Survival Course

"How do you know this is where I want to get off?"

The driver shrugged, muttering something Remo didn't catch.

"What did he say, Chiun?"

The Master of Sinanju put the same question to the driver, and translated the reply.

"He said, 'This is a good place to get off;' " Chiun explained.

"Why not?" Remo said, getting out. He paid the driver in coins, knowing he was overtipping but not caring. He was sick of the heavy Mexican money rattling in his pockets. It all came out of his CURE operating expenses anyway.

The cab pulled away. Remo looked around. He was standing before a boutique called Banana. The roof had been done over to resemble Jungleland. A giant version of King Kong clutched a hairless mannequin against the backdrop of papier-mache trees.

"Let's find a hotel," Remo said, stepping around the corner onto a street called Liverpool.

The first hotel he came to was in an area dotted with earthquake-shattered buildings. The glass face of the Hotel Krystal was undamaged.

"Looks fine to me," Remo said. "So long as the earth doesn't move."

They checked in and, once in the air-conditioned room, began to feel less light-headed. Remo poured out the contents of a bottle of complimentary purified water into two glasses and gave one to the Master of Sinanju. That helped too.

Chiun sat up in one of the big beds.

"I recognized the President of Vice, Remo."

"No kidding," Remo said dryly, looking out at the Mexican skyline. It was magnificently broad and seemed to extend as far as the ring of distant mountains. The sky was darkening to a steely elemental color, as if it was about to rain toxic metals.

"But there is something else," Chiun added.

"Yeah?"

"He recognized me. That is why he ran."

"Can't be. He's never seen us. He shouldn't know we exist."

"The look in his eyes told me that he recognized me," Chiun insisted. "Not in his face. It was like the mask of a clown, always grinning. But his eyes. They told me that he knew my face and feared me."

"Impossible!"

"It is so," Chiun repeated firmly.

"Look, I'm going to need you on this," Remo said anxiously. "Are you up to it, or not?"

" I will serve my emperor," the Master of Sinanju said weakly.

"I'd better call Smith."

"Tell him what I have told you."

"He's not going to believe any of this," Remo muttered, punching the telephone keypad.

Chapter 15

The headquarters for CURE, the supersecret U. S. government agency that existed in no budget, employed no official staff; and yet possessed a multimillion-dollar operating budget, was a second-floor office in a sleepy private hospital in Rye, New York.

The name on the plain door was Harold W. Smith, who was officially director of the hospital, incorporated as Folcroft Sanitarium.

For nearly three decades Smith, formerly with the CIA, had helmed CURE from its early days of crisis management through times of grave political uncertainty. He had not been young when the even younger President had offered him the monumental task of preserving American democracy from those who would twist the Constitution to achieve their vicious ends. And he was not young now.

Smith sat in the same chair he had first occupied in the first day on the job, staring into a modest computer terminal on his desk. He looked like a man who had spent his youth locked in a dank basement eating only lemons and the occasional hard crust of bread. His skin was grayish and dry, his mouth puckered in thought. Behind the prim transparencies of his rimless eyeglasses, his eyes were gray where they should be gray and red where they should have been white.

Smith watched the message-traffic intercepts scrolling before his eyes. The White House was clamped down like a fortress. Cryptic, carefully guarded messages were going back and forth in the State Department and from there to the CIA station in Mexico City.

The lid was still on. It would not stay on long, Smith knew.

He leaned into the screen, his long patrician nose almost bumping the glare-free glass. His fingers lifted like a pianist's. The dry clicking of the keys was as close to music as lemony Harold Smith ever made.

Smith brought up the whereabouts of the Vice-President. All was calm there. He was definitely where he should be.

So whom had Remo and Chiun seen-or supposedly seen-on the Mexican videotape?

"An impostor," he muttered. "Must be." Or was it as Remo had suggested, the other way around?

There was no way Smith could verify either theory. His eyes darted to the black dialless red telephone that sat within easy reach. Normally it was his hot line to the White House. But now there was no one there to pick up the phone. Other than the President, no one in the executive branch knew of Smith or CURE or any of it. That was one of the safeguards built into CURE, which, if it was discovered, would have to be disbanded, because to admit it existed was to admit that one gray man hunched over a computer screen, unknown and unelected, as well as two of the finest assassins ever known, was all that kept America from slipping over the brink into anarchy-or worse.

Smith considered the possibility that the Vice-President had somehow been responsible for the downing of Air Force One. He immediately resolved not to communicate with the man until he knew for an absolute certainty that the President had been lost and the Vice-President was not complicit. He had that option. CURE was autonomous of the executive branch.

Smith switched over to the wire services and TV news digests, automatically processed by the massive computers hidden in Folcroft's basement, two floors below.

A press plane had just arrived in Bogota. It had gone on ahead to record Air Force One's arrival. They would be stalled with a story about weather over the Yucatan Peninsula.

The White House was throwing a lot of attention to the Vice-President's itinerary, obviously hoping by misdirection to keep the domestic press occupied. A major speech by the Vice-President had been announced, one having serious political repercussions.

More misdirection. Unless it too was part of the plot. Smith dismissed that thought. The President's own staff would not throw in with any coup. It made no sense. This was America, not some banana republic. But even as the thought struck Smith, he sat up, realizing that had it not been for CURE, America might be no better than many Latin-American republics struggling against internal disorder.

The ordinary desk phone rang, and Smith reached for it without averting his eyes from the screen.

"Yes?" he said dryly.

"Remo here."

"Progress?"

"We found the Bimbo Bread truck, but it got away."

Smith's hand tightened on the receiver. "The President?"

"He might have been in back, but the V. P. was definitely at the wheel. He drives pretty good too. He got away from us."

"Where are you now?" Smith's voice was bitter.

"In a hotel. The Krystal. That's with a K."

"Return to the field. Every minute counts."

"Wish we could," Remo said worriedly, "but Chiun's incapacitated. I'm not feeling so hot myself."

"What is this?"

"It's the air. The pollution. You know how we function, Smith. Correct breathing, centering. We're weak as kittens."

"I understand nothing of that."

"If you can't breathe, you can't run. Right? If we can't breathe, we can't do the impossible. But we'll manage. "

"Remo, I'm getting the CIA warnings out of Mexico of suspected Colombian narco-terrorists converging on Mexico City. What do you know about that?"

"Oh, right. That flashy DFS comandante you hooked us up with? We think he's been bought off. It's possible he overheard our last talk."

"Then he knows the President may be alive in Mexico," Smith said in a hoarse tone.

"Afraid so," Remo admitted.

"Therefore these terrorists may be en route to locate or possibly to take possession of the President from whoever's holding him." The long-distance trunkline buzzed over the silence as both men considered the possibility. Finally Smith cleared his throat. His voice was metallic when he spoke again.

"Remo, the President must not fall into the hands of the Colombians."

"Gotcha."

"Remo, it would be better if the President died before he fell into their hands-better for him, and better for America."

"You don't mean-"

"Do you want me to repeat that?" Smith said harshly.

"No, I read you, you cold-blooded son of a bitch," Remo said bitterly.

"Do you remember the story of Enrique Camarena?"

"Should I?"

"He was a DEA agent stationed in Mexico. Corrupt Mexican authorities betrayed him to drug traffickers. They tortured him until they extracted every DEA secret they could. Then they killed him. The President holds many secrets too. Our national security-never mind our nation's prestige-rides on his not falling into the hands of these bloodsuckers."

" I said, I read you," Remo snapped. "Look, we're on it. Is there anyone we can trust down here?"

"No."

"That makes it harder for us. We're handicapped as it is."

"Your best lead will be the local Mexican news," Smith said. "That was the source of the bread-truck tip. Follow any rumor, no matter how bizarre."

"Oh, come on, Smith!" Remo exploded. "We can't hang around watching TV, hoping for a lead."

"You'll do whatever it takes, Remo," Smith said flintily. "But you'll do your job. And stay in constant touch. "

"There's another thing," Remo said quickly. "Chiun thinks the V. P. recognized him. That's why he took off."

"Remo, that's impossible. The President knows what you both look like, but the Vice-President could not."

"You don't suppose the President could have told him about us?" Remo suggested.

Smith's voice was flat. " I cannot believe this President would do any such thing."

"Then can you explain it?"

"No," Smith admitted.

"Well, there it is. Look, we'll stay in touch. You do the same."

"I want results, Remo." Smith hung up on Remo's response. He had work to do.

Down in Mexico City, Remo snapped, "And you'll get them," into the dead phone. He hung up, adding, "You just might not like them. But then, you never do, do you?"

Outside, a violent electrical storm had broken out. Rain came down in sheets of metallic needles. It washed the windows like an invisible car wash. Forked lightning stirred the storm.

Remo turned to Chiun, lying on the bed. "We got to move fast," he said. "Can you hold up your end?"

The Master of Sinanju opened his tired eyes.

"Yes. The rain will cleanse the air of impurities."

"It won't add any oxygen. We're way above sea level. "

Chiun slipped his legs over the side of the bed.

"We must do what we can. Where do we begin?"

"Believe it or not," Remo said, picking up the remote-control unit and pointing it at the television set, "we start with the local news. I'll watch. You translate."

He fell back onto the bed, felt something hard dig into his back, and pulled out the videotape of the President's rescue. He tossed it on the nightstand and waited for the TV screen to come to life.

Chapter 16

The White House staff called it "grips and grins."

After four straight hours of it, the Vice-President of the United States called it agony.

He collapsed in his suite at a local hotel.

"Boy, am I glad that's over!" he told his chief of staff. "I could use a round of golf," he added, squeezing his right hand, "but I think if I get a club in my hand, I won't be able to let go."

"I got bad news for you, Dan."

The Vice-President looked up.

The look on his chief of staff's face was grave. He was pale. His voice had quavered toward the end.

For an instant the universe reeled under the Vice-President of the United States. For an instant he thought the thing he half-hoped and half-dreaded had come to pass. The thing that the nation talked about, joked about, and even feared, each according to his views and political opinions.

"You mean . . . ?" The Vice-President croaked.

"Yes," the chief of staff said. "The White House wants us to go to Detroit and do another one of these damn things."

The Vice-President let out his breath. His heart started beating again. He was not the new President.

"What?" he said dazedly.

"More grips and grins," the chief of staff said grimly. "The White House wants it coordinated with the Bogota thing."

"Oh," said the Vice-President. He was relieved. He hadn't wanted to become President under these circumstances. But the possibility had been on everyone's lips ever since the President had agreed to go to Colombia.

"I don't know if I can deal with this," the Vice-President admitted, trying to unclench his right hand.

"It's a two-hour flight. Take a nap and soak your hand-shaking hand on the plane. But let's go. They're really anxious about this."

The Vice-President got up and straightened his tie with stiff fingers.

"Oh, by the way," his chief of staff said, pulling out an envelope, "this is for you."

The Vice-President reached for the proffered envelope, but his fingers refused to close around it. It dropped to the carpet.

"I'll get it," said his chief of staff.

"No, I will," the Vice-President said genially.

They bumped heads attempting to retrieve the fallen envelope.

"Sorry."

"No, I'm sorry," the Vice-President said, holding his head.

His chief of staff helped the Vice-President to his feet and again handed him the envelope. This time the Vice-President accepted it with his left hand. The transfer was completed without further incident, much to his chief of staffs surprise. He had known the Vice-President to forget his own wife's name.

The Vice-President looked at the blank white front and asked, "What is it?"

"From the White House. It's your speech."

"My speech?"

"Yeah. They had the President's top speech writer draft it. I think it's tied to the one the President is giving in Bogota."

"Really?" the Vice-President said, pleased that he rated a presidential speech writer. He reached for the flap.

"No, don't open it now!"

The Vice-President's smile turned to a frown. "Why not?"

"It's not to be opened until you give it."

"How am I gonna practice it?"

"You can't. The White House gave strict orders that you not read it beforehand. There's a covering letter inside explaining that."

"okay," the Vice-President said, digging at the flap.

"No! You're not supposed to read that until five minutes before the speech."

"This is crazy!"

"The White House chief of staff says it's very, very important. It's a major speech. He says it may be one of the most important of your career."

"This is weird."

"This is politics. And you know how the President is about leaks. Now, come on. We're got a plane to catch."

Chapter 17

Emilio Mordida wore the stony copper face of a mestizo. His expression seldom wavered. It might have belonged on a Mayan rain god. Emilio was of Mayan descent. Also Zapotec, Chichimec, and of course Spanish.

Like most mestizos, he had no concept of time. Not even years of working as a desk clerk in the Japanese-owned Nikko Hotel in Mexico City's Zona Hotelera had inculcated him with a shred of punctuality. A wake-up call for seven sharp might be made at seven-fifteen or even seven-fifty-nine. It did not matter. This was Mexico, where the only god was manana.

It was another desultory afternoon in the massive neo-Aztec lobby of the Nikko. Emilio shifted between the computer terminal and the guests checking in and out, looking very modern in his powder-blue jacket, but wearing the immutable mask of his Mexican forebears, one that betrayed no hint of ego or inferiority. It was the mask many Mexicans wore in a land that did not belong to them anymore.

Nothing, not the drumming of impatient fingers on the marble countertop, nor the half-muttered insults by foreign turistas who thought they too were the lords of Mexico, brought a flicker of reaction as Emilio went about his methodical unhurried day.

The drone of the fountains was his clock. Unlike the Japanese or the Americans, who saw time as a straight line, Emilio saw time as a bubble-a warm amniotic bubble in which a man might float through life. And so patrons waited while Emilio went on his silent, officious way, his face impassive.

Until a man who bore a strong resemblance to the Vice-President of the United States of America entered the spacious lobby.

Emilio Mordida noticed him because he entered carrying a dusty golf bag. Golf was not unknown in Mexico City, but it hardly rivaled soccer or bullfighting.

Emilio studiously ignored a West German couple who were attempting to check out in time to meet their plane and followed the man with the golf bag with his dark eyes.

Yes, those were definitely golf clubs in the bag. And it was certainly the Vice-President. He walked mechanically, looking neither left nor right, his face a mask as stiff as Emilio's own. Only instead of a sullen set to his mouth, the Vice-President wore a smile that might have been carved of ivory and rose marble.

The Vice-President spurned the reception desk and went directly to the elevators.

It was enough to cause one of Emilio Mordida's inflexible eyelids to lift in surprise.

All morning the city had been buzzing with rumors that the American Vice-President had been seen driving around the city. At first it was said he had been driving a bread truck. Then he was seen at a discotheque dancing with Charro. Or that he had lost two fingers fighting over a bullfighter's woman in the affluent Colonia del Valle district, but had emerged victorious.

Emilio had absorbed these rumors with interest, dismissing them as hysteria in the wake of the imminent arrival of the President in Bogota. Many had thought that Mexico City was a better-and safer-location for the drug summit. The President of Mexico himself had prevailed on the U.S. President to consider reconvening in Mexico City, but was politely rebuffed.

But here was the Vice-President, clearly the Vice-President. Although it could have been Robert Redford. They looked very much alike.

Emilio, showing uncharacteristic swiftness, fairly leapt to the reservations terminal and punched up the Vice-President's name. He was not registered, which did not surprise Emilio one bit. Robert Redford was also not listed.

Moving swiftly, Emilio Mordida left the reservations desk and made for the elevator bank.

He was not surprised to see that the Vice-President was still awaiting an elevator. Even the elevators were slow in Mexico.

When one arrived, Emilio followed the Vice-President into the car. The Vice-President pressed sixteen. Emilio then pressed seventeen.

They rode in silence, Emilio watching the Vice-President's boyish, almost ghoulishly smiling profile. He was even younger-looking than he had appeared on television.

The car stopped at the sixteenth floor. The Vice-President stepped off: The doors rolled shut.

Emilio rode to the next floor and slipped back down the stairs.

The Vice-President was still in the corridor, Emilio discovered when he peered around the elevator alcove. He was behaving very strangely. He was going from door to door, putting his ear to each panel. He would listen for a brief instant, then move on.

Until he reached Room 1644. There he paused a bit longer. The Vice-President dropped to his knees with a quick folding of his knee joints and put his eyes to the electronic lock, much as a submarine captain looks through a periscope.

The Nikko's locks required no key, but a magnetized passcard. The lock combinations were changed daily. They could not be breached without the correct card.

Yet, as Emilio watched, the Vice-President proceeded to breach the lock. He accomplished this in a novel, perhaps unique manner. Withdrawing his eyes from the card slot, he lifted his right hand and, retracting his thumb, jammed the remaining four into the slot.

