The Last Alchemist

Destroyer 64: The Last Alchemist

By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

Chapter 1

The bodies were still there, preserved by the cold and dark of the sea, just as he said they would be. And they were right where he said they'd find them: two hundred feet down, off the coast of Spain, in the belly of a Spanish man-of-war. Maneuvering in the slow dreamwalk of the deep, the diver moved around the open hatch, watching the pantaloons of the dead quiver in the currents created with his heavy leaded feet. They were Spanish soldiers of the king, he had been told, guarding the ship for eternity. They would not harm him, he had been told. He had answered that he wasn't afraid of the dead; he was afraid of the old diving suit he had to wear. If they did find the wreck, and he had to enter it, an air hose going up to the mother ship could get caught in one of the old timbers.

"You're not getting paid to test modern equipment, you're getting paid to find a damned ship and get me something," Mr. Harrison Caldwell had told him from behind a desk in a very modern salvage office in Barcelona. Mr. Caldwell was an American, but strangely he could speak Spanish as though born a grandee. The diver, Jesus Gomez, had been warned of that, warned not to make little snide remarks about the gringo in Spanish.

"Mr. Caldwell, sir. There is no amount of money that is worth my life, sir," Jesus Gomez had answered. He made his protest about the old air hose in practiced English. Jesus was the son and grandson of divers, men who had gone under the water for sponges without any equipment and ended up crippled from the bends, walking into old age stooped like ships heeling to one side. He knew that if he wished to walk upright for the rest of his life he would have to dive with equipment. Getting equipment meant not diving for sponges but things under the sea important people wanted. And important people meant English-speaking people. So Jesus, the diver, learned English early on. The first word Jesus Gomez learned was "mister." The second was "sir."

"Mr. Caldwell, sir. If I lose my life, what good is money? There is not enough money, sir, to pay for my life," Jesus Gomez had told Mr. Caldwell.

"Oh, there most certainly is," Harrison Caldwell had said, brushing something imaginary off his dark immaculate suit. "Let's not waste time in this infernal Latin bargaining. Everything has a price; people are just too stupid to know it. Now, we are not talking about your definite death. We are talking about a risk of death."

"Yessir," said Jesus Gomez. He sat a bit more stiffly than normal, because his mouth had learned the words, but not his soul.

"You risk your life everytime you go down, so we are not even negotiating the risk of your life, but how much of a risk."

"That is correct, Mr. Caldwell."

"Therefore, what is your price for the greater risk?"

"Sir, may I ask why you insist on the old air line connected to a heavy steel helmet and a diving suit? Air lines get tangled in wrecks. Suits are heavy. Wrecks are dangerous enough without entering them on the end of a thin air line."

"I wish to have contact all the time. I wish to have telephone contact all the time."

"Sir, may I suggest the new scuba equipment for me, with a telephone line for you. I will be safe. You will have your diving service, and we will both be happy."

"My way, fifteen thousand dollars for the week," said Harrison Caldwell. He had a sharp long face with a highbridged nose, and an imperious dark-eyed stare that always reminded others of what, exactly, Harrison Caldwell thought they were-servants.

"Sir, I will do it for ten thousand, but let me use my own gear."

"Thirty thousand. We use mine," said Harrison Caldwell.

"Sir..."

"Forty," said Mr. Caldwell.

"Fifty," said Jesus Gomez, and when the American agreed so readily, Jesus Gomez cursed himself for not demanding more. But still, fifty thousand American dollars, for one week of diving, was more than his father had made in a lifetime. Though Jesus was a man of twenty-eight, he almost did not tell his father of his good fortune; Jesus feared his father might regret his having given up his life for so little.

"Jesus," said his father, "fifty thousand dollars American is far too much for a week of diving. It is too much."

"There is no such thing as too much."

"There is always a thing that is too much, " said the father. "I am afraid I will never see you again."

"You will see me rich, Father. You will see a new home, and the good wine bought in bottles, and American cigarettes, and the French cheeses you once had on your trip to the big city. And Mama will have lace for her hair."

"Too much for one week," his father had said. But his father was an old man who was crippled at forty from diving without any gear for the sponges that became farther and farther out, deeper and deeper down. An old man who had spent his strong days earning in his entire life the equivalent of twelve thousand American dollars.

And so Jesus Gomez had taken the dive, and as Mr. Caldwell had said, the ship was waiting for him, including the dead men.

"Yes, Mr. Caldwell," said Jesus Gomez, activating the telephone line with a switch. "I see the bodies where you said they would be."

"Good," said Mr. Caldwell. "Are they wearing pantaloons?"

"Yessir, Mr. Caldwell."

"That is the front hatch, then. Go to the stern. I will wait. "

Slowly Jesus Gomez made his way along the dark planking of the ship, shining the special deep light ahead of his steps, careful not to put his full weight on any plank lest he fall into the hull. Small fish darted in the bright beam, a hole of light in the great darkness of the silent deep. The wood was intact but not strong, not after more than four hundred years. When he reached the stern hatch, his light picked up white skulls, piled like cannonballs in a pyramid.

"Santa Maria," gasped Jesus Gomez.

"You're there," came down Harrison Caldwell's voice. "Wait for the camera." Even two hundred feet down, Jesus could see the strong lights break the surface above. By the time the lights were within the reach of his hands, they were blinding. He had to shut his eyes and grope. Once he had them pointed away, he saw they were mounted on a still camera, a very large still camera, strangely large considering that a movie camera would have been half the size.

"Leave the skulls where they are," came Mr. Caldwell's voice. "Let yourself and the camera down, carefully down, on the prow side of the skulls. You will be walking toward the center."

"I am afraid of my air."

"You have twenty more minutes of work to do to collect the rest of your fifty thousand. Come, come. You are not really in a negotiating position."

When Jesus Gomez shone the light into the dark hull with ribbing torn from the capsizing that took place centuries before, the words "sir" and "mister" came very slow from his throat. But they came nevertheless. Always mindful of his air line, he called for more, and pulled it in a loose coil to his side, careful to avoid a crimp. He would know when he had a crimp. He simply wouldn't be able to breathe.

With the coil carefully at his side, he allowed himself to fall slowly into the hull, prayers on his lips all the way.

It was an insane way to dive, he knew. The camera came with him, its lights making sunshine on wood turned coal black by centuries of the Atlantic. His weighted diving boots kicked a bar and the bar did not move. Heavier than lead. He shone the light down, and it was what he suspected. Gold. A bar of gold. No, tons of gold, piled along the entire length and width of the hull stacked like cordwood in some peasant's hut. No wonder Mr. Caldwell so easily agreed to fifty thousand dollars.

"Do you want me to photograph your gold now, Mr. Caldwell, sir?" said Jesus Gomez, the words now a joy because he knew why the money could be so plentiful. He was no longer obsessed with the danger of the dive, but with the richness of it.

"No, No. Forget the gold. Farther toward the prow you will find it."

"A man who does not value gold, a ship guarded by skulls."

"Gomez, I value gold more than anything. As for guarding by skulls, that was an old practice for treasure. One skull per fortune."

"But there is a stack of skulls back there."

"Yes," said Mr. Caldwell.

"What should I photograph?"

"You will see it. You cannot miss it. It is made of stone, simple black basalt. And it is round."

"Just that, sir?"

"That's what you are being paid for," came back the voice of Mr. Caldwell.

At that moment the air became just a bit more difficult to breathe, and not because of the line. Jesus was very careful about that line, jiggling it free from above and behind him every few feet, careful of the insurance coil of slack. At the first resistance of the line, he pulled no more and used the coil. He would not, he vowed, go one step beyond that coil.

If there was gold in the stern, stacks of it, then there has to be more of it for ballast, he thought. Unless, of course, the stone is the ballast. The big stone in the middle of the ship is the ballast.

And then he thought some more, stepping carefully over the floating hand of a man whose sword had been useless to defend his life under the water.

No, he thought. If I am to photograph the stone, then the gold is the ballast. The stone had to be the many treasures, the reason for the many skulls. Such was the stunning revelation that came to Jesus Gomez as he stumbled onto the stone. It hit his feet. It was round, almost a perfect circle the diameter of a short man.

"I have found it."

"Turn on the camera. There is a rubber plunger switch at the rear ... good. That's it. Don't kick up the mud." This from Mr. Caldwell, who could obviously see through this camera. But that did not explain why it was so large. Television cameras could be made as small as a loaf of bread.

"There are four quadrants," said Mr. Caldwell. "Do you see them?"

"Oh, yes," said Gomez. The stone was divided into four parts. In the days of the Spanish, gold coins were divided into pieces of eight, and quarters, where the modern Americans got the name of their silver pieces from, not from quarters of dollars as they liked to believe.

"Stand on the edge of the closest quadrant."

"Yes, Mr. Caldwell."

"Point the camera directly at your feet, and hold the camera steady."

"I am, Mr. Caldwell."

"Press the button on your left."

"I am doing that, Mr. Caldwell." Jesus felt the camera whir and felt little clicks. Jesus did that two times minimum for every section of the quadrant, sometimes doing it as many as five times. And by this he realized every picture he took was seen and recorded on the surface ship, because otherwise Mr. Caldwell would not know to ask for another picture unless he could see something he didn't like in the first ones.

Jesus thought he recognized some of the letters but could read no language. There were Arabic letters, he thought. Spanish letters, he thought. But the words were not Spanish, even though he thought he recognized one or two.

Perhaps, he thought while waiting for the camera to do its job, one language is Latin. I have seen words like this chiseled into church walls. Perhaps the Arabic is old, too, he thought. Other letters he could not even remotely recognize.

As he checked his watch he realized that if he had taken down tanks he would not have been able to stay so long. This made him feel better. There was some logic now to the risky suit. Mr. Caldwell wanted his photographs done in one dive. It would be fifty thousand dollars for a day. He had done all four quadrants. There was nothing left to do. He waited for Mr. Caldwell to call him up to the surface. Finally, he could wait no longer. "Are we done, Mr. Caldwell?" said Jesus Gomez.

There was no answer from above. He felt his ears ring. Something was pushing in on his skull. The breathing was hard, like his lungs were being pushed out into his rib cage. It was hot, very hot for this deep. Then he realized the air pressure in the suit was increasing. Becoming enormous. He tried to move across the planking but his weighted feet were rising. He was rising. And he couldn't stop it.

"Mr. Caldwell, Mr. Caldwell. Lower the pressure. Lower the pressure," cried Jesus Gomez. He felt himself lift from the base of the hull, rising toward the upper decks. The underside of the deck felt strangely soft. Very soft. It was as though the ceiling was as springy and as pliable as a balloon. Then he saw it-a gloved hand in a bloated arm. The pressure had pushed him into another diver, a diver who was also pinned to the roof. Dangling from the diver's hand was a camera similar to the one Mr. Caldwell had given Jesus, except it had a single light. Jesus had been sent a strong battery of lights. Did they try the first time and find out there were not enough lights to photograph the stone? But why did they strand the diver? At that moment, pinned inside the wreck of a ship two hundred feet and four centuries beneath the surface, Jesus Gomez knew exactly why Mr. Caldwell was willing to pay fifty thousand dollars for a week. He would have paid fifty million for a week. Because Mr. Caldwell never intended to pay him at all. Mr. Caldwell paid only in air pressure.

Jesus saw the air line and the camera line float away. Apparently they could disassemble them from above, plugging the air line at Jesus' end. He knew it was from his end because bubbles came from the retreating end like a snake, like a snake of life saying good-bye to Jesus Gomez pinned to the ceiling of an old ship, another skull to guard the many treasures. He wondered if he should cut open his suit, just to get free of the ceiling. Of course he would drown, but maybe he could somehow get to that bubbling hose going away, taunting him with the air he needed. But the arms of Jesus Gomez, trapped in a taut balloon of a suit, could not move. And besides, the pressure was turning everything black anyhow. Or was it the batteries going out in the lights? Could they turn those out from above? he wondered. His father had been right. It was too much money. And his last dim thoughts as his body gave up its quest for air, in the warm comforting narcotic of death, was that his father, the poor sponge diver, was right. Too much money. Too much.

Professor Augustine Cryx of Brussels had to laugh. Not only was it too much money, but anyone willing to pay money at all for his services had to be suspect.

"What? Calling from America? Is there something wrong with the postal service? Eh? I can't hear you."

"Professor Cryx, this is a perfect telephone connection. And you're hearing well. I want you to look at several photographs tomorrow. I will pay whatever you ask, just see me tomorrow."

Professor Cryx laughed. Even the laughter was old, almost a crackle coming from a dry throat. He was eighty-seven years old, lived a life of virtual obscurity, pensioned off by the university in quiet embarrassment after the Second World War, and now someone was offering him four times what his yearly salary had been just to look at some pictures.

"Mr. Caldwell," said Professor Cryx. "What would I do with the money? I have no need of money. How many years do you think I have left?"

"What do you want?" said Harrison Caldwell. "Name it."

"I wish to enjoy the feast of St. Vincense D'Ors. And that is tomorrow. And I have my wine, and I make libations in all four corners of the world, and chant the words so dear to his heart."

"I can build a statue for him or of him, Professor Cryx. I'll make a donation to the church in St. Vincense D'Ors' name."

"Wouldn't do any good, Mr. Caldwell. The Roman Catholic Church cleared poor Vincense out with St. Christopher and Philomena and so many others, years ago. We all no longer belong, including me. We are all finished and done with. Good day, Mr. Caldwell."

"Wait. I can make a donation to the Catholic Church. They serve the living. I'll build them hospitals in St. Vincense's name. That's what you can do for St. Vincense D'Ors if you see me tomorrow. The Church won't turn down helping the poor."

