Sue Me

"Anytime you want to really answer my question, feel free," said Remo.

"Tell him. You tell him," Debbie said to Chiun. Chiun was busy pondering the selection of robes he might wear. Though he was not allowed onstage, Debbie had assured him he could stand in the wings.

"Listen to her, she makes sense," said Chiun, imagining how the pure black kimono would look with a single silver lotus blossom. He wondered if it would clash with the costumes of the rock stars. And then he gave up, realizing that everything clashed with what rock stars wore.

In Korean, Remo told Chiun he was not going to humor her like Chiun preferred to do.

And in Korean Chiun answered: "He who reasons with fools dresses in warm aspic."

"I stand for things, little father."

"The wrong things, Remo. Be nice to the girl. Then we can get on with this idiotic degradation of assassins' calling, this occupation termed detective work. "

Remo glanced back at Rizzuto's door. He could hear laughter in the room. He could also hear Rizzuto curse. The big concert was only a few hours away. He had to find out what Rizzuto's plans were for the concert before then. Why, he was not sure. But he was fairly certain that if he knew what Rizzuto was going to pull, he could be there to make sure some evidence for a court case could be unearthed.

Remo found the door to Rizzuto's room locked. With a careful pressure of the handle against the lock, he cracked the lock. Unfortunately he cracked it too hard. It shattered with the force of a grenade. The door flew open and three men ducked behind couches grabbing for shoulder holsters. The only one who didn't have a pistol was Rizzuto. He was playing cards for big stakes with three strangers who carried guns.

The piles of bills were naturally not in front of him, and his checkbook was open with a leaking fountain pen beside it. Remo thought it looked like it was bleeding.

Remo shut what was left of the door behind him. "Hi, it was open, so I thought I'd just pop in."

"Who're you?"

"Friend of Rizzuto's."

"We're leavin'," said one of the men. "He can't bring in some backup."

"Get out of here, Remo. I gotta recover. They can't leave."

"Don't worry, they're not leaving," said Remo.

"We're leavin'," said the one who did not put his gun away.

"Well then, if you must, but don't take any money with you."

"We're leavin' with our dough, sweetheart," said the man with the gun.

"Because you have a gun?"

"Because we won it and yeah, because we got guns. "

"Genaro, do you always play with strangers who have guns?"

"I didn't know they had guns until you crashed in," said Rizzuto.

Remo caught the thug's attention with a smile, which was enough distraction for him to slap the gun free. He also got the other guns as they reappeared from their holsters and put them in the middle of the table. Then he said they could all leave with their guns and money but he wanted to play a few hands of poker.

The three men looked at each other, stunned. They hadn't seen the hand that had disarmed them. They had moved for their guns, held out their guns, and then found them missing.

One of them couldn't believe it. He lunged for his gun in the middle of the table. Something sharp like barbed wire brushed the back of his palm, causing incredible pain. And yet there was no bleeding. There was just the stranger who had burst through the door, who had taken the guns so quickly they didn't see his hand move. And he was smiling. The gambler cradled the throbbing hand that the stranger had barely touched.

"I think we're going to play some cards," said Remo.

"I didn't know you gambled," said Rizzuto. If he had known that, he wouldn't have ignored the man all this time since Gupta, the man with too many questions Genaro Rizzuto did not want to answer.

"All the time," said Remo.

"What do you like to play? Stud? Five-card draw? What?"

"Poker," said Remo.

"They're all poker," said Rizzuto.

"The one with full houses and flushes," said Remo.

"They all have that. How much poker have you played?"

"Enough," said Remo. Actually he hadn't played cards for years. When he was a policeman, before he went through the phony execution to make him the man who didn't exist, before his training and new life with Chiun, he had played, for pennies and nickels, poker that had so many different wild cards and payoffs that the big hands wouldn't end in winners and losers but in heated arguments over the rules.

These men played a hard tight game for big money. They would never play a game with so many cards wild that there could be three straight flushes in one hand, the highest grouping of cards. And the only gambling game Chiun had taught him wasn't really a gambling game, but a Korean mental exercise originated by the Masters of Sinanju called Ka, or game of stones, from which the far cruder Japanese game of Go emerged.

"Sure I can play poker. Let's play the kind where you get five cards and nothing is wild."

"Five-card draw," said Rizzuto. The gamblers returned to the tables, exchanging quick glances. What the glances said was that they were soon going to win back their guns and anything else that was on the table from this lunatic who broke doors and moved so quickly no one saw him.

Before they began Remo had one question. "Among the four suits, the highest suit is spades, right?"

They all nodded.

"You sure you know poker?" asked Rizzuto.

"Sure," said Remo. "Just one more question. Spades is black, right? But so is clubs. Clubs is the one with the bumps, not smooth rounded like spades. Spades are more heart-shaped. Right?"

"Right," said everyone.

"No limit with a C-note ante," said one of the gamblers.

"That's a hundred dollars," said Remo.

"Right," said everyone.

One of the reasons Remo lost his liking of money was that upstairs supplied all his needs, and there was no reason for him to accumulate anything. He moved around so much it was silly to buy a home. He never cared about cars, so the walking-around cash upstairs gave him tended to stay in his pocket for a long time.

He had twenty hundred-dollar bills almost as fresh as the day they were issued to him years ago. He put one into the middle of the table. Everyone else tossed in money, except Rizzuto, who put down an IOU, asking Remo if it were all right.

"These guys are my friends. They take my IOU's," said Rizzuto. As soon as one of the men began to deal, Remo could tell why they were so generous.

Someone else might simply have seen cards being shuffled, but Remo clearly saw each individual card, and he saw the aces move up the deck like a ladder with exactly three rungs-the other cards-between each ace.

Remo smiled and folded on the first hand. Rizzuto bet heavily. He had kings. He lost.

When it came time for Remo's turn to deal, the hard part was reminding himself what were second-, third-, and fourth-highest hands.

He spread the cards out faceup in one sweep of his hand to see where each was, and then quickly collected the deck. With one hand moving several cards so rapidly it looked like shuffling, he moved the other hand, careful not to use so much speed that he burned the cards from friction; feeling the weight of each, the balance of each, the very power of the stability of the roam, he got the cards in order, careful to give each man the right hand.

There was the formality of the cut, whereby one of the players, to avoid cheating and assure honesty, took half the deck from the top and put it on the bottom. As Remo picked up the deck to deal, he simply reversed the weighting of the cards, so that the deck went back to the way he arranged it. All three of the gamblers watched him closely. None of them saw him work the deck.

Strangely, none of them bet heavily. Only Rizzuto, who had the winning hand.

Rizzuto cursed his luck that the first time he got spades straight flush, no one else had anything to bet into him. And then Remo gave them all a little demonstration. He made them turn up their cards, something players never had to do, but encouraged to be honest by the promise of getting their wrists snapped if they didn't go along, they all complied.

When Rizzuto saw that one had a straight flush in clubs, one in hearts, and the third in diamonds, he realized something was wrong.

"They were waiting until they dealt so that they could be sure of winning. Genaro," said Remo, "these guys have been robbing you. They're con men. They're thieves. You haven't been gambling. You've been taken."

"They were the only action around," said Genaro.

"What action? It's losing," said Remo.

The three gamblers began easing their way away from the table, trying to get in position to make a lunge for the door.

"You forgot something," said Remo. "His money." Quickly the gamblers pulled out wads of bills and laid them on the table along with a blizzard of white IOU's. Rizzuto collected them all.

"One more thing," said Remo. "Your money. The money he didn't have a chance to win. C'mon. It's a friendly game."

"Friendly, how? That's robbing," said one gambler.

"It's friendly because I'm not pulling your spinal cord out through your mouth," said Remo. "That's friendly, don't you think, Genaro?"

"I'd say so," said Rizzuto.

With a good two hours until showtime, Genaro suggested that since they were alone and still had a deck of cards, they play a little stud.

"You just saw how I fixed the damned deck," said Remo. "Do you really think you have a chance to win?"

"You wouldn't cheat me."

"Of course I would. Look, buddy. I may be the only friend you have across a table."

"Why are you doing this? Friends don't come across gambling tables."

"Because I see someone who wants to help. You're not just another shyster ambulance chaser. You're someone who cares. You wouldn't be joining this Save Humanity spectacular if you weren't."

"Two hands," said Genaro.

"I want to talk about saving people."

"I'll deal and then we know it will be fair. I never cheat. "

"How did you hear about the Gupta disaster so quickly? And how did you know what was wrong so quickly?"

"Blackjack. One hand of blackjack. You can deal. The odds are with you. What's a hand of blackjack?" asked Rizzuto. His dark eyes were begging. "Ten seconds. Then I'll tell you. Anything you want to know. My love life. The inner workings of Palmer, Rizzuto You name it. One simple hand. Do you know how to play blackjack? You deal one card down to me, one card down to you. Then I bet. I call for another card. Two simple cards. I keep calling for cards to get as close to twenty-one as possible. If I go over, that's it. I lose. What's the most cards you can possibly deal, seven, right? Seven cards, and then I tell you anything you want to know. "

Rizzuto shot out the words like a machine gun and was shoving the cards into Remo's hands.

Remo dealt out a hand of blackjack, not expecting all that was promised. Rizzuto lost.

"Okay, I just want to know what you attribute your success at your firm to. You're probably the most successful negligence lawyers in the country. The reason I ask is I have an aunt who's really . . . "

"What're you doing with the cards?" asked Genaro, as horrified as if Remo had just thrown a baby out of a window.

"We played a hand. Now we talk," said Remo.

"What hand?" said Genaro with such vehemence that his gold jewelry tinkled on his dark hairy chest. "You don't play a hand of blackjack. You play a deck. How can I have a chance to win if I don't see what cards come up?"

"You said a hand. You didn't say a deck."

"I didn't say a deck," said Rizzuto, imitating Remo. "What's the big problem? Deal. We'll talk as you deal. "

"You seem to have the best technical assistance in the business," said Remo as he dealt another hand. "I mean you really know what causes accidents. How do you know so quickly and so well? Is it you? Is it Schwartz? Is it Palmer?"

"Hit me," said Rizzuto, signaling for another card. Remo would have loved to. He could have gotten everything he needed in thirty seconds by simply taking one ankle of one negligence lawyer and hanging the party of the first part out of the hotel window by the ankle of said party of the first part, until in maximum fear, party of the first part would divulge to Remo, the party of the second part, exactly how his law firm was raping America, immobilizing industries, and generally turning the protection of the law into an unbearable burden for the people.

But Smith had said no. Precisely because they were lawyers they had to be destroyed by legal means. It was the law that CURE was trying to protect. Remo thought momentarily of burying them all under lawbooks. He held up the card.

"We're good. That's all. You want us to take your aunt's case? You got it. Hit me."

Remo gave him his card. Rizzuto wanted another. "Who deals with your technical people?"

"Palmer. Hit me."

Remo gave him another card. Rizzuto went over twenty-one and sat drumming his hands on the table. Remo dealt a card again. Rizzuto bet again. Remo held up the next card.

"What does Schwartz do?"

"Tactics. Palmer does strategy on the general idea of what we should do. Schwartz shows how to do it. And on the big cases, I do it myself in a courtroom. I'm a trial lawyer. I'm wonderful. Another card, please."

Remo dealt. Then he dealt to himself. He won again by getting closer to twenty-one.

"Why would you say you are so successful? More successful than any single lawyer or law firm?"

"Because we know what we're doing and we'll take care of your aunt. We have law offices all over the country. We travel all over the world. When you get Palmer, Rizzuto you get a world of protection. Now deal, dammit."

Remo played blackjack with Rizzuto for almost two hours, getting little information he felt he could use, but winning seventy-five thousand dollars without thinking about it. Ten thousand in cash and sixty-five thousand in IOU's.

He walked with Rizzuto to the giant auditorium, wired now to reach out live to the world. When they got to the aisle with screaming fans and televison cameras and paparazzi, Remo ducked into the crowd and moved through it, hidden by the dense sea of people. He caught up with Rizzuto by coming up on the blind side of a guard who was posted to ensure that no one crossed the line to be with the celebrities. "Gambling's pretty expensive for you," said Remo.

"No. Not expensive."

"You lost seventy-five thousand dollars in two hours. "

"You figure wrong. That was the total loss. But do you know how much was wagered in winning and losing, and going back and forth? Maybe almost a million dollars. I got a million dollars of action for seventy-five thousand. Now where else can you get a return on your money like that? Take buying shoes for my kid. Fifty bucks for a pair of shoes. That's it. They're labeled fifty dollars. You pay fifty dollars, good-bye. Now when you gamble, that money can come back. For fifty dollars that I waste on a pair of my kid's shoes I get maybe five hundred dollars in action. And that's if I lose."

"You're a compulsive gambler, Genaro," said Remo. This might be a weakness he could work on to get some sort of legal case for CURE to transfer to some prosecutor.

"No. I'm not a compulsive gambler."

"If you're not, who is?"

"People who are worse than me. There are guys who will bet the clothes off their backs. I mean it. Guys who get killed by loan sharks because they borrow to pay loans from other killers."

"Where do you draw the line, then?"

"Right beneath me," said Rizzuto, who bet Remo there was an odd number of performers on the stage. Remo refused to bet. The stars were packed on the stage like so many cattle. The lights in the center of the auditorium were blinding, and the heat was oppressive. But the stars all managed to look as though they couldn't be happier, even when having to quaff emergency water rations. It was like a marathon run for the singers, except the singers had to smile. Rizzuto wore a lavender tuxedo with a neon-blue cummerbund and a diamond-studded bow tie. On this stage he looked subdued. Remo tried to stay near him, but he saw Chiun in the rear signaling to him.

