Summit Chase

Remo left the car in front of the steps, got out, and motioned Chiun to follow. The old man slipped out of the car and slowly followed Remo up the broad stone stairs, his feet under his brocaded blue robe, shuffling softly on the steps.

Nemeroff was seated on the edge of the patio, eating, alone and he waved at Remo who nodded.

"Will you join me at breakfast?" he asked.

"No thanks."

"Who is this man?"

"This is one of the men you wanted. Chiun."

"I wanted him dead," Nemeroff said, chewing on the end of a cinnamon roll.

Remo nodded. "He's as good as dead whenever you want him dead. But I brought him here to try to get his partner, this Williams, to follow. He must be hiding somewhere, there's no sign of him yet."

Nemeroff considered this as he chewed. Before he spoke, he was interrupted by the ring of the telephone at his side.

"Yes," he said.

"I see. All right."

He hung up the telephone and turned a smile on Remo.

"Already, your plan has borne fruit. The guards have captured an agent on the grounds."

"Good," Remo said. "Maybe it's Williams." He turned to Chiun. "Still think it's going to be the hour of the cat, old man?"

Chiun said softly, "The cat has not yet unsheathed its claws."

Nemeroff clapped his hands and a ferret-faced man in a white suit appeared on the balcony.

"Accompany Mr. Kenny as he brings this man to our… visitors' quarters," he said. The man smiled and said, "Yes, sir."

"And prepare for other guests," Nemeroff added.

The guard turned into the building and Remo grabbed Chiun's arm, following him through the study, into the hallway, past the hidden elevator and to a flight of steps in the back of the building.

The steps were damp and musty; the walls were stone and they sweated. The steps zigzagged back and forth, through four landings, until they were in a dungeon deep underground, below the level of Nemeroff's armoury.

The steps opened into a narrow passageway, bordered oil each side by heavy wooden doors that had heavy steel locks. The doors were open; the cells stood empty. There were no windows and the only illumination came from bare overhead light bulbs, glittering yellow in the musky air.

"Am I to stay here?" asked Chiun.

"Afraid so, old man," Remo said.

"I will catch my death of cold."

"You'll be gone before the first sniffle," Remo said. "I promise."

"You are always thoughtful."

The guard led them down the dank passageway, the moisture on the stone floor muffling their steps. He stood aside to let Chiun pass, then placed a hand on the old man's shoulder to push him into the last cell on the right.

The guard pushed, but nothing happened. It was as if he had leaned against a wall. He pushed again. Chiun turned toward him.

"Restrain your hands, ferret-faced one," he said.

"Abuse I take from the fearsome PJ Kenny, but you take no such liberties."

He turned his back then on the surprised guard and stepped into the cell. It held a narrow wooden cot with a limp, spring-less mattress. There was a sink and a toilet.

"All the comforts of home," Remo said, standing in the door.

"Thank you," said Chiun. "I will remember you with fondness."

"Now why don't you try telling me where Williams is?"

"He is near," Chiun said. "He is near."

Remo heard footsteps coming down the corridor toward them and turned. Along the passageway came Nemeroff, pushing Maggie Waters along in front of him, towering over her in the dim light of the dungeon like some powerful monster from a dream.

He pushed Maggie with one last thrust and she fell against Remo.

"You look surprised, Mr. Kenny," Nemeroff said. "She is the agent that was captured on the grounds."

"I didn't think she had followed me," he said. To Maggie, he said: "A British agent? And I thought you just wanted me for my body." She refused to look up and buried her head against her blue short dress.

Maggie did something very un-agentlike. She began to weep.

Nemeroff pushed her again, this time into the reach of the guard. "Put her in a cell," he said, "and make her comfortable." The guard smirked.

He pushed Maggie in the cell opposite Chiun's. She staggered to the middle of the floor, then stood there quietly. Slowly, she lifted her head until she was standing proudly erect.

"Attagirl, kid. Keep a stiff upper lip," Remo called.

She turned to him with a look of total hatred. The guard meanwhile had taken manacles down from a hook on the wall. He snapped a pair on her wrists, and then another pair around her ankles.

All the while, he talked, a soliloquy to himself.

"The little lady's going to like this. Englishwomen always like to show off. The little lady's going to get a chance. To show off everything. Will the little lady like that?"

He kept talking as he took from the same wall hook, a short length of chain with a padlock hung open on its end. "Wait till the little lady sees what I've got planned for her. The little lady's going to be proud to show off the merchandise, isn't she?"

He grabbed the cuffs around Maggie's wrists and pulled her toward the back wall of the cell. Imbedded in the stone floor was a large iron ring, and the guard pressed Maggie's upper body downward, until her wrists were near the ring. Then he looped the chain through the wrist manacles, under the ring, through the chains on Maggie's ankles, and fastened it with the padlock.

"Does little lady like that?" he said. Maggie was facing the rear wall now, bent over from the waist as if trying to touch her toes during her morning exercises. Her short skirt had ridden up over her buttocks, and she wore no undergarments, and Remo could almost sense her embarrassment at the view her jutting posterior gave to the men behind her.

The guard still talked. "Little lady going to be nice to her friends, isn't she?" and he rubbed his hand down one soft buttock.

Nemeroff turned to Remo. "You have enjoyed her. Perhaps I shall give my men that same opportunity before she is sent to her death." He turned again to look at Maggie. "An inviting target, is it not?"

The man who thought he was PJ Kenny grinned. "I've scored some bullseyes on that range," he said.

"And now our Chinese friend," Nemeroff said, turning toward Chiun who still stood motionless in the center of the cell. "Bind him also," he told Remo.

Remo approached Chiun and led him to the ring in the back of the cell. The old man did not resist, and he showed no interest when Remo pulled down the manacles and chains from the wall. Instead, Remo could heard him talking under his breath.

The old man was praying. Remo grinned. He'd finally come to his senses and realized he was going to die, and now he was making peace with his ancestors. Well, good for the little chink, Remo thought, as he fastened the chains and locks.

And then he listened to the old man's words. They were soft and intended for the heavens alone.

"Oh, Masters of Sinanju who have trod this earth before, forgive me my patience with these butchers and animals. Close your eyes to my display of inaction, and consider instead that I suffer their insults so that I may yet save the one who will be the next Master of Sinanju.

"But my patience even now grows thin and the hour of the cat is near at hand. Guide my wisdom, as my experience will guide my hand."

"Say one for me, too," Remo said, as he stood up from fastening the last chain. Then he strutted from the cell into the passageway where Nemeroff and the guard waited.

To the guard, Nemeroff said, "You watch these two."

To Remo, he said, "You can dispose of them at your leisure later, but now you must come with me."

"I saw that your guests are arriving," Remo said, as he followed Nemeroff down the passageway.

"Yes," Nemeroff said. "Our meeting will begin soon. But we have another visitor. One of our New York operatives has arrived. He has seen this Remo Williams. Perhaps he may be of help to you in capturing him."