Again there was laughter over the transatlantic line. "Mr. Caldwell. Good old St. Vincense needs his libations and holy words. He needs them here in Brussels where he was born. Now why are you offering me so much money for a discredited science, so discredited that even in my youth I was forced to teach it as the history of the medieval ages? Why?"

"Let me ask you then, sir. Why are you so insistent on performing those ceremonies tomorrow? Why not let others do it?"

"Because, Mr. Caldwell, I am the only one to pour libations on St. Vincense's birthday. I am the last."

"I will carry it on."

"You lie. What do you care about the patron saint of alchemy? The science has been discredited for over a century. But I tell you, the alchemists were the beginning of Western science, no matter what you or anyone else says. No matter what the university feels. Other sciences have flaws. Do they call physics superstition because a theory doesn't work? Do they call psychoanalysis superstition because someone comes up with a new definition of the id? No. But alchemy, the source of Western chemistry and science, was discarded entirely as a superstition just because a few theories did not prove out."

"Why are you yelling, professor? If I didn't believe, would I be offering to pay you so much money for one day?"

Harrison Caldwell heard heavy breathing at the other end of the line. The man might be having a stroke. He had to gentle him down, not antagonize him.

"I am tired of being ridiculed. Leave me alone."

"I have something that you must believe in," said Caldwell.

"I don't have to believe in anything. I don't have to believe the world isn't composed of the four pure elements of fire, water, earth, and air. I don't have to. And I will tell you something else, you ... you mocker of our science. I never will."

"I have the philosopher's stone," said Harrison Caldwell.

"If I were to believe you, I would be even more offended. That stone. Always, always the problem. They said that because we claimed as alchemists to be able to turn lead to gold, we were a pseudoscience, the court jesters of science, the embarrassment of science, like an old grandfather born bastard instead of legal. But this bastard made your chemists of today, son."

"The stone is in four quadrants. Two of the languages I recognize. They are Latin and Arabic. The third might be a form of Greek, but I am not sure, and, Professor Cryx, I dreadfully hate talking about this on a telephone line. What sort of wine do we pour to St. Vincense D' Ors?"

There was a pause on the telephone line. Finally Professor Cryx spoke.

"It's a long ceremony. I have been using a cheap port, but you do have funds, you say?"

"What sort of wine would our blessed St. Vincense like?"

The voice from Brussels was timid, almost like a child unable to believe it was worth such a gift.

"Laffite Rothschild ... if it isn't too expensive."

"We will have two cases for Blessed St. Vincense. A hundred if you wish."

"Too much, too much. But yes, of course. Wine is one of the few pleasures of the old. A hundred cases would allow me to drink every day for the rest of my life. Oh this is too good, too good to be true. You will be here tomorrow then. Services start at sunrise."

The next day, Harrison Caldwell saw clearly why the Church never recognized good old St. Vincense. Half the prayers were pagan, and the other half were pagan-based, calling upon the elements as though they were gods themselves. The ritual was anathema to the first of the Ten Commandments, which called for reverence to one God who made everything.

Professor Cryx was a Walloon, one of the two groups that made up Belgium, and the one that usually ran things. The other group, the Flemish, only felt it should run things. Professor Cryx wore a gray jacket stained by all the meals he'd eaten since middle age. They stood in an old square near an old fountain, while Professor Cryx chanted a language Harrison Caldwell had never heard but suspected might be on one of the four quadrants of the stone. The old man was sparing with the wine, commenting to his St. Vincense that when the other hundred cases arrived there would be more wine. The wine was poured into the fountain. Some of the prayers were in English for Caldwell's benefit. Harrison Caldwell did not bother to mention that he spoke both Dutch and French, which would have enabled him to converse with anyone in Belgium. Nor did he mention that he spoke Spanish, ancient Greek, Latin, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, and Danish.

Nor did he even mention that he spoke all of these languages fluently, like someone who used them daily. Harrison Caldwell stood with the grace and tremendous reserve of someone who was sure that in a very short time he was going to realize a dream of generations.

With casual ease, Harrison Caldwell allowed an arm to gently rest on a hip. Oddly, this small gesture attracted a crowd. The sight of a ragged old man pouring wine into a fountain and mumbling things in one language after another aroused only pity, making people turn away. But to see someone so elegant stand there with the old man, as though about to receive a crown of a kingdom, was something to make people stop and look. And when Professor Cryx bowed four times to the four corners of the world, praising the four elements for their gifts as St. Vincense D'Ors had taught, people came over to ask what the ceremony was about.

''We're getting followers," gasped Professor Cryx.

"Move on," said Caldwell. And they did. Not just because the elegant man ignored all requests as though he had never heard them, but because when Harrison Caldwell did not respond to people he made them feel ashamed that they had ever spoken. He had that ability with employees, even from his earliest days when he had to work for a living. But those days would soon be over.

The professor's apartment was small, dim, and smelled like an unopened trash barrel. But the old professor was giddy with joy; a second life had begun even as his days dwindled. He was talking of plans, something he hadn't indulged in since the 1960s when alchemy made a very brief comeback on the coattails of the astronomy craze. Harrison Caldwell endured the smell and the conversational discomfort. Then, from a very thin briefcase, he brought forth four pictures. Each showed a quadrant of the stone in harsh clarity. Harrison Caldwell cleared a table for Professor Cryx and poured a glass of wine.

Cryx trembled the glass to his lips, letting the pure sharp wine pleasure his tongue for a delicious moment, finally swallowing almost with regret. Then a full sip, and then a swallow, and then he offered the glass for more.

"You did say we're getting a hundred cases, didn't you?"

"For the rest of your life. The pictures."

"Yes, the pictures. Just a touch there, thank you," said Cryx, making sure the bottle filled the glass. "I guess I can get used to this." His glass full, he returned to the pictures. He held the glass up for another sip while he read the Arabic. The Latin was clear. The Arabic was not, and then the ancient Hebrew, the one even before the language of the Old Testament. And of course Sanskrit. Good old Sanskrit. The Babylonian variation. The glass stayed where he had placed it. He didn't even notice Mr. Caldwell, the nice Mr. Caldwell, take it out of his hands.

"Yes. Yes. Of course. Yes. This is it. The old devil himself. Where did you find it?"

"It was sunk."

"Leave it there. This has caused us alchemists the trouble, all the trouble, from day one. This one stone has been the defamation of us all. Leave it. If you believe in alchemy, leave this stone."

"The one that shows how to turn lead into gold."

"The one that led us to be called frauds and hoaxers. If it weren't for this stone, our cures for the blains and rheumy would have been given the prominence they deserve. Our formulas and beliefs would have survived most respected. Instead our work was stolen from us, given the name of chemistry, and credited to the thieves. Leave the stone be. Alchemists are not mere goldmakers, and never were."

"But what if the stone is true? What if the great lie were shown to be the great truth?"

"I have asked myself many times that same question, Mr. Caldwell, and the sad answer is that the stone was our one lie. And we paid for it dearly. For you, sir, are looking at the last alchemist. And that stone is the reason."

"But it is true."

"No. If it were true, would we not have been rich?"

"Not necessarily."

"Why not? Don't tease me like this. Please, tell me. Why not?"

"Because you don't know gold," said Harrison Caldwell. "I left what would be calculated today at perhaps twelve million American dollars at the bottom of the sea because I know gold. I know what it does. I know what it feels like. I know you think it is the noble metal. The most noble metal."

"Yes. I do. Alchemists have always called it the noble metal."

"I left twelve million dollars of it on the bottom of the sea, because it is like a speck, a pathetic speck compared to this stone."

"Go back and get your gold, Mr. Caldwell," said Professor Cryx, looking for his glass again, the one with the exquisite wine. He found it and took a hard gulp of it, shaking his head. "If we could have turned lead to gold, then we would have. We would have saved our lives, I tell you. How many of us were beheaded or burned to death when a king placed a pile of lead in front of us and then ordered us at the pain of our lives to produce gold from it? Do you think we would have rather died than do it? Leave the stone. It has been our curse throughout the ages."

"What if I told you I am sure someone did change the lead to gold?"

"You mean the gold you left on the bottom of the sea?" asked Professor Cryx. Who was this man who seemed so much like a stranger and yet knew so much about alchemy? One would have thought he would have known the languages.

"As I told you," said Harrison Caldwell, "I know gold. I doubt that gold was made through the formula of the stone. Maybe no more than a few ounces were made in all history by the stone. But if you know gold, and I do know gold, Professor Cryx, you would know why."

"You must tell me. Tell me."

"The answer lies in this stone itself and what I know you-an alchemist-can tell me. You see, gold is really a very plentiful metal. Quite plentiful. In every little cubic mile of seawater there is at least ninety thousand dollars' worth. Did you know that?"

"No. I didn't."

"But it would cost four million dollars to extract it. You see it is uneconomical. There is an economy to gold."

"So it might have taken diamonds to make gold. Something even purer in the fire of the earth," said Professor Cryx.

"No," said Caldwell. "Nothing is purer than gold, or more serviceable, or serving. Or more tradable."

"Then what is it?"

"Obviously something they did not have access to easily."

"What?"

"That is why I am here. Who else can read the old alchemic symbols but you?"

"Of course," said Professor Cryx, putting down the wine again. Mr. Caldwell brought him a pad and pencil, and kept pouring drinks. There was the old symbol for lead, Professor Cryx saw. It was like an old friend. And there was red sulfur. And mercury. A great element was mercury. Hard to come by, but not unavailable in history. Only in the old Sanskrit did the descriptions start to fit. Then Mr. Caldwell was writing furiously on his own piece of paper. He seemed a bit lax with the proper chants. But when the Sanskrit yielded the missing element, Harrison Caldwell said:

"Of course. It would have been very scarce then."

It may have been the amount Professor Cryx was happily drinking, but the wine suddenly had a giddy sting to it. Rather nice, but darkening.

"Perhaps I have had enough," said Professor Cryx, thinking that it might be a nice time to perform a little prayer of gratitude to the gold itself, asking its power and spirit to bless their venture, thanking it for the rebirth of the one true science, soon to be resurrected in the world, like astronomy and plant worship.

"I'll have a million cases here by your doorstep," said the wonderful Mr. Caldwell.

A million cases? Was there that much of this fine wine in the world? It was, after all, just one vineyard. Professor Cryx thought he was telling this to the nice Mr. Caldwell, but his tongue was not moving. It was numb. So were his lips, and so was his body. But it wasn't until he felt the burning in his stomach that he recognized the old alchemist's formula for cyanide at work in its most biting and painful form. When the pain ended, the old professor was not quite there to feel it fully. His body was stiff, and only the fingers moved briefly when the photographs were yanked from under his hand.

What luck, thought Harrison Caldwell. As his family had always said, "Spill enough bowels onto the pavement and the whole city will love you." Which, of course, was another way of saying he who dared, won. He left the apartment through the rear and walked out the alley whistling, whistling a song whose rhythms had not been heard in these city streets for centuries. Harrison Caldwell not only knew gold, he also knew he would have more of it now than any king since Croesus. And, come to think of it, even more than Croesus ever had. More than anyone, ever. Because Harrison Caldwell knew that nowadays, what the old alchemists lacked was more plentiful than at any other time in history. All one had to do was steal it.

Chapter 2

His name was Remo and he was supposed to let the little girl drown. The mother was hysterical. As bystanders lined the shores, one young man attempted to get out to her; when he went under he had to be dragged out himself.

It was early spring in Michigan and the ponds were barely covered with cellophane-thin coats of ice. A young girl who had throughout the winter played safely on that ice had fallen through now. It was a pond for summer folk mainly, and the boats, somehow, were all carted away to winter homes. So there she was with no one able to reach her, and a local television camera whirring away. And Remo was supposed to turn and walk away because his picture would be seen on television if he swam through thin ice to save the girl. That would be big news because people could not ordinarily swim through ice.

The television newswoman pushed the microphone into the mother's face.

"How does it feel to watch your daughter drown? Is this your first daughter to drown?" asked the newswoman. Her makeup was camera-perfect. Her hair blew dramatically in the breeze. Remo had seen her on television a few times. They announced she had won an award for reporting. Remo never saw her do anything but read dramatically. He had seen similar situations around the country, in the places he stayed that would never be home. Pretty people would read things into the camera, and then they would collect rewards and be called reporters. Sometimes they thought of things to read all by themselves. Those instances were obvious because a look of desperation crossed their faces, as if it were a struggle to think of an entire word. A complete sentence seemed insurmountable.

The mother's answer was a scream.

"My baby. My baby. Save my baby girl. Save my baby. Someone."

"We are here at the tragic drowning of young Beatrice Bendetsen, age five, at Comoyga Pond. This is Nathalie Watson, Dynamic News, Channel Fourteen."

Nathalie smiled to the camera. The camera panned out to the pond. The little girl had come up again. The camera panned back to the mother. Then the girl. A producer behind the cameraman whispered:

"Stay on the girl going down. The mother's screaming is going to go on far half an hour. Plenty of footage there."

Nathalie Watson, her handsome, strong woman's face with fashionable swept hairdo, steamed over to the cameraman.

The producer was whispering furiously into some form of headset.

Nathalie ripped it off him.

"I will not do a voice-over. I have been doing voiceovers all day. I want live."

"Nathalie, precious, we love you but this is good footage," said the producer.

''There's always good footage. That's why I am doing voice-overs all day."

"It's the first drowning of the year, live," said the producer.