Debbie Pattie, who was going to do the last solo, needed special wiring held by her bodyguards. Since none of them were here after Remo got into a shoving match with them, and since the new ones for some reason hadn't arrived yet, would Remo do the decent thing and carry Debbie's wires?

"Which ones?" asked Remo, looking at the dark tangle of wires.

"I don't know. My regular equipment didn't get here for some reason, and all this stuff is new. All I know is I have to have powerful amps on my voice and guitar or I sound like a squeaky little kid."

"Like at Gupta."

"Yeah. Although it's still real Debbie Pattie."

"I don't like gadgets."

"You know how many people would give an arm to be this close to me, Remo? Chiun, you tell him. You know what's going on."

"This is all craziness, Remo," said Chiun in Korean. "Why now do you balk at this added craziness? Carry the wires or we will have to keep talking to this little fool."

"Okay," said Remo in English.

"Thanks, Chiun. You're the decent one. You understand what I mean by saving the world."

"Until you know where the money goes you don't know what you're doing," said Remo.

"Why are you so negative? Even the reporters don't ask questions like that. Reporters never ask questions like that. They ask when I became so knowledgeable about world affairs, when I became so philosophical."

"You don't know until you know where the money goes," said Remo, and took a handful of Debbie Pattie's wires. They were thick, almost as wide as hot dogs, and they seemed to stick to his skin as he held them, as though they were covered with some form of gelatin. Remo looked around the stage to see if there were others like them, but there weren't. The others were the normal thin wires that didn't glisten with this strange substance on them. The closest thing to it in Remo's mind was the substance people used to make electrocardiograph electrodes more effective in reading the heart.

The first song was the now famous "Save." A hundred stars, amplified by a million megawatts, blared out that one word over and over again. "SAVE. SAVE. SAVE. WE SAVE. SAVE SAVE SAVE. PEOPLE SAVE. SAVE SAVE SAVE. WE SAVE. SAVE SAVE SAVE."

The crowd screamed. The singers screamed. The stagehands screamed. The noise onstage could have deafened people sitting outside the auditorium.

Chiun shouted into Remo's ear. "White music."

"Not all white music is like this," Remo yelled back.

"Doesn't have to be. This is enough."

The noise went on for fifteen minutes. When it subsided to the level of an avalanche, an announcer called it the most meaningful experience of the twentieth century.

Then one of the singers introduced Genaro Rizzuto and Remo discovered what Palmer, Rizzuto had up its sleeve.

"We have here someone who is fighting for the poor," said the lead singer. "We have here someone who takes his care and concern into the field. This man was on the scene even before the doctors. This man was Gupta. This man was the suffering. This man was the dying. This man was the first to say 'save.' He said we couldn't let our brothers die anywhere in the world, or we would let them die everywhere. "

The last piece of absurdity was met with hysteria, and when it died down the singer said, "I give you Genaro Rizzuto of the law firm of Palmer, Rizzuto They care. They save. And they have an important message for you."

Rizzuto came forward among the bangles, the rags, the glitter, the heat, and the noise. And he too managed a big smile.

He thought of the thousands of yelling people as a jury, and in so doing he felt at home.

"I'm just a lawyer," yelled Rizzuto.

The crowd screamed back. One girl fainted and another desperately lunged forward to touch his shoes before she died.

It was then that Rizzuto realized the rock crowd was better than a jury.

"I am just a lawyer, and I just defend the rights of people to live safely, to live in peace, to live in an environment that doesn't kill them, to drive cars that don't maim them, to visit doctors who will not murder them with their incompetence. I am just a lawyer."

The crowd screamed its answer. "Save. Save. Save."

"And we went to Gupta so that these people, these poor people, would not suffer in vain. And what did we find? We found that the world does not care. The world does not care about a person if he's brown, if he lacks power, if he doesn't live in some white country. The world does not care."

"Destroy the world," screamed out one young man with a peace symbol on his T-shirt.

"No. Let us save the world," yelled Rizzuto, ripping off his tie and popping buttons off his shirt, then flinging his arms wide, his chest exposed like the other stars, the lights playing off his glittering teeth. "Save the world. Save. Save. Save."

"Save. Save. Save," the crowd yelled back.

"We cannot put a price on a life because of the color of a man's skin."

"No," yelled back the crowd.

"We cannot put a price on a person's life because of where that person was born."

"No," yelled back the crowd.

"Everyone has the same right to life that we have. "

"Yes," yelled back the crowd.

"Everyone has a right to a life as good as everyone else's. "

"Everyone."

"Here. "

"Here," yelled back the crowd. "In America."

"America," yelled back the crowd.

Now Genaro's voice hushed, forcing the people to strain to listen. "But I am sorry to say, my friends, that big rich corporations know how the world works. The little people, you and me, the people who suffer, don't know how the world works. The big rich corporations with their rich lawyers know that if they put a dangerous plant in a poor country, the lives of the poor won't matter that much. They know all lives are not equal. They know they can make money from the suffering of the poor. And they know they're going to get away with it."

"No," screamed the crowd. Someone called out for the death of all corporations.

"No," said Genaro. "We don't want them to die. We don't want them to collapse. We just want them to stop killing our planet, killing our brothers, and there's a way to do it."

"Do it," screamed the rock stars along with the crowd.

"We can say to them, 'Hey! Our brothers' lives are worth something. You can't keep killing our brothers and getting away with it.' We can say to them, 'You've got to pay for your misdeeds, just as if you did them in our home. Just as if you did them in San Francisco or New York City or here in Chicago. Our brothers are our brothers wherever they are.' "

And thus with the mob screaming "Save our brothers," Genaro Rizzuto brilliantly made a public appeal for change of venue. He started a mass movement to make crimes committed in a foreign land punishable in the home country of the corporation, because in America a life was not worth an average of seven dollars, but more like a quarter of a million, and the fifty percent Palmer, Rizzuto would collect on a quarter of a million dollars would be enough to pay for Palmer's love life, Schwartz's investments, and Rizzuto's willingness to gamble with strangers who carried guns and didn't bet on hands they didn't deal themselves.

Remo listened to all this and both he and Chiun sensed something else was at work here, something far more dangerous than a change of venue, something that was going to kill.

They were right. What they didn't know was that it was about to happen onstage.

Chapter 8

At first everyone thought it was part of the song, a great new song, the rock hit of the decade. All the singers were screaming, some of them clawing to get off the stage. Others crawled and still others punched and pushed, and someone at a microhone cried out. "Lord help us. Help us. Help."

The audience applauded as the center of the wooden stage began to sag and then with a sickening crack, it collapsed. Bodies fell into each other. Guitars and bones cracked in the onslaught. The center-stage singers were crushed under the load, smothered by the bodies of those who fell on top of them. It was a full minute before the audience realized this wasn't the best rock piece they had ever heard but a disaster.

Remo and Chiun saw immediately that the people were in trouble, not singing about it. Using the wires, they pulled Debbie and her guitar free and then dove into the center of the surging mass of bodies, lifting off rock stars, passing them up over the side of the stage. Those on the bottom could not be saved, but they managed to get the upper layers free so that doctors could get to those who were still alive at the bottom.

At the lower levels the bodies were slippery from the blood.

Some of the rock stars didn't realize what happened for the whole evening. One of them, with a punctured lung and enough cocaine coursing through his blood to numb the whole of southern California, only discovered he was injured when he tried to sing and nothing came out but blood.

Another with a broken hip, completely smashed on Quaaludes, thought she couldn't walk because this time she'd taken one pill too many. The idea made her giggle.

Debbie Pattie was furious that Remo and Chiun yanked her off the stage before she could get in front of the cameras.

"I hated all this anyway. All those other people sharing the attention. I was going crazy. I had withdrawals. I know others did, too."

One thing did make her feel better. At least it showed Remo that rock stars not only gave of their time and money but also of their blood.

"You can't say we're not saving now," said Debbie. Remo ripped off the wires, and so did Chiun. "Why do you use such sticky wires?" he asked.

"Hey, I'm talking to you. I said you can't say we're not saving now," said Debbie. "I mean, people are bleeding on that stage."

"I didn't say you didn't mean well," said Remo. "I just said jumping up and down and screaming 'Save' over and over doesn't mean anything. You're not saving people by dying, any more than you're saving people by screaming."

"That's singing," said Debbie.

"Whatever," said Remo. "Do you always use wires that stick?"

Debbie shrugged. She hired people for that. She honestly didn't know how a lightbulb worked, but when you made enough money, things just were supposed to work or you fired people.

"That's the difference between singers and nobodies," said Debbie.

Remo noticed that Rizzuto, who was standing at the front of the stage, had escaped the collapse of its center by simply jumping off. Being a good trial lawyer, he had the presence of mind to look for an open microphone. Finding one, he gave a last message to the people.

"Do not let them die in vain. Do not let them bleed in vain, everyone, you here and across the world, support change of venue for negligence. Please, I beg you in the name of humanity, the suffering humanity you see here, and the suffering you don't see which is even worse, write your congressmen. March in the streets. Barricade your courtrooms, Americans, because if the venue isn't changed to America, if it stays in Gupta where human life routinely suffers extermination by the powerful, then, friends, no humanity is safe. No mother is safe. No child is safe. No one is safe. You are not safe."

A stagehand wanted to borrow the microphone for a minute to get people in the rear to open a way for an ambulance. Rizzuto put his hand over the microphone.

"In a minute. In a minute, all right?"

"People are dying here, buddy. We got to get the ambulance. "

"I said in a minute," said Rizzuto, and made one more appeal for the change of venue, this time telling the people in so many words that if they helped the class-action suit against International Carborundum , they would be saving their own air, their own water and, as Rizzuto put it with a trembling voice, "your own green, green grass of home. "

Debbie Pattie saw Remo start to break away from her to get to Rizzuto.

"Hey, you're the luckiest man in the world. I'm ready to ball you. Let's go."

"Later," said Remo.

"Hey, I'm the most sexually desirable female in America," said Debbie.

"Sorry."

"Then I'll ball the old man, and he'll tell you what you missed. Everyone says I'm great in bed, everyone lucky enough."

"Fine," said Remo, easing his way through the stretchers and wounded. He knew that Debbie had as much chance of getting Chiun into bed as the pope. No, the pope would be easier. But if he told her that, she would keep bothering Chiun all night. Debbie Pattie wanted only one thing in life, it seemed. Whatever someone told her she couldn't have.

The thing that struck Remo about Rizzuto was that the man was only pressing the Gupta case. If each of those rock stars earned millions, and many of them would not be able to perform again, the size of the negligence suit would be awesome. And yet when Rizzuto dusted himself off, he went happily looking for what he called "action."

In Gupta, according to what Chiun found out, Rizzuto was right on the scene with a well-prepared case. Here, he walked past millions of dollars in liability, telling Remo that he thought he might know of a crap game in the hotel. Remo followed him, and that was exactly where Rizzuto went. There was a bigger negligence case on that one stage that evening than in all of Gupta, but Rizzuto ignored it.

And Palmer, Rizzuto with a man already on the scene, made no move to get any part of it. In fact, it was one of the few really major cases that year that the firm didn't get.

Remo contacted Smith on a public phone. Somehow, and of course Remo did not know how, the line was secure the moment contact was made.

"Smitty. I don't know that this detective thing is getting anywhere. I can't figure out a lot of this. A lot of things don't make sense. What if we just gently hang Rizzuto out of a window somewhere and find out what really makes them tick, and then you move the evidence somewhere?"

"Holding someone out a window, Remo, is not evidence. Just find out how they're doing this, how they're causing these accidents, and I can get the evidence worked up from here for some prosecutor. We've got to destroy these guys in a courtroom. We've got to have the law appear as though it's taking care of its own. Legally we have to do what Chiun always wants us to do. Hang a head on the wall. "

"I don't even know where the wall is in this case."

"Keep on it. And by the way, are you all right?"

"You mean that crazy business, or what you called that crazy business? Yeah. I'm fine. I haven't had a desire to do something decent for days. I just run around after people."

"I wasn't talking about that, Remo."

"What were you talking about?"

"To be honest, Remo, I don't know. Something is wrong. We're not getting the right readings from our sources. I backed everything off to the perimeters of the law firm's business and still our own system doesn't seem to make headway with them. We have a program that checks and analyzes every call they make. It's done automatically, even analyzed by the program itself. But every time their phone system connects to the Midwest it seems to suddenly go blank with an incredible amount of static."

"Like the system you use, Smitty?" asked Remo.

"Something like that, Remo. Except we're the only ones in the world who are supposed to have it. Or know how it works."

"So?"

"So, there's been an even stranger silence from that firm that I can't figure out. It's like that quiet in the jungle before a tiger strikes. Have you ever seen a cat stalk prey?"

"Maybe. I don't know. What are you getting at?"

"I think you're being stalked by someone or something. "

"Why?"

"A hunch."

"Smitty, you don't play hunches. You don't even have hunches. In fact, I wonder if you have feelings sometimes. So how come you're coming up with hunches all of a sudden?"

"Because some of our systems don't seem to be working quite right. Granted, no one has penetrated us. But there is that strange sense of things like in the jungle when the birds stop singing."

"You're going crazy," said Remo.

"Watch yourself, all right?"

"Me and Chiun. Who do we have to be afraid of?"

"Didn't Chiun tell you?"