This was an impossibility, Emilio knew. Human fingers are too large for the card-reader slot. But not only did the slot accept them right up to the knuckles, the metal gave no squeal of protest.

Most mysteriously, the red light over the slot turned green, signifying the magnetic card reader recognized the Vice-President's four fingers.

The Vice-President withdrew his remarkable fingers and slipped into the open door. The green light winked out and the red light winked back on. The corridor was silent.

Eyes puzzled, Emilio Mordida passed down the corridor to the door to Room 1644. The lock was as it should be. Undamaged. There was not so much as a scratch around the slot.

Taking a deep breath, he knocked on the door.

After a moment a voice demanded, "Who is there?"

"Hotel staff, senor. Is everything satisfactory?"

"Yes. Go away."

"Si, senor."

Emilio Mordida withdrew to the elevator alcove and looked back around the corner. He saw the door suddenly open, and a multilingual "Do Not Disturb" sign was surreptitiously hung on the doorknob. The door clicked shut again.

All the way down to the lobby, Emilio Mordida thought quickly. This was worth money, this information. The news agencies like Notimex would pay many pesos for such a tip. As would, he supposed, the local police and the Federales.

Returning to his counter, where one of his fellow clerks was stolidly enduring the fractured-Spanish abuse of the West German couple Emilio had earlier ignored, he wondered who would pay the most handsomely for such a tip. The Security Police. Perhaps the Federales.

Emilio checked the reservations terminal, punching up Room 1644. It showed vacant. It had been vacant two days.

As Emilio Mordida dialed the local office of the Federales, he wondered what would compell the Vice-President of the United States to become a squatter in this hotel. Did they not pay him enough?

The Primer Comandante of the Distrito Federal of the FJP haggled with Emilio Mordida only a few moments before proper remuneration was agreed upon. Swiftly Mordida told the comandante of the Vice-President's unorthodox residence at the Nikko.

"Who else knows of this?" the comandante inquired suspiciously.

"No one, comandante."

"See that no one else learns," barked the comandante, who abruptly hung up.

Emilio Mordida hung up, confident that within a week-no more than three-a fat envelope would be presented to him by a Federal. Corruption was a way of life in Mexico, but everyone valued a good source. The comandante would be true to his word.

Still, Emilio thought, there was always the chance that the comandante would forget or his messenger would pocket the money for himself.

Emilio picked up the receiver and began to dial the DFS. He could have saved himself the trouble. For the Federal comandante had already sold the DFS the intelligence for three times what had been promised Emilio Mordida.

And so, word was eventually relayed to Tampico Zone Comandante Oscar Odio, who had agreed to remunerate his FJP informant handsomely.

Odio quickly put in a call to Bogota.

"Padrino," he said.

"Si?"

"I have news, both good and bad."

"I am listening."

"I regret to inform you that your pistoleros-I assume it was they-were all annihilated earlier today. Their dead bodies were found by my agents beside the Aquila Azteca train, which they attempted to board."

"Muy triste," El Padrino hissed, sounding more hateful than sad. In a softer voice he added, "And their quarry?"

"That is the good news I have for you, Padrino. I have been reliably informed that the Vice-President has been located in one of our best hotels."

Odio could hear El Padrino sit up.

"And el presidente, el jefe, himself?"

"I do not have that information as yet, but I am working on this."

"Who else knows of this, Odio?"

"By this time," Oscar Odio said truthfully, "probably half the Mexican security appartus."

"I have other assets in the area," EI Padrino said smoothly. "But it will take time to move them into position. What can you do to further my interests?"

"The Vice-President is occupying a room illegally," Odio explained. "He can be detained on these grounds."

"Do this, and I promise you, Comandante, you will never stoop to accepting fat envelopes again. You will be passing them out."

"As you say, Padrino. "

Comandante Oscar Odio hung up the phone, his wide smile threatening to pierce his earlobes. He put on his mirrored sunglasses and wrapped a silk scarf around his neck.

Outside, the helicopter was waiting. He anticipated trading it in for a newer model by month's end. Perhaps one with rocket pods. Yes, he would enjoy waving rocket pods.

Chapter 18

Federal Judicial Police Officer Guadalupe Mazatl was forced to give up her search for the loco American diplomats. They had disappeared in the controlled confusion of Mexico City traffic more quickly than she would have believed possible. Even the sick Asian one, who looked as if he could barely walk, never mind run.

Officer Mazatl had given up the foot chase and returned to the taxi. After thirty or forty minutes of aimless circling of the Zona Rosa and questioning numerous local police, she decided they were unfindable. There had been no sign of the Bimbo Bread truck, which had compelled them, for some strange reason, to leap into traffic, risking their very lives.

Something strange was happening, Officer Mazatl considered as the taxi drove her to Mexico City FJP headquarters, a white colonial building with the words "POLICIA JUDICIAL FEDERAL DE ESTADO" in gold lettering over the entrance.

The Mexico City primer comandante was only too happy to assist Officer Mazatl in her plight.

"You have lost your charge, eh, chica?" he said, coming around from his desk. He shut the door. His arm went around Officer Mazatl's shoulders. Officer Mazatl undid the flap of her belt holster. It made a loud snap. The arm withdrew with alacrity.

"You misjudge me, chica. You are out of your district. I only wish to assist you."

"They are an Anglo and an old Asian man," Officer Mazatl clipped out. "The Anglo dresses in a black T-shirt. The Oriental wears a fine red silk robe."

"Ah," said the comandante. "Yes. I have heard of them."

"They are supposed to be attached to the U. S. embassy."

"If that is so, why have they taken up residence in a hotel?"

"Which hotel?"

"Ah, but if I tell you that, what will you do for me?" His voice was like cream.

"We are companeros of the FJP," Officer Mazatl said tightly. "We should be working together."

The comandante smiled generously. "I am, like you, poorly paid, and forced to seek opportunities in order to make my poor way in the world."

"You do not expect me to bribe a fellow officer into sharing police intelligence!" Officer Mazatl flared.

"No, I do not expect it, but . . ." His hands spread like separating birds, lazily taking wing.

"Never mind! I will do my duty without you."

As Officer Mazatl stormed out, the comandante's voice called coolly after her, "When you change your mind, chica, I will be here, thinking of your strong womanly body."

It cost Officer Mazatl only ninety pesos and a look at her credentials to commandeer an FJP car from the motor pool. The comandante had been too eager to have his way with her. He had admitted the americano and his friend were registered in a hotel. There were many, many hotels in Mexico City, it was true. But it would be infinitely easier to check with every one of them than to have to bed that criadero de sapos of a comandante.

As she pulled into traffic, Officer Guadalupe Mazatl noticed the heavy police patrols. On one corner, three officers stood around talking to one another, two holding machine guns at the ready, the third casually swinging a doublebarreled shotgun. They looked tense, even for Mexico City police.

Everywhere there were police. DFS vehicles and Mexican Army soldiers in their forest-green uniforms, all armed, all alert.

Could the downing of Air Force One have anything to do with this? Officer Mazatl wondered.

She drove directly for the Zona Rosa, the opulent and overpriced tourist district. It was near the U. S. embassy and therefore exactly the place the gringos would go-if they knew where to go in Mexico.

She checked at the desks in the Galeria Plaza and the Calinda Geneve hotels. The gringos had not been there.

Driving down Liverpool, past still-shattered facades of buildings damaged during the 1985 earthquake, she stopped at the Krystal.

"Senor, por favor." She accosted the desk clerk, quickly describing Remo and Chiun.

The clerk wordlessly passed her a key. It was stamped Room 67.

"Gracias," Officer Mazatl said, striding for the elevator.

She boarded the car with a pair of white-uniformed waiters carrying covered trays. They joked among themselves as the car ascended.

"si," the first one said, "driving a bread truck. Everyone is talking about it."

"I did not know that Bimbo Bread paid so well as to entice an American politician to drive one of their trucks," the other laughed.

"What is this?" Officer Mazatl said suddenly, erasing the smiles from their dark faces with her authoritative tone.

"Senorita, we only-"

"Officer," she corrected.

"Officer, I was merely repeating the stories going around that a man very much resembling the Vice-President of the United States was seen in the city driving a Bimbo Bread truck. It is one of those rumors one hears."

"Bimbo Bread. You are certain of this?"

"Si. But it is a joke."

The elevator dinged, and the doors opened onto the sixth floor.

"We shall see who ends up laughing," she said, leaving them to exchange glances and uplifted eyebrows.

At the door to Room 67, Officer Mazatl used the butt of her gun to knock. She struck the panel so hard it shivered. Then she flipped the pistol around until the muzzle was pointed directly at whoever would answer.

The door flew open. It was Remo. Surprisingly, he was unfazed by the sight of her pistol.

"Who is it?" the squeaky voice of Chiun called from behind Remo.

"It's Lupe," Remo called back. "Told you I recognized her knock."

"Send her away."

" I have a pistol," Lupe warned.

"Down here, everyone has a pistol," Remo muttered. "Come in, as long as you're here."

Lupe shut the door behind her. The TV set was on, tuned to an English broadcast on CNN. The old one called Chiun lay on one bed, looking wan. Remo threw himself onto a chair and focused on the TV.

"How are you, old one?" Lupe asked Chiun.

Nodding to the pistol in her hand, Chiun warned, "if you discharge that thing in here, I will kill you."

Lupe almost laughed, but it was not a time for laughter.

"Why did you chase that bread truck?" Lupe demanded of Remo.

"What truck?" Remo asked, filling a water glass with Tehuacan brand mineral water.

"The Bimbo Bread truck with the Vice-President driving it," she said quickly.

Remo stopped pouring. He looked up. He looked to the one called Chiun. The old one looked back.

They shrugged in unison like two puppets attached to the same strings.

Remo spoke first. "Tell us what you know about the Vice-President," he said.

"Only that he is supposed to be in Mexico City."

"How do you know this?" Chiun demanded coldly.

"Everyone in Mexico City is talking of this."

"They are!" Remo said.

"But they think it is a joke. You do not think it is a joke, do you?"

"Look, can we level with you?" Remo asked.

"Remo," Chiun warned, "we are in a strange land. We can trust no one."

"Silencio, papacito!" Lupe hissed. Chiun's face wrinkled as if stung. "Go ahead, Senor Yones."

"Call me Remo," Remo said. "Look, I'm kinda glad you're here. We've been watching TV, hoping to get some news on the situation."

"What situation?"

"You know about Air Force One going down."

"I saw the wreck, same as you."

"Well, what you don't know is that the President was carried out of the wreckage alive. Never mind by whom. The important thing is that the Vice-President, or someone who looks exactly like him, rescued him."

"Are you saying that your President is in this city as well?"

"We think so," Remo admitted. "We hope so. And we're trying to find him. We thought we had him, but the truck got away from us."

"No wonder. You were on foot. You should have stayed with me in the car."

"Spilt milk," Remo said.

"Que?"

"It's an expression," Remo said.

"Do not believe him," Chiun interposed. "He sings the same song to me."

"Why do you not check with your embassy people?" Lupe demanded. "Would your President not seek refuge there?"

"That's the tricky part," Remo explained. "We're not sure the Vice-President is up to any good. This could all be part of a plot."

"It is a plot," Chiun intoned feebly from the bed. "The President of Vice's plot."

Lupe frowned. "These things do not happen in American politics," she suggested.

"That's what we thought," Remo sighed. He took a sip of water.

"They happen in all politics," Chiun said firmly.

"So what do you say?" Remo asked Lupe. "Give us a hand?"

"You are in my charge. We will work together as long as you understand that Mexican jurisdiction applies." She pronounced it "yurisdiction."

"Anything you say. Are you ready, Little Father?"

"He is too ill to accompany us," Lupe said firmly.

The old Oriental's eyes narrowed to slits at that remark. He pressed his thin-fingered hands with their impossibly long nails into the bedclothes as if testing the mattress strength.

Without warning, he was suddenly in the air. He executed a smart back flip, landing behind Lupe. She whirled, her gun still in hand.

By the time she turned all the way around, the old one was no longer there and her gun had left her fingers.

She was aware only of her suddenly stinging fingers and a simultaneous flash of crimson silk.

She turned again, and the old Asian was standing there offering her gun back.

Officer Guadalupe Mazatl accepted the pistol in stunned silence. It felt lighter than it should. She broke open the cylinder and saw the chambers were vacant.

"Where are my bullets?" Officer Mazatl sputtered.

"Perhaps you left them in your other gun?" the one called Chiun sniffed.

"I have them," Remo said as he stood up.

He showed her his fist, opening it. Six brass bullets lay in his palm.

"I may need those," she sputtered.

"We don't like wild shooting when we go to work," Remo said, brushing past her for the door, "and we're going to work right now."

Officer Guadalupe Mazatl followed them out into the corridor, trying to reholster her pistol. She was so nervous it took her four tries to get the barrel to go in properly.

Out on the curb, Remo Williams got behind the wheel one step ahead of Lupe Mazatl.

"This is an official vehicle," she snapped. "My vehicle."

"Then you can sit up in front with me," Remo said politely. "That okay with you, Chiun?"

The Master of Sinanju nodded and eased into the back seat. Remo put his hand out the window for the keys.

Officer Mazatl folded her arms angrily.

"Trade you for some bullets?" Remo suggested.

"No."

Remo peered under the dash. "Maybe I can hotwire it, then."

"Very well," Officer Mazatl said reluctantly.

She got in and they made the exchange.

As Remo started the engine, Officer Mazatl looked into her open palm. "You gave me only two bullets," she complained.

"I don't remember talking numbers," Remo said, smiling as he pulled into traffic.

"You think you are so smug," Lupe spat.

"Just doing what comes naturally," Remo retorted. "So where do we go first?"

"Must drive. I will ask questions. First, did either of you see the license plate of the Bimbo Bread truck?"

"Not me," Remo admitted. He called over his shoulder, "You, Chiun?"

"Yes," Chiun said in a tired squeak. "It had some numbers on it. I do not remember what they were."

"Do you remember the letters under the numbers?" Lupe asked.

"Possibly."

"Did they say 'Mex Mex' or 'D. F. Mex'?"

"They said 'D. F. Mex.' I do not know what that could mean."

"It means the truck is registered here in the Distrito Federal, not in the state of Mexico, which surrounds Mexico City."

"That narrows the search area, huh?" Remo suggested.

Lupe picked up a CB-style dashboard microphone. "It would until you understand that Mexico City is the largest city in the world."

"Oh, right. Forgot about that," Remo said.

Lupe began speaking rapid words in Spanish, asking questions and getting answers as Remo tooled his way through the colorful Zona Rosa.

"Take the Paseo de la Reforma," she said suddenly.

"Glad to," Remo shot back. "What is it and where is it?"

She replaced the mike. "Two streets more, then right."

Remo went up a street called Hamburgo and found himself on the same broad avenue where he had earlier lost the bread truck.

"We are passing the American embassy," Lupe said suddenly.

"Is that so?" Remo said, glancing at the flag-draped building.

"Did you not tell me that you worked for the American embassy?" Lupe said harshly.

Remo's face assumed a guileless expression. "We do. Sort of. We're cultural attaches."

"That means CIA."

"No flies on you," Remo said.

"Que?"

"Another expression. The rough translation is, yes, I do work for the CIA. I even have sortie ID on me. Satisfied?"

"No."

"So where to now?" Remo asked casually.

"Follow Reforma," Lupe said. "I am told a Bimbo Bread truck has been found parked near the Zona Hotelera. It has been abandoned."

"Damn," Remo said softly. He pressed the accelerator to the floor. "That's our only lead."

They skirted Chapultepec Park on one side and the Museum of Anthropology with its battered stone idol on the other, and whizzed past several more humanistic statues Remo didn't recognize.

"The truck will be found on the left, past this next crossroad," Lupe said, pointing.

"We call them intersections," Remo said, slowing down.

Beyond Chapultepec Park, in the shadow of the Hotel Nikko, was a shopping center. They found the truck there, guarded by two stone-faced local policemen toting shotguns.

Officer Mazatl led Remo and Chiun up to the truck, saying, "These norteamericanos are with me."

The cops withdrew under Lupe's hard stare and superior credentials. She threw open the back doors.

Loaves of bread tumbled out, several of them torn open and spilling half-eaten slices of thin-sliced bread.

Remo grabbed one bag as it tumbled out. It was crushed, as if stepped or sat upon.