"Maybe," Remo said. "Who is this guy?"

"His name is O'Brien," Nemeroff said. "He is a guard at the New York federal prison. He has done invaluable service to us there."

"Good," Remo said. "I can't wait to meet him."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Remo followed Nemeroff up the steep flights of damp stone stairs to the first floor.

As they stood momentarily in the large entrance hall, Nemeroff walked away from him.

"Mr. Fabio. How are you? So happy you could come."

An olive-skinned man had just walked through the glass doors from the first floor patio. He looked up at Nemeroff with the Mafia's traditional look-halfway between cowardice and toleration-which passed for respect, and stiffly stuck out his hand.

"Who's that?," he asked Nemeroff, gesturing with his head over the baron's shoulder toward Remo.

The baron laughed. It was that evil whinny of a laugh that greeted things he thought were funny.

"Oh, yes," he said, still braying. "I want the two of you to meet."

He took his visitor by the elbow and led him toward Remo. Outside, Remo could see Fabio's bodyguard lounging on a chair on the patio, trying to appear unconcerned, but watching the activities through the glass, ready to move if it became necessary. He was exiled to the patio because it was considered bad form to bring one's bodyguard into another man's home.

Then Remo had his hand stuck into the hand of Fabio.

He looked hard at the face and knew he should have known it, but it was just another wop with the brains of an organ-grinder. Who he was just wasn't worth the effort.

He heard Nemeroff say: "This is Mr. Fabio. He is an important man in the United States."

Remo looked harder at him. The man had a fleshy face, and a small thin scar ran from the corner of his left eye to the bottom of his left ear. The skin was whiter than his normal skin, he had splashed powder on his face to try to equalize the colour but he was still scarred and hideous.

And then Remo heard Nemeroff say:

"And this is my associate, Mr. PJ Kenny."

Fabio's hand tensed in his and then removed itself, not recoiling suddenly as if from fear, but moving back deliberately as if for a reconsideration, and then he heard Fabio speak:

"Dat ain't PJ Kenny."

Nemeroff whinnied again, so Remo adopted his mood and smiled as Nemeroff said:

"Good. That is proof of how successful the plastic surgery was."

Remo watched as Fabio's little pig eyes burned into his. Then Fabio said:

"PJ. Is it really you?"

Remo nodded. Fabio stared a little longer. Then his pig features relaxed into a smile. He took a step forward, raised his right hand, palm up, to signify surprise, and then brought his hand around Remo's shoulders in a half bear hug.

"PJ," he said. "I've been wondering what happened to you. Everybody was."

"I was under the knife for the new face," Remo said, hoping that was the right thing to say. "And then the baron arranged for me to come here and join him."

"And join him," Fabio mimicked. "Maybe that doctor operated on your brain, too. You talk better than you used to."

"Thanks," said the man who thought he was PJ Kenny. "Part of my new image."

"I'll tell you, your new image is a lot better than your old image," Fabio said. "You was about the ugliest looking thing I ever saw."

"Wasn't I, though? I looked downright Italian," Remo said. When Fabio paused, unsure how to answer, Remo added, "and now I look Neapolitan," giving the word the extra Italian accent on the last syllable, guessing that Fabio was Neapolitan because of the way he had raised his hand in greeting.

Fabio laughed out loud. "Yeah," he said, "that's a real improvement. And you're in with the baron?"

"Right-hand man," Remo said.

Nemeroff moved quickly into the conversation.

"Mr. Kenny has agreed to join with all of us in insuring that whatever agreement we reach will be fairly kept. I think he has that reputation for fairness," Nemeroff said.

"You bet he has," Fabio said. "Hey, PJ—remember when you got my brother, Matty?"

"Sure do," Remo smiled. "It was some job."

"Some job?" Fabio laughed. "They was picking up pieces of him for weeks."

"Yeah," Remo laughed. "I used my special cheese cutting knife for that job." Then he added, "Ho, ho, ho."

"Hee, hee, hee," laughed Fabio, remembering the one hundred twenty-seven pieces of the remains of his brother, Matthew, whose crime had been that he held up to ridicule the son of another gangland leader.

"Ha, ha, ha," whined Baron Nemeroff. Then he turned the smile and laugh off as if by a switch, and said,

"Come, Mr. Fabio. We will go to the meeting room upstairs. Some of our mutual friends have already arrived."

He stepped toward the picture on the wall and pressed the button hidden in the moulding of the frame. The door slid quietly open.

He stepped aside to allow Fabio to enter first, and turned to Remo: "The man-O'Brien-is in the study. Perhaps he can tell you more about this Williams. What he looks like or what to look for."

Remo nodded and waited until Nemeroff had entered the elevator and pressed the button for the fifth floor. The painting moved softly back over the door opening.

Remo turned and walked across the parquet floor, his tennis shoes noiseless on the highly polished wood. The door was a giant wooden panel, deeply carved with elaborate filigrees, but it pushed open as though it had been hinged on ball bearings.

The room was dark. Remo found himself looking at the stark silhouette of a man, who stared out the first floor window toward the end of the house. Over his shoulder, through the window, Remo could see a red helicopter coming into view. He realized the man was following the helicopter's flight with his eyes. Though neither knew, it was the craft that had taken Vice President Asiphar the few miles to the Scambian Presidential palace where he expected, within forty-eight hours, to occupy the presidential bed.

Remo moved up behind the man, close enough to touch him, and he said, "O'Brien?"

The man wheeled and as he turned, released the heavy drapes he had been holding, and the room again leaked into semi-darkness. But Remo could see the man's face was startled, and the man said: "Boy, you gave me a fright, sneaking up on me like that."

"Tennis shoes," Remo said, as if that explained it. "The baron tells me you know this Remo Williams?"

"No," O'Brien said, "I don't know him. But I saw him once." He brushed past Remo and walked back to a small chair alongside a desk, and plopped down heavily into it.

Remo turned, the sun glistening between the drapes now at his back and shining into O'Brien's face.

"What's he look like?" Remo asked.

"Well, when I saw him, he was dressed like a priest," O'Brien said.

"That's not going to help me much."

"Wait. I'm trying. He had brown eyes, but not like regular brown eyes. They were deep, like they had no black. All deep-coloured. You know what I mean?"

"Yeah."

"And he had a hard face. Like he was dressed like a priest, but he sure didn't look like any priest. His nose was straight and he was the kind of guy that looked right in your eye."

O'Brien squinted to try to get a better look at the man standing in front of the window, but all he could see was the outline of his head and body.

"All right," Remo said, "cut the art class lectures. How big was he?"

"He was a big guy, but not that big. Maybe six feet. Not heavy either. But big thick wrists, like he worked on a chain gang or something."

Remo moved closer to O'Brien's chair. O'Brien was casually inspecting his toes. Remo leaned onto the desk top.

"Yeah, go on," he said.