"Has he made contact with you?"

"I thought it would be a good safety precaution for me to keep in touch with you both."

"Because you think I'm crazy."

"Because I don't know what you're going to do. And it's a good thing I do have contact with Chiun because he thinks that for your own safety perhaps you should take off for a year or two and get out of the country, come back later when things are safer."

"He's hustling you. He wants us to get in on some business elsewhere. Nothing's bothering him. Is that where your hunch came from?"

"No. I'm warning you too. You're being stalked."

"You're both crazy," said Remo, and hung up.

In Folcroft Sanitarium, Harold W. Smith watched the computer screen taking readouts from a network across the nation. He wondered if he were losing his mental balance. After all, he really didn't play hunches and had never trusted them. Yet why did he have this feeling that not only was Remo being stalked, but by something he might ultimately be helpless against? Was the organization going to lose him after all these years? And if so, what would happen to the organization? It had come to rely on Remo and Chiun, perhaps too much.

Harold W. Smith did not like hunches because he couldn't analyze them. He could not explain in hard facts why his senses kept telling him Remo was now up against perhaps the one thing he couldn't handle. And there was no rational evidence for it. He had absolutely no idea of what that one thing was.

In the plush suite of Palmer, Rizzuto it was Palmer who almost threw a chair through the glass case enshrining their old storefront-office desk. "What is that idiot Rizzuto doing? There are hundreds of millions of dollars to be made on that stage. Why is he talking about stinking little Gupta? Forget Gupta. Was Debbie Pattie hurt? If she were hurt we could earn double Dastrow's fee for Gupta."

"I think it was a real accident," said Schwartz.

"How do you know?"

"I don't know," said Schwartz. "I forget what they look like anymore."

"As good as Dastrow's," said Palmer. "But they're more spontaneous, right?"

"Dastrow's are spontaneous. There's nothing more spontaneous than an air disaster. Dastrow's are very spontaneous. That's why we use him. The man is incredibly safe. But so what if this thing isn't his? That doesn't mean we can't clean up anyway. And Rizzuto's sitting on his goddamned hands out there."

"I never thought of rock concerts. What about the Academy Awards? Can you think of the value of an entire auditorium filled with producers, stars, directors, writers?" asked Schwartz. He rubbed his hands. He thought of having the auditorium collapse after the awards were given out so the winning victims would be worth more.

"You mean do an Academy Awards?" said Palmer. "Dastrow asks money up front."

"Give him a contingency fee like we work on."

"Writers aren't worth much," said Palmer. "We don't need the writers. We can do it without the writers. You don't get anything for writers."

"We can say the builders who negligently let that auditorium blow up or collapse or whatever Dastrow does with it, maybe poisons the air or something, we can say their lost lives are robbing our entire civilization of art."

"To say nothing of the studios' incomes."

"Yes, studios. The studios will be good."

Palmer dialed Dastrow's number and waited for the callback. It came about eveningtime as the sun set over the Pacific and Palmer, Rizzuto employees headed home on clogged freeways and Schwartz dozed.

"Listen. The accident in Chicago with the Gupta benefit gave me a great idea, Bob. A truly great idea. A wonderful idea. Instead of some accident with rock stars, what about the Academy Awards? We couldn't pay you up front, but perhaps a contingency-basis sort of thing . . . Bob, are you there, Bob?"

"I'm here," said Dastrow. "I'm just looking at something."

"What do you think?"

"About the Academy Awards?"

"That's right."

"I've already done an entertainment group," said Dastrow.

"You mean the Chicago rock disaster was yours?"

"Uh-huh."

"Are you working with someone else? Is that it? You think we're broke and you're working with someone else," Palmer moaned.

"No. You are the lawyers who work. You're the lawyers who work well with the sort of thing I do. You're the sort of lawyers I can always count on for this sort of work. You're fine."

"Then why did you do Chicago? We never discussed Chicago."

"I am trying to find out how something works."

"How what works?" screamed Palmer. Dastrow was always difficult in his own Midwest hayseed way. But this was impossible.

"What is going to destroy you if I don't."

"Thank you."

"I'm not doing it for you, Palmer. I've never done anything for you. Let's not be confused here. I do things for myself. If they get you, they're going to get me."

"They? Who are 'they'?"

"That's why I returned your call. I thought you might be able to tell me something about them. Most peculiar people I have ever seen. Absolutely strange. If you knew what I know, you would jump out of your windows right now."

"What do you know?"

"I know it's going to be fun, finding out what goes on with these two. I know I'm going to remove them from our lives forever. I know, dear Palmer, how things work."

And Dastrow hung up.

"What did he say?" asked Schwartz.

"He said no to a contingency-fee basis," said Palmer, "and Chicago was his, and no, he's not working with anyone else. You know, Arnold, I think that Midwest hoopie has found out how we work. After all these years, I think I realize he's been using us."

"Can we sue?"

"Go flash your Rolex," said Palmer. "If we were to sue Dastrow, the entire courtroom would turn against us. I guess I should have known that eventually he would have figured out how the legal system works. He figures out everything eventually. Could you imagine if his genius were somehow harnessed for good?"

"It is. He's making us money. We employ people. Our lawsuits help keep corporations more careful. By serving Palmer, Rizzuto Robert Dastrow serves America in ways he may never fathom," said Schwartz.

"Do you honestly believe that nonsense?" asked Palmer.

"Just practicing," said Schwartz.

Robert Dastrow could not believe his calculations. And yet there they were. The Chicago disaster had worked to perfection. Without bodyguards, Debbie Pattie had to use those two who knew how Gupta worked but not how machines worked.

They, in turn, had responded to the disaster in front of them. Dastrow would have been satisfied with a quick leap back to safety, But instead, he got more body action than he could have hoped for.

He got tests of strength. Quickness. Balance. Nervous system, and of course blood-pressure levels and the intricate motor responses that made limbs work, all during the course of extreme stress.

Built into the power lines to Debbie Pattie's guitar were sensors to measure the body responses of those who held them. The lines were coated with thick, sticky conducting fluid to give better readings.

And the most amazing thing appeared to Robert Dastrow, like some strange jewel in an exotic clock that kept time as no other instrument might.

He held the white-and-green paper readouts in his hands, quivering with excitement in the large machine shop he had built underground at his Grand Island, Nebraska, estate. In those black numbers on the coarse paper, he saw evidence of balance that would be more appropriate to a cat than a human. He saw a nervous system respond with a strong, sure precision, as regular and dependable as radio waves from the center of the galaxy, and he saw awesome strength coupled with an unbelievably perfect muscular symmetry.

He glanced around the machine shop. There were more tools and instruments here than in most defense laboratories. The fluorescent lights glittered on the shiny instrument panels. Robert Dastrow felt his mouth go dry. He could think of only one thing seeing these figures, a poem by an Englishman.

"Tiger! Tiger! burning bright, in the forests of the night, what immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?"

Was that what William Blake was talking about? Dastrow had always thought the poet was talking about the basic force of the universe. Did life follow art?

They certainly didn't understand mechanical things. Where did their power come from? From this symmetry? Would they at last use it against Palmer, Rizzuto and in so doing inevitably reach Dastrow himself? And what had kept them from using this force against Rizzuto, the dramatic mouthpiece of the firm?

Was there something in these men that Dastrow had discovered in the workings of nature, and only dimly perceived in his calculations?

He looked at the numbers again. There was no question. As much as he would like to study them, he could no longer afford any such luxury. The numbers meant they had to die. But of course, killing them would pose a special problem. One just didn't plan on collapsing a roof, because these two might well walk away from it. They might walk away from anything. And when they walked away they would walk more quickly to their ultimate destination, which had to be Robert Dastrow himself. Why else would they have been making inquiries in Gupta? Inquiries not as reporters, not as insurance men, not as factory personnel.

But inquiries about Palmer, Rizzuto The two tigers in the night were coming for them, they were coming for all of them. The question was, as it had been from the beginning: Who were they, and how were they going to die? The difference was that now, after reading these reports on how they responded physically, Robert Dastrow had a very good idea.

Remo was on his way back to his hotel room when he saw a car pull up on the dark Chicago street. He could tell from the tense body positions of the men in the backseat of the car that they were going to fire something at him.

He moved fluidly in a lateral motion, and with their normally slow reflexes, the men in the backseat finally caught up with what was going on and jerked toward the direction Remo had been heading. By the time they completed their jerk, Remo was on line with the car and moving toward it, getting there by the time their guns rose.

He rammed them in their solar plexi and then let the two men recover while he chatted with the driver. "Good night for killing, isn't it?" said Remo. The driver swallowed. He started to explain how he really didn't know the men in the backseat. He was just driving along and they happened to climb in. Why, were there guns in there? My goodness, there were indeed. The driver said he was leaving right now. He hated guns.

"Fine," said Remo. "You can go. But I'll keep your kneecaps here on the seat to make sure you'll return."

"Thanks, I guess I'll stay," said the driver.

"Who sent you?"

"You wouldn't believe it."

"I believe," said Remo, repeating an absolutely silly line from a movie he had seen. Some trainer was trying to teach a pupil some physical tricks and he had said that all the person had to do was believe in himself. It was the wrong word. When doing something tricky, belief could get you killed. It was the knowing that a person had to have, not believing one could do something. One had to know it, deep down in the bones and in every little muscle and nerve. And one only knew it when it was so.

"A voice. The voice said there was some money in a bag in a garbage can. The voice said pick it up. It was a down payment. There would be more, when we finished the job."

"Where would there be more?"

"He didn't say. But there was ten grand in the fuckin' bag and that's good enough for a hit, you know. Nothing personal."

When the two gunmen regained their breath, they told the same story. "Nothing personal," they repeated.

"Nothing personal," said Remo, and removed three felons from the population of Chicago with three precise strokes through the skulls into the frontal lobes. When he was done, three foreheads had nice, neat dents in them.

The car smelled of pine deodorizer coming from a statue on the windshield. Remo wiped the knuckle of his right forefinger on the plaid car seat and left.

Before he got two blocks a street gang known as the El Righteous Kanks informed him he was going to die by the knife. There were four of them, each wearing a T-shirt with some absurd symbol. They all had stilettos as sharp as needles and as long as trowels. They were going to dig out his insides, they said. It seemed that they hadn't bathed in weeks. Remo moved upwind. One of the Kanks thought he was trying to escape and blocked his way. He stood upwind. He did not stand upwind long because before he knew what had happened his legs were flying downwind with him attached to them. He collided with a lamppost which did not yield, but his spine did. He fell to the concrete sidewalk like a duffel with the contents hanging out.

"Why do you announce what you're going to do?" asked Remo. The El Righteous Kanks were black. Remo imagined no white man had come into this neighborhood alone before.

"Hey, man. We gotta have some fun. Ain't no one bothered by bein' dead. He gotta know he gonna die. We gon' downput' upside yo head."

"You're going to try to kill me, right?"

"No try, whitey. We do."

"Would you tell me if this is just some ordinary run-of-the-mill mayhem which keeps this area unlivable? Or are you actually doing something constructive like getting paid to kill me?"

"You don' do nuthin', whitey, but stan' there and die. That's what whitey do. He here to die."

"I don't see any whites around here."

" 'Cause dey racists," said the leader of the El Righteous Kanks. "But if we nail one o' dem racists, we kill 'em all."

Remo took another line of reasoning. He applied the apparent leader gently to the lamppost while the other two attacked him. He pressed the other two neatly against the same lamppost until their spines cracked, and then suggested to the leader he would continue the pattern. On the other hand, he might not continue the pattern if he could establish a dialogue.

"Anyone tell you to make a hit on me?"

"A voice. Crazy voice. Tol' us where money was. Tol' us there'd be mo'."

"That's it then, a voice?"

"Ah swear."

"I believe you," said Remo, and dropped the El Righteous Kank leader on top of the pile unharmed. "By the way, where did you get the name Kank? Sounds like some sore."

"It be our black mystery, righteous Islamic."

"Somehow I doubt the accuracy of that," said Remo. And before the hotel he avoided a thrown grenade, and this time he didn't even bother to ask who was behind it. It was, of course, a voice.

At the hotel, Remo found out that Debbie Pattie had found new bodyguards and this time Remo only moved through them so as not to injure them. He didn't want to have to carry her electronic gear anymore.

"Little father, something strange is happening. I am being- "

"Attacked by the gun and the knife and the bomb," said Chiun.

"Yeah. How did you know?"

"Look in the other room," said Chiun. "We are fools, I think. Here we are in this insanity called detective investigation, and you await our death."

"They didn't get us."

"They will," said Chiun.

"How can you say that? You know who we are."

"I know who we are. And soon they will know who we are, if they do not already. And once they know that, they can better kill us."

"Are you guys detectives?" asked Debbie. She had switched to black rags instead of yellow and green rags. Remo knew she had her own full-time seamstress to sew the rags together. They were not taken out of dime-store garbage pails but were actually manufactured for her.

"No," said Remo. "We're just trying to find out something."

"I thought you knew it all," she said. She winked at Remo and nodded to the bedroom.

"Bodies in there," said Remo.

"Was that what Chiun was doing? Oh, he's neat. He's beautiful. He's heavy. He's baddest."

"It is her way of attempting to explain perfection; Remo. We must be tolerant of her," said Chiun.

"How are we going to be killed?" asked Remo. He hadn't seen anything that would be a problem. The problem was figuring out how to gather evidence against the super shysters on the Coast, not getting through the day alive.

Chiun raised a finger.