"Looks like someone was in back, in the dark, having himself a pretty plain meal," Remo suggested.

"The true President," Chiun hissed.

Lupe went around to the driver's seat and threw open the door. She looked under the cushions, felt the floorboards, and came back, her face unhappy.

"There are no traces of anyone," she said, sullenvoiced.

"Assuming this is the right truck," Remo asked her intently, "where could they have gone?"

Lupe looked around. "Into any of these places," she said, gesturing toward the cluster of boutiques, theaters, and nightclubs around them. "Or"-her other arm indicated the other side of the Paseo de la Reforma, which hummed with cars and buses and mini-vans--"perhaps into the hotel district. The best hotels in the city are to be found there."

"I don't suppose you could organize a building-to-building search?" Remo wondered, daunted by the task.

"I do not think so," Lupe added unhappily. "I cannot get the local comandante to help us. With these burros we must plow."

"What's that?"

"A-how you say?-expression."

Remo winced. "How about these guys?" he suggested, pointing to the police officers standing out of hearing.

"I will speak with them."

Lupe engaged the two officers in earnest conversation and returned to Remo and Chiun.

"They say they are under orders to guard this truck, and not to interfere," she reported.

"Interfere with what?" Remo demanded.

"They refused to say."

"Is something going on?" Remo wondered.

"Something is always going on in Mexico City. It is a cesspool of intrigues. That is why I work in Tampico. There is less money to be had in Tampico, but also less intrigue. I do not understand what is going on."

"Well, nothing to do but to fan out and look around," Remo said morosely. "It's all we have." He turned to Chiun. "Are you up to this, Little Father?"

"No. But anything to get us out of this land of unbreathable air and unfeminine women."

"What did he say?" Lupe demanded.

"Don't sweat it," Remo returned. "He says that about all women-unless they're Korean."

"He is Korean, then?"

"Can't you tell?" Remo asked, without humor.

They split up and went through the various establishments, finally rendezvousing beside the bread truck an hour later, empty-handed and unhappy.

"Well," Remo said, looking around. "Do we do this in quadrants, zones, or what?"

Officer Lupe Mazatl's answer froze in her mouth.

An olive military helicopter suddenly passed overhead, flying slowly and sweeping around. In the distance came the caterwauling of sirens.

The helicopter descended on a strip of grass near the Hotel Nikko.

"That resembles Comandante Odio's helicopter," Lupe said slowly.

"Just what I was thinking," Remo said. "Let's check it out."

Traffic on the Reforma was so heavy in both directions-it seemed to consist of three mini-vans for every single passenger automobile-that the only safe way to cross was a footbridge constructed of loose planks laid on a framework of orange-painted pipes.

It turned out to be only slightly safer than crossing on a strand of spider silk. The framework hummed and rattled in sympathy with the traffic below. The planking was as loose as the teeth in a centuries-old skull.

Eventually they made it over to the other side.

They rounded a corner past a seemingly unfinished statue of a scowling Winston Churchill and into the back entrance of the Nikko, only five paces behind Comandante Oscar Odio's swaggering figure.

Remo caught Lupe's eye and put his finger in front of his lips. She frowned but went along.

They hung back while Comandante Odio strode up to the reception desk and said loudly in Spanish, "This lobby is under DFS control. No one must be allowed to enter or leave."

"Si, Comandante," a clerk said meekly.

"Which one of you is Emilio?"

A man in a powder-blue coat lifted a hand. His eyes were frightened.

"In what room does your unauthorized guest reside?" Odio's voice was a silken hiss.

"Sixteen-forty-four, senor.''

"Sounds good to me," Remo muttered to Chiun, after the Master of Sinanju translated the exchange. To Lupe he said, "Just follow us."

Remo and Chiun flitted through the lobby, going from sofa to plant, unseen by Comandante Odio. Lupe moved between them, feeling very exposed. She was astonished when they reached the elevators unseen.

Remo stabbed the up button. The doors opened instantly, taking them all by surprise. They rode the elevator to the sixteenth floor in silence.

When the doors separated, Remo stepped out into the corridor.

"The coast looks clear," he said, waving them on.

"What coast?" Lupe hissed. "This is a hotel."

"Expression," Remo said wearily.

They crept to the door of 1644. Remo noticed Lupe extracting her pistol from its holster.

"Put that thing away before I break it over your head," he said harshly. " I don't want any wild shooting if the President's around."

"But it is the only weapon we have among us," Lupe snapped back.

At that, the Master of Sinanju lifted a single gleaming fingernail to Lupe's nose. It hovered there an instant, so close to her face that Lupe's eyes crossed. Then it sliced down with guillotine swiftness.

The leading half-inch of Lupe Mazatl's pistol snapped off, along with the gun sight. Chiun caught it. He presented her with the snapped-off section of the gun barrel in silence.

Officer Mazatl spent a disbelieving second putting the two sections together. They fitted perfectly, but did not adhere.

Swallowing several times, she returned her pistol to its holster.

"Comprendo?" Remo asked.

"The proper word," Lupe said hoarsely, "is comprende."

"All my Spanish comes from Cisco Kid reruns," Remo said. "Now, get set. We're going in."

Chiun set himself on one side of the door. At a gesture from Remo, Lupe stationed herself on the other.

"You will go in last, old one," she told Chiun.

The Master of Sinanju snorted derisively. "Each monkey to his rope," he said. Lupe frowned at the familiar saying.

Remo pressed the heel of his hand to the electronic-lock assembly. He drew his elbow back and then rammed forward.

The sound that the fracturing assembly made was not loud. But the door itself shot off its hinges like a cannon ball.

Lupe plunged in instantly. To her astonishment, she was still several paces behind Remo and the old Korean. They stopped suddenly, blocking her view.

"Hold it right there!" Remo shouted.

"Make no rash moves, traitor!" Chiun cried.

"What is happening?" Lupe demanded, unable to see past their backs in the narrow foyer.

The bed creaked. Then there was a whisk of a sound, like a sword coming out of its scabbard. Lupe reflexively reached for her pistol again.

Then the fight began. Something flashed past Remo's shoulder. He ducked under the blur and Chiun moved in, kicking high.

A man dropped faster than seemed humanly possible under Chiun's leaping crimson figure. There came another flash of steel, like a sword blade in motion. A cry.

And something shot past Lupe's head with the velocity of a rocket-propelled grenade. She turned around. Embedded in the bathroom door was the laminated maple head of a driver.

Lupe whirled back, and beheld the stunning sight of the Vice-President of the United States lifting a headless golf club to defend himself as Remo and Chiun closed in from opposite sides.

"Watch it, Chiun," Remo warned. "He's faster than you'd think with that thing."

"It is only because we are slowed by this infernal bad air."

"Just watch it."

The Vice-President looked at his maimed club. Without a flicker of his fixed expression, he tossed it aside and extracted a sand wedge. He faced them boldly, his grin like a photograph.

"If you think you can hurt us with a sand wedge, you're crazy," Remo said. "Now, put that down and we'll talk. It's not too late to straighten this out."

"Isn't it?" the voice of the Vice-President said as he took the steel sand-wedge head in one hand. He exerted momentary pressure. The metal went grunk! loudly, and when he let go, the head had a sudden sharp edge.

Remo blinked. "Where'd you learn to do that?" he demanded, dumbfounded.

The edge sliced for Remo's face. He faded back, lifting his right hand to parry the next blow, while Chiun slipped around behind their assailant.

"No good, pal," Remo said. "But go ahead. Take your Mulligan."

The club came back for another blow. Good, Remo thought. He's falling for it.

Then the crinkled blue eyes shifted right.

The figure of the Vice-President shifted like a spun top. Remo couldn't believe his speed. Or was it that his own senses and reflexes were so slowed by pollution inhalation? he wondered.

The gleaming edge snapped around. It went whisk! whack! furiously, narrowly missing Chiun on both swings.

"Be careful, Little Father," Remo hissed. "He's really, really fast." "No one is faster than a Master of Sinanju," Chiun cried, and his nails began weaving a defensive pattern before him until their reflection became a silvershard pattern of light.

The club descended. It bounced off the whirling barrier. The Vice-President lifted it again, this time with both hands.

That gave Remo his opportunity. He plunged in, his hands reaching for the Vice-President's smoothly tonsured neck.

The sand wedge broke off on the second blow. Remo's fingertips brushed the Vice-President's neck hairs for a brief instant.

And then, so quickly that he couldn't believe it, he was holding empty air, and his momentum was carrying him directly into the path of Chiun's deadly flashing nails!

Chapter 19

DFS Comandante Oscar Odio waited impatiently in the Hotel Nikko lobby for his blue-uniformed agents to arrive. Their sirens filled the air, but they had not yet arrived. He had contacted them as soon as he reached Mexico City airspace, obtaining instant use of a contingent of agents-no questions asked from the Distrito Federal comandante, with whom Odio had a working relationship. It was that simple.

The unit burst into the lobby from all doors like busy blue locusts.

Comandante Odio gave quick orders, stationing men at every exit.

"The remainder of you will follow me!" he cried, brandishing his pistol. "Vamos!"

They surged up the stairs because it seemed like the most macho thing to do, even though it was a sixteen-floor climb.

By the time they reached their floor, they were perspiring and out of breath. Even men accustomed to the city's rarefied air suffered its effects.

Officer Guadalupe Mazatl stood blinking at the impossibility of it all.

She saw three gringos, Remo and Chiun and apparently the American Vice-President, fighting like demons with fire in their veins and steel in their bones. Their hands moved like quicksilver.

It was not a battle of men, but of gods, much like the old gods of old Mexico to whom Officer Lupe Mazatl had prayed to as a child in the Catholic church whose altar displayed the Virgin of Guadalupe, after whom she was named, but behind which were hidden the true gods of Mexico, Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca, and Coatlicue.

They were swifter than the hummingbird, more ferocious than the ocelot. Even the Vice-President, with his ridiculous weapons. Lupe could hear the air crack as his club tore through it. He was beating in all directions at once, like some out-of-control machine.

As she watched, the conflict moved swiftly from attack to joined battle to resolution.

No sooner had the deadly sand wedge broken off against a spiderweb of light woven by the one called Chiun than Remo moved in to take the Vice-President by the back of the neck.

Lupe blinked. It seemed as if Remo had the man for certain. And in that blink, the Vice-President was suddenly gone, as if he had turned invisible.

And Remo, unable to check his lunge, was falling into that deadly web of light.

So many things happened in that next breathless instant that Lupe was never sure in what order they transpired.

The shouting at the door behind her first drew her attention. But the crash of shattering glass pulled her head back around again. She blinked rapidly, unable to comprehend what was happening.

"What is going on here?" a familiar voice shouted arrogantly.

Lupe was yanked to her feet and shoved aside by a in-rushing tide of men.

"You!" the voice blurted.

"And you," Lupe said, recognizing Comandante Odio.

"What is going on here!" Odio demanded. "It's the Vice-President," Remo shouted, his voice twisting like metal in a forge. "He committed suicide!"

"What!" Odio said, racing past Lupe. His IFS forces followed him. Two hung back, seizing Lupe.

"Look!" Remo said, pointing out the big picture window, whose frame was festooned with dangling glass teeth.

Odio rushed to the pane. He looked down.

"Madre!" he shouted hoarsely. "It is true!"

Far below, sprawled on the circular driveway facing the Paseo de la Reforma, lay a tiny human figure, a golf bag across his back, spilling various woods and irons.

Odio turned to Remo. "It is the Vice-President?" he demanded.

"He jumped," Reno repeated, sick of voice. "What made him jump?"

"What I would like to know is, what made him so strong?" Chiun put in. He leaned out the window. His nose wrinkled at the sting of foul air in his delicate nostrils. Just as quickly, he withdrew.

"You are all under arrest!" Comandante Odio said swiftly.

"On what charge?" Remo wanted to know.

"The murder of your own Vice-President, asasino!"

"It was self-defense," the Master of Sinanju said haughtily. " I challenge you to prove differently."

"I will not have to," Odio retorted. "Here in my country, a man is judged guilty until proved innocent. As you will be if I take you into custody."

Remo pulled himself away from the window.

" If?" he asked shortly.

"It is possible an arrangement could be reached," Odio said smoothly.

Officer Lupe Mazatl spoke up. "What did I tell you about this hombre? The DFS all drink from the same little jug."

"Silencio, woman!" Odio spat. He turned to Remo. " I would trade you your freedom for a certain thing I require. "

"How much?" Remo asked in contempt. He reached into his pocket.

"Oh, it is not a matter of money, but intelligence."

"He thinks you are the Wizard of Ooze Remo," Chiun sniffed. "Do not give him your brain, under any circumstance."

"No, no," Odio said. " I desire information. That is all. "

Remo pulled his hand from his pocket. "Yeah?"

"The whereabouts of your presidente."

"What makes you think I know that?" Remo asked suspiciously.

"I know that he is in Mexico," Odio said with ill-disguised pride.

"So you were listening in," Remo said.

"Si.'

"On my conversation with Smith?" Remo prodded.

"Si. with Smith. Your CIA agent contact, no doubt. The DFS has a working relationship with the CIA. Smith is a muy popular name at the CIA. I myself have met many CIA Smiths."

"Good guess," Remo said, his eyes narrowing. His glance flicked to the Master of Sinanju. Chiun nodded imperceptibly.

Remo smiled easily. "Okay. I don't want to be thrown into a Mexican jail. I hear conditions are pretty terrible-unless you're a drug dealer and can afford a bridal suite."

"You are an intelligent gringo," Odio said, his tense expression relaxing. "Now I give you my word. Provide me with the information and I will set you free. But you must leave the country immediately.

"Sure thing," Remo said casually. "He's right behind you. In the closet."

Comandante Oscar Odio's eyes went wide with surprise. Eagerly he turned to give the order to search the closet to his borrowed DFS unit.

His mouth opened. His arm raised. The arm froze and his mouth locked, as a stiffened finger stabbed at the nape of his neck, shattering vertebrae like ice cubes. The disintegrating bone severed his spinal cord so swiftly that Comandante Oscar Odio had only time to exhale the first breathy consonant of his order. His brain died before his face hit the rug.

The others failed to see the blow that felled him. They were too busy dying. The Master of Sinanju crushed a convenient kidney with one fist and jellied testicles with a high-kicking sandaled foot.

Remo waded in to help, pitching one DFS agent out the shattered window and lifting another off his feet bodily. He threw that one toward the door, where the remaining DFS agents had Officer Mazatl in custody.

"Duck!" Remo said quickly.

"Que?" they said in unison.

"Too late," Remo said as the flying body bowled Officer Lupe Mazatl and her captors out into the hall.

Remo leapt after them, and quickly crushed the DFS men's windpipes with the heel of one Italian loafer. He gave Officer Mazatl a hand, bringing her to her feet with a smooth retraction of his arm.

"You killed them all," Officer Lupe Mazatl said in a dazed voice.

"And on our worst day, too," Remo said. He plunged back into the room, where the Master of Sinanju was opening the closet. It was empty.

"Too bad," Remo said, looking in. "I had my hopes he'd have been stashed there."

"You killed five DFS officers with your bare hands," Officer Mazatl said, her voice tight and sick.

"They knew too much," Remo said. "Come on. We've got to go to Plan B."

"What is Plan B?" Lupe wanted to know as she was pulled by one hand out the door and to the elevators.

"Be prepared to improvise," Remo said bitterly. "First we check the Vice-President. Maybe he has something on him that'll help."

"Such as?"

"A safe-deposit-box key or a bus-terminal-locker tag," Remo growled unhappily. "I don't know. Look, I just had the Vice-President of the United States attack me and then take a header out an open window. I'm having a terrible day."

"Do not worry," Chiun put it. "I will vouch for you with Smith. None of this would have happened had Smith not sent us after ferocious geese."

"That's going to mean a lot, if we don't locate the President," Remo said sourly.

The elevator brought them to the lobby, where they were greeted by two DFS officers with drawn pistols.

The officers said, "Alto!" and Remo returned their greeting by cracking their pelvises with a swift upkick to each man.

He left them writhing on the floor, not exactly dead, but in no mood to celebrate life.

The lobby was free of other human encumbrances. In fact, it was deserted.

"It is not like one such as Odio not to have the lobby guarded by more men than those two," Lupe said as they made for the main entrance.

"I'm not complaining," Remo growled.