O'Brien looked up, squinting. "As I said, he had thick wrists. Like yours," he added, glancing down at Remo's hands on the desk. "And there was something else."

"What's that?"

"It was his mouth. It like didn't have any lips. It was thin and hard looking and you just knew he was a bad-ass. That was some bad mouth," O'Brien said. He looked up and squinted again into Remo's shadowed face, reflecting slowly, "It was like yours."

"And his eyes were brown?" Remo asked.

"Yeah. Brown… like yours."

"And his hair?"

"It was dark," O'Brien said. "Dark . . . like yours." He jumped up from the chair and his hand flashed to his side, but then his hand didn't work anymore and he was back in his chair, and a pain more excruciating than any he had ever felt before was happening along his partially-crippled right arm, and the man who thought he was PJ Kenny said, "What the hell's the matter with you? What are you trying to pull a gun on me for?"

O'Brien said, "Don't give me that. How'd you get here?"

"What are you talking about?" Remo said. "I work for the baron."

"Sure," O'Brien sneered. "He just went ahead and hired Remo Williams."

"Remo Williams? What the hell are you talking about?"

"You're him, man. Maybe you can shit the baron but you can't shit me. You're Remo Williams."

"And you're nuts. I've been assigned to kill Williams."

"Well, just cut your wrists, man," O'Brien said. "And Williams'll die of the bleeding."

"You're dreaming," Remo said.

"Look, Williams," O'Brien said. "I don't know what you're pulling here, but how about letting me in on it? I can probably be some help to you."

Remo was busy trying to sort out what O'Brien had said, but it was all wrapped up in darkness. He was PJ Kenny. But this man said he wasn't. This man would know and he said that he was Remo Williams. But how could he be?

"I just had plastic surgery," Remo said. "It must just be a coincidence."

"No way," O'Brien said. "How about it? You and me? Fair split?"

A fair split. Remo thought about it for a second, O'Brien's hand went toward his gun again, and Remo suddenly hated this man who had brought confusion into a life that was simplifying into the daily humdrum of the professional assassin. So he reached high into the air and brought the side of his fist down against the top of O'Brien's skull and heard the bones cracking like ice cubes splintering in a warm mix and O'Brien slumped forward in his chair, dead.

Remo let the body fall heavily onto the floor.

Remo Williams? How could it be? He was PJ Kenny. Nemeroff had known him. Maggie had known him. How could he be Williams?

But there was the chink. Had the chink recognized him when he stepped into that door at the hotel? Had the chink known he was Remo Williams? Then why hadn't he said something? Why had he just stood there, waiting to be killed by PJ Kenny?

He tried to consider the moves and every move came back to Chiun, to that old Oriental calmly awaiting death in his cell, humiliatingly bound, wrist and ankle to the floor, and Remo knew his answer was there and he would have to confront the old man.

At that moment, the telephone rang. It sat on a small walnut table in the center of the room and Remo stepped over and picked it up. "Hello."

"This is Nemeroff. Was O'Brien any help to you?"

"Yes," Remo said. "A great help."

"Good. May I talk with him, please?"

"Afraid not, baron," Remo said, looking at the body. "He's lying down." He saw the brains and blood oozing from O'Brien's skull. "He said he had a splitting headache."

There was a pause. "Oh, all right," Nemeroff said. "I am just beginning my meeting now. My men will have to forego their pleasure with the Englishwoman. Would you please dispose of her and the Oriental and then join us up here in the fifth floor conference room?"

"Yes, sir. As fast as my little legs can carry me," Remo said.

"Thank you. We will all be waiting."

Remo hung up the telephone, looked at it momentarily, then stepped out into the hall. He would have to confront the old Oriental, and clear up this mystery once and for all.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The dungeon corridor was empty, even though Nemeroff had told ferret-face to watch the prisoners. The mold felt damp and slippery under Remo's feet as he slid down the dungeon corridor to Chiun's cell.

The door was locked, bolted heavily with an iron lock that weighed four pounds. Remo took the lock in his hands, and looked around to call the guard for the key, but then changed his mind for some reason, and twisted the lock in his hands until the metal fractured and it came loose from the door.

He quietly laid the two pieces on the floor, listening. There was no sound in the dungeon except the soft sobbing of Maggie in her cell, behind the closed door, across the narrow passageway. She would be next, but first, the Oriental.

Remo pulled the door open slowly, and remembered how he had last seen the old man, helpless, wrists and ankles chained to the floor.

The door opened softly. The old man sat on the bunk in the cell, a full six feet away from the metal ring, and Remo looked toward the ring.

It was inch-thick steel and it had been-sheared in half. Laying next to it were the chains. Broken. So were the ankle and wrist manacles, mashed and broken as if they had been pounded by a hammer wielded with enormous power.

But of course that was impossible, since the old man's hands and feet would have been in the chains when such a hammer was wielded and he would have suffered injury.

The old man stood as Remo walked into the cell, then bowed from the waist and smiled.

For the moment, Remo would not ask how he had escaped. There were other, more important, things for the man who thought he was PJ Kenny.

"Old man," he said, "I need your help."

"You have but to ask."

"I think I know who I am, but I'm not sure. Help me."

Chiun looked at the small bandage still covering Remo's temple. "You received a blow on the head, did you not?"

"Yes."

"And it was after that that your memory disappeared?"

"Yes."

"Then perhaps a similar blow," Chiun said, and before Remo could move or react, a small rock-hard fist lashed out, and a thumb knuckle hit against his temple, missing the exact mid-point of the bone by a precise 32nd of an inch, and Remo lived by exactly that distance. He saw stars. He shook his head to clear it. And then in a rush of memories, his life flooded back into him: his identity, his mission, who he was and why he was here.

"I know," he said, smiling happily, yet shaking his head from the shock of the attack. "I know. I'm Remo."

"I am glad," Chiun said. "I have something for you." And then, quicker than eye could see or body could move, the old man's hand lashed out, open, fingers extended, thumb drawn in alongside the fleshy part of the palm, and the four extended fingers slapped Remo's cheek with a sharp report.

Remo's head spun, and he growled, "C'mon, Chiun, now what the hell was that about?"

"That is for calling Sinanju a suburb of Hong Kong and for calling me a Chinaman. That is for being insolent to your elders. That is for not staying on your diet and for consorting with women and for bothering Doctor Smith and for endangering your country's interests."

"Had you worried, huh?"

"Worry? About a piece of worthless carrion who will, without me, eat himself to death in a week? What is to worry?"

When he had been PJ Kenny, Remo had planned to ask how the old man had broken his iron bonds. Now that he was again Remo Williams, the question was not necessary. The old man had broken his bonds because he was Chiun, the Master of Sinanju, and because there had never been anything quite like him in the world before. Even if he felt he was getting old, there was color in his cheeks now and the happiness of the hound on the chase.

"Come, Chiun, we have things to do," Remo said, turning toward the door.