"Someone. Please. My girl," cried the mother, and then she looked at Remo, Remo who was turning away, Remo whose years of training served an organization that dared not be known to exist. Remo who, in the absolute best interests of his country, was a lone assassin, a man who didn't exist. And therefore could not be on a television camera, or photographed. He was a man whose fingerprints were no longer checked against files, because he was dead. Had been for well over a decade, the victim of a well-planned, carefully executed fake death. The man who didn't exist for the organization which didn't exist.

He had been trained to discipline his feelings. Thoughts, after all, were the real power of the human body, not the crude, weak muscles. Even his dreams at times were as controllable as fingertips. So he told himself he should not be bothered by this.

And then he saw the mother's eyes lock with his, and heard the word "please."

And all of it went. The years of it went. The training of it went. The analysis of the situation went. And Remo was moving, the legs following the force of the body, the absolute perfection of movement. Smooth, as though the legs were like feathers, and the air, not a barrier, but a moving part of a universe. He heard the pads of his shoes tap the thin ice like the soft pop of a cellophane cake wrapper. His feet did not pound the ice but moved with the mass of water beneath it, his thin body feeling the prickly cool of the still-chill Michigan spring. Pine trees, green and fragrant, rimmed the lake, and he could sense the weak rays of the sun on his body that floated as it moved, quick with the light feet. And then he was at the girl and with his left hand he scooped her up out of the water as though fielding a baseball and continued the open fifty yards to the rest of the ice on the other side of the lake.

It was that fifty yards that caused the cameraman to check his focus, the producer to let out a shriek, and even Nathalie Watson to stop complaining about her lack of camera time.

"Did you see that?" said the producer.

"Did I see what I saw?" said Nathalie. "The guy ran on water."

"To hell with the drowning. We don't have it anyway unless the kid goes back in the water, which I don't think she will."

"I don't think she will either," said Nathalie. "That mother won't let her. I'll do a live with the man who runs on water."

"Okay," said the producer.

"What happened?" cried the mother, trying to brush the tears away to see her daughter better, her daughter now coming very quickly to her in the arms of that man who had gone out to save her. He was running with her along the lake shore. The mother hadn't seen what he had done. All she saw was that her daughter was going to live. The crowd behind her cheered.

Nathalie Watson moved through the crowd toward the mother. That was where the man who ran on water would be. With any luck, provided no one shot the President or something-and that could happen with bad luck-Nathalie Watson and her strong handsome woman's face were going to be on camera this evening not only Michigan north, but network national. She was heading toward thirty seconds of national exposure.

"What happened? What happened?" asked the mother.

"We're going to do an interview," said Nathalie.

"My baby," said the mother, and reached out her hands. Remo saw the hands, saw the pain and joy, and put the child back in her mother's arms.

And then he smiled. He was feeling very good again. Good as when he was seventeen in a New Jersey city drinking beer from a bottle, feeling very much grown-up the night before he was to enter the Marines. No. Better than that. Then he felt grown-up. Now he felt like a human being.

And there was the camera looking at him with the big glass eye that was not only going to spread his face all over the country but show those special things he could do, so that from now on everyone would be looking for him if he disappeared. As the television newswoman approved, pointing the microphone toward his face, he suddenly wondered if he should wave to the folks upstairs and say hello. He could see Smitty, the head of the organization, choking on air if he said hello. Maybe he should say:

"Hi, America. I'm Remo Williams, and I can do these wonderful things because I have had training no white man has ever had before-and damned few Koreans, too, maybe one every half-century or so. Maybe you've seen me before. I kill a lot. So here I am, Remo Williams, saying your government couldn't survive within the Constitution, so they have me break it high, wide, and handsome just so we can all survive from week to week, from one disaster to the next."

He thought of that as the mother was hugging the little girl, kissing the cheeks, laughing and crying and thanking Remo, and really only happy she had the child back. He thought it while Nathalie Watson was asking him if he realized what he did. He thought of it, and then he thought of lemon-faced Harold W. Smith, chief of the organization, choking at the televised proof that the secrecy so many had died for had been destroyed on an impulse. Whoopee. And Remo Wiiliams began to laugh. And the laughter seized him.

"Sir, sir. Are you overjoyed? Is that why you are laughing?"

"No," laughed Remo.

"Why are you laughing?"

"Get the microphone out of my face," said Remo. There was moisture in his eyes.

The microphone came up closer to his lips.

"Get the microphone away from my face," said Remo. He was still laughing.

But Nathalie Watson, award-winning newscaster, was not going to be moved by something as insignificant as a personal request. Nathalie Watson, her good side toward the camera, moved the microphone a touch closer. Nathalie Watson saw the laughing man's hands. They seemed so slow. But somehow her hands were slower. Nathalie Watson was suddenly looking at the camera with a cord coming out of the center of her mouth. Something was lodged in her throat. It felt cold. It was metal. The microphone had a definite aluminum taste. She wondered what she looked like with a microphone cord coming out of her mouth. She looked at the camera and smiled. If the lunatic hadn't damaged her magnificent teeth, no harm would be done. She saw the laughing lunatic go up to the cameraman. He took the camera. The cameraman had been a linebacker at a Big Ten school. He had also gotten a degree in communications. This prepared him perfectly for carrying something heavy and pointing it. He did not take kindly to people grabbing his camera.

His playing weight had been 244 pounds of lean muscle. He had put on a bit more beef since then and now weighed 285. For the sake of beautiful Nathalie and his camera the lunatic was reaching for, the cameraman took a football-sized fist and pounded it down into his head. He was sure they would have to dig this guy out of the ground.

His fist felt quite funny as it struck. Was the guy's head metal? No. The truck was metal. The Channel 14 truck was all metal. It made a very loud sound. It made the sound because he was being thrown into it. It shivered and he collapsed.

Remo had the camera. He recognized it as the kind cameramen changed film with in one motion. One only had to slide it backward. It did not slide backward. Was it right-side-up? Remo slid the film magazine up. It did not slide up. Nor did it slide down or forward.

"It's a simple one-piece move," said the producer, who knew his film was going to be lost; now all he wanted was to save the camera.

"I did that," said Remo. This time he slid harder. He slid in all directions. A flaky gray cloud appeared in his hands, along with the film that smoldered with a bitter smell of burning tires. The camera had disintegrated from the friction. The film had been set on fire. He gave it back to the producer.

"Any idiot could have opened the damn thing," said the producer.

"Wrong idiot," said Remo pleasantly. One of these days he was going to have to learn how to work gadgets. He jumped up on the truck. There were about twenty people in the crowd.

"Look. I want a favor. I want you to say this never happened. I have personal reasons. Any reporters, including these people here, come to you and ask you about this, just say the girl fell in on the shore and her mother picked her out."

"You don't want credit for it?" called out a man from the crowd.

"I want you to say it never happened. Say the camera crew is on coke or something."

"Anything," cried the mother. The crowd closed around her, pointing at the crew.

"I saw them sniffing," said a woman, "didn't you?"

"Absolutely," said another.

One man in the crowd very quietly slipped away. He was a grain inspector for the government. He worked for the Department of Agriculture. He filed his reports on a computer terminal in his office in nearby Kalkaska, Michigan. About twenty years before, he had gotten a directive. The government, concerned with price fixing, wanted him to file reports on anything unusual. The request was general, and he wasn't sure what they wanted, but they did want him not to talk about it. He knew a couple of other grain inspectors in the Kalkaska office had gotten the same request, knew it because they mentioned how unusual it was. He said nothing because he was under the impression he wasn't supposed to talk about it. Shortly thereafter the other men were talking about how the program had been dropped. Just like the government, not knowing what it was doing.

But it wasn't dropped for him, and he realized he had just passed a weeding-out process. Early on, he used to phone in his reports to a special number. They were interested mainly in criminal activities. He never knew what good it did, but a couple of times, prosecutors nailed the people he had suspected, never knowing it might have been him who turned them onto it. One time a gangland figure notorious for eliminating witnesses turned up crushed like a grape in a room that only had an entrance through the twentieth floor. No one could figure out how they got a machine into that room to do that sort of damage. But the gang that had been preying on grain dealers disappeared with him.

When computers came in he was given a computer access number special to him. And he would punch in his code, punch in his information. There were two strange things about this. One, they wanted information on anything strange or different nowadays, not just Agriculture departmental business, and two, he never got an answer back except to confirm that it was sent. Each month he got a check from his department mailed to his home, sort of a bonus, nothing exceptional, but he knew he was the only one getting it.

Now as he drove through the Michigan countryside and its spring-sodden fields, he wondered about that. Wondered if he shouldn't pass up the incident at the pond. It wasn't illegal except possibly for the assault on the television people, and that the local police could handle if they ever could get a witness against the assaulter.

What the man had done was strange. Was it the sort of thing they would be interested in? He wondered again as he sat down to his terminal. He decided to make it brief. He was almost embarrassed to even report it.

"Saw man on pond run across water. Fifty yards. Did it to save a kid, then asked everyone to say they didn't see it. Destroyed television camera. Man seemed to have incredible force. Thought it might be of interest. Sorry if it isn't. It wowed me."

And then he punched in his code sign-off.

And for the first time in twenty years, he got an answer that was more than just an acknowledgment of a received message.

"Ran on water? How far?"

The Agriculture inspector's fingers suddenly felt numb. He punched the keys, hit several wrong characters, and had to repunch. Finally he got out the message.

"Fifty yards."

"Describe man."

"Thin, sort of. Dark hair. High cheekbones. Wore light jacket and loafers. Didn't seem to mind the cold."

"Did he have thick wrists?"

"Affirmative. They were thick."

"Did the television cameras get pictures of him?"

"Yes."

"Where is the film? Who has it? Is it scheduled for this evening? Answer if you know. Do not attempt to find out."

"Film burned up. Crew assaulted by man."

"Are they dead? Witnesses?"

"Not dead. Man got up on truck and told everyone to deny what they saw. Everyone willing because man saved little girl. I think no one minded television crew getting punched out."

"Punched out? Explain."

"Cameraman put up a fight."

"You said no one dead?"

"Correct."

"And film destroyed?"

"Correct."

The grain inspector saw the sign-off on the screen, and never heard from whoever was at the other end again. He wasn't even sure what continent the other terminal was on.

At the other terminal, Harold W. Smith looked out of the one-way windows of Foicroft Sanitarium on Long Island Sound and said one simple swear word. It had to do with human waste and began with an S. It referred to the antics of Remo. Remo was now performing in front of television cameras. He wondered whether he should even use him anymore. Unfortunately, he had to.

Chiun, Master of Sinanju, glory of the name of Sinanju, teacher of the youth from outside Sinanju named Remo, prepared to enter into the history of Sinanju the bald fact that Remo was white, possibly without even a trace of natural yellow blood. He did this in a hotel room with a scroll laid out before him.

The ugly gray light of the American city named Dearborn, in the province of Michigan, filled the room that was crowded with heavy American furniture. Big wood chunks supported heavy brocaded pillows. Chiun sat on his mat, an island of dignity surrounded by the accoutrements of the new world. The television set, the one magnificent thing in the cesspool of this culture, was off.

His topaz writing kimono was still. His delicate hand with the graceful long fingernails carefully dipped the quill into the dark inkbowl. He had been leading up to this moment for years, first hinting that Remo, who would be the next Master of Sinanju, had come from outside the village of Sinanju, then outside Korea itself, then even to the point of referring to where Remo was born as being beyond the Orient. Now he would say it: Chiun had given Sinanju, the sun source of all the martial arts, to a white. The House of Sinanju would one day be inherited by a white. He felt the ages of these greatest assassins looking down on him. The great Wang, who had done so much to elevate the Masters of Sinanju, taking them from positions of servitude in the courts of the Chinese dynasties to legendary status. Master Toksa, who had taught the lesson to the pharaohs. The Lesser Wang. And there was little Gi, who had determined that the reason Sinanju had unlocked the full power of the human animal was that it was the most perfect product of the most perfect race. Little Gi was never a great assassin, but he was the most loved historian of all the Masters of Sinanju. Little Gi looked down on Chiun the hardest. It was little Gi who once believed that power to be a great assassin was in the color of the skin.

It was Gi who had convinced Kublai Khan to rise above Mongol barbarism, to stop doing their own sloppy assassinations and to let professionals like Sinanju serve a great court.

To this Kublai Khan agreed, and asked that little Gi teach his son such body control. Now, understanding the minds of emperors, Gi knew he would not refuse. Nor could he fail. But the boy was clumsy, stupid, and unable to follow directions despite an agreeable nature. He had the intelligence and natural agility of a clod of mud. It had been a triumph to get the boy across a room on both feet.

"Great emperor," Gi told his father, the Khan, Kublai, "your seed shows an infinite ability to excel, to excel to such an extent that he must command assassins, not dirty his hand like some horseman."

Now Kublai's father was Tamerlane, son of Genghis, the Khan. And they were Mongols, horse Mongols, riding Mongols, killing Mongols, who took great pride in their horses and swords and bloody massacres. Their method of rule was simple terror, and they left the greatest of the cities of the world, like Baghdad, in cinders. They were as fit to rule as a child throwing a tantrum for a toy. Tamerlane's Mongols, being barbarians, of course had no need of an assassin. They did not understand that if one had an assassin one could kill few instead of many, one could rule cities instead of pillage them.

Kublai understood, but still liked to pride himself on being Mongol, a horse Mongol. So when Gi referred to the Khan's son as more than a horse rider, Kublai became furious. He said his son was Mongol, as Mongol as Genghis and Tamerlane, as Mongol as the plains from which they came. Now this was said in the imperial city of Cathay amid the splendor of silks and cushions and pools of perfume, lily pads of gold flake and women of such beauty as to turn the eyes of statues.