Out in the circular driveway, they discovered why the lobby was empty. Everyone was out there-DFS agents and Nikko employees alike-standing in the broken glass and staring at a body.

Remo pushed through the crowds. A DFS officer pushed back. Without looking, Remo casually batted with the back of his hand. The agent's head jumped off his shoulders with a report like a mushy cannon shot and struck a nearby bronze horse.

That got the crowd's attention. They backed off with gape-mouthed respect.

Remo knelt beside the body. It was dressed in a blue DFS uniform. It was the one he had pitched out the window. "Damn!" he breathed.

Jumping to his feet, Remo raced through the crowd. Everywhere he went, a path was cleared for him. A few people panicked and ran off. There were no other bodies.

"I don't see the V. P. !" Remo called to Chiun. "Where is he?"

Officer Lupe Mazatl demanded the same question of the crowd. One of the DFS officers meekly replied, and she translated for Remo's benefit.

"He says there is only one body, that one."

"Well, I saw the Vice-President lying right here," Remo snapped. "He didn't just get up and walk away. "

Lupe put the question to the DFS agent.

"He says that they heard a crash of glass," she said, translating the man's voluable Spanish. "They came out and saw nothing but a man with a golf bag walking away."

Remo blinked. "Then what?"

"Then the DFS officer fell from the sky."

Remo looked to Chiun. "Is she translating it right?" he wanted to know.

The Master of Sinanju nodded. "The President of Vice got up and walked away. But it is not possible."

"Not possible?" Remo snorted. "It's ridiculous."

Officer Mazatl put in her two cents. " I have read that it is a great puzzle why your presidente picked that man to be his second."

"Yeah?" Remo said slowly.

"A man who can fall sixteen stories and walk away is a man. What we call mucho hombre. It is no wonder he was chosen."

Remo blinked some more. "That almost makes sense," he said.

"Enough," Chiun snapped. He turned to the DFS agent and rattled off a string of Spanish questions.

"He says our quarry walked in that direction, toward Chapultepec Park," Chiun translated.

Remo looked across the Paseo de la Reforma, where the thick green of the park shivered in the passing hurricane of traffic.

"Then we start our search there!" Remo said. "Come on!"

No one got in their way as they ran for the side street, Calzada Arquimedes, and to the Reforma.

They stood on the corner of Arquimedes and the Reforma, beside the glowering statue of Winston Churchill, who looked as if he were emerging from a mud slide. Comandante Odio's helicopter sat on a nearby traffic island, its rotors drooped.

The traffic was like a fast-moving wall that spewed noxious fumes in their faces.

Almost immediately, Remo became aware of the tight band encircling his head.

He looked to the Master of Sinanju.

"Oh-oh, I'm starting to feel woozy again," he said.

" I too," said Chiun.

"It is because you have been exerting yourselves," Lupe told them. "You must not run."

"We gotta," Remo said. "Finding the Vice-President is our responsibility. He's our only lead to the President. "

"If you faint, then, do not blame me," Lupe said flatly.

"Little Father?" Remo said.

Chiun lifted a wise finger. "We will not run," he announced. "But we will walk very fast."

"Maybe we'd better split up?" Remo suggested.

"Yes. We will take opposite sides of the street," Chiun said. " I will allow you to cross the traffic," he added.

"Thanks," Remo said dryly. "Let's try to maintain eye contact until one of us spots something. It's gonna take both of us to catch the Vice-President-especially in our present condition." Remo turned to Lupe. "Mind staying with him?"

"Of course not, I prefer it," Lupe said tartly.

Remo looked back and saw the orange-pipe footbridge. He used it to reach the other side of the Reforma.

Once there, Remo walked along the broad shady sidewalk, keeping pace with Chiun and Guadalupe on the other side.

On his side, Chapultepec Park was bound by an iron fence. As Remo walked, he noticed bushes sculptured into the shapes of animals-a ram, a llama, and a particularly joyful-looking hippopotamus-on the other side of the fence. A little farther on, he spied a miniature railroad through the thick foliage. Probably the children's section of the park, he concluded.

Through the trees beyond, Remo saw no sign of the Vice-President, who by all accounts should be lying in a pool of blood and glass back in front of the hotel.

He couldn't figure it out. What was the deal here? Like many Americans, Remo had been mystified by the selection of an obscure Hoosier senator to be elevated to the vice-presidency. There was obviously more to the man than anyone had thought, if today's events meant anything.

Maybe that was it, Remo thought. Maybe he was the President's secret weapon. This President had once considered shutting down CURE. But if that was the case, why, after rescuing him, had the Vice-President hidden the President?

Across the Reforma, the Master of Sinanju crossed a side street to a brick-paved park dominated by a tall bronze statue of a man in military uniform. Probably some Mexican general, Remo thought. He walked on.

He came to a huge wrought-iron gate. It was closed. Remo looked back to the other side of the Reforma, saw the Master of Sinanju stopped before the bronze statue, head cocked inquisitively, and waved. Chiun did not look in his direction. He seemed fascinated by the statue for some reason. Probably Lupe was explaining its historical importance.

"Great," he muttered. "We're only trying to rescue the President, and those two are playing tourist and native guide."

Remo hesitated. The thrum of traffic was like a wall of sound. No point in trying to yell. He decided to go over the fence, knowing that if the Vice-President had entered the park, every minute counted.

The Master of Sinanju walked slowly, deliberately. His magnificent lungs drew in empowering oxygen. The trouble was, it tasted like nitrogen coming in, and with each exhalation, Chiun felt as if he were venting precious life-giving oxygen.

"This is a dirty place," he said, giving his opinion of Mexico City to the Mexican woman named Guadalupe. "It is no wonder that my ancestors had nothing to do with the Aztecs."

"Were I in your country, I would not criticize it," Guadalupe said sullenly.

"You would not like my country. The air is breathable."

They came to a red-brick park on the corner of Reforma and Calzada Mahatma Gandhi. There stood a more-than-lifesize bronze statue of a man, hands clasped behind his back, on a dais. The edge of the dais bore a name: JOSIP BROZ TITO.

Chiun walked past the statue of the unimportant non-Korean and through the park, where stylized grasshoppers perched on stone hieroglyphs.

Something silvery gleamed in the bushes directly behind the bronze statue. The Master of Sinanju abruptly swerved toward that unexpected gleam.

"What are you doing?" Guadalupe asked as the Master of Sinanju bent at the waist and reached into the bushes.

He stood up, frowning at the sand wedge in his hand.

"What?" Lupe gasped.

"The bag and remaining clubs are also here," Chiun said solemnly.

Guadalupe joined him. "He must have cast them aside," she ventured.

Ignoring her, Chiun looked around the park.

"His clothes are also here," Guadalupe said. "Why would he discard his clothes?" she asked in puzzlement, holding up a brown jacket by its collar.

The Master of Sinanju did not reply. He had found the shoes and socks that had been discarded behind a tree. Shoes did not always leave imprints, but bare feet did-even on brick, the outline of perspiration could be seen by eyes that had been sharpened by Sinanju training.

The Master of Sinanju did not find any perspiration imprints when he examined the brick sidewalk, however. He floated back to the bushes, where the Mexican woman stood, a befuddled expression on her impassive brown face.

There were heavy footprints in the soft dirt, he saw. They led directly to the statue's austere dark bronze back.

His facial wrinkles multiplying in thought, Chiun went around to the front. He looked up. His eyes narrowed. It was merely a statue, its eyes lifted skyward.

Chiun looked down. Flecks of dirt collected at the statue's booted feet. No crumbs of soil lay outside the circumference of the dais, however. And no perspiration imprints were visible on it.

Guadalupe joined him, regarding the statue. They stood in silence for many moments, Chiun's hands withdrawing into his sleeves, which joined over his stomach.

Finally the Master of Sinanju put a question to her.

"How long has this statue been at this spot?" he asked softly, not taking his eyes off its metallic face.

"I do not know," Lupe admitted. "I am in Mexico City only from time to time. Why?"

"Have you seen it here before?"

"Si. It has been here several years, in recognition of the close ties between my government and this man, who formerly headed Yugoslavia."

Chiun stepped up to the dais. One fingernail lifted cautiously. He tapped the bronze once. It rang faintly-a solidly metallic ring. The true and correct ring of bronze.

"What do you do?" Guadalupe asked slowly.

"Hush," Chiun admonished. He brushed a cloud of hair away from one delicate ear and placed it to the statue's stomach, the highest point he could monitor without lifting up on tiptoe.

Guadalupe watched him with growing concern. She had heard of tourists fainting in the thin air, who had to be hospitalized during the winter months, when the natural bowl that was Mexico City trapped inversions along with the terrible pollution.

But she had never before heard of a gringo who had become crazed by the bad air. And this old one was not even, strictly speaking, a gringo.

As she watched, the Master of Sinanju's brow crinkled. His parchment face gathered like drying papier-mache. His tiny mouth popped open suddenly.

He stepped back abruptly. "I hear sounds," he whispered in a surprised voice.

"What kind of sounds?"

"Metal sounds."

"It is made of bronce," Lupe said reasonably. "Of course you would hear metal sounds."

"Not like these," Chiun said, regarding the statue with suspicious eyes. "These are clicks and hums, the sounds of gears and other machine workings."

"But it is a statue. It is hollow."

"It is not hollow, although it may be a statue."

At the sound of those words, the statue, whose head had been tilted slightly upward toward the brownish sky, suddenly looked down. Its bronze neck creaked with the impossible movement.

"Dios!" Guadalupe gasped. She stepped back without thinking, her hand reaching for her pistol.

The eyes of the statue, with its hollow shadowed pupils, moved, showing a sudden dark gleam, like obsidian lenses. And the sculptured mouth dropped open.

The statue spoke, evoking a shriek from Guadalupe Mazatl.

"Why do you pursue me?" Josip Broz Tito asked, his voice a conglomeration of raspy metallic vowels and consonants, like dozens of hasps and files sawing one another, trying to make articulate music.

"It speaks!" Lupe gasped. "The statue is speaking!"

"Because you are the Vice-President, statue," the Master of Sinanju said in a reasonable tone. He did not understand what would possess a statue to talk, but he knew that when faced with the unknown, a wise assassin did not show fear. He repressed it.

"I am not the Vice-President now," the statue of Josip Broz Tito said through gnashing teeth.

"True," returned the Master of Sinanju carefully. His eyes narrowed. There was something familiar about the way this statue spoke. Not the tortured metallic voice, but the too-simple manner of phrasing. He pressed on.

"There is another reason I pursue you," Chiun added firmly.

"I would like to know that reason."

"Why?"

"It is important to me."

"Why is it important to you, O statue?" the Master of Sinanju asked carefully.

" It is important to my survival."

"Ahhh," said the Master of Sinanju, and he knew what the statue truly was.

But knowing the truth and admitting it were different matters. The Master of Sinanju preferred not to let the statue know that he knew what he knew.

"It is important to me to know that the President is safe," Chiun said simply.

"He is safe," the statue said.

"How do I know this?"

"Because I am not lying," said the statue with invincible logic.

" I see," mused the Master of Sinanju. "It is also important that I see this for myself. It is my responsibility to see that the President is returned to his own country in safety. He has many enemies in this land."

"This is important to me as well, meat machine."

The Master of Sinanju let the odd description pass. It only confirmed what he already knew.

"Perhaps we can assist each other in our mutual goal, O strange statue."

"Explain."

"Take me to the President, and I will conduct him to his home. He will be safe with me, and you will be relieved of your burden."

"No."

"Why not?"

"I must accompany the President wherever he goes."

"Why is this necessary if I give you my word that he will be safe?"

"Because I do not trust your word. And I must be with the President at all times ."

"Why?"

"I am safe with him. He is well-protected. The meat machines work very hard to ensure his survival. All persons and machines around him are ensured of their survival. My survival will therefore be assured so long as we are inseparable."

"Well-spoken," said Chiun. "But you are not with him now."

"This is a temporary necessity," Josip Broz Tito grated. "Evil meat machines are attempting to terminate him. Until I have devised a safe method to return him to his habitation, I have placed him in a secure place.

"Where, O statue?"

"I will not tell you. You may mean harm to him. I cannot allow that, for it threatens my survival."

"I understand perfectly, O mysterious statue whose true nature is unknown to me," Chiun said broadly. "Perhaps I can help you in your plight."

"Explain."

"What are you doing?" Lupe demanded. "You cannot bargain with a statue. It does not live."

" I will offer you safe passage back to America," Chiun went on, ignoring the outburst, "you and the true President, where you will be safe."

The statue hesitated. Its mouth stood open, but no grinding words issued forth.

"More information," it said at last.

"I work for the President's government," the Master of Sinanju said proudly. "I cannot tell you how, for it is a secret. But I will report to my emperor, and tender to him any offer you wish to make. I am certain he will barter your survival for the President's safety. "

"This would solve my dilemma," the statue said rackingly.

"If you will remain here, I will make contact with my emperor," said Chiun.

A bronze arm lifted in warning. "No. I do not trust you. We will meet in another place."

Chiun nodded. "Where?"

"I do not know the names of places in this city."

The statue's head swiveled like a football on a bronze spit. It groaned horribly.

Guadalupe Mazatl recoiled from the statue's inhuman regard.

"You, indigenous female meat machine. Name a place where there are no others like you in great numbers."

"Teotihuacan," Lupe sputtered. "It is a ruined city. To the north. Very large. Very empty. That would be a place such as you wish."

"In three hours," the statue intoned, "I will await you in Teotihaucun."

"Done," said the Master of Sinanju, executing a quick bow.

And then the Master of Sinanju beheld a sight such as he had never before seen in his many decades in the West.

The bronze statue lifted one foot. One bronze boot wrenched free of its base, leaving a shiny irregular patch. The other foot snapped loose.

Then, arms creaking, legs bending to the tortured shriek and snarl of bronze, the statue of Josip Broz Tito walked off its pedestal and marched away, stiff and ungainly as an old stop-motion mechanical man.

It stamped up the Paseo de la Reforma back in the direction of the Hotel Nikko.

"Increible!" Guadalupe said hoarsely. She made a slow sign of the cross, but the words she muttered were ancient Nauatl, and the gods she invoked were of old Mexico, not the East.

The Master of Sinanju watched as the bronze figure, its head jerking right, then left, then right again as it walked, went to the waiting helicopter and climbed aboard.

The rotors started turning. The engines whined.

And then the helicopter lifted free and flew north.

"What was it?" asked Guadalupe Mazatl when she found her voice again.

"It is an evil thing I had thought long dead," intoned the Master of Sinanju bitterly. He watched the bright dragonfly that was the late Comandante Odio's helicopter disappear beyond the drab gray slab of new brutalism architecture that was the Hotel Nikko.

Chapter 20

Bill Holland listened mesmerized to the cockpit voice recorder.

It was, first of all, amazing that the CVR had even survived the crash. Air Force One's wreckage had been extracted from the sierra by helicopter skycrane and taken to a warehouse in Tampico for preliminary analysis and final extraction of the flight crew, who were inextricably mingled with the compacted cockpit.

It was in the course of that messy task that the CVR was uncovered, dented, but its tape loop intact.

Bill Holland personally flew it back to Washington for analysis.

He hit the rewind button and settled back in the cherrywood conference room at the National Transportation Safety Board headquarters in Washington.

"It doesn't make sense," a voice was saying. It was the human-factors expert.

"We can account for it," Holland said in a testy voice. "Let's just listen again."

He found the point on the tape just before impact and let the tape run.

The voices of the flight crew were tense. The pilot was saying, "It's like she's trying to save herself."

The copilot's voice came on then, controlled, only slightly warped by concern. It might have been a defect in the tape and not his voice. They were a professional crew.

"We've lost the other engines."

"We're going in. Dump the fuel."

"Oh, my God. Look. She's already dumping! It's like she can read our minds."

"That explains why there was no fire," the human-factors expert said.

Then it came. The long scream of metal as the underbelly was ripped along the desert floor. A pop. A hissing as the air rushed out of the still-pressurized cabin. Familiar sounds.

The sound of impact, when it came, was terrible. It was like a trash compactor crushing apple crates. It went on for a long time and Holland's mind flashed back to his first aerial view of that long imprint in the desert. He shivered.

It ended with a crump of a sound that mingled with the crunching of the windscreen against the base of the mountain.

Then silence.

Normally the tape would stop with the disruption of electrical power. But somehow this tape jerked on.