"There has been the gun, and that has failed, correct ?"

Remo nodded.

"And there has been the knife, and that has failed, correct?"

Remo nodded. "And the grenade too, so what are you talking about? No problem."

"If you fail, and fail, and fail, what does that mean?" asked Chiun.

"It means you can't get bookings," said Debbie.

"I don't know," said Remo.

"It means that someday you will succeed. Remo, the handmaiden of success is failure. There are only so many times a determined person can fail before he succeeds. And look at whom we face. Someone who understood how Gupta worked. I believe we are being tested. See what fails here, and see what fails there, and see what fails elsewhere, and all the while the failures are telling that person who we are and what we can do."

"I dunno," said Remo.

"On the one hand, Remo, we face someone who knows what he is doing while we have no idea what we are doing."

"Talk in Korean," said Remo.

"I'm old enough to hear anything you say," said Debbie. "And smarter than you think, too. Yeah." But Chiun ignored her.

"We hunt these lawyers for proof for some judge. What sort of a country is it that an emperor cannot maintain order with a scaffold or sword? What is evidence but something someone else may believe? Is that what we hunt? We should hunt thundershowers for our purse and build walls from morning dew. We are made fools of. Do you not understand we do not belong here? If this were easy for us it would be right. But it is impossible."

"It's only impossible when you give up, little father. We will fail, and fail, and fail, and then succeed. What's good for our enemies is good for us."

"Unfortunately, Remo, when an assassin fails, he is usually dead for the trouble. Leave this crazy land and the crazy man Smith. Come with me to civilized people. Did you not feel the respect of India, the grandeur, the sanity, the beauty?"

"I saw a dirty river," said Remo.

"How American," said Chiun.

"I'm not giving up, little father. Every other country in the world has a tinpot dictator, where laws mean nothing. There's no difference between some despot and some glorious emperor," said Remo.

"That's what I am saying. This is the age of the despot, and here the glory of Sinanju wastes itself in foolishness beyond comprehension. We do not even serve a lunatic emperor like Smith any longer: we serve some poetry that you alone appear to believe in."

"Smith serves the same laws. And he's not insane. You just don't understand America."

"That's not the problem, Remo. You don't understand the world."

Debbie Pattie saw the two men fall into hostile silence. She did not understand a word they were saying, but she recognized a family fight when she saw one. She recognized two people thinking each other stubborn and unreasonable.

She also recognized a chance to make her point. "Look," she said. "I know you think I don't know what I'm doing with all these crazy rags and the weird colors and downright junk I dress in, but I do. Nobody ever paid a million dollars for Beethoven's Fifth. This is what makes money. And so this is what I do, understand? I mean, I couldn't be a heavyweight boxer, right? I couldn't really be an opera star, because I don't have a voice that would carry past the first row. So I did what I could do without any talent. And I did all right, too. I'm famous and I'm rich, and that ain't bad if all you can do is yell and dress bad."

Debbie paused. Her voice lowered, and they could hear the tears beginning.

"So what I'm saying, fellas, is would you please be a little bit understanding of someone who works different from you? Huh? How about it? A little human understanding, Remo?"

"No," said Remo. "I don't believe in it, and Chiun believes in it even less."

"Okay, you poor moneyless jerk, I'll show you I have smarts. I'm going to show you where every penny of that Save benefit went. I'm going to show you you're wrong. You're wrong about everything. Because whether you know it or not, I love you, you big ape," she said to Remo.

"I didn't know that," said Remo.

"Well, I do," said Debbie, her tears making a rainbow stream through her multicolored makeup. Remo shrugged. It didn't make any difference to him. Chiun, of course, was not surprised. The girl was the epitome of bad taste.

For Chiun, only one thing really mattered. He knew that if something did not change soon, he might lose Remo. And this mattered much, much more than he would ever let Remo know.

Chapter 9

During World War II, when defense planners identified the seven most likely targets for the maximum possible damage to the United States, the Grand Booree Dam on the Colorado River rated right behind the destruction of the capital itself.

The project was immense. Not since the pyramids had mankind produced anything so massive. At its base the dam was almost a half-mile wide. In a perfect awesome slope of reinforced concrete it rose to the top of the canyon, almost as high as it was wide.

Major U. S. highways were built just to transport material to the construction site. A rail line for the concrete alone was built along the upper ridge of the Booree Canyon. Enough concrete was used in the making of Grand Booree to build twelve cities.

And behind its massive wall, a lake formed of such size that if the government chose, it could lose a fleet of battleships there. Homes and cities rose around the lake. And it was this lake that gave defense planners such nightmares.

If an enemy chose to destroy the dam, the force of the unleashed waters cascading down the canyon would obliterate everything under a wall of water that would shame any tidal wave yet recorded.

It was a nightmare that had moved this dam in Colorado right up the list of most vulnerable targets. It stayed there until a military officer took one look at the project and asked quite simply, "How would they destroy it?"

He calculated that for Japan or Germany to put even a single hole in the Grand Booree they would need a round-the-clock fleet of heavy bombers pounding the dam for three weeks straight. Even if Germany or Japan could mount such an extensive air bombardment, penetrating formidable coastal defenses, they would certainly not bother to do it to flood a few cities in Colorado.

What about a saboteur's bomb? the officer was asked.

"In terms of known explosives, to put a hole into that mass of concrete would require the national production of dynamite for August and September, or roughly four full trainloads."

There was no way any saboteur could sneak in enough explosives to do damage to the Grand Booree. Nevertheless, the very thought of what could happen if the lake ever let loose on the valley downriver was enough to force the government to station antiaircraft batteries around its perimeter and limit access to it all through the war. The government felt it just had to do something, even if something was absolutely not needed.

The residents of the valley numbered twenty-seven people, most of them guides who could easily have been trucked away. But the Grand Booree was an object of national pride; its lake was as important a public symbol as the Statue of Liberty.

The word from the top had been that Grand Booree was too big to be ignored. Robert Dastrow knew this was still government thinking, as he informed Nathan Palmer that he was about to do a freebie for Palmer, Rizzuto

"Never mind why I'm doing this. You can pay me later. Just get your young lawyers into the Booree Canyon to warn the people that the Booree was badly built and might go any day now."

"The Booree? How are you going to do the Booree?"

"Never mind. Just get your people out there. Make a lot of noise. Attract attention. Do whatever you have to do to make sure people sit up and take notice. "

"But we usually don't want to be noticed."

"This time, you do," said Dastrow. "Be sure you make noise now. We're fishing, so to speak."

When the young spokesmen for Palmer, Rizzuto came into the canyon to warn the few residents there, they were greeted with derision. The governor of the state went on television to laugh at the crazy lawyers. It became a popular joke that Palmer, Rizzuto had run out of disasters to chase, so instead they were hallucinating them. Palmer worried that the dam wouldn't go and their investment would be lost. Schwartz worried that the dam would go and for the first time Dastrow would have them linked as possible suspects in its destruction. Rizzuto worried about filling an inside straight with two men he met on an airplane, and in Folcroft Sanitarium Harold W. Smith took the threat of the Grand Booree more seriously than anyone else in the country.

It was a threat he couldn't possibly resist. Palmer, Rizzuto had made a mistake. They were, for the first time, establishing a trail right to themselves.

At their first check-in he ordered Remo and Chiun into Booree, Colorado. As soon as Remo nailed the evidence he was to inform Smith, and Smith would move it through normal channels back into the justice system, where the law firm of Palmer, Rizzuto to say nothing of Messrs. Palmer, Rizzuto, and Schwartz individually, could at last pay for their crimes.

"Well, we finally got 'em now, little father," said Remo as he made sure the fourteen steamer trunks with the kimonos for all occasions were packed and organized for the bellboys to wrestle into the elevator.

"We have nothing. We have insanity. Even the girl dressed in rags made more sense than you. She understood money. She understood the purpose of work is to make money. You don't even understand what you do things for anymore."

"No, it's you who don't understand;" said Remo.

"This is childish," said Chiun. "It could go on for days, you saying I don't understand and I saying you don't understand. Let us just let the subject drop."

"Okay," said Remo.

"Because you don't understand," said Chiun, following the trunks out the door.

On the plane to Denver Chiun opened the magazines, pointing out stories about how people worked for money. Everyone else in the world worked for money but Chiun's lunatic protege.

"I thought we were going to let the subject drop," said Remo.

"I am dropping it."

"Then do it."

"Done. Why should I want to talk about how you are breaking my heart?" said Chiun.

"If I don't do exactly what you want, exactly when you want, your heart is broken."

"I hardly consider your betrayal of everything we stand for something so petty as 'not exactly what I want.' "

"This may come as a surprise to you, but guilt does not work with me," said Remo.

"Why should my suffering ever bother you? What have I done for you, other than teach you everything you know from breathing to movement? What should I expect in return for this, for the best years of my life?"

Several people in the first-class section were now listening to Chiun. A young girl thought Remo was awful. A middle-aged man kept casting angry glances at him. A flight attendant comforted Chiun. A woman named Goldstein was taking notes, commenting that Chiun was an absolute master of communication.

"See, even she knows," said Chiun.

"She probably meant 'master at communicating guilt,' " said Remo. "I don't care how much other people make. I don't care how much glory other Masters have brought to Sinanju. I do my job. I like my job. It's my job and I'm happy with it, dammit. Case closed. Good night. I'm taking a nap."

"Sleep well," said Chiun.

"Thank you," said Remo angrily.

"On the tears of one who loves you," said Chiun, who then dozed off contentedly while Remo fumed.

"I never win with him," said Remo.

"Why should you?" said a flight attendant.

On the drive from Denver to Grand Booree, Chiun decided he was going to let Remo find his own way. He would no longer berate him for what he felt he had to do.

Indeed, Chlun was most pleasant during the drive, saying how much he respected and liked Remo. "You have become a Master, something not always possible even for those of Sinanju. You are truly a good son in so many ways. Your loyalty to most of that, which is Sinanju has impressed me over the years. I have felt pride in your glory. For your glory, Remo, is the glory of Sinanju."

Remo waited for the other shoe to drop. He recognized a setup when he heard one. But the other shoe didn't drop. Chiun just repeated how much he respected and loved Remo. That Remo was better than anyone from Sinanju except, of course, Chiun, which was why Chiun had stayed so long. If Remo weren't wonderful, Chiun would not have wasted a minute beyond the initial time paid for by Smith for the training.

"Perhaps you do not even know the moment I knew you were someone special, even in white skin." Remo cast a quick glance at Chiun. The voice was soft, the hands were complacently at rest in the lap of the traveling kimono. The face was benign. This was when Chiun was most dangerous.

Remo did not venture an answer.

"It was when I saw a star in your eye. It is greatness that comes from a mystery. Is it the blood of birth? Is it the forge that tempers a soul? Is it the soul itself? Even Masters of Sinanju do not know this. But you had it, my son," said Chiun.

Remo did not answer. He drove in silence, but Chiun did not attack him once. In the small town of Booree, alongside the lake above the massive dam, Remo finally exploded.

"All right. I give up. Why are you being so nice to me?"

"Because you are going to die, Remo," said Chiun, and he said it so plainly that Remo believed him. This was not a game. It was not a manipulation.

Remo thought for a while. He finally said, "Not without a fight, little father."

"May the Masters of Sinanju look down on me with pity. I train a Master of Sinanju who believes that second place in a fight to the death is all right provided he performs well."

In Booree the laughter among the people had suddenly changed. People were now talking about how much less their homes would be worth if they bordered a big pit instead of Lake Booree. Every few moments people cast worried glances at the top of the dam. And Remo could feel what was going on. Through the reddish clay of what had once been the top of a canyon and was now the lake's shore, Remo could feel a slight rhythmic tremble every few moments.

The birds winging over the dam sensed the danger, cawing strange calls. Remo sniffed the water and the air: it smelled of impending disaster.

" 'Course you can't tell a thing from here," said an old-timer with a sun-grizzled neck and a face as worn as a leather saddle. "But engineers say the Grand Booree, she's beginnin' to tremble. Vibrations like. Slow now but they're pickin' up. Those lawyer fellas sure are smart 'bout what's happenin'. They said it would. Said the government was negligent when they built her. Nobody ever thought that, but it sure looks like it's true."

"Who says the Booree is going to go?"

"Engineers. Came in to check once those lawyer fellas got around sayin' so. If you own property here, better sign up with them. They sure know what they're talkin' 'bout. Chief engineer wonders how they could've figured it out."

"Where is he?"

"Over at Grand Booree. But better not go there. It's a danger zone now."

Before Remo left for the dam itself, Chiun gave him an order.

"Forget all our troubles. Forget everything but what your body has been taught. Listen to your body. It has learned everything it needs."

"Thank you," said Remo.

"You will survive," said Chiun.

"Yes. I will survive." And then there was a long silence, broken only when Chiun turned away to let his thoughts and being quiet and focus on the center of the universe.

At the dam Calvin Rutherford was giving orders. He wore a plastic safety helmet, and his white shirt pocket contained a plastic case filled with pencils and pens. His face was ashen, and every few moments he sighed in frustration and rage, feeling more helpless by the moment.

When he saw Remo he ordered him off the dam. "This is no place to be," said Rutherford.

"I'm safer than you are. Do you know how this happened?"

"You from the government?"

"Yeah. Who the hell else would be interested?"

"Reporters," said Rutherford. "But what the hell. I've already told them. I'll tell you. Don't care who sues us. This is a disgrace. The damned engineers made a mistake."

"After all these years?"

