit that came at the beehive group of four captured platoons in a slow, deliberate offensive.

"They're going to sacrifice all of them, Chiun," Remo panted as he made what seemed like his ten-thousandth round inside the group. He was tiring, and running on reserve.

"Take one of the officers," Chiun said, passing by in a flurry of motion.

Remo looked at Chain's back unbelievingly.

The two platoons had marched into firing range, and the front line was kneeling. The rain of bullets

began.

"Are you kidding?" Remo yelled. "There's nothing between us and them but a million units of

ammo."

"Go," Chiun said, bis thin voice straining. "I will hold the formation. But I cannot move it forward alone. And I am growing weary."

A sliver of alarm streaked up Remo's spine. If he himself was bone-tired, Chiun would be exhausted. The Korean had passed the 80-year mark long before, and holding the formation meant traveling in double-time. Even before Remo left the group, Chiun's pace had quickened to a speed that made him nearly impossible to see.

Swallowing hard, Remo darted out of the mass and into the smoky field dotted with flying bullets. As he did, the two platoons 500 feet in the distance

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shifted their target from the unwieldy, stagnant group of soldiers held by the old Oriental to the single man in a black T-shirt, armed only with his hands. Remo saw the barrels of 16,000 M-16's more slowly toward him with terrifying accuracy.

Almost immediately a bullet grazed Remo's thigh. It helped. Inside his body, he felt his adrenalin pump to overload level, and he needed that for the pattern he would use.

Chiun had taught him the pattern—if it could be called a pattern at all—long ago, but he had never had to use it in actual combat before. It was an extension of the movement that allowed him to dodge a single bullet fired at him from point-blank range, a quick shifting of balance entirely without rhythm.

Chiun had explained that the exercise was difficult because in all of nature, as in all of the training of Sinanju, rhythm played a crucial role in the scheme of survival.

Rhythm and balance. Without them, chaos, and nature would not abide chaos for long—not in the planets, nor in the human organism. Chaotic gene patterns created mutants that died early and could not reproduce. Rhythm and balance were everything. Remo's breathing was rhythm. Chiun's formation around his mass of recruits was rhythm. The bullets that were fired at Remo resulted from pure, mechanical rhythm with the triggers that fired them. It was as though each molecule ever created, as Chiun had once explained, had made a pact with nature before its existence not to disturb the rhythm of the universe.

But the secret of avoiding bullets was anti-rhythm, balance without rhythm, movement so fast and formless that it defied rhythm without throwing

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the balance of the body into chaos and the inevitable outcome of chaos, self-destruction.

Avoiding one bullet was easy. The loss of rhythm and the amazing speed required for it lasted only a fraction of a second. The damage wreaked on Remo's body was no greater than that inflicted by an insect bite. But to dodge—how many bullets? A million? Two million? He would have to create a pattern of anti-rhythm at perhaps 100 times the speed of a champion Olympic sprinter.

Remo appeared to be moving slowly and in a blur. It was easy for the soldiers to get a bead on the young T-shirted man but, inexplicably, impossible to hit hirnt

"Fire," the officers commanded.

"Fools, kill him!" Both officers took out their pistols and emptied their barrels at the weird, slow-moving target with fuzzy outlines. As he moved closer, one commander rubbed his eyes. The other squeezed his shut and shook his head. Neither could believe what he was seeing, for the young man appeared to have no face.

He was within ten feet of the front Ene, and still they could not hit Mm. At eight feet, one of the commanders reached an inescapable conclusion and related it shakily to the other: the man was unkül-able.

"He is of the undead," the officer said, his voice heavy with dread.

"There are legendsin Quat. . . ." the other replied slowly.

At five feet, the two of them ran screaming for cover.

Remo was losing his focus from the strain of the anti-rhythm pattern, but the two figures were large

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enough to tackle without perfect vision. Not waiting to regain his rhythm, he sprang on one foot toward the two officers, spiraling in the air like a football. He fell on them both, killed one immediately, and held the other in front of him by the collar.

"No," the man quavered. "My God, my merciful God—"

"Tell them," Remo whispered, his speech thick and slurred from the ordeal he had put his body through. As he spoke, the rifles of the two platoons turned automatically on Remo and the officer he held squirming in front of him.

"Hold your fire!" the commander screamed. 'In the name of all that is sacred on this earth, hold your fire!"

"Tell them not to try to harm us," Remo said. "Under any circumstances. And make them get rid of their rifles." He felt his eyes rolling back into his head.

"Maneuvers completed," the officer shouted. "Destroy your weapons. Repeat. Destroy your weapons."

In the distance, Chiun's group vibrated to a halt. The old man staggered outside the group, holding a hand to his forehead.

The sound of splintering rifles filled the air for minutes, then stillness settled over the parade grounds. The only noise was the whimpering of the Quati officer dangling in Remo's hands. Remo wound his hand slowly around the officer's neck and strangled him. Ahead, the troops observed the scene with faces as impassive as statues.

Remo dropped the man and walked over to Chiun, who had replaced his hands inside the

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sleeves of his robe. "Are you all right, Little Father?" he asked.

"Yes," Chiun said, nodding. "Are you?" He was dizzy. He was nauseated. He was cold. And the wound in his shoulder from the Quati archers still hurt. "Yes," Remo said, just before, he fainted.