And somewhere in the cockpit, the crushed cockpit containing what was later determined to be completely dismembered bodies, a high metallic voice squealed: "Survive . . . survive . . . survive . . . must survive."

"It doesn't sound human," the human-factors guy said.

"It's definitely a voice," Holland retorted. He took a sip of his coffee. Stone cold. He finished it anyway.

"Transmission?" a voice offered.

"The radio was destroyed upon impact," Holland said. "That was a member of the flight crew. Who else could it have been?"

No one knew. And so they listened to the tape once again, and on into the afternoon, attempting to explain the inexplicable.

Finally they decided that it was a freak of electronics. The CVR tape overwrote the loop every thirty minutes. The squealing voice repeating "survive" had not been recorded after impact, but was the garbled residue of previously overwritten recording.

"Are we all agreed on this?" Bill Holland asked wearily.

Heads nodded. But no face bore a look of conviction. But in the face of the impossible, it was the best explanation they had. There were already too many other anomalies. The gunshot wounds. The eyeless, toothless skull. The missing heads. The still-missing presidential body. No one wanted to add more to the list.

"Then that's it," Holland said. "Let's move on."

The official NTSB preliminary report on SAM 2700 was rushed through channels. Within an hour, it had been messengered to the FBI, the State Department, and the White House. Not everyone who read this "For Your Eyes Only" copy knew that SAM 2700 was the official designation for Air Force One.

One person who did not know was an FBI file clerk named Fred Skilicorn. A copy of the file ended up in his hands after it had been received at FBI headquarters in Washington. He had it for only ten minutes. That was enough time for him to skim it and, after delivering it to his superior, make a surreptitious phone call.

Fred Skilicorn officially worked for the FBI. But the extra check that landed in his post-office box every month bore the CIA shield. The CIA knew nothing about the check, however. It was drawn off a secret CURE payroll. Many people worked for CURE. Most of them-like Fred Skilicorn-never knew it.

It was Fred Skilicorn's job to leak sensitive FBI intelligence to the rival CIA. Or so he thought.

The number he called was a recorded message identified only by its phone number. Skilicorn whispered a quick gist of the NTSB report and hung up.

Within seconds the audio recording was electronically converted into print copy and squirted over the telephone lines to a very active computer at Folcroft Sanitarium, where Dr. Harold W. Smith was doggedly tracking all message traffic in and out of Washington, D.C. The town was like a pressure cooker about to blow its lid. Rumors were flying. The president was overdue in Bogota. The press were told his plane had laid over in Acapulco. Authorities in Acapulco denied the story. The story was hastily revised to a Panama layover. U. S. occupation forces in Panama City issued a clipped "No comment" to every media inquiry and the media was momentarily stymied.

Smith detected only a feeling of unease. There were reports of a major speech to be delivered by the Vice-President. Officially, it was tied in with the President's trip. Unofficially, there were a thousand unconfirmable rumors. Smith was picking up anonymous tips that it was much more than that.

He sweated as he scanned these rumors reaching him. They ran the gamut from the Vice-President's intended divorce to his impending resignation for medical reasons. The resignation story was the one most rife. And it was coming from credible sources at State, from Treasury, and out of the White House itself.

Nothing was breaking in the media. The noon news broadcasts had come and gone, but the evening newscasts were being prepared. And there was no story to report. No arrival of Air Force One. Reporters were burning up the phone lines with questions.

And there were no answers.

A blinking screen light warned Smith of an informant's tip emanating from Washington. Smith keyed into it. The gist was brief. Smith absorbed it at a glance.

It was an NTSB preliminary report. He almost dismissed it. What had happened to Air Force One would be a matter for tomorrow. The President's fate was today's crisis.

And then Smith saw the remarks about the cockpit voice recorder's final recording. A strange voice that said over and over: "Survive . . . survive . . . must survive."

And Dr. Harold W. Smith's grayish visage paled three times, each time losing another shade of gray.

He sat at his terminal, white as the proverbial ghost. Because what he was reading told him that a ghost from CURE's past had returned-a ghost of plastic and aluminum and fiber optics.

A ghost named Mr. Cordons.

Smith reached for the telephone and began dialing Mexico City. His fingers kept hitting the wrong buttons. He hung up, took a deep breath, and tried again.

Chapter 21

Remo Williams began to appreciate the size of Chapultepec Park after he had been walking along a winding pathway between bands of ancient cypress trees for twenty minutes and saw no sign of the other side.

It was vast. Like New York's Central Park squared. Sad-faced Mexicans of all varieties, from prosperous businessmen to blanket-clad Indians selling tortillas and refrescos from little wheeled carts, milled about. There were so many people roaming the park, Remo wondered if it was some kind of Mexican holiday.

So many people that it was difficult to move quickly through them and impossible to spot the Vice-President-if in fact he were mingling with the jostling crowd.

Remo looked around for someone who might speak English. He spotted a well-dressed blond woman feeding ducks in a pool so large it might pass for a small lake, and worked his way toward her.

"Excuse me," Remo began.

" Si?" the woman asked in Spanish. She turned around and Remo saw the caramel coloring of her smooth skin. He realized her hair had been dyed.

"Habla ingles?" Remo asked.

The woman shook her head, murmuring, "No ingles. Sorry. "

"Thanks anyway." Remo moved on. His head hurt and he lowered his respiration cycle to keep out the pollutants. Unfortunately, this also decreased the amount of already-sparse oxygen getting to his lungs. The effect was like starving the fire that was the sun source burning deep within his solar plexus, the true seat of his soul, as he had been taught by Chiun.

Another few yards, another blond head bobbed. Remo pushed through the crowd to reach her.

"Excuse me," he called. "Help out a fellow American?"

" I am not an americana," she replied.

"But you do speak English," Remo prompted.

"Does it not seem that way to you?" she asked demurely.

"Yeah, yeah," Remo said impatiently. "Look. Have you seen the Vice-President around here?"

"No. Perhaps you should go to the Presidential Palace. "

"No. I mean my Vice-President."

"Your Vice-President?"

"Yeah. The U. S. Vice-President. Comprendo?"

"Comprende," the Mexican blond corrected. "And I do not know what he looks like."

"I thought everyone knew his face."

"You gringos are such egotists. Can you tell me what the Mexican Vice-President looks like? Or our President?"

Remo winced. "Point taken," he admitted. "The guy I'm looking for really stands out in a crowd. He's got a golf bag over one shoulder and-"

"Golf? What is golf?"

"It's a game. Played with clubs. You know-fore?" Remo pantomined Arnold Palmer teeing off. He got a quizzically raised eyebrow that was twenty shades darker than the hair above it.

"I am sorry, senor. I cannot help you."

Remo started to go, then remembering something. "How about Robert Redford? See any sign of him?"

"No," the blond said brightly. "Is Senor Redford in Mexico?"

"I doubt it," Remo said sourly. He stalked away.

He decided that his best bet was to climb one of the towering cypress trees. He went up the nearest bole.

By the time he reached the crown, his hands were dusty with pollution particles that had come of the leaves and branches like tomb dust.

He looked at his fingertips. The stuff resembled fine ash, but it gleamed with metallic traces.

"Unbelievable," Remo grumbled. "Even the trees are dirty." He looked around, stepping from branch to branch to get different views of the park.

There was no sign of the Vice-President, nor of anyone carrying a golf bag. Not that even Remo's sharp eyes could have easily picked one man out of the teeming throng.

Releasing a defeated sigh, Remo started to climb down off the tree.

He heard the helicopter before he saw it. The sound made him jump back to the grass. He looked up.

To the north, a helicopter lifted free of the cypressdotted horizon. It vectored away toward the concrete tower that was the Hotel Nikko.

Remo recognized it as Comandante Odie's personal ship. The markings and mounted machine guns gave it away.

He started to run back to the Reforma. After his lungs began to burn, he changed his mind and dropped back to a trot.

By the time he reached the exit gate, he was walking.

The Master of Sinanju was waiting impatiently in the brick park where Remo had last seen him.

Remo approached wearing a frown. Something was wrong. He could tell it by the dark expression on his mentor's yellow face. Officer Mazatl was likewise troubled. Her flat eyes were dazed, almost wounded.

"Who took off in the chopper?" Remo asked breathlessly.

"Josip Broz Tito," Guadalupe Mazatl said flatly.

"Who's Josip Broz Tito?" Remo wanted to know.

Lupe pointed to the dais, now empty. Big bronze letters said "JOSIP BROZ TITO," and under that were the dates "1892-1980." He saw the shiny newpenny patches where the statue's feet had been. And it came to him what was wrong. The statue was missing.

"Okay," Remo said. "I have a headache and we're getting nowhere. I see the pedestal and I see that there's no statue there anymore. In twenty-five words or less, what the hell happened?"

"It was Gordons," Chiun said, brittle-voiced.

"Impossible!" Remo exploded.

"Who is Gordon?" asked Guadalupe Mazatl.

"Completely impossible!" Remo repeated.

"I spoke with the statue known as Josip Broz Tito," Chiun began.

"Wait a minute-what about the Vice-President?" Remo wanted to know.

"Gordons is the Vice-President. Or he was. Now he is this Tito thing."

"Who is this Cordon?" Guadalupe asked again.

Remo snapped at her, "Stay out of this, will you, please!"

"Interventionist americano!" Lupe muttered. "Whose country is this, anyhow?" But she shut up. She looked as unsteady as a dandelion in a freshening wind.

"The statue talked to you?" Remo asked Chiun.

"Yes. He wished to know why we were pursuing him. I explained this to him. It was then that I recognized the childlike mind of the man-machine Cordons. I was very clever, Remo. I did not let on that I knew he was Gordons, not Tito."

"If it were anybody but that walking GoBot," Remo muttered darkly, "I'd wonder who fooled whom. But Gordons has the reasoning powers of a six-year-old."

"There is more," Chiun added.

"Look, my head is ringing like Quasimodo's bell," Remo complained. "Let's get back to our hotel, where the air isn't carcinogenic and we can talk to Smith. Let him figure this out."

As they turned up the Reforma, Officer Guadalupe Mazatl asked a question:

"Who is Smith?" She pronounced it "Smeeth."

"We do not know anyone named that," Chiun said flatly.

Remo said nothing. He pinched the bridge of his nose, between his closed eyes. They felt like ball bearings.

After a twenty-minute ride during which Remo had personally rolled up every car window, Remo and Chiun were back in their room at the Krystal.

"The first item on the agenda is order room service," Remo said, pushing aside the videotape of the President's rescue to get at the phone. "We haven't eaten since this thing started."

"Yes, food will help you," Lupe said.

Remo got the order clerk. "I'd like two portions of boiled rice. Just the rice. No salt, no pepper. No nothing. Just rice. Better make it two double portions. Gracias," he added, using the only word of Spanish he felt sure of.

After he put down the receiver, Remo noticed Guadalupe looking at him with a mixture of wonder and pity.

"What's the matter now?" be demanded.

"I do not understand."

"Join the club," Remo said distractedly. "I thought Gordons was dead for good."

"I do not know this Gordon, but this is not about him."

"About what, then?"

"If neither of you has eaten, how could you sufer from the turistas?"

"Is that what they call this bad air-sickness?" Remo asked, throwing himself onto the bed. Chiun lay atop the other one, his eyes closed, his fiingers touching his temples. He rubbed them methodically.

"No. That is la contaminacion. The turistas are what you gringos call Moctezuma's Revenge."

"Montezuma," Remo corrected.

" I am pure Aztec," Lupe insisted. "It is Moctezuma, no matter what the ladinos or norteamericanos might say."

"I'll take your word for it," Remo said sourly. "And Montezuma's Revenge isn't what ails us."

"Then why did you order only rice?" Lupe asked, puzzled.

"We always eat rice. It's like spinach to Chiun and me."

"Spinach?"

"You know, Popeye, the Sailor Man."

"Ah. Popeye. But I still do not understand."

"Let's keep it that way." Remo glanced over to the Master of Sinanju. "Okay, Chiun, let's have the sordid details. And talk slowly. I'm going to have to explain this to Smith."

"Gordons is the President of Vice," Chiun said hollowly. "He has been the President of Vice all along. This explains many things, not least the selection of a callow youth as the true President's prince."

"He's not a prince and I don't buy that," Remo retorted. "The Vice-President didn't just pop out of the fifth dimension one day. He has a wife and family. He was a senator for years. No, Gordons may have been impersonating the Vice-President, but he is not the Vice-President. The Vice-President is still in the U.S. Smith said so."

"It is possible Smith is mistaken," Chiun sniffed.

"I doubt it."

"You and I were mistaken. We thought we had destroyed Gordons. Four times we believed this true, and still he returns to trouble our lives."

Remo folded his bare arms in annoyance. "Yeah. That's strange. We know he can be destroyed. All we have to do is wreck his central processor, or whatever it's called. Trouble is, it's not always in the same place. Once it was in his head, and another time in his heel. Last time it was in his left hand."

"No, it was not!" Chiun snapped. "That thing you dismembered last time was not Gordons, but an automaton created by Gordons. His true brain was in the deadly satellite, which I vanquished at the same time you battled the false Gordons."

"No, that was Gordons," Remo said with conviction. "I nailed him. And he went down. End of story. "

"I destroyed his brain," Chiun insisted, "and the false Gordons collapsed. It had nothing to do with your blow, ineffectual as it was."

"Wrong. "

"Right. I am always right."

Remo sighed. "Listen, I thought we settled this argument. "

"We did," Chiun retorted. " I dispatched the true Gordons."

"Yeah?" Remo countered. "Then what is he doing running around Mexico City tricked up to look like the Vice-President?"

"I do not know," Chiun sniffed. "But we can ask him later."

Remo sat up. "We can?"

"I have arranged a meeting with Gordons-the true Gordons-at the place called Teotihuacan. It is there we will negotiate for the safety of the President. And it is there that Gordons will tell you the truth of our last encounter with him."

" I can hardly wait," Remo said sourly. "So what does Gordons want?"

"What Gordons always wants. What he is programmed to want. To survive."

"Right. Survival. The prime directive." Remo's face darkened. "You know, I'm really, really sick of him coming back to haunt us."

The food arrived at that moment. Guadalupe Mazatl, who had been an interested but puzzled listener to the conversation, let the hotel waiter in. She shooed him away with a quick burst of Spanish and a fat tip.

Remo and Chiun got up and attacked the rice. Spurning the wheeled serving cart, they set the silver tray on the rug and assumed lotus positions before it as they dug in.

They ate in silence, and quietly Guadalupe joined them on the floor.

" I have been listening to your conversation," she said tentatively.

"Must be a local custom," Remo grumbled.

They ate with what Guadalupe thought was peculiar intensity, like men about to go into battle.

"I have listened to you discuss this hombre Gordon," she persisted. "Sometimes you talk of him as if he were a man. Other times as a machine. Which is it?"

"Both," Remo said.

"Neither," Chiun said.

"I would like to know more about this creature."

"It's our President," Remo said. "And our problem."

"And I will remind you that this is my country," Guadalupe replied tartly. " I am a law-enforcement officer. It is my duty to deal with internal threats."

"Tough," Remo said through a mouthful of rice.

"Tell her, Remo," Chiun said suddenly. "Why-"

"Because I am eating and I would rather suffer through your words than her nagging."

"What is 'nagging'?" Lupe demanded.

"What you were just doing," Chiun replied. "Remo."

Remo put down his rice. "All right," he began. "Years ago there was this crazy female NASA scientist. She liked to drink and she liked to make robots almost as much. Her dream was to create a thinking robot to send on long-distance space flights. Instead of sending people, NASA would send robots. Or androids. I guess Gordons is an android."

"I know this word 'robot,' but not 'android,' " Lupe admitted.

"It's like a robot, except it looks and acts almost human," Remo explained. "Linda like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Well, this woman scientist invented Mr. Gordons. This was after Mr. Seagrams and Mr. Smirnoff didn't work out."

"Those are liquor brands," Guadalupe said doubtfully.

"Didn't I mention she liked to drink? Well, that's what too much Gordon's gin will do for you. Gordons walks and talks like a man. He thinks like a six-year-old. But he knows how to do one thing well--survive. That's what he's programmed to do, and that's what he does."

"Survive . . . ?" Lupe repeated. Remo nodded. "Survive. That's where the real trouble with Gordons all began. When NASA funding was curtailed back in the seventies, the Gordons project was defunded. Gordons figured he'd be turned off, so he escaped. He's been on the loose ever since. "

"He is a menace?"