"Hell, the mistake didn't happen now. It's just showing up now. I'll take you down to see for yourself. "

Inside the dam Remo could feel its mass. He sensed the hugeness of this man-made mountain. He felt the awesome weight of the water in Lake Booree, and sensed the vibrations through the elevator that had brought him and Engineer Rutherford twenty stories down into the bowels of the Grand Booree.

They walked through a half-mile of internal piping that Rutherford explained in detail and Remo did not understand at all.

"A dam, any dam, has got to have its sluices working. You've got to let the water out below, because if it comes out over the top, it'll be useless for energy and eventually will wear down the surface of the dam, grind it down just like waterfalls do to the stone they fall on, understand?"

Remo nodded. He thought he understood.

"So the sluices are important. It's what we run the turbines with. Water pressure pushes the blades and we create electricity. The Grand Booree supplies much of Colorado. Okay?"

"Gotcha," said Remo.

"Now, understanding the turbines, you've got to understand vibrations. Soldiers break step when they walk across a bridge because otherwise the vibrations would set the bridge to rocking. What we have here are not cables, but masses of concrete. The very mass has picked up the vibrations from turbines synchronized in such a way as to turn this whole damned incredible mass of concrete into a pane of window glass that'll crack when the vibrations get strong enough."

"So where was the negligence?" asked Remo.

"You sound like a lawyer."

"I'm trying to catch lawyers."

"The negligence is that not only did we fail to perceive the effect of synchronized vibrations but we built the turbines in such a way as to be able to run them in only one direction."

"What's wrong with that?"

"If we could get them reversed to create a counter vibration, which would be diametrically opposed to the one that is gathering momentum now, we could stop the vibrations perfectly."

"Well, why not just shut down the turbines? Won't that stop everything from shaking?"

"No, it's too late for that. Other than reversing the turbines, the only solution's a construction one. We're working on it now."

"So what's the problem?"

"The problem is we have to reconstruct the sluices at the entrance point. In other words, we have to do it from underwater at lakeside. We've got divers there now."

"Good," said Remo.

"Not so good," said Rutherford. "The desilting of the bottom near the sluices is due this month. The whole area is so heavy with silt from the bottom of the lake that our diving gear keeps getting fouled. If only this had happened a month from now we would be okay. Divers are just having no luck in the goo, and if we don't fix those sluice entrances pretty soon, the divers, the diving barge, and everything is going to go along with the dam."

Remo saw the giant turbines set with metal bolts twice the size of a man.

"Pretty soon," said Rutherford, "you're going to be able to feel the vibrations. Then they'll continue to build on themselves until . . . boom!"

"How much time do we have?"

"A half hour till I clear everyone out of here."

On top of the dam Remo saw a large sign calling the Grand Booree "America's Pride." It was built during the Depression when a president had to give hope to a nation. It was a symbol as much as it was a stunning technical achievement to keep a river in check and provide electricity.

Men on the barge were signaling Rutherford with their hands. He had a walkie-talkie on his hip. He pulled out its antennas.

Remo heard the voice crackle across the airwaves. "Too much silt. Can't work in that much silt. That's what's fouling the diving gear," came the voice.

"I can work in silt," said Remo.

"You a diver?"

"Sure," said Remo.

"I thought you were an investigator for the government. "

"Used to be a frogman," Remo lied.

He wasn't going to let America's Pride go under and he was grateful that Chiun wasn't there to see him do it.

"Explain to me again what has to be done," said Remo, taking over a diving suit on the barge. The other divers were warning against trying.

"You'll be buried alive. You can't get down there. It's like a big blanket clinging to your gear: There's nothing but death down there."

"Shh," said Remo. "I'm trying to understand how that sluice works."

"It's not the sluice that's a problem. It's the silt," said Rutherford. "If you really want to see something that'll make it simple for you, read this."

He took a flier out of his rear pocket. It had been folded several times. Over a pale gray sketch of the Grand Booree was a message to concerned citizens. It came from the law firm of Palmer, Rizzuto It decried an age when the lives of people were of little concern to a government bent on aggrandizing its image. It did not matter that the aggrandizing had been done a half-century before. The problem was coming to a crisis point now.

Because the government had rushed ahead without testing the massive structure, it was vulnerable to vibrations. Just when the vibrations would come, the law firm did not know. Hopefully, the flier stated, this would never happen. But should the vibrations occur, and if the vibrations should be caused by a buildup of silt at the sluices, the only way to stop them was to reach the sluices from the lake side of the dam. And that meant diving. But because of an engineering oversight, the flier continued, the sluice entrances were below, not above, the sluices. And this underwater area was now almost completely obstructed by silt.

"Absolutely simple," said Rutherford. "If we had put the openings above instead of below, we could get in."

"Why didn't you?"

"Why didn't I? Hell. I wasn't born then, and whoever thought there would be a problem today back then?"

"So I have to get in from below. Okay," said Remo. He stepped into the diving suit, feeling the rubber wet and cold against his skin. He let his mouth breathe for him and then put on the diving mask and tanks.

He ignored the offer of fins and jumped overboard. On deck the crew noticed something peculiar.

"Hey, there's no bubbles coming from him."

"I didn't think he looked like he knew what he was doing," said one diver.

They waited five minutes, and when they didn't see a bubble they declared him dead. Atop the dam, the sign declaring the Grand Booree to be America's Pride quivered and fell.

"Vibrations are reaching maximum. It's gonna go. No point waiting for that guy. He's dead. Let's get out of here," said Rutherford.

"Maybe he's not dead," said one of the divers.

"And maybe he don't have to breathe either. Let's get out of here. You can even see the vibrations now. "

Not only had the sign fallen, but across the vast dark lake little waves appeared like the ridges of a giant washboard. Along the shore the trees quivered and dropped their leaves, and down in the darkness of the silt Remo Williams searched for the opening.

As soon as he was out of sight, Remo took off the mask and rubber suit, allowing his skin to acquaint itself with the cool water. It was not that he stopped breathing. He would never completely stop breathing. Instead he used the technique borrowed from the Indian fakirs, who buried themselves alive for hours at a time. By slowing the rhythms of his body he required less oxygen than an unconscious person. Yet his nervous system functioned at peak efficiency. He knew that his muscles suffered from the reduced oxygen absorption, but it wasn't muscles that made Remo a Master of Sinanju.

The problem was finding the opening in the silt. At the top, it felt like some strange oil on his body, but farther down it became densely packed like unset concrete. Even farther down it was like moving through settled clay: hard, dense, packed clay. Remo kept his eyes shut and moved along the cement base, pausing every few moments to let his palms press open-fingered against the coarse concrete, trying to distinguish the normal vibrations of the water going through the sluice from those which seized the concrete mass and were obviously growing.

The plan was to create an opening through an entranceway beneath the sluice. Remo got there and found the metal plate Rutherford had predicted would be there. It had to be moved in one direction or another, and Remo couldn't figure out which. As the vibrations forced him back, Remo cut through the silt once again to reach the plate. Something had to be done with the plate. He sensed the dam might go at any second. Taking the plate in his hands, Remo did what he did to old television sets, whose workings he also didn't understand. He gave it a kick. The only difference was that nowadays he kicked televisions very, very gently.

The kick was backed up by the weight of all the damned-up water guided by the rhythms of Remo's body. His foot went through the metal like a torpedo. With a muffled sucking sound, the silt was pulled through the hole, creating a rhythm of its own. The turbines stopped, clogged by mud. The dam quivered and the vibrations ceased. But Remo saw too late that it was a trap. Someone had expected him.

The only thing in the narrow sluiceway between the open air above and the lake itself was Remo Williams-and a small, carefully placed explosive device. When the explosive charge detonated, he was propelled by the force of tons of lake water, shooting out through the sluice like a pea through a straw, the mud behind him and the rocky riverbed below.

Blinded momentarily by the mud, he almost did the one thing that could get him killed: he started to tighten his muscles against the impact. But his muscles knew better. They had been trained too well by Chiun, and so instead he stretched out like a long strand of silk. As he let the mud and water wash over him, becoming one with the lake and the riverbed, he let the mud behind him absorb the impact of the explosion.

He moved down the shallow river for about a quarter of a mile and then climbed up the bank. Behind him the dam disgorged mud and water, but not so much as to cause flooding. The dam had stopped vibrating. America's pride had held.

Along the lakeshore, Calvin Rutherford and the other engineers were reading their meters and cheering. The sluice could be closed and the smashed turbine would be replaced. As a side benefit the powerful current was even desilting the lake, carrying tons downriver. At this rate, they would probably not have to dredge.

When Chiun saw Remo walk up the road covered with mud, he felt joy that Remo was alive. In an instant he knew his joy was to be fleeting.

Remo walked into the motel room with a big grin. "Well, here I am, little father. Alive."

"So far," said Chiun. "But I have come to the conclusion we have only one chance."

"What's the one chance?" asked Remo as he headed for the shower to wash off the mud. Even his pores had breathed it in under the pressure of the water, and his body had to breathe it out again.

"We must join this Palmer, Rizzuto, and Schwartz, who we are not allowed to kill, and eliminate Smith for them. That is our only way. And it is righteous."

"How is betrayal righteous?" said Remo, stepping into the shower. He didn't use soap, because soap, which actually burned off dirt with lye, left its fatty residue still burning his skin.

"It is not we who are betraying, the mad emperor Smith, but he who is betraying us."

"I thought we worked for him."

"Assassins are not used as targets. in decent civilized lands, like India, people appreciate a great assassin for what he is. In America he is turned into a palace guard, some local official who investigates things. A catcher of thieves."

"Detective," said Remo.

"That," said Chiun.

"I used to be a cop," said Remo.

"All this training, the awesomeness of Sinanju, and you are still a cop."

Remo paused before turning on the water. "Little father. I have not dishonored Sinanju. I have not learned nothing. But you did teach it to an American. So I am an American and I am Sinanju."

"One cannot be both Sinanju and American, two things at the same time. This is impossible."

"But I am."

"Then get rid of the lesser one, or die."

"Okay," said Remo. "I'll get rid of Sinanju."

"You can't," said Chiun. "I have trained you. You are Sinanju. You can no more rid yourself of Sinanju than a cloud can forfeit its air, or the sun its light, or the river its water."

"So I'll stay stuck."

"You could try ridding yourself of being American. There are two hundred million of those. The world will not mourn the loss of one."

"You know that's not possible either."

"Then, my son, you are dead, unless we kill Smith. There is precedence for it. Good precedence."

"You mean a tale of Sinanju? Which one was it? The Great Wang, and the Ming emperor? Let's see, he pointed out that an assassin never lost a king, so that certainly wouldn't be the Great Wang, or even the Lesser Wang, who did only one assignment, which wasn't all that important anyway. Then we have the middle period when the House of Sinanju worked Asia heavily. Could it have been the gateway to the West, when we served Rome and the caesars who never took our advice? No, I think we worked for Livia, except she was a chronic do-it-yourselfer, if I remember correctly, poisoning people. Then there was the later Western period of Ivan the Righteous, whom the rest of the world called the Terrible but whom we knew as a man of honor who paid on time. "

"Do not mock the glory of Sinanju? You know perfectly well it was Sayak, during the middle period, a time of prosperity and peace and honor."

"Wasn't that something to do with a love affair? Some tawdry thing a private detective in America might handle? An unfaithful spouse?"

"Like a typical American, you remembered the dirt and missed the point. If you remembered the point we would happily join with this firm of lawyers right now and kill Smith. This already has good, solid precedent in the lesson of Master Sayak, who, when faced with death, when faced with a bitter, bitter choice, made the right choice and continued the line of Masters of Sinanju. For there is one thing a Master must know before all else: to continue the line he must not allow himself to be killed. There is nothing any more noble in death than there is something noble about rotting fruit. One does whatever possible to delay that inevitability. Fruit and life." Chiun folded his hands in his kimono and shut his eyes. Remo had learned well the tale of Master Sayak from the histories of Sinanju. As he though about it, he returned to his shower, turning on both the hot and cold water slowly, until a warm, comfort able mixture streamed over his body. Strategically Chiun was not all that wrong. The tale of Master Sayak applied all too well to this situation.

The more Remo thought about it, the more troubled he became. It appeared Chiun might be right. Killing Smith might be the only way to survive. But did Remo want to survive at that price? What was life worth?

He wasn't born in Sinanju, where life was a struggle, where pushing it on to old age was a major triumph, especially for an assassin.

And he was not just a killer. He was Sinanju just as much as he was American, but not more. He let the warm water splash against his face and received the water now as a gentle stream, just as he had received it as an immense force shooting him through the sluice.

He had been given Sinanju, and it was a trust for the future as much as it was a tool for the present. He let the water touch his body. become one with his body. and tried to forget the tale of Master Sayak.

Chapter 10

From the histories of Sinanju: "The Tale of Master Sayak and the Emperor's Concubine":

And it came to pass, during the masterhood of Sayak, that an emperor of a kingdom west of the middle kingdom of China, on his throne in Rhatpur north of the populated city of Delhi, suffered an affront to his life of such skill and daring that he realized no guards would keep him alive, no soldiers could stay the dagger now aimed at his imperial heart.

And beseeching Sinanju he sent a courier with a message. "O Master, my empire is held in the grip of a murderer's blade. None of my ministers or captains know how to help. No shield will prove sufficient. Only Sinanju and its glory can sustain my kingdom. Ask but the price and it will be delivered unto you."