"No, great emperor. You are greater than your father, and your son, greater than you. And his son shall be greater still, because you are the ones meant to rule the world. Men ride horses from saddles, but they ride men from thrones. Now which I ask you is greater?"

And Kublai Khan had to agree ruling men was greater than ruling horses. And little Gi then pointed out that when a royal attempted to do the work of an assassin, a royal was not as great as he could be by ruling assassins.

For if the Khan gave up the idea of his son learning Sinanju, then the son would be yet greater still because he would rule assassins. Little Gi not only got rid of a hopeless dolt, for Mongols never could move like Koreans, but he also earned more tributes from the great Khan at the same time.

Later generations, bereft of suitable candidates in the village and the peninsula, would attempt to teach a Thai, even an arrogant Japanese, who later took the meager scraps of Sinanju and turned them into Ninja. But none but Sinanju were successful, in thousands of years.

Now the most un-Sinanju person in imagination, an American white of dubious parentage, had become in all manner and thought, but for regressive white habits, a full Master of Sinanju. And Chiun had to explain how, and most importantly why, he had chosen such an unlikely student.

The subject had been introduced in previous chapters of Chiun's histories by implication: the Master hinted strongly that America was a form of an extension of the Korean peninsula, stressing that the Indians who crossed over from the Bering Strait were Oriental in origin. In a few thousand years only a handful of scholars would know the difference anyhow. And besides, there was always that good Korean girl who would take Remo's seed and begin the breeding-out process. A simple sixteen generations should purify the line adequately.

And then no one would know. But Chiun had come to the part where the parentage of Remo had to be written and he certainly could not enter Remo's origin into the history of Sinanju as "not exactly in the center of the village of Sinanju proper," or even "the far suburbs." America was America was America and not, in truth, an extension of the Korean peninsula. Future masters would have maps, and Chiun did not wish to be remembered as one who told untruths. He had been working on Remo many years now, first to get him to write a history, which he wouldn't, and second to refer to Chiun as the "Great Chiun." A great Master was established by future generations.

So Chiun now was poised with ink-heavy quill over the lambskin parchment, the Korean symbol for white in his mind, ready to see it on the scroll.

And then Remo entered the hotel room. Chiun knew it was Remo because the door did not open with grinding of metal on hinge but rather balanced and silent, resting naturally on the handle and the hinge. Also, there was not the cold thump of weight falling on the balls of the feet, or the odor of meat-laden breathing used by those who breathed the way they were born.

The person entered the room with the grace of the wind, and the only other who would do that now was Remo.

Chiun immediately put the quill back in the well and asked if Remo would like to begin training in recording events of history.

"Anything you wish to say," said Chiun, his white wisps of hair trembling with joy.

"Why are you happy to see me, little father?" said Remo.

"I am always happy to see you."

"Not that happy. What's wrong?"

"Nothing is wrong."

"Is that the same scroll I left you with this morning?" said Remo. He glanced at the letter symbols of grace and power, an elegant writing. Not only hadn't Chiun advanced much since the morning, he was stuck on that same word.

Remo turned on the television to Channel 14 Dynamic News. There was a lot of active-authoritative music, then a graphic that faded into a shot of people sitting around talking. Then the people sitting around talking were shown talking to people who were not employed by Channel 14. These were politicians. There was a fire. Channel 14 people talked to firemen. At every change there was the music. Armies could have marched to that music. Channel 14 could have run excerpts from the fall of Berlin to that music.

Nathalie Watson was not there. An anchorman talked about it. He talked about the horror of assaults on newsmen attempting to keep America free. He talked about a reporter's word being the most trustworthy element in any story.

"Boldly and proudly we at Channel Fourteen Dynamic News declare forthrightly that concerning the situation in the lake district, we will not comment. And we might add that at Channel Fourteen, we lead the fight against drugs. Ms. Watson will return just as soon as surgeons extricate a Channel Fourteen Dynamic News microphone from her esophagus."

The martial music went on again.

Safe, thought Remo. He had gotten away with it. And he was feeling good. He looked to Chiun. Chiun was smiling. He was not even angry that Remo had turned to something else, not focusing immediately on what Chiun had brought up.

"What is it?" said Remo.

"Nothing," said Chiun. "I am looking for just the right word for the history that you will take over someday. I thought perhaps you might help with the word."

"What word do you want me to help with?"

"Perhaps you can write something about your not telling me your parentage and that your movements have always been Sinanju upon being shown them so well by, say, the Great Chiun."

"Do you want me to call you Great?"

"Do you want to call me Great?" said Chiun. "If you want to, that is your right. As you become a full Master of Sinanju when I am no longer here, I know you will want to remember me with accuracy and honor."

"I don't know what Great is. I don't know any other Masters."

"If you read the histories you would know what Great is."

"I read them. They're distorted. Ivan the Terrible is Ivan the Good because he paid on time. The whole world revolves around what is good for Sinanju and what is not. The histories are mostly nonsense. I know that now. I'm not a trainee anymore."

"Sacrilege," said Chiun. The head rose in righteous umbrage.

"Truth," said Remo. "They're fairy tales."

"The histories of Sinanju are what make you and me what we are. They are our past, and our future. They are our strength."

"Then if they are so accurate, why do you want me to lie?"

"Put in your own words, then, what you call truth." Remo glanced at the scroll.

"White. The word you want is 'white.' Do you want me to write it? My characters are not as fine as yours but I will write it. I'm white."

"That's so crude," said Chiun. "Perhaps you can say it with grace. Say, perhaps, that strangers would get a white impression from you but because of the way you have been taught to move and excel you are Korean in essence."

"I'm white," said Remo. "The character sign is 'white.' You know, the pale lake surrounded by the bleaching sticks. Do you want me to write it?"

"I wanted help," said Chiun, "and I got you." He cleaned the quill in pure vinegar and wax-sealed the special ink blended to last millennia for future Masters of Sinanju. He would write no more until the foulness of this betrayal left his spirits. "I can write no more for years. "

"You didn't want to say I was white," said Remo. "Your problem is you have never worked for a real emperor. "

The phone rang and a computer was talking to him.

Remo knew who was behind it. But Smitty, Harold W. Smith, head of the organization, hadn't reached out for him like that in years, partly because Remo had difficulty in working the codes, but also because assignments often required questions and answers. This was an old and cumbersome routine. Remo got the first code right in answering the computer. It was to hit the number one on the touch-tone phone continuously until what at first appeared to be a sales pitch from a computer turned into a responding voice, still not Smith. It instructed him to make sure no one was following him and to proceed to a phone booth in nearby Lansing, Michigan. The code to punch in that phone booth was a continuous two.

It was downtown Lansing and Remo arrived there at night. And after he put in his quarter and punched two continuously, he finally got Smith's voice.

"What's wrong? What's up?"

"You went running across water in front of a television camera today."

"Yes. I did," said Remo.

"Therefore, you threatened to compromise the entire organization."

"I saved a little girl."

"And we're trying to save a country, Remo."

"Right then," said Remo, "I felt the little girl was more important. And do you want to know something? I still do."

"Are you in the mood to help your civilization?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"Uranium is being stolen continuously from factories and we cannot stop it. So far, enough uranium to make fourteen atomic bombs is missing. We don't know how they are doing it. All other intellligence agencies are helpless. We're down to you, Remo."

"I never thought I was down, Smitty," said Remo.

"We are a last resort," said Smith. "We have to get you into one of the factories."

"Smitty . . . "

"Yeah."

"If I had it to do over again, I would still save that girl."

"I know," said Smith.

"You know me."

"That's why I said it. Watch yourself."

"What's to watch? I'm always okay."

Across the safe line Remo heard Harold W. Smith clear his throat. Remo did not mention that he would have loved to see Smith's face if the pictures did appear on network TV. Then he would have loved it. Now he felt sort of bad. He felt he had betrayed a trust, a trust to this man and a trust given by a nation.

"I'll watch it," said Remo finally. He said it with anger. He hung up by embedding the plastic receiver into the phone and shattering the booth door as he walked out through it in a shower of wire-reinforced glass.

From across the street it looked as though the telephone booth had exploded the man out of it. It looked that way to the policeman who saw the suspicious-looking stranger who did it. But the longer the cop watched the stranger, the more unsuspicious he became, especially when, just as an angry boy might kick a can, he took a car door off and skimmed it down the street. The policeman then remembered a sudden parking problem in the opposite direction and ran there to write the tickets.

Chapter 3

Harrison Caldwell knew gold. Anyone who trusted anything else was a fool. In times of crisis, people bought gold with their paper and their land and their possessions. And when the price of gold went up, then Caldwell and Sons, est. 1402, goldbrokers to the world, bullionists supreme, would sell gold. It was a nervous time. The paper was called money, but it was based only on people's faith. Eventually all paper came to be worth its weight in wood pulp. When that happened slowly, it was called inflation. When it happened quickly, it was called a collapse.

Selling gold for paper always made the Caldwells nervous. They only held the paper as long as the price of gold was high, waiting for the gold to moderate. That was the kind of patience that brought a man two things he could not have too much of. One was gold; the other was heads on the wall.

"He who hangs his enemy's head on his palace wall may rest his easily for another night."

The Caldwells had operated in the Americas since the sixteenth century, and in New York City since 1701, occupying the same family-owned land near the port for over two hundred years. Later that little street just off Wall Street in the commercial district would be worth millions. But the Caldwells knew that land, too, had flaws. Land was only worth what people said it was worth; therefore, it was nearly as weak an investment as paper. And as for ownership, armies decided who owned what land. Nobody ever stopped an invasion with a silly little piece of paper called a deed.

Only gold was of value forever. When the Caldwells had lost everything once in Europe, they escaped with only the knowledge that gold endured, and tales of a great stone that someday one of their descendants might discover again. "Gold," they had told every firstborn son, "begins and ends every hope of man. With enough gold, anything you want will be yours."

And now Harrison Caldwell was going to own more of it than anyone. The pictures of the stone and the translation from the old alchemist's symbols were safely locked in the Caldwell depository in a major New York City bank. The dead, of course, were dead, and therefore completely safe. While their heads didn't hang on palace walls to give warning, they would keep their silence more certainly than a promise from a saint's lip.

It was Harrison Caldwell's own personal wonderful day. He left the sedate offices of Caldwell and Sons, bullionists, happy, receiving awestruck recognition from the line of secretaries leading to the front door.

"Mr. Caldwell," each would say, and Harrison Caldwell would nod. Sometimes he would see a flower on a desk out of place, or a fingernail bitten. Though he would not say anything to the offending secretary herself, he would mention it later to an assistant. The secretary would then be reminded to mend her ways.

The wages were relatively low, the demands precise and unmovable, and despite what every labor-relations counselor would call a throwback to the Stone Age, Caldwell and Sons had a turnover rate of virtually nil, while those corporations with "enrichment programs" and "employee feedback forums" and psychological tests had the pass-through rate of a subway turnstile.

Caldwell and Sons did not have employee feedback forums and the employees knew why: they were not the chums of the Caldwells, nor were they partners in an enterprise. They were employees. In that respect they would be paid on time, given clear work, not overworked one day or idled the next. They could advance in pay as their skills advanced. There was something about working at Caldwell and Sons that was reassuring.

"I don't know what it is. You just always know where you stand. It's weird. You just have to be in Mr. Caldwell's presence to know where you are in relation to where he is." This, invariably, came from each new employee.

And where they stood, where everyone who worked for Harrison Caldwell stood, was beneath him. And the great secret he knew was that most of the people in the world liked that. The Caldwells knew how to rule.

So, on this day as he left, all the secretaries were surprised to see him lay his hand on an assistant's shoulder. They would have been more surprised if they heard what he had said. But all they heard was the assistant's rather loud reply:

"Are you sure? Are you sure, Mr. Caldwell?"

Then they saw Harrison Caldwell nod ever so slightly. If they didn't know him, they would not even have known it was a nod. But that was the Caldwell nod. Three times the assistant asked the same question, and three times there was the nod.

After the assistant bowed his good-bye, he stumbled back to his own office. There he sat down, cleared his desk, and set the telephone directly in the middle of it. Next, he ordered that no phone calls were to be put through to him unless they came from Mr. Caldwell himself.

Then he waited, staring at the telephone, as the perspiration formed on his forehead. For what Mr. Harrison Caldwell, the most conservative broker in a conservative business, had just told him was that when he phoned, Caldwell and Sons was to immediately sell twice as much gold as they had, or possibly hoped to have. And this plan was to be carried out in seven languages in seven countries.

Harrison Caldwell left his office humming and entered his chauffeur-driven limousine, promptly giving his driver an address in a part of Harlem few whites ever entered.

For Harrison Caldwell, Harlem was one of the safer places in the world, because he understood the black ghetto. It was not unsafe; it was just unsafe for people without guns or unwilling to use them. During the riots of the sixties when stores and buildings went up in flames, several buildings were left unscathed. And these were not black-owned places, but those owned by the mob.

While commentators throughout the country placed the blame of the riots on deprivation, racial injustice, and all manner of social ills, Harrison Caldwell and the Mafia knew a far more basic reason for the destruction. A very human reason. The rioters knew they were not going to be shot, except when they entered mob-run stores.

These remained as peaceful as Fifth Avenue.

And so would Harrison Caldwell's warehouse. It was a bastion neither riot nor arson nor anarchy could penetrate. Nevertheless, Harrison Caldwell took his precautions one step further when he ordered that everything being brought into his warehouse be delivered in giant drums, drums so large that only a crane could move them. Since nothing could be snatched and run with, even the random street crime that plagued the neighborhood would not affect him.

