The End of the Game

He raised a hand to silence her. "Leave it to me," he said. He lightly vaulted over the railing and dropped the fifteen feet to the room below. He landed on the cushions of the sofa, rolled backward over its back, landed on his feet between two of the would-be gunmen, and snapped the machine guns from their hands.

The man behind the chair heard the sound and turned toward him, slowly raising his Magnum to firing height. But before he could do anything with it, Remo had taken it from his hand. Remo stood there among the three men holding all three guns. Three guns were awkward, he realized. He tried holding one machine gun in each hand and the revolver under his chin but that wasn't comfortable.

"Who are you? What do you want?" the man behind the chair said.

"Just hold your horses," Remo said. It was hard to talk holding a gun under your chin.

He put both machine guns under one arm and held the pistol in his other hand, but the machine guns began to slip. They might fall out, go off and hurt somebody that way, he thought.

"Are you all right?" Pamela yelled from the balcony.

"Fine, fine, fine, fine," Remo said. "Will you all just wait a minute?"

Finally he gave up and tossed all three weapons into a corner of the room. "Listen," he told the three men. "I put them over there but that doesn't mean you should think you can run over and get one or something because then I'll have to kill you."

Pamela came down the steps into the living room. She covered the three men with her small pistol and Remo noticed that she held it low and close to her hip, the way people did who were expert in the law-enforcement use of firearms, not out in front of her where anyone could slap it away.

"Don't anybody move," she snarled.

"They weren't planning to move, Mrs. Peel," Remo said sarcastically. "Now aim that thing away from me." He turned back to the three men. "Okay, what're your names?"

"Who wants to know?" said the man who had been hiding behind the chair.

Remo upended the brass coffee table behind the couch and twisted one of its legs into a corkscrew shape.

"Next question?" he said.

"Bondini," the man said. "Bernie Bondini."

Remo glanced at the other two men, who were still on the floor, cringing in front of Pamela, whose gun pointed unwaveringly at them.

"Hubble."

"Franko."

"Any of those sound like the voice that's been calling?" Remo asked Pamela.

"I can't tell from just their names," Pamela said. "They've got to say more."

"Who are you?" Bondini asked.

"Will you stop saying that?" Remo said. "All right. Now I want you to take turns. One at a time, repeat this: Four score and something ago, our forefathers brought up--"

"You're getting it wrong," Bondini said.

"Just say it any way you want," Remo said. "I never told you I was any good at history."

"Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon--"

"That's good," Remo said. "You remember that from school?"

"Yes," said Bondini.

"I could never remember it," Remo said. "I kept mixing up fathers and forefathers. I was supposed to recite it on Memorial Day but I kept getting it wrong."

"That's a shame," Bondini said.

"Yeah. They got Romeo Rocco to do it instead. Boy, did he stink. He sounded like that guy who does the fast commercials. He wet his pants in the middle and he still finished the speech before any liquid reached the floor."

He turned back to Pamela.

"Him?" he asked. She shook her head no.

"Okay, you," Remo said, pointing to the bearded man on the floor. "What's your name?"

"Hubble."

"Okay. Recite the Gettysburg Address."

"I don't know the zip code for Gettysburg," Hubble said.

"Very funny," Remo said. "Now will you try for a broken neck?"

"Four score and seven years ago, our fathers something something," Hubble said.

"Him?" Remo asked Pamela.

"No," she said.

"That leaves you," Remo said to Franko. "Recite."

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in--"

"That's enough," Remo said.

"--liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether--" Stash Franko rose to his feet. "-- this nation or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated--"

"I said enough," Remo said.

"--can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield--"

Remo clapped his hand over Franko's mouth. "If there's anything I hate, it's a show-off." He looked at Pamela and she again shook her head no.

"I'm letting you go," Remo told Franko. "If you promise to speak only when spoken to. You promise?"

Franko nodded and Remo released him.

"--of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion--"

Remo straightened out the brass table leg, snapped it from the table, then wrapped it around Franko's neck, tightly enough to frighten him, not so tight that it would hurt him.

"I'll be quiet," Franko said meekly.

"What do you want?" Bondini said.

"Who's Buell? The owner?" Remo asked.

"We just met him once," Bondini said. "Abner Buell. A twerpy-looking guy with plastic hair. I don't even really know him."

Remo looked at the other two men, who shook their heads.

"Why were you going to kill us then?" Remo asked.

"Because I didn't want to beat my mother with a stick," Bondini said.

"And I won't make it with no sheep," said Hubble.

"Or a corpse," said Franko.

It took Remo a while to sort it all out but with Pamela's help, he finally figured out that the three men were counting on getting some money from the owner of the place and they didn't even know who Remo was. He was glad about that because it meant that he would not have to kill them.

"How were you supposed to notify Buell that I was dead?" Remo asked.

"He didn't tell us."

Remo said to Pamela, "That means this place is wired or something. Probably sound and camera."

He turned back to the three men. "All right. You guys can go."

"That's it?" Bondini asked.

"You're not going to turn us in?" asked Hubble.

"Not me, pal. Go in peace."

Franko was silent, gazing out toward the ocean. Finally he said, "There was one thing."

"What was that?"

"The guy who owns this place. I heard him say he had a place just like it in Carmel and he was expecting company. Does that help?"

"Yes," Remo said. "Thanks."

"It's better than making it with a corpse," Franko said as he walked toward the door. He paused in the doorway.

"Another thing," he said.

"What?" said Remo.

"--of this battlefield as a final resting place for those who here gave--" he said, and then ran as Remo started toward him.

* * *

In Carmel, north along the Pacific shoreline, Buell turned off the television monitor and said to Mr. Hamuta, "Get yourself ready. He should be here soon."

"I am always ready," Hamuta said.

"You'd better be."

Hamuta left and Marcia came into the room. Buell graced her with one of his infrequent and emotionless smiles. She was wearing a train engineer's outfit, but the legs of the jeans were cut off almost to her crotch and she had on no shirt and her breasts bobbled back and forth under the overalls' bib front.

"He escaped, this Remo?" she said.

"Yes."

"Who can he be?" she asked.

"Some government spy. I don't know," said Buell.

"Too bad he escaped," she said.

"No, it isn't. He was supposed to, remember? I just wanted him to be on his guard when he gets here. Make it a tougher game for Hamuta."

"Suppose Hamuta fails?" the woman asked.

"He never fails."

"But if he does?" the redhead persisted.

Buell rubbed a hand over his patent-leathered hair. "It doesn't matter," he said. "The whole world still goes up. Boom."

"I can't wait," Marcia said. "I can't wait."

sChapter Ten

"He flew the coop, Smitty," Remo said. "But I know who he is."

"Who?" asked Smith, whose computers had discovered the Malibu house but had not been able to identify its owner.

"Abner Buell."

"The Abner Buell?" asked Smith.

"An," said Remo.

"An?"

"He's an Abner Buell. That's all I know. I don't know if he's the Abner Buell. I don't even know who the Abner Buell is. An. But I think I know where he went. We're going there now."

"We?"

"The girl I'm with."

"Does she know who you are?" Smith asked.

"No. She thinks I work for the post office. No. The phone company."

"Get rid of her then," Smith said.

"She knows Buell's voice."

"And you know his name. I'm sure you'll be able to figure it out when you meet him. Get rid of her."

"Okay," Remo said.

"Where is Buell now?" Smith asked.

"I think he's got a place in Carmel. That's in California."

"Let me see if I can find it," Smith said. He fiddled with his computer. "Do you know how I found out the address in Malibu?"

"No," Remo said.

"Do you care?" Smith asked.

"Not even one whit," Remo said.

Smith snorted. "I've got an address in Carmel. It's probably his."

"I'll try it," Remo said and Smith gave him the address.

"By the way, Remo. Buell's got a very interesting background. Are you interested?"

"No."

"I beg your pardon," Smith said.

"That's okay," Remo said.

"What is okay?"

"Look. You asked me if I was interested in Buell's background. I said no. Does it have to get more complicated than that?"

"I guess not," Smith said slowly.

"Then we're done," Remo said.

"Remember. The man is capable of causing World War III. He's come very close in the last few days. Extreme measures are called for," Smith said.

"You mean, make pate out of him."

"I mean make sure he can never do this again."

"Same thing," Remo said. "Good-bye."

* * *

Pamela Thrushwell was not pleased.

"I'm sorry," she said curtly, in her crispest British accent, "but I'm going."

"No, you're not. I'll handle this myself."

"No, thank you very much. I'm going, I said."

"And I said you're not," Remo said.

"Then I'll call the papers and tell them everything that's going on. Would you like that?"

"You wouldn't do that," Remo said.

"How are you going to stop me? Kill me?"

"It's a thought," Remo admitted.

"How will your superiors like that?" she asked.

"After the initial furor dies down, they'll raise the price of stamps. That's what they always do."

"You said you worked for the phone company, not the post office."

"I meant the price of a telephone call," Remo said.

"All right," she said. "You go. I don't need you. I can get a lift and go by myself."

Remo sighed. Why was everybody so intractable these days? Whatever happened to women who said yes and did what you wanted?"

"Okay. You can tag along. I guess that's the only way to keep you out of trouble."

"And you drive carefully," Pamela said.

"I will. I promise," Remo said. He also promised himself that when the appropriate time came, and he had Buell nailed, he would just leave Pamela on the side of the road somewhere and never see her again. As they left Malibu, going north along the coast highway, Pamela said, "Why'd you change your mind?"

"You've got a nice ass," Remo said.

"That's a dumb reason."

"Not if you're an ass man," Remo said.

"Who was that you called?" Pamela asked.

"My mother," Remo said. "She worries when I'm out of town too long. She worries about rain and snow and gloom of night keeping me from the swift completion of my appointed rounds."

"That's the post office again," she said.

"Don't nitpick," Remo said.

Mr. Hamuta was alone in the Carmel house, built overlooking the ocean on the town's fourteen-mile-long scenic coast drive. The entrance to the house was down a long winding pathway that began at the home's heavily locked front gates.

When Buell and Marcia had left, the redhead had asked, "Should we leave the front gate open?"

"No," Buell said.

"Why not?"

"Because the gate won't stop him whether it's locked or unlocked. But if we leave it unlocked, he might suspect a trap. Don't you agree, Mr. Hamuta?"

"Most wholeheartedly," Hamuta said. He was in an upstairs bedroom. The large windows had been opened and, sitting back from the glare of daylight, he was hidden from sight but commanded a total view of the walk and the gate and the roadway beyond.