Now, Sayak knew Emperor Mujjipur was the grandson of Emperor Shivrat, who paid well and promptly to the House of Sinanju when seizing the throne from his brother, and Sayak knew that blood often ran true. And the honor of a grandfather was often passed through the blood to the grandson.

But Sayak had made one mistake. Being Sinanju, he assumed that the problems of a soldier or a minister would not be problems for a Master of Sinanju. So he did not ask about the problems. But when there is a thunderstorm, the wagons of Master and soldier, Master and peasant, Master and courtesan, are all stuck in the same mud.

And when Sayak presented himself to Emperor Mujjipur in the summer palace of Rhatpur, the emperor gave to him a freedom few emperors would have allowed.

"To protect my royal life you are given fiat to kill whoever in my kingdom threatens that royal life," said Emperor Mujjipur. "Only one person may you never kill. Only one person's life must at all cost be spared, no matter what the provocation, and that is my beloved concubine, Hareen. No harm may come to her under any circumstance."

Now, Emperor Mujjipur was an old man, in his middle fifties, and his girth was wide, his breathing heavy, and his life hanging by a thread. And yet in that age men often delude themselves about love, and like boys again believe that whoever they happen to love at the moment is a gem beyond compare. So Sayak did not think this announced protection as anything unusual.

Besides, in these situations, such announcements are irrelevant. If Emperor Mujjipur had placed such a prohibition on a son or a cousin, then that might have posed a problem, because in these matters, the one who benefits from the removal of the emperor, the one likely to inherit the throne, is usually the one who seeks the ruler's death.

More significantly, though he had granted his concubine her protection, he had failed to put the empress under that protection. For if he loved this concubine Hareen so much, the queen, out of anger, might possibly have sought Mujjipur's death. Sayak understood the purpose of royal marriages is not sexual but political. Yet he was aware that some empresses felt themselves lovers as well as consorts of their mates. As a Sinanju saying went, all the best planning in the world could get out of hand in a lover's bed.

Yet this was not the case with the empress, who only laughed when Master Sayak respectfully asked her of her life at court, hoping to find the source of her troubles.

"We are all doomed because of the emperor's foolishness-me second, assassin, and you first," she said, and would explain no more.

Sayak knew there was only one way to avert danger and that was, of course, to stop it at the source, which was most simply done at the moment the danger struck. For the most deadly point is also the most vulnerable point.

And it came to pass that the assassin who had attempted twice before to steal the life of Mujjipur sent another deadly hand against the emperor.

He was a common strangler of some skills and some strength, but one of insufficient power. Sayak easily took the strangler's rope and put it about the strangler's neck, turning it slowly so that the face purpled and the teeth bared as the strangler struggled for breath, a move designed to injure the mind more than the body. The strangler would know for the first time, firsthand, the suffering he wrought and fear it.

Naturally it worked, and the strangler said he had been hired by a young captain in the palace quarters of the concubine Hareen. And keeping his promise, Sayak did not put the strangler to death with the rope, but dispatched him with a certain speed that would be welcomed by any of the dying. For it is not the purpose of Sinanju to cause pain. Pain for pain's sake alone is a waste and the mark of a sloppy assassin, and Sinanju would never allow that.

Knowing the injunction, Sayak formally asked the emperor for permission merely to enter Hareen's quarters.

"I honor this beauty so much that I allowed as how her quarters were like her kingdom. You must ask her permission," said the emperor.

But Sayak saw a danger. "Oh gracious Emperor, ruler from the throne at Rhatpur, light unto your subjects, the land you do not control in your own kingdom is land set against you. And land set against you is a danger."

"Sayak, from Sinanju in the Koreas, you have not seen her soft skin, or her eyes as bright as all the mornings of all the suns of all the universes. You have not seen her smile, or receive your body with her gentle love. You cannot know the rapture of this heavenly creature."

And so the answer was no. And Hareen refused even to see Master Sayak. Shortly thereafter there came five men with spears to take the life of the emperor, and these five did Sayak dispatch, but not before these five did again point the finger to the young captain in the quarters of the beautiful Hareen.

And again Mujjipur forbade entrance, saying he had mentioned this to Hareen and that it had brought her to tears.

The next killers came in a band of twenty, with arrows and slings and all manner of death in their hands, and Sayak through Sinanju prevailed, although this time the arrows were close, and the missiles closer, and he knew that while he could defeat the next in all probability and the one after that in all probability, sooner or later even a Master of Sinanju would suffer loss if all he did was sit as a target, like the emperor.

And he told this to Mujjipur, saying the emperor must take back his word to the concubine Hareen. An enraged Mujjipur called Sayak a lesser Master of Sinanju.

"All I ask is that you protect my life without harming my one blessed relief in a burdensome kingdom, and you say you have failed. Since when does Sinanju fail?"

Now, knowing one should never call an emperor fool, Sayak accepted the rebuke and promptly entered the quarters of the beautiful Hareen.

She was in the arms of the captain who had sent the killers one after another against her emperor. She told Sayak she would have him executed for violating the sanctity of her quarters. She told him her Mujjipur would never allow his ears to hear of infidelity. She told Sayak to leave the throne at Rhatpur and return like a dog to the kennels of Sinanju.

Sayak heard her noise, but saw her predicament. This was a girl in love, for otherwise she would have accepted the favors of the emperor and grown rich and comfortable, a noble purpose for a courtesan, for in fact that would mean that her family and village would be secure from want. Sayak could appreciate this, for he provided the same security for his poor village, Sinanju, on the rocky slopes of the West Korea Bay.

Seeing Hareen lying on the multicolored pillows with soft silk cascading about her and her lover in her arms, Sayak saw she had made an improper move for a courtesan. For she did not seek the crown, but someone else, and of course it was he who controlled the beautiful Hareen, the captain of her guard, the man who held her now.

And with the inimitable grace of Sinanju, Sayak did move upon the multicolored pillows and snuff out the life of the captain, even while the beautiful Hareen screamed of murder, screamed of treachery, screamed she would see Sayak's death, no matter what the cost.

Using the force of her anger, Sayak let the anger work around her body in traditional ways, as he prepared to move her from the tension of anger quite naturally into relaxation with common touching and breathing techniques of the first level of Sinanju, and then up to sexual tension. At the height of her transformed energy, he took her, bringing her to an orgasm of peak intensity.

Since it was her body and not her mind that craved the captain, it was her body now that told her she loved Sayak.

And indeed, this beautiful girl who was no more than sixteen offered some attraction for Sayak, for even though Masters of Sinanju are at one with their bodies, they are still men. And she was a most beautiful being, rounded perfectly in all the places that were to be rounded, and thinned in all the places that were to be thinned, and smelling too of lilacs and roses and all the fragrances of a thousand gardens on her perfect skin.

But Sayak was Sinanju, and abiding by his responsibility he told her that first she must order the death of the emperor, order it from Sinanju, as a service. She did this readily, as she had gone along with the now dead captain.

That night Sayak sent the Emperor Mujjipur from a peaceful sleep into the deepest sleep for which there was no morning.

And by so doing, Sayak stilled the one voice that would accuse Sinanju of failure, though it had been the emperor's failure all along. But one could not be too careful about evil words from clients. Mujjipur had no right to defame Sinanju for his own faults, and thus justice was done, a necessary justice because Sayak knew that sooner or later even he would have succumbed.

Now Hareen did not want her new lover Sayak to leave, offering him instead the throne at Rhatpur. But Sayak said, and it should be remembered by every Master unto the ages when all men leave the earth and assassins are no longer needed, "Beautiful Hareen, you offer me the throne at Rhatpur. But look now, a thousand years ago there was a kingdom here which you do not remember, and a thousand years from now, there will be a kingdom here which will not remember the throne of Rhatpur. But a thousand years ago, there was Sinanju, and a thousand years hence there will be Sinanju."

And the lesson from this tale of Master Sayak was that an emperor who foolishly does not allow his assassin to do his job has not hired him. But he who will let an assassin be what he should be, that one is the rightful employer.

Thus it was written in the histories of Sinanju that there was a time when a Master owed to Sinanju the correct move in seeking the right employer for the awesome talents and power of Sinanju.

Millennia later, in a motel shower alongside Lake Booree in Colorado, getting the mud out of his body pores, Remo remembered the tale of Master Sayak and knew Chiun was right. He had almost died in saving that dam. He finished washing, dried off, and put on his slacks and T-shirt. He could travel with all his clothes in a briefcase. He had never gotten into wearing kimonos as Chiun had tried to have him do. He didn't like them, and Chiun attributed this bad habit to early training which could not be broken. Remo paused before the meditating Chiun.

"I could never get myself to work for Palmer, Rizzuto " he said.

And Chiun knew Remo had been thinking properly. "We can then leave. Insane Smith would never say we had failed; he is obsessed with keeping our glory hidden. Why would he not do the same for our shame?"

"I guess you're right, little father," said Remo. "I guess it has come to that."

In Chicago, Debbie Pattie had made a fantastic discovery. She had launched her team of accountants into the books of the Save concert. Out of the twenty-five million dollars raised, her accountants tracked down exactly what was reaching Gupta, India. It was sent in an express package two feet wide and one foot tall. Exactly thirty-five dollars' worth of Band-Aids.

Enraged in large part because the man she wanted, Remo, had been right, and more important, didn't want to go to bed with her, Debbie immediately set out to raise a cry in the land about the fraud.

She contacted the leading rock singers of the Save concert. One of them, who yelled about being an American and wore a bandanna around his head, showing lots of sweat and muscle, was Barry Horowitz, sometimes called The Man.

He was strong. He was radical. He was concerned. "Barry, this is Debbie Pattie. I found out something horrible. Do you know that for all our work we are only sending thirty-five dollars in Band-Aids to Gupta?"

"That's not my job, sweetie. I'm the strong outraged American. I scream my guts out. That's my job."

"But if you'd been to Gupta, you'd have seen the suffering. We have to do more."

"Hey, little shitheel, I sang my lungs out. You can't get no more out of this man."

"But the people aren't getting anything."

"I'm the voice of rage and justice, not the food-delivery man, baby. Get your act together. I got mine. "

Some others thought it was terrible, but they had bookings they had to fill. And still others had attended the concert because everyone seemed to be doing it and they had never even known what the benefit was for.

Debbie Pattie was alone and she couldn't even reach Remo. But she knew she had made it through a hard world right to the top, and if she could nail the thieves herself, she thought, then Remo, the one man she wanted and couldn't have, would have to come and admit she was someone special.

The money, as it turned out, went to several places. Everyone made money. The auditorium management hoarded what little it had to pay damages to families of the injured and dead rock stars, the unions received special bonuses, and one dandy little tidbit was that almost half of everything collected went to Gadgets Unlimited, the company that provided the wiring and lighting for the stage. The accountants told her the people who arranged this were brilliant and knew just how benefits worked, even understanding that money could be taken out as security for future bills.

"If you hadn't alerted us we never would have found this rascal. This is the best job of numbers manipulation we have ever seen."

Gadgets Unlimited was in Grand Island, Nebraska. Debbie wouldn't go to Grand Island to die, but she would bring Grand Island to her. She phoned the company and got a machine. But this was the strangest answering machine she had ever heard.

"Yes, I am an answering machine but I can answer your questions, hold conversations, and even give you three minutes of appropriate sympathy if that is called for."

"I want to speak to the employee who handled the work on the Save benefit."

"A tragedy, yes. But the Save concert also contributed to furthering the interests of stage delights."

"There are a few million dollars' worth of bills here," said Debbie. She looked at the printout on the marble tabletop in her hotel suite. There were electron microscopes, mass spectrometers, and enough scientific gadgets to outfit a space capsule.

"And every one of them going for improved and better sound, not only for today but also for tomorrow."

"But wasn't this money supposed to go to the poor people of Gupta?"

"Everything after expenses did go to Gupta, we are led to believe. I think they got the very latest in the 'ouchless' gauze bandage."

"Look, to me that's fraud. And maybe you can pull off fraud against most people, but I got a friend, a good friend, and my friend Remo . . ."

As soon as the word was out of her mouth she heard a fast click, and live noncomputer voice got on the phone. She knew it didn't come from a computer because no computer could be so grating on the ears. It twanged like a rusty nail across a piece of concrete.

"Remo as in Remo and Chiun," came the voice.

"Yeah. Them. You know them?"

"Know of them? They're my heroes, little lady. My name is Robert Dastrow, that's D as in Data, A as in Arithmetic, S as in Silicone, T as in Titanium, R as in Robot, O as in Ohm, and W as in Wildebeest; heh, heh, sometimes I throw in an animal. I'm a card, you know."

"Look, is there any way you can return some of that money to the people of Gupta? If you'd seen them suffering, you'd know we should do something."

"Right you are, sweet lips," came the voice. "I think we ought to talk about it. We ought to talk about it some more. I'd love to give everything to Gupta, but I have to know what kind of person you are, not just some fly-by-night who wants a million here and a million there."

"I'm a rock star. I'm rich," said Debbie.

But it wasn't enough for Dastrow, D as in Data, A as in Arithmetic, and so on, and finally Debbie Pattie agreed to meet the man with the rusty voice.

Robert Dastrow looked as he sounded. As though he should be in some hardware store west of Chillicothe. Ohio. He wore a plain starched white shirt with pencils in the pocket, wire-rimmed glasses, and a crew cut. If Debbie wanted to cast the perfect class nerd, she would call on Robert Dastrow.