He entered his warehouse at noon and went to a glassenclosed booth high above the floor. Beneath him were bubbling vats of molten lead and sulfur. He looked at his watch. The trucks should be arriving soon, he thought. Time for a final check. As he requested, each door was guarded by a man with a shotgun. These were rented by Caldwell from a local gangster. Outside there was the growl of heavy trucks, coughing their way to a halt. The guards checked their weapons and glanced toward the booth. Caldwell nodded for them to let the trucks in. The heavy metal doors to his warehouse creaked open and three trucks lumbered into the building and parked near giant hoists. Immediately the hoists dropped metal claws into the backs of the trucks and picked up, drum by drum, the yellow barrels marked with the black crosses that signified nuclear danger, careful to set them right, without spilling. What pleased Harrison Caldwell most was not how perfectly the hoists set each drum in its preordained position, nor how the warehouse staff functioned as one, but the very fact that the trucks had arrived on time. For it had taken him months to gather this material, to put together all of the small and large quantities that made up the contents of three trucks. Harrison Caldwell was watching months and a dozen little acts all coming together at the specified time to join the bubbling vats of lead and sulfur in proper proportions. He was watching himself become the richest man who ever lived. As he saw the trucks unload tons of the one material the ancient alchemists lacked, he felt his ancestors were applauding in their royal way. They were right-it was possible to make gold from lead and mercury. All they had to do was add the ingredients symbolized on the stone, an element incredibly rare in their age, but plentiful today. All they needed was uranium, and all the Caldwells could have forged their futures on the philosopher's stone. After all, the secret to how he knew the stone and its one ancient flaw was the very history of his family.

As was the adage: "He who holds gold holds the soul of the world." Not that Harrison Caldwell wanted the soul of the world. He only dealt in what was of value.

He himself directed the emptying of the drums into a vat, watching it fill up to a mark he had made on its side. Harrison Caldwell had taken the formula inscribed on that stone now beneath the Atlantic and multiplied it by twenty thousand. The proportions were immense. What had been a mouse-hair's pinch in alchemic terms was now exactly five tons of uranium. The lead was seventy-three-point-eight, by weight. The sulfur would only act as a catalyst.

Three chrome-plated steel funnels twenty yards long all led to a white-faced wall and a single funnel. No one in the mixing room would see what came out the back.

Harrison Caldwell returned to his office and entered the only passage to the back room, a small man-size circular stairway. There were no doors to that room. He flicked on a light. A vast cavern lit up. The floor beneath him, one hundred yards by one hundred yards, looked like a checkerboard run amok. And on that floor, thousands of oblong molds were laid out at a precise angle, so that those closest to the funnel were slightly higher than those farther away.

A lesser man might have sweat or yelled. But Harrison Caldwell simply threw a switch. On the other side of the wall the vats tilted. Molten lead flowed alongside burning sulfur and mercury; then came a stream of the uranium, called so quaintly by the alchemists, "owl's teeth." Uranium, of course, had nothing to do with teeth at all. Professor Cryx had given his life to explain that to Harrison Caldwell.

The hot metals made a cracking sound as they joined at the wall and went on through, gray and pink and red. But when they came out mixed, they had turned magnificent yellow, with a light white coat of dross skimming the top. What was now pouring out into the thousands of molds was gold. Twenty-four karat gold. Exactly seventy-eight-point-three tons of it, forming at his feet a floor full of gold bars in a world where that simple, soft metal sold for $365 an ounce.

In the offices of Caldwell and Sons, the assistant, on his eighth tranquilizer of the hour, got a phone call. He remained as calm as if Mr. Caldwell were ordering biscuits.

"Sell," came the aristocratic voice of Harrison Caldwell.

In Bayonne, New Jersey, the three drivers who had made a routine delivery of uranium for the federal agency controlling it were pulled over by a car with a blinking bubble on top.

A man with a badge hopped out of the car and asked the three drivers their names. Then he asked where they were taking the trucks.

"Back to the garage," said a driver. The man with the badge wrote down the address of the garage.

"Have you been carrying uranium?"

"Sure. What do you think those trucks are lined with lead for? Stops radiation. What do you think we wear radiation cards for? Why the questions?"

"We've had a problem. Large quantities of uranium have been missing from plants across the country. We're checking all transport."

"We got our bills of lading."

"I'd like to see them," said the man, putting his badge away. "All of them."

The three drivers returned to their trucks. It was a cold gray sort of day, and they had been looking forward to parking them for good and getting a beer. The trucks idled their big diesels on Kennedy Boulevard, a well-traveled road. Several people stopped to watch.

The man with the badge looked at the bills of lading and mentioned that nowhere did they show a stop in Harlem.

"Oh, that. Yeah. I'll give you the address."

"Wasn't that supposed to be secret?" said the man with the badge. "Weren't you supposed to keep your mouths shut, under any circumstances?"

"You're with the government, ain't ya?"

The man with the badge smiled. He beckoned them closer, returning their bills of lading. Each bill had an envelope with it. Each envelope had a note. It told them to look up. They were being robbed.

The big barrel of the .357 Magnum, a cannon of a pistol, told them to believe what they read. One of them began trembling. He couldn't get off his watch.

"Just a couple of wallets will be fine," he said. They didn't ask why he wanted only two. They thought of themselves as lucky. And this thought lasted less than three seconds because the big barrel of the pistol made flashes. They saw the flashes before they heard the sounds. Sound traveled at six hundred miles per hour.

The .357 Magnum slugs traveled faster, right through their skulls, taking off the tops of their heads, spilling their brains out onto Kennedy Boulevard.

A passing car slowed down, the man jumped in, and was driven to the Bayonne Bridge, a high-rising arch that reached across to Staten Island. At its apex he tossed out his badge. Everything had worked perfectly, just as he had been told. And just as he had been told, he was given his payoff near a public golf course on Staten Island. And this is where the plan changed. He did not get an envelope with thirty thousand dollars in it. He was given, instead, a brand-new shovel and allowed to dig his own grave.

When he finished, he was told not to bother to climb out.

"Hey, buddy. If they are going to pay me off like this," said the man in the open grave, "what do you think they are going to do to you?"

"Give me the shovel," said the man standing above the grave. He had light blond hair and delicate features, and a soft gentle mouth. When he got the shovel he appeared to be offering it back into the grave for help to climb out. But with a tender little giggle, he brought the blade of the shovel around, bludgeoning the larynx of the man already in the grave. Then, with a pleasant little laugh, he covered the body with the fresh earth just before a nearby golfer sliced into the area. The white ball landed in the soft fresh mound of the grave. The golfer walked over, and seeing it half-buried, cursed his luck.

"I mean it is like playing out of sand, right? I mean, is this ground under repair? Because if this is ground under repair, I get a free lift."

"No. You don't get a free lift. It's not ground under repair."

"You're cruel, you know," said the golfer. "You could have said it was ground under repair."

The next day, every Dynamic News station in every Dynamic News locale reported the simple murder for robbery of three drivers for a nuclear plant, and a denial by a government agency that any uranium was missing.

"While we deeply regret the murder/robbery of three of our drivers, we find no reason for a nuclear alarm." This from a government spokesperson.

"But the trucks were empty, weren't they?" This from a newsperson.

"They were empty trucks en route to the main garage in Pennsylvania."

"But were they empty when they started out?"

"Yes."

"Then why were they being driven?"

"To return them to the main garage in Pennsylvania." And the spokesperson assured the press, assured the television cameras and the world, there was nothing to worry about at this time. Everything was under control. In his office just off Wall Street, Harrison Caldwell watched the bullion market take five tons without a quiver. Then he made arrangements to sell twice as much. He had just figured out a way to perfect the gathering of uranium. When you had an infinite amount of money, nothing was impossible.

Chapter 4

It was a disgrace. It was an insult and humiliation almost too much to bear. But Chiun would bear it. He would bear it with dignity and in silence. Though he certainly could have borne it longer if Remo hadn't ignored the silence. For silence ignored was the most insulting if not useless of things. One might as well be a silent rock. And Chiun, Master of Sinanju, was not a rock. When he wasn't talking to someone, the victim had better know it.

"I am silent," he said, with a haughty rise of his gray-and-gold kimono of the day.

"I heard," said Remo. He showed his and Chiun's identification at the large cyclone fence surrounding the McKeesport, Pennsylvania, special nuclear facility. This was only one of the plants where uranium had been stolen. But three trucks destined for this plant did not arrive because their drivers had been robbed and murdered in a small New Jersey city. It sounded suspicious. Three dead men for two wallets containing less than a hundred and fifty dollars. Of course nowadays that kind of thing was as common as a rock in the forest. But there was just no place else to start. All the investigative agencies had come up with nothing. Remo wasn't sure what he could come up with, but he supposed Smitty had wanted a new fresh look.

"I am still silent," said Chiun.

"All right," said Remo. "I am sorry. What are you silent about?"

Chiun turned his head away. When one was silent, one certainly wasn't going to discuss it.

The identification specified that Remo and Chiun were nuclear engineers and they were going to rate the plant, and any plant for that matter, for efficiency. This enabled them to ask any question, no matter how stupid.

Remo asked where the uranium was stored prior to shipment and was told it was not. All uranium had a destination before it was made hot, as they called it. Chiun touched Remo's arm.

"I know, little father, you're silent. Look at this stuff. It's interesting. All those pipes."

"Excuse me, sir," said a guard. "Is there something in particular you're looking at?"

"I'm just amazed by modern technology."

"That's not quite modern, sir. That's a men's room."

"Right," said Remo.

"May I see your identification?"

The guard looked at the two glossy cards that showed vague likenesses of Remo and Chiun as nuclear engineers. The pictures could never quite identify them, but when showed, neither could they be used to prove they weren't who they said they were. The pictures had all the clarity and quality of normal passport photos. "Would you come with me, please, sir."

"No," said Remo. He took back the card, even with the guard's hands following after it.

"You're supposed to come with me. You can get hurt. You don't even have a radiation badge."

"I don't need one. I can feel it."

"Nobody can feel radiation."

"You could if you listened to your body," said Remo. Chiun turned his head away in disgust. It was Remo's nature to attempt to explain things to any sort of fool. One could even smell the odors of cow meat coming from the breath of the guard, and Remo was talking to him about listening to his body. The absurdity of it all. Suddenly Chiun had so many reasons to keep silent that he gave up.

"Fool," he said to Remo. "We have been reduced to speaking to guards, to little spear carriers, to people not even policemen with little square badges and no honor. Why do you waste your time talking to eaters of dead cows?"

"I told him we didn't need radiation badges."

"We need brains is what we need. I have trained you as an assassin and now you wander around looking for thieves. We do not look for thieves. Policemen look for thieves. Your problem is you have never worked for a real emperor."

"Our country has a problem. This stuff can be used to make bombs that can destroy cities. Can you imagine entire cities being incinerated?"

"Today. Of course. Everything loses its grandeur. They destroy cities without even sack or pillage. And who recognizes the assassin today? A good, not even great assassin would save millions of lives."

"Do you know how many people were killed at Hiroshima?"

"Not as many as the Japanese killed by hand in the rape of Nanking. The weapons are not the problems. Armies are the problems, armies not even made of soldiers anymore, but citizens. Everyone is his own assassin. What a shame this age has become. And you have taken the training I have given you and joined the general degradation of your kind," said Chiun, and began the litany of how he should have known when first he tried to teach a white that the white would revert to white ways. This he said following Remo throughout the nuclear plant, in the cadence of the Korean spoken most heavily in the northwest of that peninsula called by the Masters of Sinanju "the glory cove." For his big finish he stressed again that they would not be so degraded if Remo worked for a real emperor, not Smith the lunatic.

As they toured the plant, the director of security, a woman in a smart suit with smart eyeglasses and a very smart manner about her walk, watched the two. Remo ignored her.

"Oh, gracious lady, I see that you, too, suffer."

"My name is Consuelo Bonner," said the woman. "I am director of security, and I am not a lady, I am a woman. And what are you two doing here?"

"Shh," said Remo. "I'm thinking."

"He does not realize your beauty, madam," said Chiun.

"Would you shush a man?" said Consuelo Bonner. She was twenty-eight years old, and could have been a model with her flashing blue eyes and glorious pale skin with raven hair, but chose instead to be in a business where men would not order her around.

"No. I wouldn't shush a man in your job. I would put him through a wall," said Remo.

"You don't sound like a nuclear engineer," said Consuelo Bonner. "What is the fission rate of a neutron imbalance subjected to hyperbombardment of laser-intensified electron streams?"

"A good question," said Remo.

"Answer it or you're under arrest."

"Seven," said Remo.

"What?" said Consuelo Bonner. The answer was a formula.

"Twelve," said Remo.

"Ridiculous," said Consuelo Bonner.

"A hundred and twelve," said Remo. He turned away from the woman and continued on down the corridors of the plant, putting the problem into perspective. If the nuclear waste were stolen, he reasoned, the thefts could not have been committed by people without protection from radiation. It really couldn't even have been heisted by people who didn't know how to move the uranium; not that much uranium, and not that consistently. Therefore it probably was someone working within the system itself, someone who normally would have access to the fuel.

The woman was still following him. She had a walkie-talkie and was calling for assistance. Chiun smiled at the woman, telling Remo he had to learn how to handle women. One did not bruise them; one showered them with petals of distraction. He turned toward the woman, intent upon providing a gracious example.

"The delicacy of your hands on that instrument belies its purpose," said Chiun. "You are a thousand mornings of joy and delight."

"I am every bit as good as a man. I can do anything you can do, let me tell you that. Especially you, buddy, who won't even listen to me," she said.