"A common pattern," Chiun said. "First the personal abuse, and now the orders. Do this. Do that. Am I to be treated like a wage slave? Is there no respect due a man my age, a frail old specter barely able to stand erect?"

"Don't," Remo said. "You'll have me in tears. And let me warn you. If you kill anybody this trip, you clean up the bodies yourself."

"You are without feeling, without soul, without heart."

They were both now in the corridor, and could hear Maggie's fault sobbing from behind the closed door of her cell. The door had no lock, and Remo pushed it open softly.

Maggie was there as she had been left. But the dress that had ridden up on her buttocks, was now slung up over her hips. The ferret-faced guard stood behind her, his back toward Remo. His right hand moved rhythmically, back and forth between Maggie's legs, and Remo saw he held a gun in his right hand. He was giggling and still talking to himself. "There's more for the little lady where that came from. Stay with poppa and poppa will give the little lady all she wants."

Remo cleared his throat. The guard partially turned and saw Remo there. Chiun was in the shadow of the corridor and was unseen. The guard grinned at Remo and giggled again. "She likes you, PJ but she likes this better. Don't you, little lady?" Then his left hand reached over and joined his right between Maggie's legs, working the gun in and out.

Remo spoke, and his voice was edged ice.

"I like your style kid. You're being promoted."

The guard turned to look at Remo. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. Right upstairs." Then there was a knuckle in the windpipe. It hurt too much to cough and he was dying too fast to choke, so the guard fell onto the damp floor.

"Or downstairs, as the case may be," Remo said.

Maggie glanced over her shoulder, as far as she could in her position, and saw Remo. At first her face showed relief, and then it turned again into a mask of hatred.

Remo moved around in front of her and Chiun joined him, quietly lowering her dress over her flanks.

"You," she said to Remo. "Leave me alone. I don't want any help from you."

"Maggie, honey. I can't explain now, but trust me. We're on the same side."

She started to speak, to spit out her distrust, her hatred, but then Chiun stood alongside Remo and the look in his eyes told her somehow that everything was now all right.

She watched as Chiun and Remo knelt on the floor next to the iron ring. Then they each launched a hand slash at the ring. The two blows landed only a fraction of a second after each other. The vibrations that Chiun started in the metal, Remo interrupted; the metal swallowed its own vibrations, and the inch-thick-ring screeched in pain, then splintered into fragments.

Then, as if the locks were not there, the iron bands on her wrists and ankles were broken, and the chains fell heavily to the floor.

Maggie straightened up, painfully, rubbing her wrists which had been chafed raw by her writhing movements on the point of the guard's gun. She stared disbelievingly at the broken shards of steel on the floor, the remnants of the manacles that had held her so tightly.

Then, Remo had her by the elbow and said, "Come. Nemeroff is waiting for us."

She followed Remo and Chiun out of the cell, then stopped, and went back in. The guard's gun lay at his fingertips. It was a .45 automatic. She picked it up.

"I may need this," she said to Remo.

"Don't get in our way. It'll be safer."

"For whom, Mr. Kenny?" she asked.

"For all of us. And I'm not Mr. Kenny."

They moved quickly up the stairs leading to the main floor, Chiun leading the way. By the time Remo and Maggie had reached the first floor, Chiun was pressing the secret button for the elevator. Remo asked him: "How did you find that?"

"It gives off vibrations. One must listen for them."

"I didn't hear a thing," Remo said.

"Of course not. The perpetually open mouth impedes the efficiency of the sometimes-opened ear," Chiun said and led them into the elevator.

Remo pressed the button marked V.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Every seat at Baron Nemeroff's conference table had been filled.

From all over the world they had come, white men, black men, yellow men. They wore the costumes of their native countries: dashikis from Africa, cotton suits from Asia, dark blue mohair from the United States.

Among them, the thirty-odd men present had accounted for thousands of deaths on a one-by-one basis; they had sent thousands of girls to the brothels; through them, tens of thousands of adults and children had fallen prey to the perils of the needle.

They thought of themselves as indispensable businessmen in an indispensable business. And across all the lines of all their businesses ran the influence of Baron Isaac Nemeroff and when he called, they all came.

Now they all listened.

Overhead, the helicopters flew with their slow flapping sound, occasionally shrouding the room in a flash of shadow as one passed over the multi-coloured, glass dome set over the conference table.

Angelo Fabio, the biggest man in the United States was toying with a pencil between his fingertips. Nemeroff's idea seemed to make good sense to him. Occasionally, he would look up and his eyes would meet those of Fiavorante

Pubescio who had come from California or Pietro Scubisci who had come from New York, wearing his dirty suit and carrying his omnipresent bag of peppers. He would nod and they would nod in agreement.

Still something nagged at Fabio; he wished he could pinpoint it.

Nemeroff stood at the head of the table, towering over the seated men, his blotchy face flushed with excitement as he spoke to them.

"Consider, gentlemen. Our own nation. Under crime's flag. Where no laws will be enforced that we do not want enforced. Where poppies will grow freely in the fields. Where hunted men from anywhere on the face of the earth can find shelter and refuge."

He looked around the table, from man to man, to murmurs of approvals. One man spoke. He was short and thin; his skin was yellow; his white suit was wrinkle-free; but Dong Hee, crime's undisputed king in the Far East, ran a finger down the crease in his sleeve as he spoke:

"How do we insure this Asiphar's loyalty?"

Nemeroff noted the "we," and with a faint smile turned to the tiny Korean.

"If you will look at the screen up over the elevator door, gentlemen. Behind you, Mr. Hee." Nemeroff leaned forward, pressed a control button imbedded hi the wood of the table, causing a plywood section of the wall over the elevator door to slide back revealing a six-foot-square television screen.

Men pushed their chairs back from the table, so they could swing their bodies around and look at the screen.

Nemeroff pressed another button. Immediately, the sound of a voice was heard. "Oh, do it. Do it some more." It was a man's voice, thick and guttural, and it was pleading. Then the screen lightened into a picture of

Asiphar, his fat body a study in black against the white sheets, his body being violated by a fair-skinned blonde girl armed with a hand vibrator. They were naked.

Nemeroff let it run for thirty seconds, then turned down the sound, but let the picture continue.

He cleared his throat and eyes turned back to him.

"That is your soon-to-be-President Asiphar," he said coldly. "He is a swine. He will do anything for the promise of a woman."

Dong Hee spoke again. His English was precise and delicate, as were his features. "That is so, Baron, I am sure. But when he is president, what guarantee will we have that… satisfying his aberrations will still be enough?" As he spoke, his right side and shoulder flickered with the bluish colour from the TV screen. "After all, as president, he should be able to make his choice of women. He will have wealth, position. Will he really need us to be his pimps?"

The others had been watching Hee with interest. Now they turned to Nemeroff for his answer.