"Suppose he comes from the ocean side?" Marcia asked.

"Mr. Hamuta has a television monitor," Buell said. "He can watch the ocean side." He pointed to the small television set which he had hooked up in the room, which showed a continuous panning shot of the Pacific.

"It is all quite adequate," Hamuta said. He was wearing a three-piece suit. His vest was tightly buttoned, his tie immaculately knotted and held in place by a collar pin on his expensive white-on-white shirt. "You choose not to remain for the entertainment?"

"Where we're going is hooked up to the house monitors here. We'll watch it on television."

"Very good. Will you tape it for me?" Hamuta said. "I would like to look at it when I return to Britain."

"You just love blood, don't you, Mr. Hamuta?" Buell said.

Hamuta did not answer. The truth was that he regarded the young American as too crass and too vulgar for words. Blood. What did he know about blood? Or about death? The young Yank designed games in which mechanical creatures died by the tens of thousands. What could he have experienced that would bear any resemblance to the feeling of exhilaration that came when a perfectly placed bullet brought down a human target so that other bullets, perfectly placed also, could carve him like a Christmas goose?

Had Buell ever held his index finger on a trigger and looked down the length of a perfect weapon and for the moment it took to apply the fractional ounce of pressure to the trigger, experienced the knowledge that one was not, at that moment, a mortal anymore but a god, infused with the power of life and death? What did this insignificant creature know about such things, he with his childish visions of fantasy games?

Mr. Hamuta thought these things but said nothing and watched silently as Buell and the woman-- a strange one, that, and much brighter than she appeared to be-- walked up the long curving walkway toward the road where a parked car waited.

Hamuta was glad to be alone, to savor the pleasure of the upcoming moments in silence, thinking to himself how he would place the bullets and where. The man was the important target so he would take the man first. He would put a shot in the knee. No, the hip. A hip shot caused more pain and would immobilize the man. Then he would simply remove the woman with one shot and then go back to the man and carve him up with bullets. It was so much more fun that way. Buell was wrong. Hamuta was not interested in death for death's sake. He was interested in killing for killing's sake. The act of the kill was pure and worthy.

When the afternoon shadows began to lengthen, Hamuta took a telescope from a velvet-lined box and carefully mounted it atop his rifle. Using a magnifying glass, he lined up a series of marks atop the scope with matching marks on the rifle frame itself, locking the telescope into the correct firing focus. The scope was a light-gathering instrument of a highly complicated personal design but it was able to render objects seen in dim light as highly illuminated, as if they were being viewed at high noon under a bright sun.

Then, telescope in place, again he sat, the rifle cradled in his arms like an infant, and waited.

The man first. It would definitely be the man first.

Three thousand miles away, Harold W. Smith looked at the printed report that his computers had spewed out on Abner Buell.

Brilliant. Unquestionably brilliant.

But unstable. Unquestionably unstable.

The computer issued a list of properties held by Buell and companies in which he was an investor. The dry tedium that makes up a person's life, Smith thought.

There was one small item buried at the end of the report. It said that a British computer had malfunctioned and almost resulted in Great Britain announcing it was leaving NATO and signing a friendship pact with Russia. Access to the British computers was by satellite signal from the United States, the computer report stated. Probability of Buell's involvement: sixty-three percent.

A wacko, Smith thought. A wacko tired of playing game-games and now ready to start World War III, the biggest game of all.

He hoped Remo would be in time to stop him.

Remo had tried to dump her by the side of the road when he stopped at a gas station and said he had to use the bathroom. As he expected, she said she did too. He went into the men's room, then darted right back out, jumped in the car and drove away. But something didn't feel right and he figured out what it was just before Pamela stuck her head up from the back seat, where she had been hiding on the floor, and said, "If you try that again, Yank, I'll plug you."

So now they were standing in front of the locked gate of Buell's Carmel mansion and Remo snapped open the lock and pushed the gate open. It swung soundlessly, well-oiled, no squeak.

"You shouldn't come in," he said.

"Why not?"

"It might be dangerous."

"This is California. You think it's not dangerous for me to sit in a car by the side of the road? I'm coming in," she said.

"All right. But you be careful."

"I have my gun."

"That's what I want you to be careful of. I don't want you to go shooting me by accident."

"If I shoot you, it won't be by accident," Pamela Thrushwell sniffed, then followed him down the short flight of steps that led to the twisting flagstone path.

* * *

It was perfect.

The two were off the steps now, onto the path, and Hamuta raised the rifle to his shoulder. The telescope intensified the dim light and brightened the images of the two people walking toward the house.

Perfect.

First the man. A bullet in the hip to drop and immobilize him. Then the woman. Then return to the man.

Perfect.

"Don't look now," Remo said, "but there's somebody in that upstairs window."

Pamela started to look up and Remo pulled her toward him by the wrist. "I said, don't look up."

"I didn't see anybody up there," she said.

"You're not supposed to. Just walk naturally."

He let go of her wrist. They walked a few more steps. Remo stopped and grabbed her arm again.

"What--?"

"Shh," he said. He felt the pressure waves increasing on his body. He did not know what he sensed or how he sensed it, but there was a faint pressure, circling in on him, invisibly touching him, a caress of danger.

"There's a weapon on us," he said softly.

"How do you know?"

"I know is all. Upstairs window. Wait. Wait. Now!"

He pushed her aside as a shot cracked. She hit the soft grassy earth and rolled behind a large stone that decorated the home's flower-bedecked front garden.

Remo had spun into a double spiral. The shot had been meant for his right hip. He knew it without knowing it and he went heavily down onto the stone path.

"Remo," Pamela called. She started for her feet.

He lay heavily on the stone path. "Just shut up and stay there," he hissed. "No matter what happens."

Hamuta smiled. The white man lay on the ground, still, his right hip jutting out from his body at a harsh, unreal angle. Hamuta knew he had hit the ball joint just the way he wanted to.

But the damned woman. She had slipped behind the rock, out of his sight.

He waited a moment, rifle still raised to his shoulder, then shook his head. He did not like changes in his program but he was going to have to make one. He would dispose of the man first and then take care of the woman.

He looked again at Remo.

Perhaps this time, the left hip.

Remo felt the second shot before he heard the sound.

In the fraction of a fraction of a second before the bullet reached him, he sensed its direction, its velocity, its intended target and, at the last moment, jerked his body off the ground. The bullet hit the flagstone below his left hip and he could feel shards of stone spray upward against his side. He settled back, twitched and groaned. Behind him, he could hear the rebounding slug whistling off across the road.

Pamela groaned. "Oh, no."

Remo twitched.

For a moment, Hamuta thought about removing the man's earlobes but he decided against it. There was no fun in it, a simple bullet in the heart would be best and fastest. Then go downstairs, find the woman and dispose of her too. She might prove to be more fun.

He lined up the sight with Remo's chest and squeezed the trigger.

Pamela Thrushwell was looking toward the house when she saw the flash from a gun's muzzle just inside the second-floor window. Then she heard the crack. She spun to the left, just in time to see Remo's body crumple, as if folding itself around something. It jerked back, three feet, rolled once and then lay facedown, arms sprawled out.

Hamuta did not like physical movement but not even his favorite weapon could fire through the rock behind which the young woman was hiding. He came out of the house and glanced up the slight incline to where Remo's body lay still. He was disappointed; he had wanted to have more sport with the man. Three shots, two hips and a heart, were not even enough to whet his appetite. It had been a very unspectacular, unsatisfying kill, and he would be glad to leave this barbarian country and return to a civilized land where even dying had rules and gentlemen observed them.

He walked up the path, rifle held loosely at his right side. The woman might be armed, he thought randomly. Well, it didn't matter. Women were just simply hopeless with firearms. She would be no threat; it would be no contest.

Before he reached the young white man's body, he stepped off the path and headed on a straight line for the large stone. He moved silently over the well-trimmed grass and when he reached the rock, he stopped and listened. Clearly, he heard her breathing and he smiled slightly to himself.

He bent over and picked up a small stone, made moist by the Pacific air. He moved silently to the right side of the stone, nearest the walkway, then tossed the pebble over the stone's other end.

It hit with a small sound, rippling through a flowering azalea bush. Without waiting, Hamuta moved around the right side of the rock.

He was confronted by Pamela Thrushwell's back. She stood in firing position, looking away from him, toward where the sound had come from, and before she could move, Hamuta had stepped toward her and knocked the pistol from her hand.

She wheeled to see the elegantly dressed little man, holding a rifle at his side, and smiling at her.

"Who the sod are you?" she demanded.

Hamuta smiled at her coarse British accent. The woman might be a battler and that was good. It might redeem what had so far been a very dull day.

"I am going to give you a chance to escape," Hamuta said. "You may run."

"So you can shoot me in the back?"

"I will not shoot until you are least twenty-five yards away," he said. "A twenty-five-yard head start." He smiled. "Because we are both British."

"No."

"Then I will shoot you here," Hamuta said.

Pamela's eyes strayed toward the ground where her pistol had fallen.

"You will not be able to reach it before I fire," he said. He had backed up so he was five feet away from the woman, far enough so that no sudden lunge of hers could reach the rifle before his bullet reached her brain.

A sudden jolt of fear surged in Pamela. For a moment, she seemed undecided whether to run or to take a chance on diving for the gun, hoping that a lucky shot would get the man before he got her. He seemed able to read her mind. He said, "Run and you have a chance. A small chance but a chance. Move for that pistol and you have none. Now run."

And then there was another voice that rang out over the lawn. It came from behind Hamuta.

"Not so fast, butterball."

Hamuta wheeled. Remo stood on the walkway, fifteen feet away, looking at him. The young American's eyes were dark and cold and in the lengthening evening, shadows carved his face into harsh angular planes.

Hamuta's jaw dropped open in shock.

"How are you there?" he asked, almost to himself as much as Remo.

"I'm a fast healer. I always was. Pamela, is that the voice?"

She was unable to answer. Surprise and shock had frozen her tongue.

"I said is that the voice?" Remo repeated.

"No," she finally coughed.

"I didn't think so. Okay. Where's Buell?" Remo asked the man in the three-piece suit.

Hamuta had recovered. Somehow he must have missed. But not at this distance. He still would have some fun with the thin American.

"I'm talking to you, suethead," Remo said.

He stepped forward and Hamuta, smiling, raised the rifle slowly to his shoulder. He had forgotten Pamela behind him and she moved quietly toward her pistol. She heard Hamuta say, "Your right shoulder, first." She lunged for the pistol. Perhaps she could get the Englishman before he got Remo. But then she heard the rifle's whip-snap crack.