But if he was so backward, why was the conversation never going where she wanted and always getting strangely back to Remo and Chiun? You would think he had something for them and not her. He wanted to know what they ate, how she felt about their vibrations, how they made love (if she could be supposed to know such information). He wanted to know any strange things they might have talked about.

"Well, it was like a family fight that went on all the time, like. You know what I mean? Like the old man was really his mother, you know? Not his father. His mother. Always telling him he didn't do this right or that right. You know, a mother who's always bitchin'. A normal mother."

"My mother wasn't like that," said Dastrow.

"Well, maybe where you're from they're different. But he was like his mother. And they were always arguing, sometimes in English. Sometimes in Korean."

"Did the older one seem to know more than the younger?"

"The older one didn't like this country, didn't like working here. Thought they ought to go."

"And just what work did they do?"

"I dunno. Those two were as mysterious about that as 'The Twilight Zone.' A weird pair. Bunch of stuck-ups. Who do they think they are, right? Remo thought he was better than everyone."

"You had problems with him?"

"Everyone had problems with him. The nice one was Chiun."

"I'll tell you what I'll do. You seem like a dedicated person and this concert was for charity. There is one way I can make back my investment if I sign over all the equipment funds to the Save committee. And that's if you introduce my new electronic guitar tonight. Because if you use it, and everyone sees how good it is, then golly, I'm off and running."

"All of the money you took goes to Gupta, right?"

"Yessiree, little lady."

"Is the guitar heavy? I can't work heavy. I move a lot. I'm a dancer too."

"I'll make it light. It's got a lot of wires, though. It works sort of on your brainwaves too."

And thus Debbie Pattie in the prime of her career allowed herself to be strapped into the new electronic guitar. Electrodes were set on her scalp and on her wrists and ankles, and when she began to play, this arrangement worked just as well as it did on any other electric chair.

Debbie Pattie got enough volts while singing before her rock crowd to do away with half the capital offenders in New Jersey.

Remo heard about her death on the television show Chiun was watching as he was packing his things, one extra shirt and one extra pair of pants. The problem wasn't packing the shirt and pants, the problem was getting them into Chiun's fourteen steamer trunks.

To squeeze in Remo's clothes, Chiun would have to get rid of a sleeve of one kimono. He carried a hundred and fourteen with him for light travel in the trunks, and each one, Remo suggested, became at one time or another the most important one. Finally Remo pointed out that there was a high unlikelihood of Chiun needing one only for the Campobasso Festival of the Grape in Italy, since the Italians hadn't worshipped Dionysus since A.D. 200 or so.

"Just when you discard a piece of a kimono is when you need it most," said Chiun. "But all right. Mutilate its beautiful wine essence. If you are ready to leave this insane asylum at last, I will endure it." Chiun was watching a soap opera he had loved in the early and mid-seventies but one which now he disliked for its filth and violence. However, on occasion he would tune it in, and this time it was interrupted to announce another rock star was dead as a result of the Concert of Death in which so many had died to save the suffering people of Gupta.

The viewers were warned that the scenes might be too horrible to look at. To avoid the horror, people should not look at the scenes which would be shown now, at the six-o'clock news, and the eleven-o'clock news.

"This is the Debbie Pattie concert," intoned the announcer, and intense noise and a heavy beat followed. Debbie's voice was barely a whisper, a whisper of talk, and then it grew louder, and her multicolored painted face turned a reddish hue and then she was screaming, and thrashing in the wires of the electronic guitar. She rolled on the ground screaming as the audience joined her in ecstatic yells. The drummer picked up pace and the fans were jumping in their seats. Some of them ran hysterically up onto the stage.

When the song was over, Debbie Pattie stopped convulsing and was still as the audience went wild. Unfortuantely she remained just as still when the next number began. Men in white coats ran out, the necessary medical teams that always accompanied rock concerts. Normally they were used for the crowds. One of them placed a stethoscope over her heart.

"It was only then," came the announcer's voice, "that the fans realized, that everyone realized Ms. Pattie was not singing, but had been electrocuted by a malfunction in her guitar."

Within minutes there was another interruption, and Debbie's manager said the song would be released as a single, calling it her best work ever. A writer for Rambling Rock magazine appeared, calling it "the most powerful, sensitive interpretation of a larger scope of the dynamic of the frontiers of rock than Ms. Pattie had ever dared explore before. It was bold, yet in full knowledge of its absolute sensitivity, combined with a tonal daring that went beyond known frontiers of harmonization."

And then there was the report that got Remo's interest. Half her money was going to the victims in Gupta, but with a special proviso: no organization would collect it, but it was to be handed directly to the poor people in cash.

"Ms. Pattie had been investigating the use of the Save concert money at the time of her death," said an announcer.

"She was all right," said Remo. "She was better than I thought. She cared. She really did. She smelled awful but she cared."

Chiun looked up, alarmed. He sensed the sounds of American lunacy coming at him, specifically Remo's. These whites shared that insanity that he found almost nowhere in the Orient.

"Let's go now," said Chiun. "We will phone Smith from Dakar, or Samarkand, or Calcutta."

"I'll phone him now," said Remo.

"Why break bad news right away? Allow Emperor Smith the kindness to still believe you work for him for a few more days. I will take upon myself the onerous chore of severing relations."

"No," said Remo. "It's my job. I'll quit it."

"No, my blessed son, great bearer of the thousand-year skills of Sinanju, glory of our House, allow me to do this delicate thing."

"Don't worry," said Remo, who knew Chiun would not be saying nice things unless he wanted something badly. "I'll handle it."

Chiun did not listen to the conversation. Instead he sadly packed both sleeves of the kimono for the Campobasso Festival of the Grape, the ones shaded to honor the god Dionysus. At least he wouldn't lose a kimono he might need. But when he would be able to free Remo from this insanity, he was not sure. Gravely Remo returned.

"I can't leave now, little father." Chiun nodded wearily.

"The whole country may be destroyed by those shysters Palmer, Rizzuto Do you know what they're going to do to the money supply?"

"Do not tell me, lest I lose sleep."

"They've figured out how to get two hundred million clients and sue the government at the same time. "

"What horror," said Chiun, folding his hands.

"But in doing so, they're going to wreck the government. I can't let them get away with that. Not after Debbie."

"Of course not," said Chiun. "What is one death alone? We must give them two."

"I know you're being sarcastic, but I believe every word I'm saying. I believe it deeply. I'm sorry."

"The problem was never that you didn't believe what you said. The heavens know how much I have prayed that one day you would learn that your body does not have to follow your tongue."

"I know how much you counted on leaving," said Remo.

"Would you mind terribly if you did not get yourself killed? Would you mind terribly acting like the professional assassin I trained you to be? Would you mind terribly killing Smith's enemy instead of getting killed yourself?"

"Of course not," said Remo, who knew that Chiun from the very beginning had railed against America's monuments to heroes who died an battle. To the House of Sinanju this only glorified getting killed, rewarding what should have been discouraged.

"There is a way we can win," said Chiun. "But I am afraid you are going to have to remember what I have only told you a thousand times a thousand."

Palmer was laughing. Rizzuto danced on the expensive table and Schwartz was on the phone simultaneously with his stockbroker and his Rolls dealer.

Their days of debt were over. They were going to have more money than they could spend, more money than Palmer could divorce away or Rizzuto gamble away, and even more money than Schwartz could brilliantly invest away.

"I am afraid to say it," said Palmer, bubbling, "but at last the world is turning our way. Nothing can go wrong. We've got the biggest client list possible. The right victims, the right victimizer, read money, and we're in position."

"Bless the name Robert Dastrow," said Rizzuto, kissing a gold chain around his neck where he used to wear a religious medal.

"I never thought of Dastrow as a good guy. I never thought he did anything benevolent in his life. But I take it all back," said Schwartz. "The man is not only all genius, he's all heart."

"He's decent is what he is, gentlemen. We have met the decent human being," said Palmer. "I didn't think they existed anymore. He knew we were in trouble. He knew we needed a big one to pull ourselves out, and he did it for us."

"You know our problem was that we didn't let him pick the overall situations, too," said Schwartz. "This man understands the law. From here on in, we follow. He's smarter than us and that's all there is to it. "

"He's better than us," said Palmer.

"He is us," yelled Rizzuto.

"What does that mean?" asked Schwartz.

"I don't know. I'm a trial lawyer. It sounded good," said Rizzuto.

Twenty minutes before, all three of them had been considering filing for bankruptcy, except Rizzuto, who was planning to leave the country because loan sharks did not accept pleas of insolvency without trying to collect pieces of the body.

And then Dastrow had phoned. He was initiating another case.

But this time Palmer was furious.

"We got nothing from the Grand Booree. The thing didn't even go off. We sent staffers out there. Staffers have to be paid. We got warning fliers printed up. Printers have to be paid. And what did we get? Less than Gupta, which wasn't enough to cover your fees to begin with. So, thank you for calling, but you are interrupting a liquidation meeting," said Palmer.

"I'm going to make you rich. You never specified rich before."

"Do we have to? Why do you think, people enter law, to exercise their gums?"

"I only followed orders before, or made suggestions. This time I'm going to make you the richest negligence-law firm in the country."

"What's the catch? How is it going to backfire?" asked Palmer.

"How much are we going to lose this time?" asked Schwartz.

"What kind of craps will show up on the dice?" asked Rizzuto, with the dourness of a man who has just lost his seventh sure thing in a row.

"Just wait one moment," came Dastrow's voice on the conference speaker box hooked up to the Palmer, Rizzuto telephone line.

"I'm waiting," said Palmer, who wanted to give this Midwest tinkerer not one more moment of PRS time.

"You should have a package out in your reception room. Have it brought into your office, but don't open it," said Dastrow.

"Certainly," said Palmer. Well acquainted with Dastrow's tricks, Palmer hung up the phone and called the bomb squad. He wasn't going to let Dastrow erase the only link to himself with one simple little explosion, not that Dastrow ever did anything that obvious.

The bomb squad cleared out the office and cautiously ran a portable X-ray scanner around the package, while men in Teflon armor jackets cringed outside in the hallway. But the picture on their screens set them laughing.

"An enemy didn't send you that package, Mr. Palmer. If he did, I wish I had enemies like that," said the chief of the bomb squad. "It's filled with dollar bills."

"Oh," said Palmer.

"He's up to something," said Schwartz.

"Turning on us at a moment like this," said Rizzuto.

"It's when you're down the world steps on you 'cause it can't do it while you're up."

Even the secretaries were moved by that little summation.

Remembering that Dastrow did warn them not to open the package, Palmer brought it to the conference room, past the old wooden desk from their storefront days.

Dastrow was on the phone in minutes.

"All right, now you know it's not a bomb," said Dastrow.

"Do you have us bugged?" asked Schwartz.

"Of course I have you bugged. And I'm not the only one who has you bugged. I've been protecting you for some time now from some interference from your attackers. But never mind. I didn't have to listen to you to know you'd have the package checked for a bomb. You think I'm running out on you and cleaning up the evidence. I knew you'd think that. You're still lawyers. You think like lawyers. You act like lawyers. You work like lawyers, at least most of them. "

"I resent that," said Rizzuto.

"Shhhh," said Schwartz. "Go ahead, Dastrow."

"Yes, Robert, please do," said Palmer.

"I want you to follow my directions precisely. Call in a secretary, have her open the package and take a handful of what's in there."

"Money is in there," said Palmer.

"Right," said Dastrow. "Do it."

Palmer called in the best secretary in the office, the one who could spell. Palmer knew she was the one who could spell because a client once commented that this was the first letter he had ever received without a spelling error. None of the partners knew that because they couldn't spell either. No one ever got rich by spelling.

The secretary was a bit mistrustful at first but when she saw the new dollar bills, she grabbed a handful with thanks.

"All right, now what?" asked Palmer.

"First, don't any of you dare touch that money."

"All right," said Palmer, looking at the stacks of dollar bills. If they were his he just wanted to pocket a handful. Rizzuto thought of how they would look stacked in front of him at a poker table. Schwartz knew he could leverage that little box of money into a prime inwestment on margin.

"If you got that out in the street, would you refuse to take it?"

"Of course not," said Palmer icily.

"Now go out into your outer office and say hello to your secretary."

"What's going on here? I'm not going to a secretary. She's going to come in here."

"Won't work that way," said Dastrow.

"Don't tell me how my office works."

"Suit yourself," said Dastrow, and all three heard him whistle away the time while Palmer buzzed for the secretary who could spell. But she didn't come. Another one burst into the room.

"Mr. Palmer, she can't move. She says her hands feel numb and she's nauseous."

"I told you so," came the voice from the box.

"Who's that?"

"Never mind," Palmer told the secretary who had just entered.

When she had gone, Dastrow told Schwartz to take away the woman's pocketbook but be sure to wear gloves. He assured all of them their secretary would get better.

"But if she kept those dollar bills longer than a few moments, if she actually fingered them awhile, the damage would be permanent. She would lose her ability to perform good work, possibly even the ability to recognize loved ones, and she would never have a decent night's sleep again in her life. She's been poisoned."

On those words, Palmer, Rizzuto, and Schwartz began to understand the magnitude of their salvation. "The United States government, through its carelessness, has printed money that is toxic. You've got the United States government as your target. It's got all the money in the world. You've got everyone who handles money as your client. You're rich."

And then the laughter began. Dastrow even explained how it worked.

"At certain times during its destruction, paper money is naturally toxic. I just made sure that certain people readjusted the formula for the ink so that it would be toxic right away. The new ink isn't in place quite yet. But now is the time to get yourself on the ground floor. Now is the time for you to start accusing the Treasury of sloppy practices, perhaps even hint at the poisoning of innocent victims, everyone who trusts the American dollar."