"You make a very good point, Mr. Hee." As he looked around the room, he saw a puzzled look on Fabio's face. "True enough, as president of Scambia, Asiphar would have certain power. But as for wealth? Whatever his dreams are, they will not be realized.

"For the last five weeks, a crew of workmen has been laying a sewer next to the wall of the east wing of the Scambian presidential palace. They are no ordinary sewer workmen; they are my men.

"When President Dashiti is assassinated, at that very moment, the national treasury of Scambia will be removed from its vaults, in the east wing of the palace. Our Asiphar will find that he is the head of a country without funds even to pay for its president's funeral. He will be on an allowance. From us."

There were murmurs of approval around the table. Hee nodded his head to Nemeroff in satisfaction. Fabio remembered what he wanted to ask:

"What about PJ Kenny? Why is he here?"

"I was coming to that, Mr. Fabio, because that is another guarantee of Asiphar's cooperation." Nemeroff slowly scanned the table, meeting individually as many pairs of eyes as he could, before speaking again. "Those of you who are from the United States have, I am sure, heard of Mr. PJ Kenny. Certainly, you have heard of his work. I daresay many of you from other nations have also.

"It is my proposal to keep Mr. Kenny in Scambia as our resident manager, as it were. He will guarantee President Asiphar's cooperation, because Asiphar will be given to understand that if he steps out of line, Mr. Kenny will slit his throat. Mr. Kenny's presence will have another benefit too. I think it would have a dampening effect upon the ambitions of anyone who might try to display his entrepreneurship in Scambia." The words were soft and measured, but the meaning was blunt and hard, even to the Americans who had never heard the word entrepreneur. Anyone who stepped out of line, who tried to get cute and take over the Scambia setup, would be killed. By PJ Kenny. Who never missed.

"Does that answer your question, Mr. Fabio?"

Fabio grunted.

Nemeroff added, "Mr. Kenny is in the castle right now and I expect him here momentarily. I would like to caution some of you who have seen him in the past that you will not recognize him. He has undergone plastic surgery recently, to facilitate his departure from his own country. He will not look like the man you may remember."

"Just so he works like the man we remember."

"He does," Nemeroff said, smiling at the underboss from Detroit. "In fact, he is awesome. That and his reputation for fairness should make him an ideal representative for us in Scambia."

There were nods of agreement from the Americans, most of whom were clustered around the far end of the long table. Fabio was busy now watching Asiphar on the screen and had forgotten what the discussion was about. All he could think of was that blonde on the screen. She knew some tricks. He wondered if she was in the castle. He would ask Nemeroff before he left.

"What is the financial arrangement to be?" Hee asked.

"I was coming to that. Here, now, we represent twenty-two different countries. From the United States, there are eight major families. For the purpose of this discussion, each family will count as a country. I am asking each of you for $500,000. For your membership in our private country." He smiled, his face breaking in the big horse grin. "And for each man you send, the fee will be $25,000."

"And what do we get out of it?," asked Pubescio from California.

"I am sure, Mr. Pubescio, that you will understand that the $25,000 per person is what is paid to Scambia. In other words; to me, to Mr. Kenny, to President Asiphar. But what you charge for your service is, of course, up to you. I need not point out that $25,000 is a ridiculously inexpensive cost to a man fleeing for his life."

"And what about the $500,000?" Pubescio said.

"That gives you the right to determine who shall be permitted to go from your area to Scambia. I think you quickly see that that power carries with it great monetary value. In just months, you will recover all that sum and much more, I know.

"There are other things which may have crossed your minds also," Nemeroff said. "There will also be ways to send people to Scambia, who might meet with a terrible accident upon running into Mr. Kenny. That could be arranged."

The American leaders looked at each other and smirked. They understood. So did Dong Hee. Soon, so did the others. Around the table heads were nodding.

"Gentlemen, I do not wish to press you for time, but it is of the essence. Within 48 hours, our plan will be underway. I must have your answers now."

"And suppose our answer is no?" Hee asked.

"Then it shall be no. Nothing could be done at this late hour by anyone to thwart our plan. If any of you choose not to participate, that would be your decision. But I would then reserve the right to deal with others in your country, to try to interest them in our proposal."

"It costs too much," Fabio said. That is what he always said at any discussion of any new idea. And then he always went along. Men at the table buzzed, discussing the idea with their neighbours.

Nemeroff had them; he knew it. He had primed Dong Hee well and Hee had handled his role perfectly, firing the questions with just the right degree of animosity, but allowing Nemeroff to calmly break down the resistance that was every one's natural posture.

Hee stood. "Baron," he said. "It will be a pleasure to join with you."

Nemeroff cocked an ear. He heard the faint whoosh of the elevator.

"Thank you, Mr. Hee. Gentlemen, I believe Mr. Kenny is coming. Perhaps some of you would like to meet our resident manager."

He came from the end of the table and walked toward the elevator door, separated from the main room by a simple mahogany panel.

The elevator door opened and the man known as PJ Kenny stepped out.

"Mr. Kenny," Nemeroff said. "There are gentlemen here who would like to meet you."

"I've brought company," Remo said. Eyes at the table turned toward the elevator, and strained to get a look at the new arrivals, and Chiun and Maggie stepped out of the elevator after Remo.

"I thought you were going to dispose of them," Nemeroff said.

"You thought wrong," Remo said coldly, stepping from behind the mahogany panel and standing next to Nemeroff, under the television pictures of Asiphar and his woman, casually looking around the conference room, meeting the faces that stared back at him intently.

Nemeroff put a hand on Remo's shoulder and hissed into his ear: "What's wrong with you, Mr. Kenny? The whole plan's ready to go."

"Two mistakes, Baron," Remo said. "First, I'm not P. J. Kenny; I'm Remo Williams. And second, the plan's not ready to go; you are."

He took another step into the room, and Chiun stepped out from behind the mahogany panel. Almost as if by magnetism, his eyes were drawn to those of Dong Hee, who was turned in his seat, casually watching the scene at the elevator door.

He tensed when he saw the old Oriental in the blue robes.

"Who is that man?" he said to Nemeroff.

Nemeroff looked at Chiun, who stepped closer to Hee. "I am the Master of Sinanju," Chiun said.

Hee screamed. The sound unleashed the room into action.

Hee stood and tried to run. Men scrambled to their feet, their hands moving with practiced ease toward guns under their jackets. Chiun seemed to float in the air and then he was atop the conference table. His blue robes flowed around him, angelically, but his face was that of an angel of death and he roared, in a hollow, doom filled voice: "Despoilers of men and jackals of crime, your end is here. It is the hour of the cat."

Hee screamed again. He was still trying to get away from the press of men in chairs, to escape the legend he had heard of all his life, and then his head dropped limply to his side, as a stroke from the old man's hand crushed his neck.

Chiun swirled along the table like a dervish. Men scattered; more drew guns; shots were fired, and through them all, now on the table, then on the floor, raced Chiun, the Master of Sinanju.