She looked up. Remo still stood there, smiling, his body twisted slightly so that his left shoulder was forward, toward Hamuta.

"What? What? What?" Hamuta was sputtering. He could not believe he had missed. Neither could Pamela.

Angrily this time, Hamuta squeezed the trigger again, aiming at Remo's midsection only a few feet away from him. As Pamela watched, Remo's body seemed to twist, then unravel. It was a rolling motion that had no discernible rhythm to it, no predictability, and Hamuta, with Remo now only eight feet away, fired another shot but Remo kept moving forward. The bullet must have missed. But Pamela knew that the Englishman could not miss forever at this distance so she aimed at his head, holding both hands on the butt of the pistol.

As she squeezed the trigger, she heard Remo call out: "No."

But it was too late. The pistol barked and the back of Hamuta's head exploded and he dropped face-forward onto the grass. Blood ran down the sides of his head. The rifle lay under his body. Remo looked over at Pamela.

"What the hell did you go and do that for?" he said.

"He was going to kill you."

"If he was able to kill me, he would have done it a half a dozen shots ago," Remo grumbled. "Now he's dead and I don't know who he is or where Buell is or anything. And it's all your fault."

"Stop sniveling," she said.

"I knew it was a mistake to let you come along."

"I never got less thanks for trying to save someone's life," Pamela said.

"Save it for the Red Cross," Remo said. "I don't need it."

"You really are an ungrateful wretch," Pamela said. "I thought you were dead. If you weren't hurt, why'd you wait so long?"

"Because, bigmouth, I had to see if there were others. Because if I went after him, one of his partners, if he had any, might have gotten you. Because I was thinking about keeping you alive, even if only God knows why. Because if it's not one irritation, it's another."

Pamela thought for a moment and was about to say thank you, but the scowl on Remo's face soured her and she said, "You can stay here and complain if you want, but I'm going inside the house."

"Buell's not there," Remo said.

"How do you know?"

"Because the house is empty."

"How do you know that?" she asked.

"I just know."

"I'll look for myself," Pamela said.

The house was empty. Remo followed her inside and in the upstairs bedroom saw the television monitor which patrolled the ocean-side back of the house.

"I'll bet that bastard is monitoring what goes on here," Remo said.

"Maybe."

"Sure. He's the Abner Buell. I bet he's a big TV wizard or something. He's been watching. He knows that Tubby the Tuba out there is dead. He was probably watching the place at Malibu too. That's how he knew we were coming here."

"Maybe," she said.

"Look." Remo pointed toward the ceiling. "There. And there. Those are all television cameras." He walked out into the hallway. "Sure," he called back. "He's got them all over. Right now, he's someplace watching us."

Pamela's hand moved instinctively to her throat to adjust the collar of her blouse.

Remo walked toward one of the cameras, looked at it, and said aloud, "Buell, if you're listening. This is the last time you're going to mess around with the telephone company. I'm coming for you. You understand? I'm coming for you."

As he ripped the camera from the ceiling, he said, again, "I'm coming for you. If you're watching."

sChapter Eleven

"--if you're watching."

Abner Buell was watching and the last thing he saw was Remo's hand extend upward toward the hidden camera and then the screen went black.

It had all been a game up till now, but suddenly, for an instant, he felt the hair raise along his arms and on the back of his neck. For he had looked into the televised image of Remo's dark eyes and felt as if he were looking into the face of hell.

Another television screen was next to him and as soon as the first screen went blank, bells began to ring on the second, small multicolored cartoon figures marched across the board, and then were replaced by a neat precise drawing of a man in a three-piece suit lying dead. Mr. Hamuta.

The machine spelled out a message to Buell.

"Target Remo now worth five hundred thousand points. Last defender gone. Play options: 1) surrender and save life; 2) fight on alone. Chances of success: 21 percent."

"Who the hell asked you?" Buell snapped, and switched off the game screen.

Behind him, Marcia asked: "It is not going good, is it, Abner?"

He wheeled around. Marcia was wearing a French maid's costume, her breasts high and saucy in a push-up bra. Her legs were encased in black mesh stockings that ended high up her white thighs with a black garter belt. A small black apron with a white lace fringe completed the costume.

Buell said, "Not going good? I haven't even started. What the hell does the computer know?" He looked at her costume again, seeming to notice it for the first time.

"I like the harem pants better. Wear them. With nothing on underneath. And the little gauze vest. I like that. Don't button it."

"As you wish, Abner," she said, but she did not leave immediately. "What do you plan to do now?"

"Why are you asking so many questions today? You going for Barbara Walters' job? Why don't you go back to modeling?"

"I am just interested in you," she said evenly. "You are the most remarkable man I have ever met and I want to know how your mind works."

As he turned back to the computer, he said, "Brilliantly. Brilliantly."

He turned on the machine and hunched his shoulders as he leaned over the keyboard. Marcia watched him for a few long seconds, but when it was clear he was not going to speak again, she left to change her costume.

Buell did not hear her leave. He was working over the computer, creating a program and inserting data as rapidly as most people could type.

His first thought was to find out how this Remo, whoever he was, had traced him accurately in Malibu and in Carmel. Had Buell himself made it too easy?

But neither house was listed under his name. None of his neighbors in Carmel-- and they were all far distant on both sides of his home-- even knew him and as far as he knew had never even seen him. If Remo had come to Carmel and asked for Abner Buell's home, all he would have gotten was a blank stare.

How had he found it so easily?

He sat at the machine, asking the computer different questions, getting answers that did not satisfy him. He waited for the computer to solve the puzzle but it did not. And then, in one of those leaps of intuition that he felt would always separate man's mind from the machine mind, he asked the machine: "What about utility bills?"

The computer did not understand. Its screen lit up with a line of question marks.

"What home is biggest private user of electricity in Malibu?" he asked.

The computer responded: "Wait. Tapping into utility-company computer records."

Buell drummed his fingers on the side of the console while he waited. In less than a minute, the computer responded. It gave Buell's own Malibu address.

Buell smiled. Maybe, he thought. Maybe. He typed onto the monitor: "What home is largest private user of electricity in Carmel?"

The machine again begged for time, and then listed the address of Buell's Carmel home.

He snapped his fingers and whooped. He had found it. Remo had found his addresses by checking the electrical usage in both communities. It was a fair assumption that Buell, with his computers and cameras and cybernetic equipment and design studios, would have been high on that list.

It was a trail that this Remo, whoever he was, had been able to follow.

But trails led in both directions.

Buell knew that Remo was no free-lance. He was working for someone, some agency which was disturbed at Buell's activities over the last several months.

The trail that led from that agency to Buell could also lead back, if Buell could only follow it, if he could only read the signs. But how to do it?

He sat silently at the console for a long time, thinking. The computer, never bored, never impatient, waited for his instructions.

Finally Buell moved. He directed the computer to go back into the utility company and find out who, besides himself, had dug into its computers to get the addresses of large electricity users.

The computer gave a listing of all such queries for the Malibu area. A few minutes later, it gave the similar listing for Carmel.

Buell typed into the computer: "List all duplicates." The computer instantly responded that only one name had appeared on both lists. It was a small computer laboratory in Colorado.

Buell instructed the computer to slip into the Colorado lab's equipment and find out if the queries had been generated from there or had been merely passed through there.

While he waited for a response, Marcia reentered the room but he did not see her. The computer's ready light flashed and gave him the name of a printing supply house in Chicago as the originator of the queries. Buell smiled. He knew he was on the right track now. What reason could a printing-supply house in the Midwest have to want to know the electrical bills at two California coastal towns? None at all. The Chicago company was a cover.

Again he instructed the machine to tap into the Chicago computers and follow the query back.

It took two hours. The trail led from the Chicago company to an auto-parts firm in Secaucus, New Jersey. Then back to an Oriental food company in Seneca Falls, New York, and then to a restaurant on West Twenty-sixth Street in New York.

From there, the computers traced the query to a distributor of used tractor parts in Rye, New York.

And there it stopped.

"Continue trace," Buell ordered the computer.

"No further lead," the computer flashed back. "Query on electrical usage originated in Rye, New York, computer."

Buell again stared at the monitor. Unseen and forgotten by him was Marcia, who sat in a corner of the room quietly watching. She was wearing her houri outfit and while she was proud of her body, she knew it would bring no sign of interest from him. Not now. Not while he was working. And above all, she wanted him to keep working.

She heard Buell giggle and somehow knew it was a dirty trick he had planned.

"Find greatest privacy electricity consumption in Rye, New York," he said.

The computer worked silently for only fifteen seconds before reporting the name and address of a Dr. Harold W. Smith.

"Information on Smith," Buell demanded.

Short minutes later, the computer reported: "Director of Folcroft Sanitarium, Rye, New York."

"Nature of Folcroft Sanitarium?" Buell typed.

"Private nursing home for elderly mental patients," the computer responded.

"Is monthly utility bill of Folcroft Sanitarium consistent with utility bills of similar private nursing homes?" Buell asked.

It took the machine fifteen minutes to issue a reply. Finally, it printed out: "No. Electrical usage excessive."

"Consistent with heavy computer operation?" Buell asked.

"Yes," the machine responded almost instantly.

Buell turned off the computer, satisfied that he had tracked down the truth. It took a massive computer operation to track down his two homes at Malibu and Carmel, and that computer operation was centered in Rye, New York. It stood to reason that the man in charge of it would have heavy-duty terminals in his home: thus, the excessive use of electricity at the home of Dr. Harold W. Smith.

And the Folcroft Sanitarium that Smith headed. That too used too much electricity for just a simple nursing home. Again, a computer operation.

This Remo had been sent by this Smith. And this Smith whoever he was, ran something important in the United States. Something important and dangerous to Abner Buell.

It was late at night and Harold Smith was preparing to leave his darkened office at Folcroft. His secretary had gone hours before and he knew that dinner would be waiting for him when he arrived home, some kind of meat smothered in some kind of red catsuppy goo.

He had reached the door of his office when one of his private telephone lines rang. Remo. It must be Remo, he thought, and he strode quickly across the antistatic carpet to the telephone.

But the voice that answered his "hello" was not Remo's.

"Dr. Smith?" the voice said.

"Yes."

"This is Abner Buell. I think you've been looking for me?"

sChapter Twelve

Smith looked toward the icy waters of Long Island Sound, two hundred yards away, lapping at the rocky shoreline where the manicured lawns of Folcroft fell away before finally surrendering to the salt-laced air.