Harold W. Smith could not miss the signs coming from Palmer, Rizzuto They were not only going to do it again, they were going to do it to America. But this time they made their biggest mistake.

At Grand Booree they had advertised they were coming. But in the new attack on the government money supply, Palmer, Rizzuto had made the fatal slip. Previously there had always been some form of protection on certain calls. Smith could tell when the blockages came up. But now these very calls from that source that had to be the source of all the accidents was open. And they had made the mistake of communicating with the government printing plant in Nevada, the one just outside the atomic testing range.

It was to this one that Harold W. Smith had ordered Remo, praying that it was not another trap like the Grand Booree. He really had no choice. If money could be made toxic, then there would be more than a negligence case. A whole nation would be crippled.

And Remo knew this. He knew the dangers as much as Smith. But someone, he said, had taught him a lesson about courage. Someone, he said, who had surprised him with her courage.

"We are not going down without a fight," he had said.

Smith felt relieved until his computers started picking up trouble at the atomic range site. It seemed that there was going to be an accident.

Robert Dastrow sat in his fixit shop, the perspiration pouring from his forehead. He wiped his hands several times on his slacks, and to take his mind off his worrying he played with his personal cyclotron for half an hour. But even that didn't help. He had finally come up against something he couldn't understand. This time he didn't know how things worked.

He had seen the reactions of Remo and Chiun, so he knew these were no ordinary men. But he realized they weren't mystical either. These two had perfected optimal use of the human body. Normally, less than ten percent of human physical potential was used in lifting and running. These two had somehow learned to use it all and maximize their power.

Everything Dastrow had done was done right. You examined something and then you fiddled a bit and then you knew how it worked. He had examined Remo and Chiun on the stage at the Save benefit performance. He had readouts that would have shamed an internist. Physically he knew exactly what they could do. They could do almost anything.

Then he did the fiddling. He tried them with guns, knives, and explosives, and that didn't work. So instead of fiddling some more he used what couldn't be dodged. A massive amount of water pressure, and the trap baited by triggering the patriotic urge of one of them.

It had worked perfectly even though it hadn't worked at all. They were better than he had thought. It was then that Robert Dastrow panicked and used a full court press.

He not only drew one of them to the atomic site, but he worked on what he had found out from Debbie Pattie. It was merely a tinkerer's kick at a machine. He was trying several things at once.

And so he waited, watching the clock and waiting for his machines to tell him that at least one of the enemy was dead. But the word didn't come. He made himself a peach milkshake with sweet marshmallow sauce and fruit sprinkles. He drank down the sweet goo, licking the faint pink mustache delicately from his lips. He had two more while waiting for Nevada to blow up. Instead of explosions he saw his machine answering someone, and then a red light when the machine indicated that it had a question from a caller it couldn't answer.

Robert picked up the phone, pressing a button for a fast review of the conversation. It was Chiun, the Oriental part of the two-part team.

"Here," said Dastrow. He tasted the residue of peach and marshmallow sticking to his teeth. He sucked it down his throat and rubbed a hand over his lip to gather the last traces of sweetness.

"Are you the voice that spoke to me from the walls of my motel in Booree?" came the high squeaky voice of the Oriental.

Dastrow checked his machines. The Oriental was no longer in Booree, but in Lockwood, Nebraska, less than an hour's drive away. That was a good sign.

"I have come to where you suggested. We have come for our payment. But I am afraid I am going to need more money."

"I don't know where you come from, sir, but when I make a deal, it's a deal."

"We too make a deal that is a deal. We have four thousand, five hundred years of deals that are deals. We have a tradition that I have told you to examine. "

"Yeah, well, I have found you mentioned."

"Found us mentioned? Found us? Before your little bud of a country was born, we were. When Angles and Jutes scrambled over the barren cliffs of England, we were. When czars were just a future dream of some barbaric animal-skinned tribes, we were. We were before Rome set one stone to another, and you in this town of Lockwood which has barely cut the first layer of its earth dare tell me you found us mentioned."

"You've been around a long time. But I've problems too. I'm not just a voice that comes from a wall, you know. That's a device I use. I need people to work for me, at prices that are sound and reasonable."

Dastrow looked over at his monitors. Why hadn't the bomb gone? Hadn't the white man, the only thing keeping the yellow man in service to Dastrow's yet unknown enemy, gone for the trap? He had to go after all. Dastrow had found out that the organization the white man served was supposed to save the country. Couldn't locate it because they had even more electronic baffles than he did at this point. But it was clear that was how he worked and why he worked, and when Dastrow set a trap, just like a mousetrap it always worked.

But the bomb had not gone off. It was all but certain a bomb had to be able to destroy one of these two. After all, they were flesh. And nuclear blasts turned flesh to vapor.

But it hadn't gone off.

"Ah, but I have good news. I bring you my son, who has seen the light. We have truly been betrayed in the contract with our current emperor."

"Who is it then?"

"Will you pay for both of us? We do not come separate, but let me assure you the quality of the work is more than doubled. And your glory and your life will shine for many ages."

"How do I know it's not a trap?"

"Fool, we have been doing business for four thousand, five hundred years. Certainly that was enough time to betray a client, to break our word. Did you not check us out? Do you hire assassins willy-nilly?"

"I've checked you two out better than any men I've worked with. You've got to admit I have reason to be leery. After all, I tried to kill you, you know. I almost did it with the white guy."

"That's business. We are professional assassins. Do you think after four thousand, five hundred years we take it personally when someone tries to kill us? You know how things work. Can you possibly conceive of us betraying a client and history not revealing it once? Not once. Or were you lying to me when your voice came from a wall? Do you wish to hire us or not?"

"There was too much to read all at once. I fed it into a computer, but I wasn't looking for betrayal," said Dastrow.

"Look for it," said Chiun. "I will wait."

Dastrow always had all his information stored in a huge data base from which he could retrieve bits and pieces whenever he wanted. The problem was that the information on Sinanju went in with the rest of the world. And unable to isolate Sinanju at first, he saw centuries upon centuries of betrayal by everyone, but not one betrayal came up marked "Sinanju." In all the histories of corporations, countries, and leaders there was not one bit of evidence that Sinanju had ever failed a client, although there were many stories of gratitude by pharaohs and tyrants and other rulers toward the assassins from the little village on the West Korea Bay.

It made sense. The one thing of value in a dynasty of assassins was, necessarily, Sinanju's reputation. Otherwise they would be counted among the thousands, millions of petty killers throughout the ages who had killed or were killed.

So that was how it worked. It was an unbroken line through history. They naturally had to keep records, and as they grew, their records made them more knowledgeable about how the world worked.

And if the Oriental were going to double-cross him, would he really be bargaining so hard for an increased fee? "I won't go double for two," said Dastrow. "The younger one obviously lacks the experience, skill, and general worth that you've accumulated working around the world. After all, you are the teacher, aren't you?"

"Yes," said Chiun and then spoke to someone nearby. "He made us a good offer, Remo. He understands us."

"I didn't hear him say yes," said Dastrow.

"He's emotional, but he'll get over it. He's still attached to the one he works for. You must know how we work by now."

Dastrow said he did. He gave them directions to his Grand Island laboratory. Actually, he did not know for certain how they worked. After he had made the deal with Chiun, he had picked up the return of Remo and Remo going into the shower. He was so shocked at Remo's survival that he thought he'd fouled up his bugging of their hotel room because he stopped hearing anything. But when the sound resumed as they left the room, Dastrow realized that physically they did what countries might do electronically. One of them, probably the Oriental, had sent out countering sound waves so that their voices could not be heard by electronic ears.

He was sure this was so because the first readout of their reactions showed they could by extension have just such powers.

Dastrow made himself another peach milkshake, and when he saw the two assassins arrive he buzzed them into his underground laboratory:

"Greetings, Master of Sinanju and pupil," said Dastrow. "I guess this just about makes me the most powerful man in this country."

He held out a hand, and promptly Remo caressed it into jelly.

Dastrow screamed. It was worse than the bullies back in high school.

"You lied. But Sinanju never lies. There are no records in four thousand, five hundred years," wailed Dastrow.

"We lie all the time, jerk," said Remo. "What do you think? We go around killing people and then recoil at a fib?"

"We don't lie," said the Oriental. "This was a tactic used by a Master We during the later middle kingdom of the Tang Dynasty. It is not a lie."

"We lied to him, little father. We lied through our teeth."

"What about your reputation? What will happen to your reputation?" sobbed Dastrow. His right hand felt as though it were melting. He would do anything to stop the pain.

"It'll be fine. We kill anyone who badmouths us. Reputation is great. You didn't find anything in almost five thousand years. That means no one lived to tell about the double crosses, the sneaky deals, the two-faced lies we've told."

"He lies," said Chiun. "He just likes to embarrass me. This is not lying. It is a legitimate strategy in defense of an embattled employer, turning down even more money than we were paid. And so it will be recorded that despite blandishments of all kinds and threats of death, the House of Sinanju stood by a poor and beleagured client, because Sinanju kept its word. "

"See what I mean?" said Remo. "Nobody else is going to be alive to know different. Actually, Chiun will turn on our organization the minute he knows he can pry me away. He got paid to train me, and he doesn't want to leave me."

"I want to get something back," said Chiun. "For all the years of ingratitude, I deserve something."

"Excuse me," sobbed Dastrow. "But I am in excruciating pain."

"I can end that, but I've come for something. I need evidence against that shyster law firm Palmer, Rizzuto "

"I'll give you evidence. I'll give you money. I'll give you a cyclotron. I'll give you anything. Please stop the pain! I know you two have control over bodies," said Dastrow. He fell to his knees and turned his head away from the throbbing hand. Just as he had figured, Remo could make the pain stop. If the two had control over their own nervous systems, they had to know where all the pressure points were. With enormous relief, numbness came at the end of his wrist. He did not look at what was left of the hand but let it hang by his side.

"Now where were we?"

"I was about to do it to your other hand," said Remo.

"Evidence. Evidence," sang Dastrow. "Glad you asked for evidence. I accumulated enough evidence to put those three away forever, or have them gassed in California, electrocuted in New York State, and garroted in Zaragoza, Spain."

"Gas would be fine," said Remo.

"Gassing is never a good death," said Chiun.

"But they are a California firm."

"Gassing lacks a sense of drama. Beheading has a good drama to it, but it messes the body," said Chiun.

"Well, all we have is gassing and electrocution," said Remo. "Oh, or death by poison injection now, in some places."

"The Greeks used poison. Hemlock has a nice ring . . ." said Chiun. "But use gas if you must."

"He's working on the histories. All of this stuff goes in. We'll take gas."

"Gas it is," sang out Dastrow, still avoiding even a glance at what he knew was no longer a hand. When the printout arrived, spit like a long white tongue from one of the machines against the wall, Remo went over to read the evidence. He had forgotten much about what constituted evidence in court since his early days as a policeman, before Sinanju. But this read like a half-dozen airtight cases. Naturally Dastrow knew how the courts worked.

"Okay, look. I'm painless when I choose to be," said Remo.

"Is there any deal we can make? For my life I'm willing to pay twice what I offered for your services."

"Sinanju is known for mercy, if nothing else," said Chiun.

"No," said Remo. "You gotta pay for Debbie Pattie. You gotta pay for those poor people in the airplanes. You gotta pay for the people of Gupta."

"I'm willing to. In cash. In gold. In machines."

"No good in this market," said Remo.

"My lunatic son," moaned Chiun. "Into these crazy hands have I entrusted Sinanju."

Dastrow did not even see the stroke. He was waiting for one more response when suddenly all the waiting ended forever. He didn't see the darkness. He didn't even know there was darkness. He knew nothing, least of all how anything worked, except one last faint thought gone in an instant. And that thought was that the universe always exacted payment for crimes against it.

Nathan Palmer, Genaro Rizzuto, and Arnold Schwartz were all sentenced to death for conspiring to murder and for being accessories before and after the fact. In the courtroom each turned on the other with a ferocity rarely seen in the annals of jurisprudence. At first the prosecuting attorneys were afraid that these powerful lawyers from the all-powerful Palmer, Rizzuto might escape. But individually none of them could present a powerful case. Palmer had the overall strategy but could not quite get the law together to defend himself. Schwartz knew the tactics of law but came across to the jury as a man not to be trusted. And Genaro Rizzuto gave one of the most touching and heartrending summations ever heard in the courtroom. Unfortunately it had nothing to do with his case.

As the old saying went, a lawyer who represented himself had a fool for a client. On appeal, however, with new attorneys, the three managed to get their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. And then a strange thing happened. Somehow someone, reportedly a thin man with thick wrists, broke into their prison cells and released all three of the defendants. At first it looked like an escape, but it seemed this man brought them all to a little grove outside of Palo Alto where the families of some of the victims of the disasters had gathered, and there with heavy stones they together ended forever the most successful negligence firm in America.

At Folcroft, Harold W. Smith saw the overview of lawsuits in America. Remo had been only partly successful. He slowed them down for a few weeks. The trend had not been reversed.

In Gupta, Debbie Fattie's memory would outlast any statue or Hindu god. Before she died, she had donated a percentage of her income to the people of that city, specifically monies derived from the sale of her final record, the one she had died singing. "Help, I'm Being Electrocuted" sold more single records than any other song ever released in America. The video of her execution did not do quite as well. Viewers said that compared with other rock videos, it was too tame.