"Menace and a half," Remo said ruefully. "For a guy who's only interest is getting through the day, he's caused a junkyard's worth of trouble. We chased him to hell and gone in the U. S., all the way to Moscow, where the Russians shot him into space. We thought that was finally the end of him. He came back as a Russian space shuttle, later turning up, variously, as a car-wash machine and an amusement park. "

"You are making no sense," Lupe said.

Remo snapped his fingers. "Right. I forgot a step. Gordons is an assimilator. He assimilates things in order to survive. That means he becomes them. Any object, inanimate or living, that he can get his plastic hooks into-bingo, it becomes Gordons. That's how he was able to look like the Vice-President. That's how he survived falling sixteen stories. He's selfrepairing. He just picked himself up and lit off. He must have become the statue of Tito as camouflage.'

"This is an incredible story-too incredible to be believed. "

"We've got Gordons as the Vice-President on that videotape over there," Remo said, jerking a thumb back to a nightstand. "And you were the one who talked to Tito, not me."

Lupe closed her eyes. " I still shake when I hear that statue speak in my mind," she said hollowly.

"Wish I'd been there," Remo said fiercely, picking at his rice. " I would have ripped his head off."

"And the secret of the true President's fate would have perished with him," Chiun pointed out. "Unless his brain is in his little toe this time, in which case your attack would have been for nothing."

"Touche," Remo said. And seeing Guadalupe's puzzled brows knit together, added, "It's French."

"Meaning what?"

"Search me," Remo said.

"You want me to search you? What will I find?" Remo closed his eyes. "Never mind. Look, we've only got another couple of hours before we go to . . . What is it called again?"

"Teotihuacan. It is a ruin."

"Unlike Mexico City, which is only a disaster," Remo muttered. "Right. So we've got to get orders from home."

"From Smith?"

"We don't know any Smeeth," Remo said blandly.

"You are making fun of me," Guadalupe accused. She pronounced it "fon."

"Anyway, we have to make a private phone call," Remo continued. "Mind waiting outside until we call you back in?"

"We who are working together should have no secrets. May I stay?"

"Can you say 'juniper juice jelly is yummy' three times fast without making a mistake?" Remo asked.

Guadalupe got to her feet stiffly. Such rudeness, she thought. These Americans ordered people around in their own nation like they were the landlords of the earth.

"Yust as you say," she said with studied formality, " I will go." She backed away from them, plucking the videotape off the nightstand while they were engrossed in their rice.

She left the room without another word.

After the door shut behind her, Remo finished the last of his rice, washing it down with mineral water.

"She is not coming back, you know," Chiun said pointedly.

"Better for us. Better for her," Remo said, reaching up for the telephone. He wondered how Smith would take the news.

Chapter 22

Jorge Chingar, alias El Padrino, arrived in Mexico City in a Lear private jet that was waved to a private hangar by the ground crew.

Mexican customs inspectors were already waiting for him as the hatch of his Lear dropped, revealing the lambskin-carpeted steps on its underside.

El Padrino stepped off the plane, grinning darkly.

"Buenos dias, muchachos," he cried, flinging out his arms grandly.

He came off the plane before his personal guard. Although he was a wanted man back in Colombia, and technically here in Mexico, El Padrino was unafraid.

The customs officers stepped forward, their faces very serious, as is the way of customs men the world over.

"Have you anything to declare, senor?" one asked.

"Any weapons? Any drugs? Any illegal contraband?" asked the others.

El Padrino reached into his silk Versace jacket, extracted an alligator-skin wallet, and began peeling off American hundred-dollar bills.

He presented two to each of the customs men and then handed the leader a sealed envelope.

"For your amigos," he said graciously.

"Muy bien, senor," said the chief customs officer.

They nodded their heads politely and, their duty fulfilled, left the hangar.

El Padrino clapped his bejeweled fingers, bringing his personal guard.

They came carrying weapons and looking fierce.

"Guard the plane. No one comes in or out. You cannot trust these Mexicans, no matter how much you pay them."

His men deployed around the hangar with military precision, as well they should. They had been trained by Israeli mercenaries.

El Padrino turned on his heel and reentered the cabin. In his private cabin he worked the phone.

El Padrino played the telephone like a master musician, his voice smooth almost to the point of unctuousness. He never overdid it. And so received quick polite answers.

But they were not answers he liked. Comandante Odio was dead, the DFS told him. It was most regrettable. No, there were no further details available at this time.

"This is unfortunate," said El Padrino to the primer comandante of the DFS. "Comandante Odio was a very valuable man. I fear I cannot replace a man so valuable as he."

"Perhaps we could work something out," suggested the primer comandante.

"Ah, I was hoping you would say that," said El Padrino, who understood that in Mexico, at least, money did not talk. It beguiled.

"If you would like to discuss this further, you may come to my office," the primer comandante was saying.

"I would much prefer that you experience the hospitality of my fine aircraft. The wines are French and the food is Andalusian."

"I shall join you directly," said the primer comandante. The phone went click.

Yes, thought El Padrino. These Mexicans were so very easy to do business with. Perhaps in a few years, if business continued to expand, he would move his operation to Mexico City. Colombia was more refined, but the government very, very entrenched. In Mexico they were more flexible. They even had a saying that governed their code of behavior: "Money does not stink."

El Padrino snapped his fingers and a steward entered the cabin.

"Prepare on excellent meal," El Padrino instructed. "We are having important guests. And see how the presidente's quarters are coming. I wish him to enjoy every civilized comfort during his journey to Colombia."

"Si," Padrino."

Chapter 23

Remo Williams noticed the missing videotape as he reached for the phone. It rang before he could ask Chiun about it. Frowning, he brought the receiver to his mouth.

It was Smith. "Remo!" he said tensely. "I've been trying to get you for hours!"

"We've been out working, remember?" Remo reminded him.

"Did you get any of my messages?"

"What messages?" Remo demanded.

" I left nearly a dozen. My God, didn't the front desk give them to you?"

"Smitty, you have a lot to learn about the way they do things down here," Remo said. "Look, we've got bad news. I hope you're sitting down."

"It's Gordons, isn't it?" Smith asked.

"How'd you know that!" Remo blurted.

"His voice was recorded by Air Force One's flight data recorder," Smith said testily, "but never mind that. Time is of the essence. Give me your report."

"The short version is: the guy running around pretending to be the Vice-President is Gordons," Remo said.

"You encountered him?"

"Yeah, but he slipped away. Last seen resembling Josip Broz Tito dipped in bronze."

"Beg pardon?"

"Read about it in my memoirs," Remo said glumly. "Let's stay on track here. We have only two hours. Gordons has set up a meet. He has some crazy idea that the President's survival is linked to his. He's willing to hand him over in return for certain guarantees."

"We cannot trust that man-I mean, machine."

"I know what you mean, but Chiun has him thinking we don't know who he is. If Chiun is right-"

"I am," Chiun said loudly enough for Smith to hear. "I never fail. When I have been sent to the proper place at the proper time. Unlike this mission."

"If Chiun's right," Remo went on, "Gordons may come along peacefully. Maybe we can make this work. Once we have the President, dealing with Gordons will be another matter."

"What does Gordons want?"

"Hard to say," Remo said. "Safe passage to the U. S. Diplomatic immunity. Fifty cases of Three-in-one oil. With that ambulatory junk pile, who the hell knows? I say we give him what he wants and sort out the casualties after the President is safe."

"Yes. Absolutely. Do what you have to, Remo. Offer him anything. Just bring the President back alive. "

"Just call me Frank Buck," Remo said. "You know," he added, "I can't believe this. How the hell did Gordons get involved in this?"

Smith expelled air into his receiver. "I did some backtracking, Remo," he said wearily. "You remember that Gordons had taken over that California theme park, Larryland."

" I remember it, well," Remo said. "He had the place rigged with that stolen Russian satellite, the one that sterilized people with microwave bursts. He thought he'd sterilize every visitor and eventually wipe out the human race. We'd all die out and he'd survive. Him and the cockroaches."

"The Army Corps of Engineers blew up Larryland."

"I was there too. I thought Gordons was gone for good. "

"As it happens, the previous President had been flying to his California ranch during that operation," Smith said. "Air Force One flew over the detonation site, apparently on orders from the President, who wanted to see the explosion from the air."

"What?"

"This is supposition," Smith went on, "but if Gordons' central processor survived the explosion, it could have been exploded upward, possibly high enough to attach itself to Air Force One."

"Christ!" Remo rasped. "You mean Gordons became Air Force One?"

"It is my best guess," Smith admitted.

"And two presidents have been riding around inside him?"

"It is a sobering thought, I know," Smith admitted.

"Sobering? It makes my blood run cold. What was he up to?"

"Think about it, Remo. Gordons exists to survive, and survives to exist. Air Force One has an excellent maintenance program and relatively light duty cycles. Gordons is a machine. As Air Force Ore, he would be the most pampered machine on earth. No one suspected him. No one molested him. In a way, it's unfortunate that this happened the way it did. The presidential plane is scheduled to be replaced in another year. Gordons would have been retired from service."

"We gotta nail him this time," Remo said fiercely.

"No. The President comes first. Gordons is secondary. "

"What happened to acing the President if he compromises national security?" Remo asked.

There was silence on the line. Remo started to say, "Hello?"

Smith spoke. "If anything goes wrong, that is your option of last resort. Some things are going on in Washington I do not understand, but we have an extremely sensitive political situation developing."

"Tell me about it," Remo sighed, a vision of the Vice-President-the real one-floating through his mind. "Look, one way or another, we should have this wrapped up tonight. Will the lid stay on that long?"

"Barely. The media are getting restive. Report back as soon as the situation is resolved."

"Gotcha. "

Remo hung up. He turned to Chiun. "We're a go for negotiating. But Smith says if it goes bad, the President is better off dead."

The Master of Sinanju's tired eyebrows lifted. "Ah, he is preparing to make his move at last."

"No. It's a last resort."

"Smith is clever," Chiun mused. "Perhaps this entire scheme is his doing."

Remo went to the door and looked out in the hallway. There was no sign of Guadalupe Mazatl. He shut the door.

"You were right," he told Chiun. "Lupe's cut out on us."

"If I was right about one matter, I might be right about another," Chiun said, getting up. He lifted to his feet like a column of scarlet smoke emerging from a floor heat register.

"Not about that," Remo said flatly. "What do you say we get to Teotihuacan early? Just in case."

"We risk much, the longer we breathe this foul air," Chiun warned.

"I'm feeling better," Remo said, rotating his thick wrists like an arm wrestler warming up.

Chiun nodded. "Now. Here. In this air-conditioned room within our bellies full of rice. But out there, the very air robs us of our strength, our mighty resources. Ordinarily, Gordons is a formidable foe. Under these circumstances, we are as ordinary men."

"So what do you suggest?" Remo wondered.

Chiun raised a lecturing finger. "We avoid combat at all costs. We negotiate, as Smith would have us do."

"Sounds reasonable to me," Remo admitted.

"And then, once back in the pure clean air of America, we will strike, for Gordons has cost us dearly in the past. He murdered the woman you knew as Anna and he robbed me of the seed of the future."

Remo's face grew sad. "Yeah, Anna. Funny, I hadn't thought of her in a long time. And Gordons did sterilize you that last time, didn't he?"

"We have much to repay Gordons for," Chiun said in a cold voice. "But we will do this in the time and place of our own choosing."

Chapter 24

Behind the pond-scum-brown smog that hung over the Valley of Mexico, the sun set like a smoky brazier. The stagnant air, fed by unregulated car exhausts and industrial smokestacks, stank of carbon dioxide. Millions of pairs of sore human lungs sucked in the unhealthy air. It scoured sinus passages and caused spontaneous nosebleeds. Scarlet tanagers, one moment winging past the Pemex Towers, simply folded their wings and plummeted to their deaths, their immune systems succumbing to toxic chromium levels.

It was just another afternoon in Mexico City.

Except for a series of seemingly unrelated events.

First, the President of the United States woke up to total darkness. He thought he was dreaming. Then he wondered if he were dead. He was not lying down, not standing, but somehow suspended in the dark. His questing fingers brushed an abrasive surface like raw plaster. He found that he could move his arms, but not much. He couldn't move his legs at all. And something was digging into his crotch, on which he was somehow balanced.

His legs tingled with pins and needles. And he smelled something odd. It reminded him of the stuffed-animal section of the Smithsonian Institution-formaldehyde and dead fur.

He called for help. There was no answer.

The Museum of Anthropology on the Paseo de la Reforma was closed on Mondays. Today was Monday. And so the spacious museum was deserted except for a single guard named Umberto Zamora.

Zamora was making his rounds when he heard the sudden awful grinding sound. Like a million giant pestles grinding maize. He ran to the sound, or where he thought the sound emanated. It changed from the grinding and sparking of stone to a slow, ponderous tread.

Zamora stopped so swiftly he skidded on the polished marble floor. He listened fearfully. The ponderous tread was coming in his direction. Slowly, methodically, unstoppably.

Umberto Zamora felt the floor tremble under his feet, and his courage deserted him. He dived behind a Mayan stela.

There he huddled, trembling as the terrible tread lumbered past him. It was like an earthquake on legs. He waited until it was gone, presumably from the museum-if the terrible rending of wood and metal meant what Zamora thought it meant.

Gingerly Umberto Zamora emerged from hiding. He followed the scuffed floor prints. They led to a hole in one wall. A very big hole. And out on the grass, giant footprints led away.

Off in the grass, an olive helicopter lifted off with difficulty.

Zamora retraced the footprints back into the museum. They ended at the open spot where the statue of the Aztec goddess Coatlicue-She of the Serpent Skirts-had stood for many years. She stood there no longer.

Umberto Zamora was of mostly Mixtec blood. He believed in the old ways. He believed that Quetzalcoad would one day return to Mexico. Still, he was quite astonished that Coatlicue had stridden away. She was over eight feet tall and made entirely of rude, immobile stone. He noticed the tiny rocky fragments littering the floor, as if Coatlicue had simply shrugged them off.

Then he fell to his knees and began praying to his gods. The old gods. The true gods of Mexico.

Federal Judicial Police Officer Guadalupe Mazatl left the Hotel Krystal in a huff, muttering, "Pock all gringos!"

She was fed up with all gringos. She was sick of the lazy FJP and the corrupt DFS, of every criollo and mestizo who gave in with fatalistic surrender to life's many indignities.

When Officer Mazatl had first joined the FJP, she was determined to be different, not to take bribes or to grovel before the white Mexicans, but to live as an Aztec woman, proud and unbending of spirit.

She had never bent. And as a consequence, she had never been accepted by the mestizo men who complimented her body but secretly yearned for that ultimate Mexican status symbol, a blond woman. In four years with the FJP, she had never advanced beyond officer, and she knew she never would.

But she had retained her self-respect. It was victory enough.

She entered her official vehicle, pride like a mask of her wide brown face, and started the engine.

There was no point in taking this matter to her primer comandante, that cabron. The DFS would be of no help either. She had virtually been an accomplice to the death of Comandante Odio and his men. How could she have been so stupid as to get mixed up with gringos? she wondered.

Officer Guadalupe Mazatl decided that if she was to protect Mexico-the Mexico she both loved and despised-she must go to Teotihuacan.

She pulled out onto Liverpool, turned right on Florencia, past the ridiculous Banana boutique with its King Kong roof diorama which symbolized how far Mexico had sunk into carnival absurdity, and sent the car speeding along the Paseo de la Reforma.

Near the Maria Isabel Sheraton, a DFA vehicle pulled in front of her. It slowed down, forcing her to do likewise. Another DFS car appeared on her left. And a third on her right. They drove in formation until they reached a red light.

There, DFS agents piled out and demanded she surrender her weapon. Officer Guadalupe Mazatl knew better than to refuse.

"What is this about?" she asked as she handed over her sidearm, holster and all.

"You are under arrest for suspicion of complicity in the murder of DFS Comandante Oscar Odio," one agent said. "You will come with us, Officer."

As obligingly as any meek mestizo, Officer Mazatl allowed herself to be bundled into one of the DFS cars.

"DFS headquarters is not this way," she said when the cars turned onto Viaducto.

"We are going to the airport," the driver informed her.

Puzzled, Officer Mazatl folded her strong arms, wondering why. She decided not to ask. Her Indian fatalism had completely reasserted itself. She despised the feeling.