"What?" said Remo.

"I said I am going to arrest you. I can do anything a man can do."

"Piss out a window," said Remo, still looking for the storage room. He could recognize lavatories now. They had the big atomic-looking pipes going to them. The reactor had the small-bathroom kind of piping. He would have this facility down pat in minutes.

Consuelo Bonner shrewdly waited until she had overwhelming force Bight guards. Four for each. "This is your last chance. This is a federally protected area. You are here under suspicious circumstances, and I must ask you to come with me. If you refuse, I must place you under arrest."

"Piss out a window," said Remo.

"How crude to such an elegant lady," said Chiun.

"Arrest them," said Consuelo.

The guards split into two teams of four, and as they were trained, each closed in a perfect diamond pattern designed to make the perpetrator helpless. Except that they closed in on themselves. Consuelo Bonner blinked. She had these men trained at the best police schools. She had seen them work out herself. She had seen one break a board with his head. They all had martial-arts experience and now they were bumping heads like babies in a playpen.

"Move it," she snapped. "Use clubs. Anything. Guns. They are just walking away from you."

The guards abandoned their patterns and with a yell all eight, like a vengeful herd, fell on the two walking down the hall as casually as though strolling through a meadow.

Two of the eight were able to stand at the end of the skirmish and a third said he felt nothing. The invading pair kept on walking. Consuelo Bonner took off her eyeglasses. She would approach the elder of the pair. He, at least, was a gentleman.

"I guess I didn't understand you. I just want to keep my plant safe."

"From uranium being stolen," said Remo.

"You can't prove that. This plant is as safe as if a man ran it," said Consuelo.

"That's what I'm saying. It's a mess."

"You don't think men are better?" said Consuelo.

"We think we are forever denied having children," said Chiun. "So we make do with our meager awesome powers."

Consuelo Bonner followed them down the hall. "If you are not engineers, who are you?"

"People who may have the same interest as you," said Remo.

"To exalt your beauty," said Chiun.

In Korean, Remo told Chiun that this woman didn't seem receptive to that sort of flattery. Chiun answered, also in Korean, that Remo was acting too white. What would it hurt to make a poor life a little less dreary with a kind word? Chiun knew how to live without gratitude. He had learned that teaching Remo. But why should an innocent woman suffer?

"For the last time, I'm not going to write that I am not white. I'm not going to imply that I lied to you, or that something in your teaching made me Korean. I am white. I have always been white. I will always be white. And when I write the history of Sinanju . . ."

Chiun raised a hand. "You will write that we are nothing but hired guards and the great House of Sinanju, assassins to the world, have been reduced to servants."

"We're saving a country."

"What has the country ever done for you? What has the country ever taught you? What is your country? There are thousands of countries and there will be thousands more. But Sinanju is here tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow ... if you don't fail us."

"I am not marrying some fat ugly girl from Sinanju, either," said Remo.

Now all of this was said in Korean, like machine-gun fire. Consuelo Bonner did not understand a word. But she knew it was an argument. She also judged without any difficulty that these two had as much to do with nuclear science as a pinball machine. She also knew that eight guards were useless against them, and that they were probably able to take on many more than that.

But Consuelo Bonner had not gotten to be chief of security at a nuclear plant by taking leaps at suspicions. Women, she knew, were judged more harshly than men. She was all but certain these two men might be just what she needed to get back her fuel, to get her the credit for getting back the fuel, and for taking one more small step for her gender. To say nothing of the large one for her pocketbook.

"I know who you are," she said. "You're not engineers. You're from one of the zillion federal agencies trying to track down the fuel. We've had them all, I think. Hasn't been made public because they don't want to panic anyone about enough fuel for dozens of bombs floating around. But I can help you find the trail of the fuel."

Remo stopped. He looked to Chiun. Chiun looked away, still angered.

"Okay," said Remo. "But tell me. What was the answer to your first question that gave you the hint I might not be a nuclear engineer? Was it seven? I had a hunch it was seven."

"It's a formula. What do you want to know for?"

"In case someone asks me again," said Remo.

Chiun turned slowly to the young white woman encouraging Remo to be a finder of lost things. He looked at her smooth white skin and sharp Western suit. Harlot, he thought.

"A penny for your thoughts," said Consuelo.

Chiun smiled, and tugged Remo away from the woman.

Harrison Caldwell felt his stomach tighten. His palms moistened and his lips went dry, and once again he felt fear. But he could not show fear. To this man he could show neither fear nor dishonesty. He was the one man you did not lie to. Nor did you use him carelessly. Shrewdly, Harrison Caldwell had kept him in reserve for only the right times, only the right missions. For as the family had said:

"Money, without a sword, is a gift for whoever has one." Harrison Caldweli had not used him for the professor who translated the stone, nor of course for the divers. Harrison Caldwell only used Francisco Braun when it was absolutely necessary. He was the last step.

Harrison Caldwell was one of the few men who knew how to use an assassin. One did not squander him for one's ego, nor belittle him as a hireling.

"Treat your sword as your daughter, and you will die of old age." And by that, it was meant that one did not go to one's sword willy-nilly for every niggling problem, or even every killing. Harrison Caldwell was not a squeamish man, but Francisco Braun could turn a stomach of iron to jelly. Sometimes, since he had found him, Harrison Caldwell wondered if Francisco knew just how terrifying he was. He had found Francisco on the Barcelona waterfront. Knowing he would need a sword to attain great wealth, he had gone to the worst section of Barcelona and asked for the name of the most ferocious killer.

Popular opinion led him to the man who ran a heroin-refining operation, known to kill his competition by breaking in their ribs and puncturing their lungs, letting them die by drowning, so to speak, in the very dry streets of Barcelona. Harrison Caldwell offered one hundred thousand dollars to the man who killed him. Caldwell's explanation was that he was seeking revenge for a relative who had died through drugs. When one offered a hundred thousand dollars, one did not need a very good explanation.

Though Barcelona's streets became littered with still men and caved chests, still they came from around the world. Whites, blacks, yellows came and died in the streets of Barcelona. Harrison Caldwell himself read about these things safely from a Paris hotel suite.

Then, after three weeks of carnage, the drug dealer was found in bed with his stomach ever so neatly fricasseed, and a gentle blond man came to the hotel asking for his money. At first, Caldwell could not believe such a pretty young man could have been the killer. The concierge downstairs thought him a male prostitute, a homosexual prostitute, such was the gentleness of the features. But something about the man's ease told Harrison Caldwell this pretty young man had done the job.

"I promised a hundred thousand dollars," Caldwell said. "I lied. It is four hundred thousand dollars. One hundred thousand dollars now, and three hundred thousand dollars to come in a short time: in gold."

"Why three hundred thousand dollars?" said the young man.

"Because you will never work for anyone else again. You are my sword."

He waited while the young man thought this over. Caldwell knew that someone who could kill with this ferocity just might kill him for daring to say such a thing. But if he said yes, Harrison Caldwell would have his sword.

"Yes," said Francisco Braun. As soon as Harrison Caldwell discovered that uranium was the missing element, his sword had work. And precise work too. He could take out a man's eyes as easily as he could help someone "in his sleep." Francisco Braun could kill anywhere and at any time, and perfectly. Just the day before, as the gold had come finally pouring out of its destiny, Francisco Braun had killed the one link between the uranium trucks and his master. It was Francisco's idea to hire a thug to do the killing and then have him picked up. He was a murdering genius and though Francisco talked little about himself, what Caldwell had pieced together of his background confirmed that killing came naturally to Braun. He was the grandson of a Nazi war criminal who had fled to Uruguay and had joined the local police. Young Francisco, too, had joined the police, forming a squad of such ferocity that they made terrorists look pale. And then strangely one day, Francisco switched to the urban guerrilla army. And his explanation was:

"There were fewer rules as to how one killed." Caldwell did not press further. This day, he had the three hundred thousand dollars in gold ready for Francisco. But every time he thought of paying him, his due and extra, he felt his palms grow moist with fear. Of course, he had been trained not to show it.

"Mr. Caldwell," was all Francisco had said.

"Francisco," was all Caldwell had said, sitting erect in his chair as though enthroned.

Harrison Caldwell had little flat bars made for Francisco, bars stamped with the Caldwell imprint. Three hundred thousand dollars in gold didn't even cover the leather blotter on the rosewood desk.

Francisco looked at it and clicked his heels. Caldwell wondered if one day this beautiful, deadly young man would turn on him.

"Francisco," he said, "we have a problem. I believe some people in the nuclear facility at McKeesport, Pennsylvania, are beginning to establish a trail. It is our wish, Francisco, that since we cannot cover the trail completely, the trackers be removed."

Caldwell explained that the head of security, according to his reports, had found a trail of bills of lading that led to the trucks, indicating they were full, not empty. She had with her two men of apparent superior ability.

"On this matter, Francisco, I do not want attention."

"Yes, Mr. Caldwell."

"Do you have anything against killing a woman?"

"I like women," said Francisco Braun. He said this with a smile. "I like them very much."

The proud Islamic Knights didn't like the idea of killing a woman. Or a yellow man. The white would be no problem-in fact they might do him for nothing. There was general laughter in the holy mosque temple, a former jitterbug hall in Boston. A faggy white guy was putting up a lot of bread to off three people. The proud Knights had offed people just to see if a new gun worked. A white reporter came around one day, and they told him that Hitler should have killed all the Jews and then the rest of the whites. They dug Hitler. All those uniforms and concentration camps.

When some Jews called their statement vicious and anti-semitic, the newspaper attacked the Jews. After all, blacks were now the official oppressed minority. Jews were out. Blacks were in. The paper called the Islamic Knights a positive social movement.

The faggy white guy was offering a thousand dollars now in cash, and eighty thousand dollars when they were done. They all knew what they would do. They would take the thousand, off the three, including the woman and the yellow man, take the eighty thousand dollars and then rip off the man's watch, and maybe off the man.

Some of them thought he was pretty enough to keep. They kept people, usually women, in rooms with locks. Sometimes they sold them. Sometimes they bought them. They had nothing to do with any Arab movement or any real Islamic movement, although they tried. The police called it breaking and entering when they were caught stealing a rug from a mosque. They called it reaching out for prayer understanding.

Again, the local newspaper sent down the reporter, who saw all manner of integrity in the young men. When he heard a knocking in one of the closets, he asked what it was.

"She be wantin' food. Peoples say we be doin' slavery. We gotta feed dem ladies. We gotta keep 'em in clothes. Hell, it worse than keepin' a dog." Thus spoke the exalted imam, supreme leader.

The reporter was offered the woman as a friendly gesture. He returned to write about a misunderstood group seeking free enterprise, and called for a dialogue between the Knights and community leaders. He did not mention the desperate knocking coming from the doors. Nor did he mention that the rug belonging to the real mosque of Lebanese Sunnis was being sold right before his eyes. He had the black beat, and he didn't see how mentioning those unpleasantries would have any bearing on the stories. His story was about black men with the courage to stand up to pressure groups and criticism.

Francisco Braun knew what he was buying. He was buying very sloppy killers. They probably had practiced on relatives first, then neighbors, and then branched out. Braun understood that every judge who released these killers back into the community had probably been responsible for more black deaths than any Ku Klux Klan chapter during the height of lynchings at the turn of the century.

Francisco Braun did not care. He had seen their kind in the slums of the world. They did not even make good guerrillas. If Francisco Braun were to stage a black revolution in America, he would not use these, but those middle-class blacks who struggled to build homes and send their children to school. They were soldiers. This was garbage. But garbage was what he needed. Lots of it. "I want a massacre," said Francisco.

"De green gotta be seen, man."

"Certainly," said Francisco. He felt one of them sidle up close to him. To understand these people one had to know that a thousand dollars now was more important than a country later. They were probably thinking robbery, and possibly even male rape. Many men thought that when they saw the tender features of Francisco Braun.

Francisco smiled gently, and with a smooth, practiced motion, put a twenty-five-caliber Beretta into the bulging pants of the young man sidling up to him, and sent a slug into the bulge. There were some very pearlwhite teeth grinning back at him from an asphalt-black face.

Though a pumping red ooze seeped from the crotch of his pants, the pain had yet to show in the young man's face. The grin, Francisco knew, was the first reaction, the total disbelief of what had been done. The Islamic Knights understood they were not dealing with a social worker or a reporter. They were packed into three cars by evening.

They stopped to rape and pillage a farmhouse in New Jersey until the figure of Francisco Braun appeared at the doorway.

"Keep moving," said Francisco.

In Pennsylvania the three carloads complained that they had been without entertainment for fifteen hours. They were suffering withdrawal symptoms. Francisco asked for someone to enumerate all their needs. They picked the supreme imam leader. Francisco listened to all the requests politely, then shot out his eyes. The three carloads did not stop until they reached a suburb of McKeesport, and the address Mr. Caldwell had given him.

At that point, Francisco laid out machine guns, machetes, pistols, and a few hand grenades on the hoods of the cars. The young Knights could not believe their good luck. Not only were they going to off this white, they were going to cut him into pieces.

"They're loaded," said Francisco. "In that house, down there," he said, pointing from a ridge down to a ranch house with a lit living room and three figures present around a table, "are three people without weapons. I, on the other hand, have a pistol. I can kill at least three of you before you kill me. I won't tell you which three. Now the choice is between three defenseless people who have done nothing to you, and me, a man who would like nothing better than putting blood spots on your black skin. Your choice."

And then he smiled very sweetly. It took the Islamic Knights less than a full second to decide. With a cry of holy war they grabbed their weapons and ran screaming toward the ranch house in the little valley.