The remnants of a rickety old dock stuck out into the water, bent at strange angles like an arthritic finger. God, so long ago. It was to that very dock that Smith and another ex-CIA man, now long dead, had tied up their small boat when they came to Folcroft to set up CURE. So many years ago.

And so many disappointments.

They had been filled with high hopes for the secret organization's success and it had failed. It had won some little fights, some small skirmishes, but the big criminals, the overlords and chieftains, all kept getting away with crime because the justice system was weighted in favor of the rich and powerful. A successful prosecution was a chain of many links and it was always possible to corrupt and weaken one of those links and break the chain.

Smith had been prepared to write CURE off, call it a failure, and go back to New Hampshire and life as a college professor. But then he and CURE were given permission to recruit an enforcement arm-- one man-- to mete out the punishment that the legal system couldn't and wouldn't mete out.

Remo Williams had been the man. Smith had framed the orphan policeman for a killing he didn't commit, had seen him sentenced to die in an electric chair that didn't work, and had brought him to Folcroft for training. Ten years ago. And for that decade, it had often been only Remo, trained by Chiun and supported by Smith, to stand up for America against all its enemies.

And it had all started with that small power boat tying up to that rickety old dock.

So many years ago.

So many deaths ago.

Conrad MacCleary, the other CIA agent, was dead many years now, and Smith ruefully reflected that he too was dead in a way. Certainly the Smith who had come to this place to start CURE, filled with optimism and high hopes, no longer existed. That Smith had been replaced by a man who ate tension as his daily diet, who hoped finally not to wipe out crime and criminals, but merely to try to stay even with them. The young Harold Smith was dead, as dead as if he lay in a grave.

And now, it was Remo's turn.

Remo or America. That was the price Abner Buell had set, and Smith knew that it was a price he would pay.

At first, Smith had thought he was talking to a madman, because Buell kept talking about Remo's point value continuing to go up as he got tougher and tougher to destroy.

He was mad, but he was also crafty and intelligent and dangerous. He had told Smith about the aborted U.S. missile firing which was a whistle away from beginning World War III and he told Smith about a similar Russian event, about which Smith was only now starting to get information. Buell stated proudly that he was behind both moves. He had too much solid information for Smith to disbelieve him and Smith's stomach sank when Buell said he could do it all again if he chose.

And he would so choose. Unless Remo was removed from the board.

"Think about it, Dr. Smith," Buell had said. "You get rid of that Remo. Or I'll start a nuclear war."

"Why would you do that?" Smith asked placantly. "You'd probably die too in an all-out nuclear war."

Buell had cackled, a madman's laugh. "Maybe and maybe not. But it'd be my war. I'd be the winner because I started it and that was what I set out to do. Five million extra points for starting a nuclear war. It's this Remo or that. Make up your mind."

"I have to think about it," Smith said, stalling for time as his Folcroft computers raced through switching procedures to try to trace the phone call.

"I'll call you tomorrow then," Buell said. "Oh, by the way. Your computers won't be able to trace this call."

"Why not?" Smith asked.

"They haven't had time yet. All they'll know is I'm someplace west of the Mississippi, and that's right. Good-bye."

That had been an hour ago and still Smith sat looking through the smoky windows at the sound. The United States or Remo. Maybe the world or Remo.

When it was that simple, was there any question what his response would be? Sighing, he picked up the telephone to call Chiun.

Marcia tried to make him eat dinner, but Buell curtly told her he was too busy.

World War Ill-- five million points.

Remo-- a half-million points.

Pamela Thrushwell-- fifty thousand points by now.

And now this Dr. Smith? How many points to give him?

He turned on the television monitor's game board and watched the point totals appear on the screen. Smith was a bureaucrat probably, and probably dumb. Arbitrarily, he decided to give Harold W. Smith a mere ten thousand points.

Until further calculation.

In the middle of the hotel-room floor, surrounded by piles of bond paper, Chiun sat.

Smith waited, silent, until Chiun acknowledged his presence but the old Oriental was preoccupied. As Smith watched, Chiun was busy crossing out typewritten lines and writing in other lines, using a quill pen and an old-fashioned inkwell which he had on the floor before him. His tongue stuck slightly out of one corner of his mouth, showing his concentration. His hands flew so rapidly over the paper that to Smith they seemed almost a blur in the dimly lit room. Finally, Chiun sighed and placed the quill pen down, next to the inkwell. The motion was casual but graceful and when he was done, inkwell and pen looked as if they had been sculpted from one piece of black stone.

Without looking up, Chiun said, "Greetings, O Emperor. Your servant apologizes for his ill manners. Had I but known you were here, all else would have been relegated to unimportance. How may I serve you?"

Smith, who knew Chiun's excuse was nonsense since the Oriental would have recognized him a corridor away by the sound of his feet scuffing on a thick carpet, looked at the stacks of paper on the floor.

"Are you writing something?" he asked.

"A poor thing but an honest effort. One in which you may well take pride, Emperor."

"This isn't one of those petitions you got up to Stop Amateur Assassins, is it?" Smith asked warily.

Chiun shook his head. "No. I have decided that the time is not yet right for a national movement dedicated to obliterating inferior work. Someday but not now." He waved a long-nailed hand over the papers. "This is a novel. I am writing a novel."

"Why?"

"Why? Because the world needs beauty. And it is a good way for a man to spend his days, telling what he has learned so he can lighten the burden of those who are yet to come."

"This isn't about you, is it? About us?"

Chiun chuckled and shook his head. "No, Emperor. I understand full well your lust for secrecy. This has nothing to do with any of us."

"What's it about then?" Smith asked.

"It is about a noble old Oriental assassin, the last of his line, and the white ingrate he tries to teach and the secret agency that employs them. A mere trifle."

Suddenly, Smith remembered the bizarre call he had gotten earlier from some publisher who had thought that Folcroft was a training area for assassins. "I thought you said it wasn't about us," Smith said.

"And it is not," Chiun said innocently.

"But a noble old Oriental assassin. His white student A secret agency. Master of Sinanju, that is us," Smith said.

"No, no. Not even superficial similarities," Chiun said. "For instance, this Oriental assassin about whom I write is honored by the country which he has adopted and for which he works. Totally unlike my situation. And the white trainee, well, in my novel, he is not always ungrateful. And he is capable of learning something. Clearly that has nothing to do with Remo."

"The secret agency though," said Smith.

"Never once do I mention the Constitution and how we all work outside the Constitution so that everybody else can live inside it. How we break it so we can fix it." He gave Smith a sly grin. "Although I must confess that once I thought I might use that in my novel, but I realized no one would believe it. It is just too ridiculous to be believable."

"It still sounds a great deal like us," Smith said. "At least on a superficial level."

"You need not worry yourself about that, Emperor. The publisher has recommended certain changes which will dispel your fears. That is what I occupy myself with while Remo is away."

"What kind of changes?" Smith asked.

"Just a few. Everybody loves my manuscript. I just have to make a few changes for Bipsey Boopenberg in Binding and Dudley Sturdley in Accounting."

"What kind of changes?" Smith persisted.

"They assure me if I make these changes that I will become a big star and my book a best-seller. The Needle's Eye by Chiun. I have to change the Oriental assassin into a Nazi spy. The white trainee has to go. In place of the secret organization in America, I have to have Nazi spies in England. And set it in World War II. And I have to have a woman who will save the world from destruction at the hands of that lunatic with the funny mustache. This is all they wanted changed. And then I will be rich."

"You are already rich, Master, in the things that count."

"And you are always kind, Emperor. But there is an old saying in Sinanju. Kindness can warm a soul but it cannot fill an empty belly."

Smith decided to drop the subject of Chiun's novel because he felt a con job coming on to raise Chiun's fees for training Remo. And besides, Chiun was always writing and never publishing, and there was no reason to think this book's fate would be any different.

And maybe none of it would matter anyway. Why worry about it today when it was possible that tomorrow, or just a few tomorrows away, none of them might be alive to worry about anything.

"I understand," Smith said simply. "Master, I come to speak to you about a matter of great importance."

"As important as my novel?" Chiun asked.

"Yes."

"Name your request, sire. It will be done," Chiun said.

"I'm glad you feel that way, Chiun. May I sit down?"

Chiun waved a hand airily toward the sofa. "Please. Be comfortable." He liked the gesture with his hand and repeated it. It would be the gesture he used when he was being interviewed by Time magazine for a cover story. Chiun, Great New Author. He would wave the reporter to a seat with just that gesture, elegant and imperious, but also inviting. He would serve tea to reporters. And read them Ung poetry to show them that his was the soul of a true artist. And he would keep Remo away from them because Remo was impossible, incapable of even the simplest civility, and he would certainly alienate the press. Or, at the very least, he would wind up insinuating himself into the story. Chiun had had enough of people thinking that Remo was important when anyone with any sense should know that Chiun was the important one.

Quietly, to himself, he wondered what Smith was upset about now. His face was so long, his chin seemed to be searching for his shoes. What was it about white men, Americans particularly, that they always thought everything was the end of the world? When the world had gone on and would go on for ages beyond counting? He told himself to humor Smith, as usual, and get rid of him as soon as he could so he could get back to his rewriting.

"What weighs so heavily on your spirit?" Chiun asked.

"You remember when you first came to provide services to us?" Smith asked.

"Indeed I do," Chiun said. "You have never missed a payment, small though they may be."

"Your primary mission was to train Remo as our enforcement arm."

"Assassin. I was to make him your assassin," Chiun corrected.

"Yes," Smith said.

"You should not give a wonderful thing an awful name. Enforcement arm is a terrible name," Chiun said. He realized he was being very helpful to Smith, much more so than the man deserved. When he tried to advertise in the future for someone to replace Remo, what kind of people would he be likely to get if he advertised for "an enforcement arm"? But advertising for an assassin would bring the best minds, the highest and most noble thinkers of the world to Smith's court. So Chiun felt good about offering Smith this advice without any charge. Occasionally, it was good policy to do a favor for your emperor, just to remind him how much he truly relied on your wisdom and judgment.

"You have lived up to your end of the contract nobly," Smith said. "Your training of Remo has exceeded even what we hoped for from you."

"He is white. I have done the best I could, to overcome that handicap," Chiun said graciously.

"There was another part to the contract," Smith said in a low flat voice.

"Yes?"

"It was your promise that should the day ever come when Remo could not be used anymore by us, that you would-- you would remove him for us."

Chiun sat silently. Smith saw consternation on the old man's face.

Finally, Chiun said, "Go on."

"The time has come. Remo must be removed."