Remo Williams got lost in the congested Mexico City traffic. He stopped in an area of run-down buildings. He kept every window sealed tight. Still, carbon dioxide was coming up through the VW Beetle's leaky floorboards.

"Damn this rental car," he told Chiun. "Remind me to slaughter that desk clerk who arranged this."

"I will leave you what still quivers," the Master of Sinanju said. He breathed through a scarlet kimono sleeve held over his nose.

Remo spotted a Mexico City traffic cop astride a motorcycle parked in a no-parking zone. As much as he hated to roll down the window, he did. Being lost in Mexican traffic hell was infinitely worse.

"Hey!" he called over. "Point me to Teotihuacan?"

The traffic cop put a hand to his ear. "Que?"

"Teotihuacan," Remo repeated. "Comprende?"

"Ah, come closer, senor."

Remo sent his car closer to the white-lined zone where the officer was parked.

"Closer, senor," the cop repeated.

"Teotihuacan," Remo said.

"Closer," the cop said, wiggling his fingers invitingly.

And when Remo had the car nose-to-nose with the motorcycle, the officer dismounted, pulled out a ticket pad, and said, "Oh, senor, you have crossed the white line. Now I must give you a ticket."

Remo looked down. His front tire barely touched the white no-parking line.

"But you told me to come closer!" he protested.

"But I did not give permission to cross the white line, senor."

Remo got out of the car. He ripped the ticket pad from the man's hands, tore his gunbelt free, and as a final expression of displeasure, stomped the motorcycle into an agony of spare parts.

"Teotihuacan, senor?" the cop said quickly. "Go norte."

"Point," Remo said. "I forgot my compass."

The suddenly smiling traffic cop obliged. Remo said gracias in a metallic voice and got back into the car.

Twenty minutes later, they were driving past a cemetery set in the foothills of one of Mexico City's towering sentinel mountains. One side of the mountain was a beehive of tar-paper and cardboard shacks, set cheek by jowl.

"I can't believe people live like this," Remo muttered.

Past the mountains, the terrain flattened and was dotted with feathery trees and the occasional rosepink chapel. The air became cleaner. But not clean enough to induce Chiun to breathe it directly. Remo's head was pounding now. It was still like breathing unadulterated car exhaust. The pit of his stomach felt cold, like a spent coal.

"How do you feel, Little Father?" he asked.

"Ill," Chiun croaked through his sleeve.

"Wonderful," he muttered, noticing the sign that said SAN JUAN TEOTIHUACAN. "We're walking into one on the worst situations in our lives and we're freaking basket cases."

"We are Sinanju," Chiun said wearily. "And we will prevail." Then he coughed. Remo had never heard his mentor cough before, and it frightened him.

Chapter 25

The question was put to Officer Guadalupe Mazatl by the fat man the others called, with slimy deference, "El Padrino."

"Que quieres? Plata, o plomo?" In English: "What do you want? Silver, or lead?"

DFS Primer Comandante Embutes held a Glock pistol to Guadalupe's smooth brown forehead. She knelt before El Padrino, her eyes more shamed than frightened. It was the question she had dreaded back in Tampico. The narcotraficantes would give other FJP officers the same choice: accept bribes and look the other way, or die.

Guadalupe's lower lip trembled. She had thought she knew what her answer would be. But she was without a pistol now. And as El Padrino, who was dressed like an Acapulco gigolo, looked at her with feigned indifference, she muttered the word that tasted of bitterness.

"Plata," she said, adding, "No me mates, por favor."

The pistol was withdrawn.

Comandante Embutes said, "Very wise, senorita. Now you will tell us all about the americanos, and their presidente."

The words tumbled out of Guadalupe's Mazatl's mouth. She told them everything, about the false Vice-President, about the speaking statue. They scoffed at first, but when she produced the videotape, they scoffed no longer.

El Padrino's video machine played the scene over and over in the plush stateroom of his Lear jet. The cabin was very silent except for muttered curses.

"Josip Broz Tito, eh?" El Padrino said finally, turning to her. "Tito was a good man. Perhaps we can bargain with him, eh?"

"He wants only to survive," Guadalupe muttered abjectly. "That is what the gringos have said. To survive. "

El Padrino stood up. He nodded to Comandante Embutes. He pulled Guadalupe to her feet, checking the cords that bound her hands behind her back.

El Padrino lifted her chin in his many-ringed hands.

"We all wish to survive, eh, chica?"

And Officer Guadalupe Mazatl lowered her head in Aztec shame at his arrogant ladino smile.

Chapter 26

Remo parked at the tourist entrance to the ruined necropolis of Teotihuacan. There was a museum ticket booth nearby. The door stood open. It was deserted.

"Looks like everybody cleared out," Remo said, coming out of the museum. He handed the Master of Sinanju a brochure, saying, "Here's a layout of the place, in case we have to split up."

They walked between two long buildings into the ruins, coming to the base of an immense flat-sided pyramid that reared up for hundreds of feet so steeply its summit could not be seen. It was like a square wedding cake, each section smaller than the one under it. The broad stairs stopped at frequent open terraces. "Remo, such magnificence!" Chiun squeaked suddenly, his tired eyes brightening to birdlike clarity.

"It's the Pyramid of the Sun," Remo replied. "And don't get carried away with past glories. The Aztecs are all gone."

"It looks almost Egyptian. Could these Aztecs have been a colony of Egypt? Only the Pyramid of Cheops rivals this."

Remo frowned. They were standing on a long straight stone-paved road. Grass grew in the chinks between the cobbles. In fact, it grew along the sides of the dull brown pyramid.

"Says here we're standing on the Avenue of the Dead," Remo said, reading from his brochure. He gazed down the road. Past a line of flat structures like flat-topped temples, the road ended at the foot of a smaller pyramid that seemed to have been excavated from a hill. The back of the pyramid was still embedded in the hill.

"And that's the Pyramid of the Moon," Remo added. He looked up. "I didn't expect anything this big. There's an awful lot of ground to cover. What do you think?"

"I think that we missed a wonderful client in the Aztecs," Chiun said wistfully, scanning his brochure.

"Forget that stuff," Remo snapped. "We'd better get organized before Gordons gets here." He looked up. "What about the top of this pyramid?"

The Master of Sinanju shaded his eyes, trying to see the pyramid's top. He could not.

"Yes," he said. "We will go up this one."

They started up the tumbledown steps. The stairs became broader as they ascended, until they reached the middle terrace, where they paused to look around and catch their breath.

"Better watch it, Little Father," Remo warned. "You can't see the steps until you're on top of them. Don't walk off the side."

The Master of Sinanju stepped to the terrace lip and looked down. It was true. The broken stone steps were so steep one had to walk to the very edge before they became visible. He frowned. The mighty Egyptians had never constructed anything so marvelous.

The city of Teotihuacan extended for several square miles in every direction. Despite the danger, Remo was impressed by its sad vastness. " I wonder if America will ever reach this stage?" he wondered aloud.

"Count on it," Chiun said. "Let us continue."

They trudged up to the topmost terrace, their lungs laboring to extract oxygen from the thin, polluted air. Chiun's breath whistled.

Above them, the pyramid's apex was accessible by a narrow flight of steps so steep that it was impossible to see their top. They seemed to merge with the brownish sky.

Remo was looking down toward a distant stone edifice his brochure called the Temple of Quetzalcoad. "I don't see any sign of Tito," he said. "Guess we gotta go to the top."

They started the final ascent. As they mounted the rubble-strewn steps, a towering stone carving became visible. It stood amid the rocks of the pyramid's uneven summit.

Remo looked at it without pleasure. "What the hell is this thing?"

It stood over eight feet in height, and seemed almost four feet wide. It was made of rude stone. It resembled, if anything, an Aztec conception of a robot. The broad head was carved into serpent heads perched nose-to-nose so that its side-mounted orbs looked out with wall-eyed balefulness. It wore a ghoulish double grin. Two other serpent heads formed shoulder epaulets, and instead of hands it sported blunted stone slabs. Its chest was arrayed with human hearts and dismembered hands. A skull served as a kind of belt buckle.

There was barely enough room on the rubble-strewn top for them and the idol when they joined it on the summit.

"It is an ugly Aztec goddess," Chiun said, looking around at the panorama of dead Teotihuacan far below. A river meandered nearby, as brown as an earthworn.

"I think you're right," Remo said, examining the idol. "It's a female. That's a skirt made of snakes. The whole thing is a walking snake pit." He paged through his brochure, trying find the snake goddess's name.

" I do not see any sign of Tito below," Chiun said, looking west.

"Ugly monstrosity, isn't it?" Remo muttered, looking at the idol's clawed feet. "Not exactly Egyptian."

"Its head is two serpents joined at the nose," Chiun noted. "The Egyptian gods had animal heads too. "

"If this is Egyptian, I'm as Aztec as Guadalupe."

"Behold," Chiun said suddenly, pointing to a cleared area of dirt where sat an olive helicopter. Comandante Odio's helicopter. Remo saw that the front seats were mangled and mashed.

Remo looked up. "He's already here," he said grimly. "Damn!"

"Beware, Remo," Chiun intoned. "He was not in the form of Tito when he journeyed here. He was much larger, much heavier. For both seats are crushed. "

"Good. That'll make him easier to spot," Remo said. He turned his attention back to the brochure. "Funny," he muttered. "I can't find it."

"Keep looking," Chiun said, his keen eyes raking the surrounding terrain. "He must be somewhere."

"Not Tito. This stone thing. According to this, we're standing on the rubble of a temple. No mention of any snake goddess," Remo's voice got smaller. "Uh-oh," he muttered, his gaze lifting to the double serpent head. He eyed its blank scaly face for expression.

"Little Father," he said softly.

The Master of Sinanju turned, his eyes quizzical. He saw his pupil's thumb surreptitiously jerking in the direction of the stone snake idol.

Chiun's eyes went very wide. Then, in a high squeaky voice, he said, " I hope our friend Josip Broz Tito arrives very soon."

"Yes indeedy," Remo chimed in brightly, edging away from the massive idol. "Be nice if he's early. The plane is waiting to take us back to the U. S., where we'll all be nice and safe."

"True, true," Chiun rejoined, also stepping away from the idol. "There is no telling what will happen to him if these Mexicans discover he has usurped their precious statue. He will be in very grave danger. They are no doubt pursuing him mightily at this very moment."

"Hope nothing happens," Remo added loudly. "I'd sure like to help him out."

They stopped. The statue simply stood there, immobile, invincible, inert. An Aztec golem.

"Maybe they already got him," Remo ventured pointedly.

"Yes, you are undoubtedly correct, Remo," Chiun said. "Let us go. There is nothing we can do for poor Tito now."

They started down the steps.

The sudden sound was like breaking rocks. It came from the summit. They turned, their hands lifting defensively, ready for anything.

The stone idol called Coatlicue roused to life. The kissing serpents parted and pointed down at them, a doubleheaded monstrosity on weaving stone necks. Its arms lifted to show its maimed forearms. And it spoke in a voice like grinding stones.

"I am here!" he rumbled.

"You are no longer Tito," Chiun remarked calmly.

"I can assume whatever shape I desire."

"We are pleased to meet you again, O statue," Chiun called up. "For we have come to parley."

The idol stepped forward on its clawed feet. Both heads looked at Remo. "And you?"

"We're both ready to negotiate," Remo said.

"Very well. I will surrender your President on two conditions."

Chiun smiled thinly. "Name them."

"One. That we are taken to a place of safety."

"Done," said the Master of Sinanju.

"Two. That I take the place of one who holds a position of security in the President's government."

"Tito's dead," Remo called, "and he's not with our government. "

"I mean the meat machine you call Vice-President of the United States."

Remo's eyes went wide. Chiun's narrowed.

"Why would you want that?" Remo wondered sincerely.

"I understand his duties are undemanding. I understand that he is well-paid, well-protected, and has much leisure time."

"You understand right," Remo said.

"These are my conditions. I am prepared to assume the form of the Vice-President at any time. I pledge to serve the office well, asking only to be unmolested for the natural span of my lifetime."

Remo and Chiun exchanged glances.

"Couldn't be any worse than the VP we already have," Remo muttered.

They turned to Coatlicue's wavering stone serpent regard.

"It's a deal," Remo said, poker-faced. "Now that that's settled, where are you keeping the President?"

The stone serpent heads opened their dry cold mouths to answer.

From far below came the sound of car engines and slamming doors. Feet scraped on rocks.

Remo whirled. Racing across the Avenue of the Dead came Officer Guadalupe Mazatl and a host of men he had never seen. Armed men. One in a blue DFS uniform. He was pulling Guadalupe along.

"Who are those meat machines?" rumbled the idol who was Mr. Gordons.

"-Search me," Remo mumbled.

"Why should I search you?"

"Just an expression," Remo said quickly. "They're not with us. Honest."

"Is this a trap?" asked Mr. Gordons in a flinty voice.

"Of course not," Remo said quickly. "Is it, Chiun?"

"No, it is not a trap," the Master of Sinanju snapped. "We have nothing to do with these people."

" I recognize the female meat machine. She accompanied the old one before."

"But she's not with us anymore," Remo said quickly. "I don't know what's going on."

The contingent of men came up the steps huffing and puffing.

A voice called out. Guadalupe's.

"Remo! Por favor! Help me!" It ended in a fleshy smack and a whimper.

There was no other way down, so Remo and Chiun simply waited, their eyes shifting between the looming entity on the summit and the approaching gunmen.

When they were within earshot, Remo called down.

"That's far enough. What do you want?"

Guadalupe started to speak. Her eyes focused upon the statue of Coatlicue. "What is that doing here?" she demanded fearfully.

"I think she means you," Remo told Mr. Gordons.

"I am here to negotiate for my survival," Gordons rumbled.

And Guadalupe Mazatl, hearing the stone voice of the Mother of the Sun, screamed.

She was flung aside. A corpulent man in a silk shirt and rings on his fingers shouted up.

"I have come to bargain for the life of the U. S. presidente!"

"Too late," Remo called back. "He's coming with us. "

"I will double their offer," Jorge Chingar said. "I am El Padrino. I am very wealthy. I can make your every desire come to pass."

"Stuff it," Remo said. "We already have a deal. Right?"

Mr. Gordons spoke up. The snake heads peered down. "I am promised the office of the Vice-President. What can you offer me?"

El Padrino laughed. "They are lying to you, amigo. It is all a trick. They know you are Senor Gordon."

At that, the stones monster stepped off the summit, its clawed feet cracking the steps.

"Damn!" Remo said. He threw up his hands. "Okay, you got us. We know you're Gordons. But the deal's still on. We have authorization."

The idol lurched down, its ungainly arms flung out for balance. The pistoleros of El Padrino clustered about him protectively, their Uzis and Mac 10's trained upward at the advancing colossus.

"It is too late to bargain," Chiun intoned. "We will have to fight."

"No!" Remo said anxiously. "We waste Gordons, and we've lost the President."

"Smith said that the President is better off dead than in the hands of evil ones," Chiun said. "We first of all must ensure our own survival."

Remo hesitated. "I'd love to debate this, but there's no time," he said. "I'm with you."

Together they raced up to meet the lumbering monster that was Mr. Gordons.

"Okay, Gordons," Remo challenged. "We tried to do this your way. Now the gloves are off. We do this our way or it's rock-garden time."

"You attempted treachery," Gordons said, the dismembered hands on his chest grasping like dying spiders.

A blunt arm lashed out. Remo ducked. Not fast enough. His reflexes were sluggish. One stone limb connected with a glancing blow. Remo was sent stumbling backward.

But the blow left Mr. Gordons exposed on that side.

The Master of Sinanju angled in, one fist out. His blow was solid. It chipped stone. The creature, off-balance, rocked back from the impact.

It turned, a grinding stone automaton. Both arms raised like pile drivers.

Landing on the terrace below, Remo recovered quickly. His head hurt. He clambered to his feet, the sight of the upraised arms descending on his teacher galvanizing him to action.

Then the shooting started.

Bullets spanked off the pyramid side and steps. Remo whirled away from a stinging bullet track.

El Padrino's voice lifted.

"Cease fire," he called. "We are here to negotiate, not battle."

The upraised stone arms froze. The Master of Sinanju faded back from their menace.

Mr. Gordons turned his blocky body clumsily. The serpent heads looked down.

"I will listen to any reasonable offer as long as my survival is not threatened," he said.

"Senor Gordon, I can assure this," said El Padrino. "I am a very rich man. I own a fine hacienda that is like a fortress. I will see that no one injures you ever. I ask only that the President be handed over to me."