Francisco Braun knew that a mass attack like this could not be stopped. He had seen it before. No matter how bad they were, the fury of the Knights' assault, combined with numbers, would neutralize any skill. He would have liked to do the job himself, but Mr. Caldwell had stressed he wanted distance from the crime. Too bad. There was a woman there, too. He liked women. He would have liked that woman. She was so beautiful. He ached for a woman. Sadly he turned back to his car. He could not bear to watch the pack having all the fun.

Sometimes, he thought, money did not pay for all the longing in him. But he knew that working for Mr. Caldwell, there would always be more women. As Mr. Caldwell had said:

"Great wealth needs a great sword. You, Francisco Braun, are my sword. Plan on it being moist."

And Francisco knew he had found the one man he wanted to work for, knew it even as he knelt on one knee before his lord.

Sadly, Francisco got into his own car. The shooting should be starting now. He turned to his engine. Perhaps that had blocked the sound. He opened the window. Still no sound. He had given them AK-47's, an excellent field weapon, perhaps the best. Nothing. Not even a grenade going off or the sound of a machete. Francisco Braun got out of the car and looked down into the valley. An old man in flowing robes was returning into the house. Three carloads of ghetto youths lay in the driveway. There had not even been a yell. Not a cry.

Now loud sounds came from the house. A man was growling, something about cleaning up bodies. The older man, the Oriental, turned his back on the younger, the white. The white was complaining.

"If you kill them, you clean them up. There are large garbage bags in the kitchen. You can get them as well as anyone."

The younger white moved the bodies around like small cartons, stacking them as he complained about always getting the dirty work. Three carloads stacked like a pyramid.

Francisco estimated the bodies were from 170 to 270 pounds. And they flew onto the pile.

"The last time," said the white. And then, as though he had known Francisco was looking down all along, he glanced up to the hill.

"Hey, sweetheart, you want yours?" said the man. Francisco knew he wanted that man as he had wanted no one else in the world. He wanted the young one. And he wanted the old one, and then in ultimate satisfaction he would finish off, like a dessert, the woman. They were all his now. And Mr. Caldwell could not possibly mind that he took them himself. The plan of the ghetto youths had failed.

Chapter 5

Francisco Braun did not collect the reward for killing the fiercest man in Barcelona by rushing in. Granted, he could crack a man's ribs with a single karate blow. He had put out the eyes of a fleeing woman at fifty yards with a fine handgun. And she had been a fast woman, too. Even faster after she dropped her baby.

But the greatest weapons Francisco Braun had at his command were reason and patience. And he forced himself to move correctly even though his passion to take all three immediately strained him mightily. They had killed the garbage he had picked up in Boston. Physically, they moved extraordinarily well, so fast he had not been able to determine which school of hand fighting they used. He could get off a shot now. But that might be risky. He might get one and then have to hunt the others, because he did not know what these men could do. He did not know who they were, and if he did not know who they were, he just might miss. They had shown they were special, very special.

Of course, if he launched a grenade into the house now, they would probably scatter in confusion and he could pick them off. Probably. But he was not alive because of probabilities.

Besides, he had help now, a man who truly knew how to use power. And Francisco Braun knew how to use what he had. He was never one who preferred to get his hands dirty when he didn't have to.

Already he had an advantage over the two men in the house below him. He knew how dangerous they were. But they had no idea how dangerous he was, or that he was going to kill them. They couldn't even know he was there. That had always been more than enough of an edge to make Francisco victorious. There was no reason to believe it would change now. He would know them, they would not know him, and then he would kill them. He had been lucky that they had shown themselves, lucky that he had not gone in first.

He returned to the trunk of the car, took out a briefcase, and opened it to two long black lenses that clicked into each other. Then he carefully screwed them into a large frame camera, to which he attached a light but steady tripod.

It was cool in the Pennsylvania hill country, but the air was not refreshing. The stench of distant slag heaps from old coal mines created an odor like rotting coffee grounds smoldering in the center of the earth. The small house looked warm and friendly with logs burning in the fireplace of the living room. Francisco Braun focused the camera on the living room. Above the fireplace mantel was a photograph. When he could read the photographer's name in the corner of the photograph, he knew that the lens was in correctly. He moved the focus back to the door.

And then in a split second, with less concern than a carpenter hammering in the thousandth nail of a roof. Francisco Braun shot out the living-room window with a handgun that he had back in his pocket even before the echoes of the shots returned from the dark Pennsylvania hills.

The older and younger man were out of the front door before all the glass had settled, and Francisco's camera whirred off twenty-five shots in one second. By the second second, he had the camera in one hand and the door to his car open in the other. Before the third, he was driving away as fast as the car could pick up speed.

Outside McKeesport, Pennsylvania, he slowed down and took the film out of the camera. By the time he reached New York City, and the home of Mr. Caldwell, he was cruising comfortably. He called for an appointment with Mr. Caldwell. Mr. Caldwell sometimes called himself an American. But Francisco knew he had to be something else. Mr. Caldwell had never asked to be called Harrison. The problem with Americans was they wanted to be everyone's friends. Mr. Caldwell had that wonderful ability not to want that. That made working for him easier. You knew Mr. Caldwell was Mr. Caldwell. He was not your friend.

"This is Francisco Braun. I would like to see Mr. Caldwell at his convenience," Francisco said into the telephone with raised braille numbers in the dial handle. These could be punched in the dark, quite necessary because the phone was in the photographic darkroom set up in his Upper East Side New York apartment. Mr. Caldwell had put him there, with a direct-access line, the day after he had called Francisco his "sword."

"We will give an audience this afternoon," said the secretary, and Francisco got the hour, without wondering what "audience" meant. He had his pictures, twenty in less than a second, each taken faster than an eye could blink or an eardrum pick up sound.

In photography, as in the rest of life, Francisco had learned that an advantage was always balanced by a disadvantage somewhere else. In other words, nothing was free. Despite the incredible clarity of his lenses and the large format, the high speed of his rapid shots needed a film so fast and volatile that the photographs ultimately came out with little more clarity than a child's snapshot. But that would be enough to start a search into the backgrounds of these men, if Mr. Caldwell was as powerful as he seemed. Money, after all, was power. To find out about the backgrounds of these men, Francisco would, of course, find out exactly what they could do, or where they would be or who they were. And when one built enough advantages, one struck. This for opponents who were a cut above. The rest of mankind could be dispatched at whim, at gravesides or meeting halls, or wherever.

There was a calm in the beautiful blond face of Francisco Braun as the strip of film moved through the developer and then into a rinse, and finally into the chemicals that would stop the developing process so no more light could affect the images. This would fix the negatives. With the best negatives, he would make prints, and then he would have his victims' faces set before him to study at leisure. More important, this would give him something to pass on for identification.

He liked the intricate power of Bach on stereo as he worked. It soothed the inner elements of his mind. It saved him from whistling. It set the mood. These would be extraordinary kills, not common disposals. He remembered the smooth way the Islamic Knights were dispatched. He wished he had had his camera out then. But he had not expected them to fail. There had been too many, no matter how incompetent. Incompetence after all, was why he had chosen them.

A strange thing came up on what appeared to be the best negatives. The face of the white appeared to be looking toward the camera. Three frames. Full face. That was an improbable fluke. Impossible, really, because no one was going to notice what was on a distant hill in one second, especially in the confusion of the aftermath of having a living-room window shot out. Francisco had seen it before-in panic and confusion the heads would bob about in every direction. Only because the camera was so fast could it appear that a person actually had noticed, then looked at, the camera. Pictures did lie.

This would always be clearer in the print, even with the lesser quality of the high-speed film Francisco used. The eyes would be open, almost dead, because they were really unfocused. The face, of course, would have the mouth wide open, because in panic, people stopped breathing through their noses and used their mouths. The body, too, would testify to the panic. The trunk would be moving in one direction and the arms flailing about in another. Of course, on this negative, it looked as though the target was somewhat composed. But that might have been due to his extraordinary ability at hand fighting, perhaps some automatic body control. Of course, he could not be composed, and that would come clear in the prints.

Francisco ran the negatives into a drum which could print before the negatives were dry. He punched in the numbers of the box that he kept close by. The box was not for film. Nor did it hold any other photographic accoutrements. Instead, it kept a single Waterford crystal glass of red wine barely chilled. Life, after all, was made up of these moments. He was always between one kill and another. Why not take the pleasure of Bach and a good Beaujolais while waiting?

Unlike most wine experts, Francisco preferred his red wine without the customary breathing period of an hour. He liked that extra bit of sharpness. And he always had only one glass and never more. He poured the rest of the wine down the developing sink.

The drum whirred, Bach sang through the instruments over the centuries, and the red wine flowed over Francisco's tongue, then ever so gently through his body. When the drum clicked, Francisco knew two things: that the pictures were printed and that he had one-half glass left to enjoy.

With precise movements he removed the three frames, laid them out, and turned on the light.

The heavy Waterford crystal hit the floor but did not crack. The wine spilled out. And it was not the target's mouth that was open in confusion, but Francisco Braun's.

He stepped back from the developing sink. It was impossible. It had to be an accident. He forced himself back to the sink.

There, looking up at him, was a man's face perfectly focused on the camera. And the mouth was not the least bit open in terror. It was thin and rising; in fact, there was a smile on the face looking at the camera, as though Francisco Braun's threat to his life was some kind of joke. Francisco examined all three full-face pictures. In all three there were smiles.

Quickly he ran the entire twenty pictures through the print drum. He had to see everything.

He tapped his feet, waiting. He turned off the damned Bach. He told the drum to hurry. He reminded himself not to speak to inanimate objects. He told himself that Francisco Braun did not lose his discipline that easily. He reminded himself how many men he had killed. And then he kicked the crystal glass into the wall.

When the pictures appeared, they were even more forbidding, but Francisco Braun was ready for that. The first frame captured the two as they came out of the house. In the second frame it was clear that the pair had been instantly aware of him. The old man, surprisingly, moved as well as, if not better than, the younger. In fact, the older man's gaze into the camera was the more interesting of the two. It was as though he were checking the weather. Absolutely no care whatsoever. Then he turned to the younger to make sure he had seen what was on the ridge, and seeing that the young one was already staring at the camera, he turned back into the house. And then, of course, came those three pictures, those featuring the amusement on the face and in the dark eyes focused perfectly, no panic at all.

Good. Francisco Braun had done wisely not to attack at once. He took two identifiable images, with height apparent and weight probable, and brought them with him for his appointment with Mr. Caldwell.

Mr. Caldwell's office now sprawled across an entire floor in a downtown New York City building. Two uniformed men with a crest of an apothecary jar and a sword emblazoned in red on their trim dark jackets stood at the doorway.

"I have an appointment with Mr. Caldwell," said Braun. He held the two pictures under his arm in a small leather envelope.

"Please, if you will?" said the guard.

"If I will, what?" said Braun.

"Wait for your audience."

"I am unaware that I am going to perform for anyone."

"Wait," said the guard.

There was that term "audience" again.

As soon as the doors opened, Francisco Braun began to suspect what the guard and the secretary had been talking about.

There were no separate offices anymore. Rather, the secretaries and lesser employees sat at desks on either side of the room, leaving a vast open expanse in the middle. There, on a raised platform, was a high-backed chair. The chair glimmered with colored stones, possibly jewels. Above the chair hung the strange embossed seal, red on dark velvet. And in the chair, one hand resting on an arm, the other in his lap, was Mr. Harrison Caldwell. "We will see you now," said Mr. Caldwell.

Francisco Braun looked around. He looked for the others. But Mr. Caldwell was alone. There wasn't anyone within twenty-five yards of him. A jeweled finger beckoned Braun up to the high-placed chair.

Braun heard his own footsteps click on the polished marble leading to the platform. Not one of the lesser employees looked up. The hand with the jeweled finger extended to Braun. He would have shaken it, except the palm was turned down. There was no doubt anymore. This was an audience, not a meeting.

"Your Majesty," said Francisco Braun, kissing the hand.

"Francisco Braun, my sword," said Harrison Caldwell. "Have you come to tell us that you have disposed of our problem?"

Braun stepped back with a bow. So Mr. Caldwell thought he was a king for some reason. True, the money was good, and Mr. Caldwell had yet to do anything foolish. But this new dimension forced Braun to consider more carefully before he spoke each word. Caldwell could be insane. Yet if he were mad, he was still awesomely rich. Even the major corporations of America, Braun knew, did not have money to waste on vast space in the financial district. This one room, this throne room, filled an entire floor.

"Your Majesty faces a more formidable enemy than I first realized."

"Enemy?"

"Yes, your Majesty," said Braun.

"We have neither permanent enemies nor permanent friends."

"Your Majesty. I did not choose these men to kill. They are not my enemies."

"As long as you serve me, Francisco, they are."

"Yes, your Majesty. They escaped the first assault," said Braun. "I have come because you have mentioned that with your power you have greater access to information than ever before."

"Greater every day," said Caldwell.

"I want to know more about these two so that I may better dispose of them for you."

"Enemies are not always enemies, you know." Braun hesitated. He did not know if he dared correct Caldwell now. But he had to. If he were going to eliminate those two, he had to have help. If not, better to leave with one's life.

"Your Majesty, you yourself wanted them eliminated because they were interfering with something, according to your reports. Have they stopped interfering?"

"Not to our knowledge."

"Then I need help. If they are more formidable, then to hang their heads on your walls, so to speak, would give you greater respect in the eyes of men who respect only force."

"Force is not only blood, Francisco. But a good sword would think that way. So be it. We will give you what you need."