"What is your reason for this, Emperor?" Chiun asked slowly.

"It is complicated," Smith said. "But if Remo is allowed to live, the world may face a nuclear war."

"Oh, that," said Chiun, dismissing it with the raising of his eyebrows.

"Hundreds of millions will die," Smith intoned solemnly.

"Don't worry, Emperor. Remo and I will let nothing happen to you."

"Chiun, it's not me. It's the whole world. The whole world may explode. Remo must die."

"And I? I am supposed to kill him?" Chiun asked.

"Yes. It is your obligation under your contract."

"And this is so that we can save the lives of some millions of people?" Chiun said.

"Yes."

"Do you know anything about these millions of people?" Chiun asked.

"I--"

"No, you do not," Chiun said. "Well, I will tell you about them. Many of them are old and ready to die anyway. Most of them are ugly. Especially if they are white. Even more of them are stupid. Why sacrifice Remo for all these people we do not know? He is not much, but he is something. All those others, they are nothing."

"Chiun, I know how you feel, but--"

"You know nothing of how I feel," Chiun said. "I took Remo from nothing and now I have made of him something. In only ten more years of training, we could both be very proud of him. And now you are saying, Chiun, all the time you have spent on him is wasted and to be thrown away because somebody is going to blow up a lot of fat people. I understand the ways of emperors but this is rudeness beyond measure."

"We are talking about the end of the world," Smith huffed.

"It seems as if we are always talking about the end of the world," Chiun said. "Who is this person who threatens this? Is it one person? Remo and I will go to dispatch this person. He will never be seen again. He will have no descendants and those that now live will die. Friends too shall perish. All in the greater glory of the Emperor Smith and the Constitution."

"Master of Sinanju, I call upon you to honor your contract."

There was a long silence, broken only by Smith's breathing. Finally, Chiun asked, "There is no other way?"

"If there were, I would take it," Smith said. "But there is none. I know that contracts are sacred to Masters of Sinanju and those were the terms of our contract. Upon request from me, you would remove Remo. I now make that request."

"You will leave me," Chiun said in a cold low voice that seemed to chill the skin on Smith's face.

At the doorway, the CURE director paused.

"What is your decision?"

"What you think important is my mission," Chiun said. "Contracts are made to be honored. It has been the way of my people for scores of centuries."

"You will do your duty," Smith said.

Chiun nodded once, slowly, then let his head sink to his chest. Smith left, quietly closing the door behind him.

And Chiun thought: White fool. Do you think that Remo is some piece of machinery to be discarded upon a whim?

He had trained Remo to be an assassin but Remo had become more than that. His body and his mind had accepted the trainings of Sinanju more thoroughly than anyone since Chiun. Remo now was a Master of Sinanju himself, and one day, upon Chiun's death, Remo would be reigning Master.

And by attaining that rank, Remo would fulfill a prophecy that had existed for ages in the House of Sinanju. That someday there would be as Master a white man who was dead but had come back to life and he would be the greatest Master of all, and of him it would be said that he was the avatar of the great god Shiva. Shiva the Destroyer. Remo.

And now Smith wanted him to throw all that away because some fools planned to blow up some other fools.

But yet, the contract was sacred. It was the cornerstone upon which the House of Sinanju had been built. Its word-- once given by the Master in contract-- was inviolate. No Master had ever failed to carry out the terms of a contract and Chiun, through thousands of years of tradition, could not allow himself to be the first.

He sat on the floor and slowly touched his fingertips to the temples of his bowed head.

The room grew dark with night and yet he did not move, but the air in the room vibrated with the long keening sounds of anguish that came from his lips.

sChapter Thirteen

"Why are we getting a motel room?" Pamela asked.

"Because I have to wait for a telephone call," Remo said. "You don't want to stay with me? Catch the next flight back and join the rest of the Lilliputians."

"Lilliputians?"

"From Liverpool. That's what people in Liverpool are called. Lilliputians," Remo patiently explained.

"No, they're not."

"Are too. I read it. The Beatles were Lilliputians."

"That's Liverpudlians," Pamela Thrushwell said.

"Is not."

"Is too," she said.

"I'm not going to stay here and try to educate you in speaking English correctly," Remo said. "Go home. Who needs you?"

That more than anything else convinced her to stay even though she looked with undisguised disgust at the dismal room, just like so many others in which Remo had spent so many nights. The furniture might have been called Utilitarian if it had not had a greater claim on being called Ugly. The walls, once white, were yellowed with the exhalations of countless smokers. The carpeting was indoor-outdoor rug, but looked as if it had not only been used outdoors but on the roadbed of the Lincoln Tunnel for the last twenty years. Threads showed through, masked only by dirt and embedded grime.

The toilet bowl had a dark ring around it at water level, the hot-water faucet in the sink didn't work, and the room's only luxury, an electric coffeepot in the bathroom, didn't work either. The place reeked with a faint smell of ammonia, as if from a cleaning solution, but the room resolutely refused to give up any clue as to where cleaning solution had ever been used in it.

"What are you here for anyway? What phone call are you waiting for?"

"I'm waiting to find out where Buell is," Remo said.

"I'd be better off trying to find him myself," Pamela said.

"Why don't you try?" Remo said hopefully.

"Because you're so hopeless that without me, you're liable to get hurt and then I'd feel guilty for causing it. For not staying around to take care of you."

"I promise not to come back and haunt your dreams," Remo said.

"You're pretty tenacious for somebody who's just supposed to be tracking down an obscene phone caller," she said.

"You too for somebody with just a tweaked titty," Remo said.

"That's gross. I'm staying."

"Do what you want," Remo said. He thought he'd rather have her tagging along for a while than argue with her. But he still didn't know why she wanted to stay.

Abner Buell did.

Outside the small central California town of Hernandez is a strange elevation of volcanic rock, rising fifty feet above the surrounding scrub grass. Abner Buell had bought the property and fifty surrounding acres three years earlier, and when he had seen the small mountain, he had hollowed it out and built inside it-- separated from the outside world by fifteen-foot-thick walls of rock-- a private apartment and laboratory.

He sat there now facing another of the computer consoles which he had in every home and apartment he occupied anywhere in the world.

It would be hours before he was to call Dr. Smith again, and he whiled away the time by reconfirming that he was able to tap into the Russian military-command computers.

Using satellite transmissions, he tapped into the Soviet system and amused himself by finding out actual troop strength in Afghanistan. He called up the number of spies in the Russian mission to the United Nations. The listing of names went on so long that Buell gave his computer simpler instructions:

"How many members of the Russian UN mission are not spies?"

The computer listed three names-- the chief ambassador, a chauffeur second-grade, and a pastry chef named Pierre.

Pamela Thrushwell came into his mind and on a whim, he tapped the Russian KGB computer network and asked how many spies the Soviet Union had inside Great Britain. "Five-minute reading limit on lists," he wrote.

The computer responded: "List too lengthy. Russian nationals who are spies? Or British who work as spies for USSR?"

He thought for a moment and asked: "How many members of British Secret Service are on KGB payroll as double agents?"

The machine instantly started to print out lines of names. Row after row of them. The names had filled up the screen twice and, in alphabetical order, they were still in the A's.

Buell remembered he had forgotten to give the machine a limit on the number of names it could print. He voided the instructions and asked: "How many members of British Secret Service are not on KGB payroll?"

Three names popped up on the screen instantly. One was the deputy director of the Secret Service, another was the agency's seventh-ranking man in Hong Kong. The third was Pamela Thrushwell, computer analyst.

Buell sat back in surprise and stared at the name. So Thrushwell was a British agent. That explained why she had been hanging on to this Remo so persistently to try to track down Buell.

She must have been trying to track him down since he had had that lark, messing around with Britain's government computers and almost moving the government into a friendship treaty with Russia. Thrushwell must have been assigned to find out how to plug that hole in the computer system.

A spy. And he had thought of her as just a nice-looking blond with an interesting accent and wonderful breasts. That's what he got for underestimating women.

Marcia came into the room with food on a tray for him. She was wearing a long diaphanous white gown of some thin gauze. She was naked beneath it and Buell felt an unaccustomed faint stirring of desire. He reached out and cupped a hand around her right buttocks. She smiled at him, tossed her red hair, and nodded toward the television monitor.

"What's that list?" she asked.

"It wouldn't interest you," he said.

"Everything about you interests me," she said. "Really, what is it?"

"It's a list of the three British secret agents who don't work for the Russians."

Marcia smiled, her full lips pulling back to expose long pearly teeth. "Only three?" she said.

He nodded. "Those are the three who don't work for the Russians. I don't know. They might be double agents for somebody else. For Argentina, for all I know." He kneaded her buttocks with his fingers. "I think I want you," he said.

"I always want you," she said. "I am here to serve you."

"I want you to go to the bedroom and put on a T-shirt and wait for me."

"Just a T-shirt?"

"Yes. A wet one. I want it wet and transparent."

She nodded submissively and looked at the screen again.

"That name. Pamela. Isn't she the woman who's following you?"

"Yes," he said.

"Isn't that dangerous? To have her looking for you along with the Americans?"

"It doesn't matter. I'm going to get rid of all of them," he said.

"Us too," Marcia said with a smile. "You promised. Us too."

"I'll keep my promise," Buell said. "When the world goes, we go with it."

"You're so wonderful," she said.

"There's nothing left in life," he said. "I've played all the games. There's no one who can even challenge me."

Marcia nodded. "I'll go put on that wet T-shirt," she said.

"Quick. Before the mood passes," Buell said.

It was well after dark when the telephone in Smith's office rang.

"This is Buell. Have you decided?"

"Yes," Smith said. "I accede to your demand."

"That easily? No negotiations? No hard bargaining?" "Do I have anything to bargain with?"

"No. And I'm glad you realize it. That's one of the nicer qualities of you bureaucratic types," Buell said. "You never try to fight the inevitable."

Smith said nothing and the silence hung in his office like a small cloud of smoke.

Buell finally said, "There are certain things I want."

"Which are?"

"I want to see it done so I know it's not some kind of trick. After all, this Remo's been pestering me. I deserve to see him go."

"Tell me what you want," Smith said.

"There's a small town in California named Hernandez," Buell began and gave Smith directions to a clearing where he wanted Remo killed. "Tomorrow at high noon," he said.

"All right," Smith said. He suppressed a small smile, even though he felt he deserved one. Buell had made a mistake.

"How are you going to do it?" Buell asked.

"By hand," Smith said.

"I don't think you can do it," Buell said. "I've seen this guy Remo. He's hard to beat."