"Over my dead body," Remo growled.

A battery of Uzis suddenly pointed in Remo's direction.

"This can be arranged," El Padrino said simply.

"I do not want any deaths until the negotiations are finished," Mr. Gordons growled abrasively.

Remo turned to face him. "The vice-presidency still goes, Gordons. I can deliver."

"Do not be a fool, Gordon," El Padrino said. "Even if they agree to this preposterous thing, the Vice-President will be out of office in four years, perhaps eight. What guarantees do you have after this?"

"Is this true?" Gordons asked Remo.

"Hey, you could become President after that," Remo countered. "A lot of Vice-Presidents become President."

"This is true?"

"Sure," Remo said. "It's the American way. Anyone can become President. Right, Chiun?"

"I know this to be true, insane as it sounds," the Master of Sinanju intoned.

"You cannot possibly believe this, Senor Gordon," El Padrino cried. "With me, you have a lifetime yob. I have many uses for a yuggernaut such as yourself."

"I wouldn't take the word of a drug dealer," Remo pointed out. "Especially one with a speech inpediment."

"Is this true? Are you a criminal?"

"I am a businessman," El Padrino said smoothly. "In my country, I am more famous than the Vice President. See my fine pistoleros? They would lay down their very lives for El Padrino. And for you, Senor Gordon, if I say this."

"Prove this. Have one lay down his life for you."

"Of course," El Padrino said. He nodded to Comandante Embutes, who yanked Guadalupe Mazatl to her feet. He put a gun muzzle to her temple.

"We will kill this one, hokay?"

Guadalupe looked up through the disarrayed hair over her face. Her brown eyes leaked tears.

"Oh, Coatlicue," she pleaded. "Do not let them kill your daughter. I implore you."

"Do it!" El Padrino ordered.

"No," said the Master of Sinanju. "There is a better way."

"What way is that?" asked Mr. Gordons.

"Ask the woman," Chiun said. "She is about to die. She knows us all. Ask her whom you may trust."

The serpent heads swept away from the Master of Sinanju to the woman, Guadalupe Mazatl.

"Tell me," Gordons rumbled.

"There is only one way you can know the truth," Guadalupe Mazatl said. "And that is by telling them all where the presidente is. Among my people, we have a saying. Caras vemos, corazones no sabemos. It means 'Faces we see, hearts we don't know.'"

"Should I tear out their hearts?" Mr. Gordons asked.

"No. It means that only by their actions can you judge them."

"The woman speaks wisdom," Chiun told Gordons.

The statue was silent. Its unwinking serpent eyes shifted from face to face. Then the heads rejoined with a clicking kiss so that the flat eyes looked out.

"The President is safe within the hollow ape atop the building called Banana," he said at last.

"Banana?" Remo said. Chiun shrugged.

"Banana?" El Padrino asked. Comandante Embutes snapped his fingers. "The monkey atop the Banana boutique. In the Zona Rosa. He is there!"

"Gracias," El Padrino said, signaling to Comandante Embutes, who still had Guadalupe by the hair. He shot her through the temples once. Once was enough.

She slumped over, tumbling back down the steep steps like a broken doll.

"No!" Remo cried. He reached the steps in a single leap. One hand lashed out, ruining the comandante's face. He kicked backward, taking out another pistolero with a toe to the throat.

El Padrino retreated as his men closed on Remo. Their pistols came up, fixing Remo in a crossfire. Remo ducked under a snapping bullet. He felt it go through his hair. He had been too slow, and the other muzzles were tracking for him.

Above, the Master of Sinanju turned to Mr. Gordons.

"You see your answer," he said. "Are we on the same side?"

"Yes."

"Then prove your loyalty by helping my son."

Mr. Gordons serpent head snapped apart. He crushed down the stairs-heavy, ponderous, unstoppable.

As his golem shadow fell over the combatants, El Padrino turned. His face registered horror. He lifted his Uzi. Streams of bullets rattled out, pocking the stone hearts of Coatlicue's broad chest.

Still the monster came on.

Square pile-driver arms swept down, bursting human heads like melons.

Seeing pistoleros falling all around him, Remo Williams slid out of the melee. He took the opportunity to trip one pistolero, sending him over the side of the terrace. The gunman landed on the one below, every bone shattered.

El Padrino ran out of bullets. He made the sign of the cross and stumbled back for the steps. Remo plunged after him.

Mr. Gordons trampled one last pistolero who had stayed to fight, and began lumbering down the stairs.

El Padrino got as far as the next terrace. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Remo and, more frighteningly, Coatlicue descending, and ran for the stairs.

He made a mistake many tourists make. He ran for the stone markers he thought headed the next flight of steps.

El Padrino assumed his feet would hit the stairs running. It was a wrong assumption. There were no stairs. He ran off the side of the pyramid, falling fifty feet. He didn't scream until he hit the terrace. Then he bleated like a lamb tangled in barbed wire.

Remo skidded to a stop. He saw El Padrino lying there, his legs twisted at impossible angles. The drug king coughed blood, proving that he was still alive.

The Master of Sinanju floated to Remo's side, ahead of the descending Coatlicue.

"Now what?" Remo asked, watching Gordons clumsily negotiate the steps.

"See to Guadalupe," Chiun said. "Now!"

"What about Gordons?"

"Leave him to me," the Master of Sinanju said, turning to face Mr. Gordons.

Remo went, quickly disappearing from sight.

Mr. Gordons strode to the lip of the terrace. He looked over the edge to El Padrino's struggling body. He was attempting to crawl to the steps. He left a trail of blood like a snail track.

"Well done, man-machine," said the Master of Sinanju, bowing.

"I am ready to return to America," said Mr. Cordons, clicking his serpent heads together. His walleyed gaze turned to regard the Master of Sinanju.

"You trust me, then?"

"Yes. Because of your actions. They tell me what your face and heart do not. At last I understand meat-machine behavior."

"Very wise. And I trust you too-unless of course you were lying."

"I was not lying. The President is hidden inside the ape."

"Excellent," Chiun said, pleased. His hands withdrew into his kimono sleeves. "Then we shall go to him as allies. After you have answered a question."

"What question?" "When we last encountered one another," Chiun said, "my son Remo fought the thing he thought was you. And I attacked the globe which I believed contained your brain. Both died at the same instant. Which truly contained your brain?"

"It was in the satellite," replied Mr. Gordons.

"That was very clever. And creative."

Mr. Gordons inclined his broad head. "Thank you. I pride myself on my creativity."

"No doubt your brain is an equally creative place this time," said Chiun slyly.

"It is."

"My son, who guessed wrong once before, is convinced it is in your right serpent's head."

"He is wrong," said Mr. Gordons.

"But I am cleverer than he," Chiun went on, lifting a long-nailed finger. "I know that it is in your left head."

"Why do you think that?" asked Mr. Gordons.

"Because you are clever, and that is not only the most creative place for your precious brain but also the safest."

"It is?" asked Mr. Gordons.

"Yes," said the Master of Sinanju. "For most humans are what is called right-brained. Or logical. By making yourself left-brained, you are automatically more creative."

"One moment." Mr. Gordons stepped around in place. His thick legs required him to take small side steps to turn his ponderous stone body.

"Why do you turn your back on me?" Chiun asked politely.

"There is something I must do," Gordons said, bending at the waist. One hand lifted to his left hemisphere.

" I am glad you trust me enough to do this," Chiun said.

"I trust you because of your actions. They tell me you have negotiated in good faith ."

"And your words tell me that you are a blockhead," said the Master of Sinanju as he set one sandaled foot to the serpent-twisted backside of the living statue of Coatlicue and exerted sudden force.

Mr. Gordons, in the act of transferring his brain from his left arm to his left hemisphere, toppled over the pyramid's side without a sound.

Landing, he broke into eight irregular pieces, pulverizing the still-squirming body of Jorge Chingar, a.k.a. El Padrino.

Remo came up the stairs like a rocket. He reached the shattered hulk that was Gordons. He looked up. "He's not moving."

"His left serpent's head is cracked in two," Chiun said as he floated down to join Remo.

"Yeah?" Remo said blankly.

"That's where his brain is," Chiun said smugly.

Remo looked at Coatlicue's fractured face. "How do you know that?" he wondered.

Chiun beamed like a wrinkled yellow angel. "The same way I know that it was I who killed Gordons last time, not you."

"How's that?" Remo said suspiciously.

"Because Gordon's told me so." And Chiun's angelic smile broadened.

"I don't believe it," Remo said as he knelt to examine the inert shattered hulk. Chiun kicked at it as if testing the tires on a used station wagon. Nothing happened. They separated the pieces, expecting a reaction. The statue of Coatlicue still didn't stir.

"See?" Chiun said happily. "bong ding, the witch is dead."

"It's ding dong, and there's no sense in taking chances," Remo muttered, lifting one knifelike hand over Coatlicue's broken left facial hemisphere. "Let's pulverize it into rock dust." He brought the edge of his hand down hard.

To Remo's surprise, his hand bounced off, making a hairline crack.

"Damn!" Remo said. "You try it."

The Master of Sinanju kicked at the stone, knocking a tiny chip loose.

"It's that bad Mexican air!" Remo growled. "We're not up to speed."

Chiun frowned. "We cannot dawdle here, Remo. There is still the President to consider."

Remo hesitated, his eyes on the broken hulk.

"Okay," he said, getting to his feet. "The President first. But we're coming back to finish the job."

They pelted down the pyramid's side, stopping at the base, where Guadalupe Mazatl's dead body lay sprawled.

Remo knelt to close her brown eyes.

They ran to their car without a backward glance.

When the stifling gorilla head came off; the President of the United States was practically in tears. He blinked in the bright sun.

"Who's there?" he moaned. " I don't have my glasses. I can't see."

"Never mind," Remo assured him. "You're safe."

On the Banana boutique roof; they pulled the plaster-and-fur King Kong apart, extracting the President. Carefully they lowered him to the artificial jungle floor.

"Where am I?" the President asked in concern.

"Just close your eyes," Remo added. "We're taking you to the U.S. embassy."

"Thank God you came back," the President moaned.

Then he passed out. His last breathy exhalation sounded like "Dan."

Remo looked to Chiun. "He thinks we're--"

"Hush," said the Master of Sinanju as he folded the President's arms over his chest in preparation to move him. "It may be better this way."

The Vice-President of the United States didn't understand.

One moment, he was getting ready to read his speech, when the envelope containing it was wrenched from his hands.

"Never mind that," his chief of staff said quickly. "Air Force Two is waiting. The President wants you by his side. Now."

They bundled him into a waiting limo and to the airport.

Before he knew it, he was set down in Mexico City, where the President was ushered aboard by tense Secret Service agents.

The President looked ragged, but he smiled warily.

"Dan," he said effusively. "Great to see you again-really wonderful." The Vice-President endured the firm two-handed handshake that seemed unending.

"Thank you, Mr. President," he said, wincing. His hand hadn't recovered from the morning's "grips-and-grins" marathon.

"Call me George," said the President. He turned to a steward. "Okay, on to Bogota."

The Vice-President blinked blankly. "Bogota?"

"We're going together, my boy." The President grinned. "From now on, we're a team. Where I go, you go."

"That's great," said the Vice-President, grinning weakly under his dazed blue eyes. He wondered what the hell had gotten into the President. He decided not to press his luck. Sheer dumb luck had catapulted him to the vice-presidency. No point in rocking the boat now. And maybe he'd get a little respect at last.

Although right now he would trade the vice-presidency for a bowl of hot Epsom salts for his aching hand. Why hadn't anyone warned him the job would be so demanding?

Chapter 27

Remo and Chiun were relaxing in their air-conditioned room at the Hotel Krystal when the phone rang. Remo was on the bed. Chiun sat on the floor, poring over a book. Outside, it was raining again. Lightning lashed the skyline.

Remo picked up the phone. "Smitty?"

"It's all settled, Remo," Dr. Harold W. Smith said without preamble. "The President and Vice-President have arrived in Bogota aboard Air Force Two."

"What about Air Force One?" Remo asked.

"That story is about to break. The White House is playing it as an air accident caused by pilot failure. The official NTSB report will attribute it to 'circadian desynchronosis.' "

"What the hell is that?"

"Jet lag."

"But Mexico City is only an hour behind Washington time," Remo pointed out.

"Nevertheless, that is the official story. We have to account for the dead."

Remo shrugged. "How's the President doing?"

Smith cleared his throat uncomfortably. "He believes the Vice-President is a latter-day Conan the Barbarian. He will be allowed to go on thinking that. The Vice-President has been told by his handlers that the President is not quite himself as a result of surviving the crash landing, and to nod and smile at everything he says, no matter how puzzling."

"He's good at that, at least," Remo said dryly. "I suppose it's on to Colombia and killing a few loose ends for us?"

"No," said Smith. "One of the bodies discovered on the Pyramid of the Sun was Jorge Chingar, El Padrino-the man who had the contract on the President's life."

"No kidding," Remo said with pleasure. " I didn't want to go to Colombia anyway. All that's left is finishing with Gordons, which we'll do when we get back up to speed."

"Too late."

Remo's hand tightened on the receiver. "What do you mean?"

"The Mexican authorities have discovered the shattered Coatlicue statue. It's even now being crated for return to the Museum of Anthropology."

"No sweat," Remo said casually. "We'll hit it there."

"No, Remo. Better to let sleeping dogs lie."

"What do you mean?"

"It's an expression. It means-"

"I know that!" Remo snapped. "But what does that have to do with Gordons?"

"That idol, Remo, is a very important national Mexican symbol," Smith said levelly. "It was found on the site of Tenochtitlan, the ruined Aztec capital on which modern-day Mexico City has been built. Let the Mexicans put it together if they can, and restore it to its proper place in the museum."

"What if Gordons isn't dead?" Remo wanted to know.

"I think he is this time," Smith replied. "And if not, he will be well taken care of by the museum staff. Perhaps Gordons might grow to enjoy being a museum piece. No one will threaten his survival ever again."

"We're taking an awful chance," Remo warned.

"Our job is done. Return on the next flight."

"How about a 'Well done'?" Remo suggested.

The line went dead.

Remo stared at the receiver in his hand.

"How do you like that Smith?" he complained to the Master of Sinanju. "Not even a thank-you."

"Assassins are never appreciated in any age," Chiun said absently. He was paging through an oversize book entitled The Aztecs.

Remo put down the phone, smiling.

"Yearning for the glory days, Little Father?" he asked.

"It is a shame," said the Master of Sinanju. "These Aztecs were the Egyptians of their time. They had worthy kings, princes, and even slaves. Perhaps they may rise again."

"Count me out if they do," Remo said.

"We would have served true emperors, not temporary presidents and disposable presidents of vice," Chiun lamented. "We would have fitted in perfectly." "Only if we wore oxygen masks," said Remo. And when he laughed, his lungs hurt.

Chapter 28

Standing before the expectant crowd, which included the President of Mexico and other dignitaries, Mexican Museum of Anthropology curator Rodrigo Lujan waited nervously as the last guest speaker finished introducing him. Behind him, perched on her basalt dais and bathed in multicolored spotlights, towered the massive tarpaulin-draped figure of Coatlicue.

It had taken a week of hard work by museum specialists to put the sundered pieces of Coatlicue together. They fitted remarkably well. The museum specialists had carefully restored her, using a special concrete paste to repair the bullet holes and knit the sections together. Steel bolts had been necessary to hold the bicephalic head together, but when Coatlicue was carefully raised to her clawed feet, she was whole.

A creditable job of restoration, but the hairline cracks were as if Coatlicue had been scored by stonecutting machetes. It was sad. She would never again be the same.

The speaker finished. Rodrigo bowed at the mention of his name. With a sad heart, he pulled the tarpaulin free of the idol, revealing the brutal elemental beauty of the restored Coatlicue. A gasp of astonishment came from the, assembled audience. Cries of "Bravo!" resounded. Rodrigo looked behind him. He gasped too.

For not a crack was visible on Coatlicue's ornate skin. Even the filled-in bullet holes were invisible. It was miraculous, as if the spirit of Coatlicue herself had taken hold of the stone, healing it until the idol was once again whole.

Rodrigo Lujan bowed in acknowledgment of the applause that washed over him like thunder. But in his heart he gave silent thanks to Mother Coatlicue, whose ophidian eyes he felt on him.

For he was, above all things, Zapotec.