Remo took Maggie's arm and pulled her into the room next to him, as he leaned casually against the wall.

"Watch him," he said. "He's really good." He really was, too, Remo thought. Where had he ever gotten the idea that Chiun had grown old?

Chiun moved faster now, faster than bullets, faster than men's hands. Men converged on him and grasped only each other as he was not there, and then his hands and feet were there and bodies hit the floor.

Knives appeared but were wrested from their holders' hands, only to reinsert themselves in their owners' stomachs. Pencils and pens from the table became deadly missiles finding their marks in throats and eyes. One pen hit the mahogany panel next to Remo. It went all the way through the inch-thick hardwood, its point protruding through the other side.

"Hey, Chiun," Remo called, "watch that." To Maggie, he said, "He's good, right? Wait until he warms up." Maggie could only watch in stunned horror. It was like a butcher shop.

Bodies were piled, now. Men no longer fought for the chance to get at the old man. They came now for the door. But between them and the elevator door stood Remo Williams and there began another pile of bodies.

And then there were no more men standing. Only Remo and Chiun and Maggie who surveyed the carnage of the conference room. It looked like a Wall Street version of the St. Valentine's Day massacre.

"Not too good, Chiun," Remo said. "I was watching. You took two strokes on that big goon from Detroit. And you missed the target completely with this pen." He pointed to the pen in the mahogany panel. "You know what a pen like that costs?" he said. "And now it's not even good for writing or anything."

"I am contrite," Chiun said, his hands folded inside the sleeves of his robe.

"Yep," Remo said, "and your elbow was crooked again. Flying up there like Jack Nicklaus on the backswing. How many times do I have to tell you you're never going to amount to anything if you don't keep the elbow close to your side? Can't you learn anything?"

"Please tell me who you are," Maggie suddenly pleaded.

"It's best you don't know," Remo said. "But we're from America. And our assignment was the same as yours. Break this up."

"And you are not PJ Kenny?"

"No. I killed him before I got here." He interrupted himself as he saw a ghostly flicker in the highly polished wood of the wall across the room. He stepped into the room and looked up over his head. "Hey, look, the movie's on. Let's watch." He watched for a second, and said, "On second thought, Maggie, you better not watch."

He looked around the room. "Now let's see where Nemeroff is."

He walked toward the head of the table and turned a body over with his toe, then looked up, annoyed. "Chiun, is he over there?"

"No," Chiun said.

"Maggie. You got him by you?"

She forced herself to look at the bodies that littered the floor around her. No Nemeroff. She shook her head.

"He escaped, Chiun. He got away," Remo said.

"If you had been more a participant and less an observer, perhaps that might have been prevented," Chiun said.

"There were only thirty, Chiun. I wanted to leave them for you, so I could see what you're going to do with the bodies. Now where the hell did he go?"

There was a hard whirring sound overhead.

"The roof," Remo said. "The helicopters. He's up there." He looked around for panels, for stairways. He saw nothing. He looked up. A helicopter was settling down on the roof, its blades cutting swaths of darkness in the room as they revolved above the glass dome.

"How the hell do we get up there?" Remo asked.

Chiun answered.

First he was on the floor, then on the table, and then he was hurtling through the air, toward the dome, and he hit into it feet first. It crashed. He turned his body in air, grabbed a cross bar with his hands and pulled himself through the opening in the shattered glass.

Some old man, Remo thought.

He followed, springing onto the table and jumping up for a handhold on the cross bar. He hoisted himself through the break in the glass, calling over his shoulder, "Stay there, Maggie."

Then he was on the roof, alongside Chiun. But they were too late for Nemeroff. His red helicopter was already off the roof, and then it dipped its nose and sped off toward the south toward Mozambique, toward the island nation of Scambia.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Nemeroff's second helicopter was taking off at the other end of the roof and Remo and Chiun raced toward it. They reached it just as it started to speed up its rotor, and with dives, they grabbed the right wheel struts.

Above them, the engine roared and lugged, and tried to lift. But their weight unbalanced the craft. It lifted and dropped; lifted again and dropped.

Above their heads, the helicopter window opened. The co-pilot made his first and last mistake. He reached out, and tried to throw a punch at Chiun. Chiun reached up with a toe, then the co-pilot was coming through the window. He hit the stone covered roof and lay in a personal heap.

Remo moved up the struts and slid in through the window. A moment later, the pilot came out the same window. Seconds later, the craft sat down heavily on its haunches and the rotor stopped as Remo cut the engines.

The door opened and Remo jumped out onto the roof. His eyes joined Chiun's in looking forward to the horizon toward which the red helicopter of Baron Nemeroff was speeding.

"Must we pursue?" Chiun said.

"Yes."

"Can you fly this craft?"

"No," Remo said. "Can you?"

"No. But if I were a white man I would be able to use a white man's tools."

They heard behind them the sound of a motor and they turned. As they watched, a section of roof lifted up and then a small screened elevator rose onto their level. In it was Maggie.

As she stepped out, she said: "He had a secret door. I found it. Where is he?"

Remo pointed to the helicopter, now far away in the distance.

"Well, why don't we follow him?"

"I can't fly this damn thing."

"Get in," she said. "I can."

"I always knew there was something about you limey women that I liked," Remo said.

He hopped up into the plane. Maggie clambered up on her side and Chiun slid in alongside Remo, sitting between and behind Maggie and Remo, watching.

"How does this thing fly?" he asked, as Maggie started the engines and they kicked on with a whooshing sound.

He sounded worried.

"C'mon, Chiun, you never saw a helicopter before?" Remo asked.

"I have seen many of them. But I have never been in one and therefore did not examine the problem closely. How does this thing fly without wings?"

"Faith," Remo said. "Blind faith holds it up."

"If body gas from passengers with eating problems would hold it up, we would have no trouble," Chiun said.

Then the craft was off the roof, hovering, and expertly Maggie worked the stick, dipping its nose. Then with a powerful swish, it began moving forward, climbing, gaining speed and altitude, following on the trail of Baron Nemeroff.

"Why must we chase him?" Chiun said. "Why don't we just land somewhere and call Smith?"

"Because if we don't stop him, hell go through with his plan anyway to assassinate the President. We've got to stop that."

"Why must we always get involved with other people's problems?" Chiun said. "I think we should sit down somewhere and calmly consider the prospects."

"Chiun, be quiet," Remo said. "You're here now and we're flying to Scambia. We'll be there in just a few minutes so don't worry about it." And to Maggie, he said: "You're pretty good at this. Her Majesty teaches you agents everything."

"Not at all," she shouted over the roar of the blades. "Private lessons."

"Thank heavens for resourceful Englishwomen," Remo said.

"Amen," she said.

"Amen," Chiun said. "Yes. Amen. But keep praying."

Slowly they began to gain on the red helicopter ahead of them. It had been a small dot in the sky, but now the dot was growing bigger, imperceptibly if one watched it steadily, but clearly visible if one looked only sporadically. They were gaining.