"I can beat him," Smith said.

"I'll believe it when I see it."

"You'll see it tomorrow at noon," Smith said.

"How will I know you? What do you look like?" Buell asked.

"I'm old. I'll be wearing an ornamental Oriental robe."

"You Oriental? With a name like Smith?"

"Yes," Smith said. "Until tomorrow." And then he hung up.

And now Smith smiled.

Remo would die. There was no helping that. But so would Abner Buell. And the world would be saved.

He told himself he would make the same deal every time.

sChapter Fourteen

On the first ring of the telephone, Remo shoved Pamela Thrushwell into the bathroom. On the second ring, he broke the lock so she could not open the door. He answered the phone on the third ring.

"Did you find out where he is?" he said.

"I've found out where he will be," Smith said laconically.

"Okay. When and where?" Remo stuck a finger in his free ear to block out the thumping from the bathroom door.

"There's a small town named Hernandez-- Remo, are you alone?"

"Not really," Remo said.

"Let me out," Pamela shrieked. "I'll call the police. I'll--" Remo threw a lamp at the door. She quieted for a moment.

"The girl?" Smith asked.

"Yes."

"Get rid of her. I told you before."

"All right, all right, I will," Remo said.

"You can't have her go with you. That's final."

"I said I'd take care of it, all right? Now where and when?"

Smith gave him the directions that he had received from Abner Buell. "Noon tomorrow," he said. "Chiun will meet you there," he added casually.

"Hold on," Remo said. "Chiun will meet me there? I thought you said I shouldn't have anybody with me."

"Chiun hardly qualifies as a pesky bystander," Smith said.

"He can be," Remo said. "And he's ticked at me anyway."

Smith sighed. Remo could visualize him at this moment, pressing the steel rings of his eyeglasses to his face with an index finger. "I thought-- this is important enough-- I thought it would be best if the two of you were there."

Pamela had started screaming again and there were no more lamps to throw.

"All right," Remo said. "I'll look for Chiun there. If he's there, we'll work it together. If not, I'll work it alone."

"At noon sharp," Smith said. "Chiun will be there."

Remo thought his voice sounded cracked and hoarse but the telephone clicked dead in his ear before he could make sure.

Smith sat at his desk for a few minutes afterward, the dead telephone cradled in his hand. Then, feeling very old and very tired, he walked to a locked cabinet and removed a Dutch Barsgod fragmenting shell pistol. The next fifteen hours were going to be the saddest of his life, but no one had ever said that saving the world would be a barrel of laughs.

The guard at Folcroft's front gate said, "Finally going home, Dr. Smith?" and Smith almost said, "No. To save the world," but he didn't.

As had always been the case in his life, the bodies would tell where he had been and what he had been doing.

"It's about time," Pamela said after Remo freed the bathroom door and let her out. "Who was that? The President?"

"Wrong number," Remo muttered. "When I finish working the obscene-calls patrol, I'm going to get transferred to wrong numbers."

"A wrong number that you talked to for ten minutes?"

"All right It was my Aunt Millie. She likes to talk."

"Really?" Pamela said archly. "What did you talk about?"

"She said the weather is good in Butler, Pennsylvania."

"It took her ten minutes to tell you that?"

"Yes," Remo said. "In Butler, that's big news. It's worth talking about."

"I don't believe it was your Aunt Tillie," she said. She wound a strand of Remo's jet-black hair around her finger.

"Millie," he corrected.

"Or Aunt Millie." She nuzzled his neck. "I'll bet I can make you tell me who you were really talking to," she purred.

"Not a chance," Remo said. "I'm beyond tempting."

"We'll see about that," she said. She eased him back on the bed and fiddled with the zipper of his pants.

Remo let her undress him and as her hands strayed over his body, he said, "Seduce away. It'll do you no good."

Long ago, in the early stages of his training, Chiun had taught Remo the thirty-seven steps for pleasuring a woman. They began with the inside of the left wrist and ended with the woman shrieking in ecstasy, although very few women were not shrieking in ecstasy by step seven or eight; it was a male fantasy come true, but it had also made sex boring, mechanical, and routine for Remo, and he rarely thought about it anymore.

"You like being controlled by a woman?" Pamela said as she straddled his body.

"Beats a sharp stick in the eye," he said.

She toyed with his body, with finger and tongue, then stopped. "Are you ready to tell me yet?"

"Not if you're going to stop," Remo said.

"I'll stop if you don't tell me," she threatened.

"Don't stop," Remo said.

"I will. I swear I will."

"Will you?" Remo said. He turned and touched the inside of her left wrist. He forgot the steps in order but he followed with her elbow, a spot on her right thigh, and then a cluster of nerves in the small of her back.

She moaned louder with each successive step. Her breasts were arched forward, her body twitched and convulsed with need. Remo satisfied that need, holding her down by the hands as the rest of her body bucked in a feverish, wanton frenzy.

Done, she lay exhausted on the bed, spent, glowing with perspiration. Remo touched a small nerve in her throat, toyed with it, and she closed her eyes and fell asleep.

He touched her face gently. "Maybe I'll see you again," he said softly before he left. But somehow, and he didn't know why or how, he didn't really think he would.

He was on the road to Hernandez when he understood, and so shocking was the revelation that he had to pull off to the side of the road to consider it.

Smith had been lying about Chiun's presence. Remo was sure of it, but he hadn't been able to figure out why. Now he had.

Remo was going to die.

It was part of Chiun's contract with Smith, he knew. Gold in perpetuity went to the village of Sinanju, but there was one large string attached: Chiun would have to kill Remo when Smith gave the order.

But why? He had done nothing to endanger the organization or the country. Why? He had no answer, but he knew, deep inside his mind, that Smith had given the order. And somewhere, even deeper than that, he knew that Chiun would obey it.

He felt his breath coming hot through his nostrils and looked down at his hands. His knuckles were white where they clenched the steering wheel. He was afraid.

How long had it been since he had felt fear? He couldn't remember. But it was not the fear which clawed at his stomach and tore at his throat and brought moisture to his eyes. It was sadness and the sadness was pure and terrifying.

Remo had never had a family. He had been raised by nuns in an orphanage. As a child, he'd tried to think about his parents, to imagine their faces, but there was nothing inside him. No memories, no images. Whoever had spawned and borne him had made no impression on his mind whatever.

And so he did not have a father until he was a fully grown man and Chiun had first come into his life. Chiun had taught him how to trust, how to obey, how to believe, how to love. And now, Remo knew in the depths of his heart that the trust and obedience and belief and love had been no more real or lasting than a shower on a sunny day.

He squeezed the wheel harder. All right, he said to himself. Let him try. Remo had been a good student. He was a Master of Sinanju too and he could do most things as well as Chiun. He would fight the old man. Chiun was a great Master, but more than eight decades of his life had come and gone. Remo could win. If he attacked first, he could--.

He covered his face with his hands. He could never attack Chiun. Not on anyone's orders. Not for any reason.

But he could run. The thought flashed through his mind like a rocket. He could tromp on the gas pedal of this car and speed off, keep going until he reached the Atlantic Ocean, and then hop a steamer and hide out in the mountains of some obscure country. He could run and hide and run some more, run until there was no place left to go.

The rocket of an idea dulled and fizzled. Remo was not trained to be a fugitive. He had spent ten years with the Master of Sinanju so that he would also be a Master, and a Master did not run.

There was no alternative. Chiun would have to kill him, as he was bound to do.

And in the end, Remo thought, it didn't matter anyway. The most important part of him had already died.

He turned the engine back on and pressed the pedal to the floor and headed toward Hernandez.

sChapter Fifteen

In the pitch dark of a cloudless night, just before the first hint of dawn lightened the sky, Harold Smith raised his infrared binoculars to his face. The area outside Hernandez was flat and barren except for scrub grass and a few mangy bushes.

Buell would be there to see the fight; Smith knew that. And the only place to be sure to see it was from the top of the extrusion of rock that jutted up from the floor of the field. Up there, Buell would have safety and a vantage point. Smith put the night glasses away and walked toward the rock. It would be his job to make sure that Buell had no such safety.

He walked slowly around the large rock. When he was finished the first finger of dawn was tickling the sky. He could climb it. With a lot of effort, he could climb it and get to Buell.

But he wouldn't be able to climb it fast enough to save Remo.

Smith went back to his room and checked the Barsgod again. The shells were the size of shotgun shells, designed for guerrilla warfare. One strike anywhere near Buell would send enough shrapnel flying to take him out. It was all the edge Smith would need.

He tucked the gun and shells beneath his pillow and tried to sleep. He could use the few hours of rest, he knew. He was not a young man and whatever edge the Barsgod gave him could be evened out by the disadvantage of his slowed reflexes.

But after an hour of tossing and turning, he knew it would be useless. He would not sleep. Maybe he would never sleep soundly again. What he was about to do to Remo Williams would forever deny him the sleep of the innocent.

How did it happen? He asked himself again and again. Smith was not an assassin. He was an honorable man. Yet everything he had ever done to Remo had been a criminal act. He had chosen Remo for CURE because Remo had no one and nothing. And he had taken Remo's identity and his dreams and his life and had forced him into service, sending him into dangerous situations without a thought, all because Remo had been trained for the work. He had seen to it that almost every friend Remo had ever made was eliminated to protect the secrecy of CURE. And now he had ordered the final ignominy for Remo Williams. He had commanded the closest friend Remo had ever had to kill him.

How did it happen? How? When had Remo ceased to be a man to Smith and become only a tool of the organization? When had Smith forgotten that Remo, others, were human beings, not just cattle to be prodded around?

But he knew the answer to that. Human beings had ceased to matter on the day that Smith accepted his responsibility to the United States of America. In the long view, Remo's life was a small price to pay for the safety of the world.

The predawn grayness blossomed into a California sun and Smith was still awake. He wondered briefly about Chiun, but Chiun was the same kind of man Smith himself was. Chiun knew his duty and he would perform it and then he would return to Sinanju to live out the rest of his life as the venerated old man of the village.

He would also, no doubt, lie awake to the end of his days, thinking of Remo.

Smith sighed and sat up, passing his bony hands over his face. Duty was a stupid word, a stupid concept. Smith had always hated ideologues and had never thought he would be called upon to sacrifice a friend for an idea, even so lofty an idea as world peace.

How long would such a peace last anyway? he asked himself angrily. Just until the next maniac with the means to start global war came along? Until the next group of fanatics decided to sacrifice the human race for some obscure cause? What good was duty when it made a killer of you?