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Seventeen

Remo came to at the sound of approaching tanks. "Here comes the cavalry, just after we need them," he said groggily.

"It is a trademark of all armies to be only in places where they are not wanted," Chiun said.

The tanks burst through the barbed-wire fence as if it were made of cobwebs, and ringed the parade grounds, trapping the recruits inside their circle. After the tanks came over 100 closed vans to remove the recruits from Fort Vadassar. The men entered the vans without resistance.

"I wonder if they will ever behave as normal men," Chiun said.

Remo shrugged. "Randy Nooner said something about 'Samantha's brew.' They're probably drugged. A couple of days in isolation, and it ought to wear off."

"Get moving," a voice from behind them said. Remo turned to see a burly American sergeant prodding recruits into a nearby van. "Hey, youse guys too. Get in here."

"Suck wind," Remo advised the sergeant

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"Leave those two alone," a one-star general ordered from a jeep moving toward them.

"Yes, sir," the sergeant said, snapping in salute.

The general's driver brought the jeep to a halt and scrambled out. "They fit the description, sir," he said.

The general rose. "Gentlemen, I've been instructed personally by the president to escort you to your destination," he said.

"And where's that?"

The general paused as a film of red rose from his neck to his cheeks. "To the No-Tell Motel," he said with as much dignity as he could muster.

"Smitty," Remo muttered under his breath. "Always looking for the cheapest rates."

Remo and Chiun climbed into the jeep. It rumbled past the convoy of tanks and vans to a rundown string of cabins 15 miles away, where they were dropped off with a salute from the general.

There was a reservation for them in cabin 5 of the No-Tell. The woman at the desk got the key for Remo. "Oh, just a second, there's a message for you, too," she said, unfolding a piece of paper stuck in the slot for cabin 5. "It says call Aunt Mildred."

"Great," Remo said disgustedly, taking the key from her. He let Chiun in the dingy room and slammed the door. "What a hole," he said.

He picked up the phone and dialed the number that would route the call through on a safe une to Folcroft Sanitarium. Smith picked up the phone on the first ring.

"What do you want now?" Remo said.

Tm glad you're alive."

"No thanks to you. Setting us against an army is

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your idea of fair play, I suppose. Not to mention holing us up in this rat's nest."

"The motel room was only so you could make this call," Smith said. "There was no point in wasting money on fancy accommodations just for a phone call."

"Suppose we'd like to rest. We almost got killed out there, you know."

"I'd rather you didn't," Smith said flatly. "The general the president sent for you knows your whereabouts."

«So what?"

"It doesn't hurt to be cautious."

"Why bother? You're going to see to it that the guy gets transferred to some obscure combat unit out in the Indian Ocean anyway."

There was a pause on the other end of the phone. "That was unnecessary, Remo," Smith said finally.

"But true."

Smith cleared his throat. "You'll be pleased to know that the investigation of Senator Nooner began today," he said, changing the subject. "It seems he got the Assistant to the Chief Clerk of Records at the Pentagon to switch the Vadassar files around, and then had the man killed. If s all coming out in the wash. The senator is going to face at least five hundred counts of murder. The case will make history."

"Happy as a clam, aren't you?" Remo said. ' "And Samantha Thwill is in custody in Texas on accessory charges. The army convoy picked up samples of everything in the kitchen at Vadassar, and if any of that stuff is drugged—as it probably is—the finger will point to her."

"Well, friend, my finger is pointing in a different

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direction," Remo said testily. "What you did to us was unjust and unfair."

"Somebody had to do it," Smith said. "Just get back here, and I'll see to it that you and Chiun get the vacation you deserve."

Remo's mouth dropped. "You mean it, Smitty? How'd you know? As a matter of fact, a vacation is exactly what we had in mind. Tahiti, I think. Tahiti would be great. You have the tickets ready, and we'll be there in four hours."

"I've already arranged for passage—"

"Aw, Smitty," Remo said, grinning, "you're really too much. I underestimated you. You're a prince. Chiun, we're on our way."

"—to Sinanju," Smith finished.

"What?"

"Chain's been asking me for months. I thought it would be a treat for the both of you."

Remo turned from the phone to stare beady darts at Chiun. The old Oriental smiled sweetly and nodded. "The sun shines nicely in Sinanju," Chiun said.

"Thanks, Smitty," Remo said. He decided not to kick a hole in the wall. "Remind me to bring you a souvenir from the glorious shores of Sinanju. Like maybe a poisonous snake. And I hope this case puts you up to your pecker in paperwork."

He hung up with a clatter and yanked the telephone cord out of the wall.

"Are we on our way to Emperor Smith?" Chiun asked, his feet bouncing in a little dance of joy.

Remo pulled down the shade to the nicotine-colored window. In the darkness, he kicked off his shoes and plopped onto one of the room's two sagging beds. A puff of dust rose from the blankets. "We're staying here," he said. "Forever. I'm never

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leaving this room. We'll probably come down with some filthy disease and die here, and it'll serve Smitty right. Sinanju. Fll bet you two were in on this all along."

Chiun continued to dip and swirl in the darkened room, his thin voice chanting a happy Western melody:

Disco Lady

Won't you be my baby . . .

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