"Keep up the good work, Maggie," Remo said. "When we go back to the hotel, I'll do you an extra good turn."

"Sorry, Yank," she said. "I'm in mourning for PJ Kenny, the only man I ever loved."

"May he rot in peace," Remo said. "The only time I've ever beaten my own time." But he was glad he would not again enjoy Maggie. With his identity had come back his disciplines. Sex was one of them.

Both planes ate up the distance to Scambia but Remo's craft took bigger bites. It was only a minute behind Nemeroff now and up ahead they saw the island of Scambia, down in the cool blue waters of Mozambique. Nemeroff's helicopter began to lose altitude. Maggie followed suit.

They were over Scambia now, a drab little island, its monotonous landscape relieved only by nature with rocks and not by man with buildings. Ahead, they could see the only large building on the island, a blue stone structure, surrounded by mazes of gardens and pools. Nemeroff's helicopter was heading down for it. They could see it touch down on the grounds. Two. No, three men scurried from it, and began running.

Maggie increased her speed, barrelling the helicopter down, and she touched down alongside the other craft only forty-five seconds after it had landed.

"Good show," Remo said. "Pip, pip and all that. If you Britishers weren't frigid, I think I could love you." A glance showed that Nemeroff's helicopter was empty. "Chiun," Remo said. "Get in and protect the president. The vice president is going to try to kill him. Maggie and I will go for the gold, to stop Nemeroff from getting it."

Before he finished speaking, Chiun was out on the grassy field, moving toward the front of the palace.

There, two uniformed guards stood at attention, their eyes carefully watching the helicopters, watching the people who had climbed from the two aircraft, now watching this old Oriental come skittering across the deep green grass at them. They had been given orders to let no one into the palace. Extreme security precautions, Vice President Asiphar himself had just told them.

Then Chiun was in front of them. They were moving to block him with their rifles and then he was not there. One guard turned to the other and said: "What happened to that old man?"

"I don't know," the other guard said. "Did you hear someone say 'excuse me'?"

"No, it couldn't be," said the first guard, and they watched again across the field as Remo and the girl headed for the east wing of the palace.

There was another guard inside on the first floor of the palace's central wing. He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to see an old Oriental standing there. "The president. Where is he?" Chiun asked.

"What are you doing here?" the guard asked, which was the wrong thing to ask. A hand grabbed his waist, and ringers like knives poked their ways into clusters of nerves; the pain was agonizing.

"Fool. Where is your president?"

"At the head of the stairs," the man managed to gasp through his pain, and then he lapsed into unconsciousness.

Chiun glided up the stairs, his feet seeming not to move under the heavy robe. There were no guards outside the heavy double doors that obviously led to the president's office. Chiun pushed open the doors and stepped inside.

Across the room, President Dashiti worked at his desk, and he looked up as Chiun entered his field of vision. For a moment he was startled, then he said: "Forgive my staring. One is not always surprised at one's desk by Oriental's in robes."

"In this world," Chiun said, "one should be surprised at nothing."

"True enough," the president said, his hand straying toward the signal button on his desk, to call the guards to escort this old lunatic out.

Chiun wagged a finger at him, naughty-naughty.

"I beg your indulgence, Mr. President. Men are coming to assassinate you."

Yes. Obviously a lunatic. But how did he get past the guards outside?

"I must ask you to leave," Dashiti said.

"Ask all you wish," Chiun said. "But I will stay and save you, even though you do not wish saving."

The President's finger moved closer to the alarm button.

Down the hall, Asiphar spoke to two men who stood in his small office.

"It is time," he said, "the baron has arrived." He turned from his window and looked at the men, both tall and European-looking.

"I have removed the guards. Just walk into his office and shoot him. I will follow at the sound of the shots and will confirm your story that others shot him and you attempted to stop them."

The two men smiled, the knowing smile of one professional to another.

"Now, go quickly. The guards may soon return."

The two men nodded and went out into the hall. Quickly they walked to the president's door. Asiphar stood in the doorway of his own office, watched them push back the heavy door and enter Dashiti's inner sanctum. Now to wait for the shots. Oh, yes. He would help them get away. Right to their final resting place. When he heard the shots, he would race into Dashiti's office. And what else could a loyal vice president do, except kill the men who had killed his president? What better way to gain for himself public support and approval?

He waited, and as the door closed behind the two assassins, he lifted the safety on his pistol.

Baron Isaac Nemeroff had not entered the castle. Instead, he had run to the outside wall of the east wing, where the sewer crew had been working for the last month.

The sewer foreman saw Nemeroff racing toward him across the open field in front of the palace and snapped to attention.

"Come," Nemeroff said, "we must proceed quickly."

The supervisor jumped down into the deep sewer trench that ran for fifty feet parallel to the east wall of the palace. Workers scattered to move out of the way as Nemeroff followed.

The supervisor pointed. At right angles from the trench, heading straight toward the palace wall was a tunnel, tall enough for a man to move through, while standing up. It stopped at the palace wall. The supervisor flashed a light at the wall. Nemeroff could see the crew's handiwork. During the last four weeks, they had quietly drilled into and removed the mortar holding the stones of the wall together.

"All it takes now," the supervisor said, "is a jolt with a jackhammer. The whole wall will open up."

"Then do it," Nemeroff said. "Timing is all, now." He waved to one of the men to back their truck to the edge of the trench. In minutes, Asiphar would be President. The president of a country without a dime; the world's pauper. There would be no other game in town, except Nemeroff.

The supervisor grabbed a jackhammer and went into the dark tunnel. After a moment, there came the terrific thump, thump, thump, so fast it was not a series of separate sounds but flooded the small tunnel with overpowering noise.

Then it stopped. Nemeroff heard the thump of stones falling onto a stone floor and rolling to a halt.

The supervisor came out of the dark to the trench-end of the tunnel where Nemeroff waited.

"It is done," he said.

Nemeroff brushed by him and went to the wall of the palace treasury room. The stones had been splintered and cracked. Some had fallen out. He pressed a hand against another stone. It fell easily, thumping on the floor of the dark room inside. Nemeroff began to push the stones free from the wall; they came loose like children's styrofoam building blocks.

He pushed and pulled stones away until he had made a hole big enough to step through easily, then clambered inside.

It was a small room, perhaps only twenty feet square, but it was dark and it took Nemeroff's sun-squinted eyes moments to adjust to the darkness. Gradually, the room came into focus. At the far end was a heavy steel door, which he knew was electrified and on the other side of which stood a squad of guards.

And on pallets, all around the outside walls of the room, were stacked gold bullion, bar after bar, one-hundred million dollars worth, the total wealth of the nation of Scambia.

Nemeroff giggled. Asiphar was in for a surprise. Talk about a president's hundred days. There would be Asiphar's hundred minutes. He would become president and the country would instantly become bankrupt. So? What was wrong with that? It happened to all African countries eventually. Nemeroff was just speeding up the process.