He walked to the window, all his anguish as meaningless as dust in the wind. He didn't have to call it duty. You could call it sanity or patriotism or mercy or sacrifice or even murder. It didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was that it had to be done and he was the one who had to do it.

Smith felt comfortable with despair. He had lived his whole life doing the right thing and he would go on doing the right thing until the day he died. And that, he knew, was the reason his life was so bare and empty.

Understanding that, he was finally able to sleep. His last thought was to wonder where Chiun was.

* * *

Unseen by Smith, Chiun had spent the night at the site of the coming battle. Wearing mourning white, the old man knelt on the bare ground in the dark and lit a candle.

It was chilly, but he did not feel the cold. He lifted his eyes to the starless cobalt sky. He prayed for a sign. To all the gods of the east and west, he begged for a release from his obligation to kill his son. For Remo was no less than a son to the old man, no less than the heir to all the knowledge and love and power Chiun had accumulated over his long lifetime.

"Help me, O gods," he said in a hoarse whisper.

And he waited.

He thought of Remo and of the legend that had brought them together, the tale written in the ancient archives of Sinanju that a Master of Sinanju would one day bring to life a dead night tiger who walked in the form of a white man but who was, in his true incarnation, Shiva the Destroyer. Remo, the man, was only the outer flesh of the sacred soul within. Chiun could kill the man, but what mortal-- even the Master of Sinanju-- could dare to kill Shiva?

"Help me, O gods," he said again.

The candle went out.

Patiently he lit another. A Master's word in contract was as binding as an inscription in stone. He had given his word to Smith, in exchange for enough wealth to feed the entire village of Sinanju forever.

But Smith did not know what he asked. He did not know the legend of Shiva. Men like Harold Smith did not believe such things. They only believed that the word of the Master of Sinanju was good.

"Help me, O gods," Chiun said for the third time.

A strong breeze blew out the candle again. There was no other sign.

Chiun let the candle remain extinguished. He sat alone in the dark, alone, silent.

He wept.

sChapter Sixteen

Marcia was looking at the outside world through a periscope from inside the hollow hill.

"It looks like a beautiful day," she said and giggled. "A great day for the world to end."

Buell nodded and slicked back his slicked-back hair.

"But I don't want you to just do it," she said.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't want you just to do everything and then tell me it's all done. I want to see it. Step by step," she said. "I want to see and know everything you do."

"All right," he said. "Starting now. Come on."

He rose from the small table where he had been drinking herbal tea and walked to one of the computer consoles that lined the walls of the living quarters.

He flipped on a power switch and then pressed a sequence of numbers that separated the screen into two lengthwise parts.

"Now, on the left," he said. "That's number one." He pressed more numbers and a large "ready" appeared on that half-screen. "Those are the Russian missiles," he said. "I'm already into their network. And number two--"

He busied himself pressing more keys on the console and finally the word "ready" appeared on the right-hand side of the screen also.

"Number two is the United States. Now both sets of missiles are ready to fire."

"How will you fire them?" she said.

"To fire Russia's, I just type onto the keyboard 'One-Fire' and the code number. That's all it takes. For America's, I type 'Two-Fire' and the code. They're already programmed and ready to go."

"How do you know where they'll go?" Marcia asked.

"I didn't have to do anything with that. Russia's are programmed to hit the U.S. America's are set to hit Russia. I just left that alone."

"Too difficult to figure out, I guess?" she said.

"Don't you believe it," he snapped. "Of course I've got it figured out. If I wanted to change anywhere these missiles should be launched, if I wanted them to go hit South Africa for instance, I would just write on the screen 'One,' then insert the latitude and longitude for South Africa, and then write 'fire.' And the missiles would go there instead."

"The same for the American missiles?" she asked.

He nodded. "Just insert the target's longitude and latitude and that'll do it. They self-correct for direction once they've been launched. I already worked out the coordinates."

"You're brilliant, Abner. Just brilliant."

"You're right," Buell said.

"You said you need the code number for firing. What's that?"

"It's in my head somewhere," he said. "I'll remember it when I need it."

"And the coordinates?" Marcia asked.

Buell flapped his arm toward the top of the computer console where piles of papers were stacked precariously. "I've got them written down somewhere. Up there. I told you, we didn't need them."

"No. Of course not," Marcia said. She stood back from Buell and as she did, she knocked over a stack of papers with her elbow.

"Clumsy," Buell muttered.

"I'm sorry." She stooped to gather the papers. When she found one with the names of cities with two simple rows of figures on it, she slipped it inside the sleeve of her blouse, then replaced the stack where it had been.

Buell had not noticed; he was calling up other numbers on the computer screen. Finally, he restored the split screen with the two Ready signals on either side. "Everything's all set for the big bang," he said.

"Good," Marcia said.

"But first we've got our entertainment outside. Let's go up," Buell said.

"I'll be up in a minute," she said. "I just want to put on a little makeup first."

"Suit yourself. Wear something nice when you come up," he said. "Maybe your cavegirl costume."

"I will," Marcia said.

When she heard the upstairs door that led outside click shut, Marcia pulled the list of coordinates from her sleeve and sat at the computer. Working swiftly and efficiently, she reprogrammed all the missiles of the United States to strike, not at Moscow and Russia, but at New York, Washington, Los Angeles, and Chicago. She did not change the trajectories of the Russian missiles. They were still aimed at the United States.

* * *

Harold Smith was ready. Flattened behind a small rock, he waited, his binoculars focused on the plateau above the site where the battle was to take place.

Almost at noon, a solitary figure appeared on the plateau, walked to the edge and seemed, like a military conqueror, to survey all the ground around him. Smith pressed himself close to the ground, then peered up and saw the man was sitting now in a folding lawn chair on the edge of the rock shelf. It was Abner Buell. Smith crawled silently through the grass toward the back of the hill.

When he reached the bottom of the hill, he felt for the Barsgod in his pocket. Its weight gave him a perverse satisfaction. On this day Remo would die, and Chiun would prepare to return to Korea, and Harold Smith would go back to Folcroft Sanitarium, probably never to emerge from it alive, and CURE would probably be finished. But because of the Barsgod, Buell would also die.

And the rest of the world would live.

So be it, Smith thought.

The sun was high and bright when Remo strode out into the open field to meet the diminutive figure dressed in white robes and standing as still as a statue. When he approached, Chiun bowed to him.

Remo did not return the bow. Instead, he stood like a man who had walked a thousand miles with a pack of stones upon his back. His shoulders were stooped and a deep furrow ran between his red-rimmed eyes.

"I didn't think it would ever come to this," Remo said quietly.

Chiun's face was impassive. "And what is 'this'?"

"Don't play word games with me, Little Fa--" Remo stopped himself. His mouth twisted with bitterness. "Little Father," he finished and spat on the ground.

Chiun's eyelids fluttered but he said nothing.

"You've come to kill me," Remo said. There was no accusation in his voice, only the sorrowful sound of resignation.

"I have been so commanded," Chiun said.

"Ah, the contract," Remo said. "That's right. Money for Sinanju. Don't forget the money, Chiun. I hope you got paid in advance. Your ancestors will never forgive you if you get stiffed on this job. The great Sinanju god. Money."

"You are cruel," the old Oriental said softly.

Remo laughed, a harsh sound in the thin noon air. "Right, Chiun. You go on telling yourself that. While you're killing me, just keep thinking how cruel I am."

"I might not be able to kill you," Chiun said.

"Oh, yes, you will. But I'm not going to make it easy for you," Remo said. "I'm not fighting back."

"Like a sheep, you will stand there?" asked Chiun.

"Sheep if you want. But that's the way I want it. You're going to have to kill me where I stand."

"You are permitted to fight," Chiun said.

"And I'm also permitted not to fight. Sorry, Chiun. I'm the one who's dying. I'll pick the way."

"It is not the way of an assassin," Chiun said.

"You're the assassin, remember? Chiun, the great assassin." Remo's eyes welled with tears. "Well, I'm going to give you something to remember me by. A parting gift from your son. When you kill me, Chiun, you won't be any assassin. You'll be a butcher. That's my gift. Take it to the grave with you."

He ripped open the collar of his shirt and lifted his chin, baring his throat. "Go ahead," he said, his moist eyes fixed on the old man. "Do it now and get it over with."

"You could have lain in wait for me here," Chiun said. "You could have killed me when I arrived."

"Well, I didn't," Remo said.

"Why will you not fight me?"

"Because," Remo said.

"A typical stupid answer from a pale piece of pig's ear," Chiun snapped. "What does that mean, that 'because'?"

"Just because," Remo said stubbornly.

"Because you could not stand the thought of perhaps hurting me," the old man said.

"Not that at all," Remo said.

"It is true. You knew my mission. You could have attacked first."

Remo only looked away.

"My son," Chiun said brokenly. "Can you see there is no other way?"

"I love you, Little Father," Remo said.

"Yes," said Chiun. "And that is why you will fight me. We must not disappoint our audience."

He pulled himself up to his full height, then bowed once more to his opponent.

This time, Remo bowed back.

They were talking and Abner Buell was growing annoyed. Stop talking and fight, he mentally commanded them. He tossed his lawn chair away and sat on the edge of the cliff, his legs dangling over the side.

The old Oriental, he thought, certainly looked nothing like a Dr. Smith. But Remo, that was the Remo he had seen on his television monitors, haunting him day after day. Until today. When Remo died.

Buell saw the old Oriental bow and the bow was returned by Remo. Buell wondered if Remo knew what was going to happen to him. Probably not. Remo was just too cocky and Buell was going to enjoy seeing him go down.

The Oriental struck first. He was small, but as fast as a squirrel. He seemed to levitate from the ground, hesitate in midair for a moment, and then slash down with enough ferocity to lop off a horse's head.

The first blow missed as Remo spun away, moving so fast himself that he was almost a blur. Then he catapulted upward in a double spiral and came down with both legs drawn in. They shot out at the last moment, hitting the old man square in the stomach. A spray of bright blood shot from the Oriental's mouth. Dr. Smith staggered backward a few steps and while he was trying to get his footing, Remo came after him.

"Come on, Dr. Smith," Buell said softly. But for a moment, it looked at as if Remo had won. The old man staggered backward, ready to fall. But at the last moment, instead of going down, he sprang suddenly upward, his arms moving in front of him like blades. Remo's head snapped backward. He was trying to get away but the Oriental's hand snaked out again and before Remo could so much as turn his head, the old man had him by the throat and then yanked back hard. There was a sound like the beginning of a cry but it was choked off suddenly. Then Remo sank to his knees. At the same moment, the old man raised his arm high. In his hand was the bubbly, bloody interior of Remo's throat.

Buell gave a whoop of triumph and leapt to his feet. "I won," he shouted. It did not bother him at all when his champion, the old Oriental, weaved on his feet, dropped the dripping mess in his hand to the ground, and collapsed in a heap. The sunlight glinted off a trickle of slick blood pouring from his mouth.

"Kee-rist," Buell said between his teeth. "That Dr. Smith is some fighter."

"His name's not Smith," said a soft voice behind him. Buell whirled around. On the opposite side of the rock shelf was a gray-haired middle-aged man wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a three-piece suit. In his right hand was a pistol that seemed the size of an electric drill.

"What'd you say?" Buell asked.

"I said his name's not Smith. Mine is."

A confused smile came to Buell's face but when the barrel of the oversized gun did not waver, the smile faded. The man with the gun was not joking and behind his steel-rimmed spectacles, his eyes held the kind of desperation that made killers of ordinary men.

"What's this about?" Buell asked, swallowing hard.

Smith's eyes wandered for a fraction of a second to the two bodies lying motionless on the field below. "It's about sanity," he rasped.

"Come on," Buell began but Smith cut him short.

"I know sanity isn't a big part of your life," Smith said. "Not somebody who's willing to blow up the world because it's some kind of game. Some of us don't think the world's safety is a game. So some of us are willing to kill for it." He glanced down again. "Even to die for it."

"If you're Smith, who are those two?"

"They worked for me," Smith said. "Enough explanations."

He started to tighten his finger on the trigger but before he could, a strong arm was clamped around his throat. A gun was pressed against his temple.

"Not just yet," said a woman's voice. "Drop it."

Smith heard the gun against his head cock. There was more than just one of them. He could still get Buell, but this one would get him and the end of the world might just proceed on schedule. He had to wait. Try to get them both.

He lowered the Barsgod and tossed it away, toward Buell.

"You have all sorts of talents, Marcia," Buell said, as the woman released her hold on Smith's neck. "Hey, I said the cavegirl costume."

Smith turned and saw a woman in slacks and a white blouse. She said to Buell, "We can stow all that sex-kitten crap now, Buell."

Smith backed away from the woman. Buell looked surprised, then shrugged and walked over to pick up the Barsgod. The Russian-made Tokarev.38 in the woman's hand fired and took a crease out of the surface of the rock near Smith's weapon.

"Leave it alone, Abner," she said. She aimed the Tokarev squarely at Buell's chest. "I want the code that activates the missiles," she said. Smith thought her eyes were as dark and deadly as a shark's.

"What is this?" Buell said in bewilderment. "Are you with him?"

The woman named Marcia smiled. "I am with the Committee for State Security of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics," she said proudly.

"You're a Russian? KGB?" Buell said.

"Why else would I have spent so much time with the likes of you?" she spat. "May I remind you, Abner, that time is of the essence? And I do have this gun. The code numbers, please."

"But the missiles are set to blow up Moscow too," Buell said.

"Not anymore. The American missiles have been redirected. Each of their missiles will strike an American city."

"Then think about yourself," Buell said desperately. "If they all go off in this country, you'll go too. You'll be incinerated."

"And Russia will rule the world," she said. "It is a small price to pay, to die for so glorious a cause."

"Then pay it now," came another voice. Smith wheeled as another figure hopped up onto the small plateau. It was a blond-haired woman with a British accent, and she moved quickly into a marksman's position and fired without hesitation at the Russian woman.

Even before Pamela Thrushwell's gun sounded, Marcia had fired. Both women careened backward as if two giant hands had slapped them off their feet. Pamela's abdomen was torn open in a red burst of blood and entrails; the Russian woman's once-spectacular face was an unrecognizable blob. Her legs twitched weakly, reflexively, once; then she lay still.

Smith started toward Buell, but the thin young man was holding the Barsgod.

"These women need help," Smith said.

"They'll get help in heaven," Buell said. "We all will, and we'll all be there soon."

"You're crazy," Smith said.

"Just bored," Buell said. A smile crossed his unlined face. "You know, I don't think I'll kill you after all. I think I'll just have you wait here with me for the big fireball in the sky. Would you like that?"

"You don't have a chance," Smith said.

"Why not?"

Smith started walking slowly toward Marcia. Her gun lay alongside her dead body.

"Because you can't stop me from doing what I want to do," Smith said. "That gun isn't loaded."

"We'll see about that," Buell said. He pointed the gun at the ground. Smith stopped and watched. Buell squeezed the trigger. The gun fired, the bullet hit the rocky plateau, and Smith dove behind Marcia's body. The plateau exploded with a rush of sound and the shell shattered, sending jagged pieces of metal scattering everywhere, twinkling in the reflecting sunshine like a shower of stars. The body shielding Smith thunked as shell fragments tore into it.

One of the pieces kicked back and embedded in Abner Buell's brain. He dropped the Barsgod and sank slowly to his knees. His body twitched, and then there was another muffled explosion, as the fragment itself exploded again, this time inside Buell's brain. He pitched forward, his face hitting the rock. He did not move.

Smith raised himself slowly from the ground, stunned that he himself was unharmed, that all the shrapnel had missed him. Buell's head looked like a macabre Halloween mask. The eyes had been exploded from their sockets. His teeth lay like charred kernels of corn on the ground beside him. His slicked hair was now matted red and flecked with bits of soft gray tissue, spilled over from his brain through the gaping hole in the top of his skull.

Shaking violently, Smith stood up to full height. Don't lose it now, he told himself. He had been prepared for death, but death had passed him by. Now he had to force his thoughts to other things. Like dismantling Buell's computer. Like ending the sequence that would result in Russia and America both firing their missiles into America's heartland. That had to be done first.

He owed it. To a lot of people. To Remo and to Chiun.

He shielded his eyes from the sun and looked over the cliff's edge down toward the field. The two bodies appeared to have vanished.

Who could have taken them?

He scanned the horizon, feeling a rising tide of anxiety well up inside him. For some reason, losing their bodies seemed as tragic as losing the men themselves. Remo and Chiun had been sacrificed for the most worthy of causes; even in Smith's last day in hell, he would be able to say that much in defense of himself. But to lose their bodies--

He was filled with shame and he could do nothing else but sink to the ground, surrounded by the three grotesquely mutilated corpses, and cry like a lost child.

He sobbed for Remo, the innocent he had betrayed so easily; for Chiun, whom he had forced, in his old age, to kill his own son; and he wept for himself, a tired, bitter old man, who no longer dreamed dreams but only lived nightmares.

He never heard the footsteps approaching. But then, no one ever heard them.

"Ever wish you had a camera?" It was Remo's voice.

Smith looked up as Chiun clucked disdainfully. They both stood in front of Smith.

"You're alive," he said.

"Most perceptive, Emperor," said Chiun fawningly, bowing low.

"I mean--" He stopped and stood up and swiped quickly at his eyes with his sleeve. "I had something in my eye. I couldn't get it out." Without waiting for an answer, he pointed to the blood on Chiun's hands. "I saw it," he said. "The fight."

Chiun gasped when he saw the blood and quickly tucked his hands into the sleeves of his kimono. "Forgive me, Most Observant One," he said. "In my haste, I forgot to remove the chicken-liver juice." He turned his back to Smith, spat on his hands and rubbed them energetically together.

Smith looked to Remo, but Remo had gone.

Stifling a small cry, Remo had run across the face of the rock to where Pamela lay and knelt alongside her body. Smith saw him feel for a pulse and then Chiun came beside him and tore off part of his robe. He made a pad to soak up the young British woman's blood, but within seconds the pad itself was sopped wet. Chiun shook his head to Remo.

"Why'd you come, you pain in the ass?" Remo said chokingly to Pamela.

Her face strained. With an effort, she forced her eyes open.

"Don't talk," Remo said.

"Must," she said. Blood bubbled from a corner of her mouth. "Did we get him?" she asked.

"We got him," Remo said. "You didn't have to come for me," he said.

"Not for you. For England. It was my job. Did we save the world?"

"Yeah, Pamela," Remo said. "We done good. How'd you find me?"

"Bribed clerk at motel. Listened in on your phone call. Told me where." She tried to smile and her mouth leaked blood. "Always knew you were a liar."

Remo clenched his jaw. The skin over her eyelids was starting to discolor. She would be gone soon.

"Saved your friend's life," she said.

Remo thought: I wish I could save yours. But he only nodded.

"We got it done," Pamela said. Her voice was growing inaudible. Remo leaned closer and she said, "Remo."

"What?"

"Do it again, will you?"

"Do what?"

Slowly, with hands as weak as a baby's, she guided his hand toward her left wrist. It barely grazed her skin when the life went out of her eyes.

Remo stood, his own eyes moist. As he looked down at the body, Smith heard him mumble, "That's the biz, sweetheart."

Remo and Chiun went into Buell's underground fortress with Smith to make sure there were no other people hiding in there.

The subterranean apartment was empty and Smith marveled at the computers.

"Good God," he said. "These have every detail of the Russian and American defense systems inside them."

He jiggled and prodded the console keyboard, and occasionally emitted a soft exclamation of wonder.

Finally he picked up a telephone.

"Calling for help?" Remo said.

Smith gazed at him blandly. "Calling Folcroft. I've set these up so that my computers can strip them and absorb everything they've got."

"You don't need us anymore?" Remo said.

"No. I can handle this alone. You can go."

"All right," Remo said. At the doorway that led up to the rock plateau, he turned and said, "Smitty. Why were you crying before?"

Smith said, "I told you. I had something in my eye," and he turned back to the console.

* * *

"Would you have killed me?" Remo asked Chiun as they walked across the grassy field below the small mountain.

"Would the robin pluck the worm from the ground?"

"What does that mean?" Remo said.

"It means would the tide betray the moon who leads it to land?"

"Huh?"

"You are uneducable," Chiun said.

They passed a rise overlooking the nearby highway.

"So would you have killed me?"

"Keep flapping your big mouth and find out," Chiun said.

They got into Remo's car.

"I don't think you would have," Remo said as he started the engine.

Chiun grunted.

"Because you love me," Remo said.

Chiun grunted.

"You do love me."

The old man rolled his eyes heavenward.

"Don't you?" Remo demanded.

"Yak, yak, yak," Chiun shrieked, bouncing up and down on his seat. "You are the noisiest white thing who ever lived. Love you? It takes all one's will merely to tolerate you."

Remo smiled and drove onto the highway.