And soon-despite that Remo Williams and that Oriental and that woman-despite all them, the crime families of the world would have new leaders and they would listen when Nemeroff spoke. Scambia would still be under crime's flag.

And someday, the Russians and the Americans might want missile bases here. What if they were willing to pour the wealth of their lands into this godforsaken island? This room could be filled with gold again and again, and again and again Nemeroff could drain it.

He turned and called to his men. "Set up a line," he said. "Begin to pass out these bars. You, get in there and start," he called to the supervisor.

Still trailing the jackhammer behind him, the man came into the small treasury room-into its darkness-and then it was dark no longer. Suddenly the overhead lights glared and glinted sharply off the gold, bathing the room almost in sunlight. Nemeroff blinked sharply, squeezing his eyelids together. When he opened them, at the end of the room, sitting on a stack of bullion, was the British woman and the man he had known as PJ Kenny.

The two gunmen entered the presidential office. The president's blue leather chair was turned away from them, facing the window. It rocked gently back and forth.

Both men held guns in their hands and one raised his, but the second man raised a hand in caution. Not at this distance. Wait.

They walked softly across the heavily-padded carpet to the President's desk.

They smiled at each other. A breeze. Walk up to him, one from each side. Two bullets in the head. No sweat.

They drew near the presidential chair. Their guns came up. The chair slowly swung around and smiling at them, looking from face to face, was not the President, but the wizened parchment face of an ancient Oriental.

In the corridor Asiphar waited. Then he heard two shots.

He unsnapped his holster and ran toward the President's office.

Inside the door, he stopped. The two gunmen stood alongside the President's chair, but their bodies were contorted and twisted. In the chair sat an aged Oriental in blue flowing robes, who looked at Asiphar as if he recognized him. He raised his hands toward Asiphar across the room, and as he released the two gunmen, they fell to the floor softly.

The old Oriental stood up. His eyes burned into Asiphar's. The vice president looked at the two dead men on the floor, first in horror, then in puzzlement. He looked up again at the old man, as if he would find an answer in the Oriental's face.

He reached for his pistol.

The old man said, "They missed," and then he was over the top of the desk, in the air, coming toward Asiphar, and the last words Asiphar heard in the world were: "But the Master of Sinanju does not miss."

He never got his gun from his holster. His heavy body hit the carpeted floor with no more sound than suet falling on a mattress.

From inside a closet door stepped President Dashiti. He looked at the two dead gunmen. At dead Asiphar. And then at Chiun.

"How may I repay you?" he said softly.

"By giving me some method of transportation home besides a helicopter."

Far away, as if from miles away, came the sound of tiny cracks. Chiun heard them; recognized them as shots. Wordlessly, he was gone from the President's office.

"Get him," Nemeroff shouted. He stood aside and men poured through the tunnel into the treasury room.

Remo sat unconcernedly on the gold bars, humming.

Three men-four, then five-poured into the small room. They stood, waiting, as their supervisor, holding the jackhammer under his arm as if it were a rifle, advanced toward Remo and Maggie, his lips twisted in a thin smile.

Remo waited, then reached up a hand and flipped the switch, plunging the room into darkness again.

Nemeroff tried to see into the darkness, but could not.

Then the room was filled with the awful roar of a jackhammer, but as quickly as it started, it stopped. Then it started again, and there was a scream.

"Did you get him?" Nemeroff called.

"No Baron, he missed. My turn now." It was the voice of the American.

The dark room was illuminated briefly by the flashes of gunfire. In the stroboscopic pulses of light. Nemeroff watched an eerie tableau of death. The American held the jackhammer under his arm. Nemeroff's men fired at him. But he was never there. More shots. And then fewer. In the flashes of light, he saw that men were falling, screaming, struggling as they were impaled on the jackhammer like bugs.

Nemeroff fled.

He ran along the tunnel toward the sunlight. He jumped up out of the trench and broke in a dead run for the field, where his pilot had already begun to warm up the helicopter's engines.

In the treasury room, Remo dropped the jackhammer. There was no one left.

Through the dark, his cat's eyes looked toward Maggie, who still sat motionless, atop the pallet .of gold.

"Maggie. You all right?"

"Yes."

"I'm going after Nemeroff." He headed toward the sunlight. Maggie got to her feet and followed him, trailing at her side the .45 calibre automatic she still had not fired.

Nemeroff was already in the helicopter and it was lifting from the ground when Remo came out into the sunlight. He heard Maggie stumble behind him and turned to help her.

Behind him, the helicopter rose, and then swooped toward them. Remo pulled Maggie up onto the street next to the sewer trench, then turned. Overhead, roaring at them came the helicopter.

Dammit, he thought, Smith'll bust my balls if I let him get away.

Then shots came from the helicopter, plinking the pavement around Remo, and he heard one thump softly next to him. As he turned, Maggie fell onto the roadway. Blood poured from a wound in her chest. The .45 dropped from her hand.

The helicopter hovered overhead, thirty feet off the ground, and shots rained from it, showering the ground with lead, as Nemeroff fired at Remo.

Remo ignored him and looked at Maggie. She smiled once and died.

He picked up the .45, wheeled and fired. He missed. Nemeroff, seeing the weapon in Remo's hands, remembering his marksmanship told his pilot to fly off.

The bird hovered, then its motor changed pitch, as it began to pull away.

Chiun came around the corner of the palace. He saw Remo, holding the .45 with both hands at arm's length, squeezing a shot at the helicopter which was moving away.

It was out of .45 range now.

Chiun ran up and took the pistol from Remo's hands.

"The Jesus nut," Remo shouted. "It holds the rotor blades on. Got to get it."

Chiun shook his head sadly. "You will never learn," he said. "The target that lives is the target that gives itself to the marksman."

Almost casually, he aimed the automatic in the direction of the fleeing helicopter. He extended his right arm, holding the .45 and gently the barrel of the gun transcribed a circle in air, and then a smaller circle, and yet a smaller circle.

"Shoot, for Christ's sake. They'll be in Paris," Remo said. The helicopter was two-hundred yards away now, hopelessly out of range.

And still Chiun's arm rotated the .45 in ever-tightening concentric circles, zoning in, and then he squeezed the trigger. Once.

He dropped the gun, turned his back on the helicopter, and knelt alongside the girl.

He had missed. He must have missed. The range was too far; the target too small. Then, as Remo watched, the helicopter pitched forward, and then it dropped, plummeting, like a rock, and there was a flash of light, and a split-second later an explosion as the aircraft crashed into the rocky soil of Scambia.

Chiun stood up. "She is dead, my son," he said.

"I know," Remo said. "You got the pilot."

"I know," Chiun said. "Did you doubt I would?"

"Not for a moment," Remo said. "Let's go. Smith owes us a vacation. I need to rest."

"You need to practice the back elbow thrust," Chiun said.