"I need, your Majesty, to identify two men," said Francisco. He unsnapped the leather folder and presented the pictures to Mr. Caldwell, or His Highness Mr. Caldwell. Braun was not sure which.

Caldwell did not take the pictures, but made Braun hold them up before him.

"I see. What contempt in that face," said Caldwell. "What an arrogant smile. He must have thought very little of the photographer. I would have, too. They are not good pictures."

"What I need to know is where they have learned what they have learned. They have special skills." Braun held the pictures before His Majesty Mr. Caldwell. The extension of the arm pressured the nerves so that the pictures began to tremble. His Majesty Mr. Caldwell took no notice. He stared at the ceiling. Braun glanced there. It was a plain ceiling. His Majesty Mr. Caldwell must be off in his own mind, thought Braun. He lowered the pictures.

Caldwell snapped his fingers. Braun raised the pictures. Caldwell chuckled.

"An amusing idea has occurred to us," said Caldwell, who knew that his idea would not amuse Braun in the least. He lowered his eyes to meet his sword's. "Our good Francisco, do not let what I am about to say trouble you excessively. But in the days of the true monarchs, there was a person who fought the king's battles. He was called the king's champion. He was the best in the land. Our idea, the idea that amuses us, is that these two may wield powers that are greater than yours."

A bolt of anger shot through Francisco Braun. He felt like tearing the pictures away from Caldwell, this imitation king, His Highness of a court that had not existed for centuries, the old Spanish monarchy. But His Majesty Mr. Caldwell was also the richest man he had ever worked for. And up to now he had not been a fool at all.

Francisco Braun replied, with great control in an icy tone:

"All I have told your Highness is that the two men are not yet dead. But they are in the process of dying. Your sword begged his crown only to assist that process, to help establish your power in the eyes of those who would destroy you."

"Well spoken, good Francisco," said Caldwell. "We will arrange everything." With a slight beckoning motion he moved a single finger. A secretary clippety-clipped along the polished marble floors. Braun felt her come up behind him. She kissed Caldwell's feet and took the pictures.

"We will speak to you about those later," said Caldwell. The young woman nodded. Apparently she wasn't even allowed to speak to Caldwell. Braun had been given that honor.

Then Caldwell's hand came forward. Braun knew exactly what his liege wanted. He took a deep breath, kissed the ring, and backed toward the door. Before he left, an aide handed him a heavy briefcase and an address a few blocks away from Wall Street.

It was the gold exchange. He was carrying at least forty pounds of gold. Was he a delivery boy now? Was Caldwell demoting him to that? He delivered the gold to the exchange, and inside, with suppressed anger, he took bar after bar of gold out of the briefcase and slammed it on the counter.

A bespectacled old man in a vest weighed each bar, chuckling.

"Caldwell gold. A good family. Always liked dealing with the Caldwells. Real bullionists, if you know what I mean."

"Of course I don't," said Francisco. "What is a real bullionist?"

"Well, you have people who get into gold just for profit, and then you have the real old houses."

"Really. How old are the Caldwells?"

"Before the founding of America," said the old man. He took another bar to the assayer's scale. Braun looked around the room with a mild contempt. The building was heavily buttressed with steel that no one had bothered to polish for decades and a mustiness had settled on the whole place. The scale itself was old and battered, and the pans that hung from the balance bar were warped and bent. Yet if one put an exact weight on one side, one could be as sure as gravity that when the other side balanced, the weights were precisely equal.

That removed the remotest possibility of cheating. "It's a pleasure to deal with the Caldwells," said the old man. "They know their gold. You see the Caldwell crest, you know you are not dealing with someone trying to skim a few ounces on a ton. The crest means a lot. It's an old crest, an old forge that one is."

Braun looked at his watch. He made this obvious, so the old coot would not babble on. But the man stopped only until Braun looked at him.

"See this crest," said the old man, pointing to an apothecary jar and a sword stamped into the gold itself. "At least twenty times today," said Braun.

"That apothecary jar is the symbol for pharmacists now, but it used to be for alchemists. Do you know what an alchemist is, young man?"

"No," said Braun. He looked at the remaining bars in the bag. There were three more to be weighed. He sighed. So the money was good. So Caldwell had been extremely shrewd. Did this make up for kissing rings and delivering parcels?

"The word 'alchemist' is the root of our modern word 'chemist,' " said the old man. "It comes from the Egyptian, 'al hemist.' "

"Fantastic. I wonder if you might be able to tell me all these wonderful things about alchemists while you continue weighing the gold?"

The old man chuckled, but he did move. "Alchemists could do everything. And did everything. Cures, potions, everything. They were so valuable that every court in Europe had one. But they got ruined. You know why?"

"Yes," said Braun. "Weigh the damned gold."

"Right. Gold. They claimed they could make gold from lead. Got them the reputation of being phonies. Soon people wouldn't hire them because they were leery of the hoodoo. You know, hocus-pocus."

"Weigh the gold," said Braun.

"And the alchemists just died off like an extinct species. But here is the strange part, and it has something to do with this crest here. Ain't a forge mark. I know forge marks."

If it is getting this bad to work for Caldwell, thought Braun, maybe it will get worse. Maybe Caldwell has a disease of the brain.

"There's those in gold today who think maybe the old alchemists really did turn lead to gold, although there's no scientific proof for it."

"Did they do it while they weighed the gold?"

"Oh, yeah, okay," said the old man, hoisting a gold bar to the empty side of the balance. The weight used as a counterbalance was made of chrome, its surface polished to perfection. If any scratches had been added to take off weight, they would show immediately.

"Well, there was this legend about the philosopher's stone. The legend was that that one stone was the secret to turning lead into gold, and it was passed along as a sort of formula. Mix lead, the stone, and some other hocus-pocus and you've got it. Presto. But, of course modern chemists proved that no stone would ever cause that kind of chemical change. Can't be done by adding any kind of a single stone."

Braun watched the bar measure the perfect troy pound.

"But you know what some people now believe that stone was? Not a secret ingredient you added to the lead, but the keeper of the secret ingredient necessary to make gold. The alchemists wouldn't put their formula to paper because paper is something that's easy to carry off. They'd only inscribe it on something so heavy that it couldn't be stolen. Like a stone-the philosopher's stone. And for all we know, that formula could have been twenty-four-karat real. I guess I am just a boring old man, eh?"

"To know thyself," said Braun, "is a virtue."

"That's why this Caldwell crest is interesting, because it has got the mark of the sword. Do you know what the sword means? It means that for some reason they were cut off from alchemy. They could have cut the ties themselves or some king might have done it for them. Who knows?"

"I know," said Braun. "I know that I do not care. Send the receipt to Mr. Caldwell. Thank you, good-bye."

"Wait a minute. It isn't his receipt," said the old man, who had worked at the gold exchange more years than anyone wanted to count. "This isn't Caldwell's gold. It's only minted by the Caldwells. It belongs to you. Mr. Caldwell has set up an account for you here at the gold exchange."

"You mean all of that is mine?"

"Absolutely. As good as gold."

"Ah," said Braun, who suddenly was most interested in the Caldwells, a fine old house among many fine old houses. The Caldwells had been dealing in gold in New York since it was called New Amsterdam, said the old man, and Francisco Braun told him to take his time and not leave out any of the details about these wonderful people.

Harrison Caldwell left his throne and allowed his new manservant to dress him in a dark business suit. He put on a neat striped tie and removed the large ring. Polished black shoes replaced the slippers that had been kissed repeatedly that day.

He could have assigned this task coming upon him now to an underling. But he knew that there were some things one assigned and some one did not. One never allowed someone else to be one's alchemist, nor did one allow someone else to be one's foreign minister. Of course, he was not a country yet, but what was Saudi Arabia but a family? A very rich one.

All he needed was some land. That would be easy. Because he was who he was, Harrison Caldwell knew what money could buy. Also because he was who he was, Caldwell understood clearly why no minister or alchemist could be trusted to help him fulfill his destiny. The Spanish throne had trusted, and the story of that transgression was much more than just history to Harrison Caldwell. It was his history.

It had almost worked. The minister had been the sword of the king. The alchemist could make gold. Unfortunately, the alchemist's feat was so expensive that it defeated its own purpose-getting the substance known as owl's teeth was so costly that to make one gold coin would cost three.

"Does the king know you can do that?" the minister asked.

"No. Not the king. I only showed it to you because you saved my daughter."

"Why not the king? He is our lord," said the minister. "Because when the kings know you can make some gold, they always want more. And that has gotten many alchemists killed. You see, kings think they can find owl's teeth. But they can't. And then they insist you use something else, and then, of course, you die."

"What if I told you that if you will make a few coins for our king, I can make sure you will never be harmed?"

"In our lore you can find many accounts of kings who have promised that, but none who has kept it. Kings just do not know their own limits."

"What if I told you I would set those limits? If you make me a few coins for the king, I will make you rich and assure you no king will ever ask you to do what you cannot do."

"How can you assure me that?"

"I will be king," said the king's minister. "I will use his greed to take his throne."

"No. Don't you see? My life is in danger already. Lords are forgiven by other lords, but alchemists are killed like useless dogs when they've fulfilled their purpose."

"I will marry your daughter. Is that enough proof? She will be my queen. Would a king kill his father-in-law? You will be noble too."

"It is a great risk."

"Life is risk," said the minister. "But your daughter could be queen."

"Marry her first," said the alchemist.

"Done," said the minister.

What happened then would be passed throughout the ages from each Caldwell family elder to each Caldwell son.

Harrison Caldwell remembered his father telling him the story in their bullionist's shop late one night on his thirteenth birthday when everyone else was gone. His father had been teaching him gold, and he was old enough, his father said, to understand where the family came from.

The minister married the alchemist's daughter and they produced a son. Upon the birth of that child, the alchemist made a purchase, investing in the very expensive ingredient that was so rare it took three years to find and five times the amount of gold it could make to buy. But buy it they did, from a place deep within the land where the Negro lived, the land now known as Africa.

And before the king's eyes, Harrison Caldwell's ancestor made the gold from lead. The king was so impressed he wanted to see more. And this time, the special alchemist's ingredient cost only four times what the gold was worth. And the alchemist found the source within one year.

The king was sure he saw a pattern. The secret alchemist's ingredient cost five times gold at first and took three years to get. The second batch cost four times as much and took only one year to get. Eventually, like all commodities that start out expensive in their acquisition, the more one bought, the less it would cost. So thought the king who looked forward to the day that the price of owl's teeth became much less than that of gold itself.

Indeed, he was right. The next batch cost three times the price of gold and was there in six months. And the next shipment, far larger still, cost twice as much and was ready in a month.

But what the king did not know was that only the first time, under the instruction of the foreign minister, did his alchemist make gold from lead.

The other times he only melted and recast part of the gold. Only the first time was he able to obtain the magic ingredient. Only the first time did the king watch the lead transform. His foreign minister had convinced him it would be unseemly to look so greedy, to actually stand over the alchemist like some merchant.

Ultimately, the king came to believe that if he made enough gold it would be cheaper to produce than the gold itself. For every coin paid, he would get three in return.

"We have turned the corner. We now can be the richest kingdom in all Europe. With all this gold we will rule the world, as we should," said the monarch, who promptly emptied almost the entire treasury to buy massive amounts of the rare ingredient that made gold. Harrison Caldwell remembered his father pointing out that this was where everything went wrong. Now the king, expecting to be the richest man in the world, hired a famous murderer to sit by his side, a man from a foreign land. The king feared that his great wealth would draw more enemies to him than ever before. He wanted to be ready for them. This murderer was especially sly and followed the alchemist by some magic which did not let the alchemist see him. And he observed that the alchemist did not make gold at all.

The minister got word of this and fled with his wife and son and as much gold as he could. The alchemist took the philosopher's stone. They sailed free of the Spanish coast, but almost as soon as they were out of sight of land, a storm struck the ship. The weight of the stone and the weight of the gold provided too much ballast, and the ship sank. The alchemist and his daughter were lost. But the minister and son escaped with a small chest of gold.

Eventually they made it to New Amsterdam, which later became New York City, and there, with the meager gold they had saved, they established their house. And they took the name Caldwell. And so Harrison Caldwell learned, on his thirteenth birthday, where the gold was, where the stone was, and to whom the gold and stone belonged. He learned, as had every male heir throughout the family's history, how the Caldwells had almost become kings, and what their bullionist's mark of the apothecary jar and the sword meant.

Perhaps it was because Harrison was a daydreamer, perhaps because he was sickly and did not get along well with other boys, but it was he who vowed to make the legend a reality. He would find the stone and make gold again.

"What makes you think you can succeed where the rest of us only hoped?"

"Because ninety percent of the scientists who ever lived are alive today. Today is different."

"The world doesn't change, Harrison."

"When it comes to people, I'm counting on that, Dad," said Harrison.

He was sure that with the advantage of modern equipment and access to so many great thinkers, the time had come to use the old family map and get the formula for the stone.

It was a godsend that the missing ingredient turned out to be uranium. The world was loaded with it now. And because people hadn't changed, Harrison Caldwell had found a way to make sure that he would never get caught while stealing it.

In his business suit with the photographs of the two men his sword had given him, Harrison Caldwell, who was more and more understanding his destiny, met in one of his business offices a gentleman from Washington.

The man thanked him for helping him buy his house. Caldwell said that was nothing. Anyone would help a friend.

The man thanked him for making sure his daughter got into an exclusive school even though her grades were not good enough.

A mere nothing, answered Harrison Caldwell.

The man said, however, he was not sure that it was totally ethical for Caldwell to open up an account for him at the gold exchange.

Nonsense, answered Harrison Caldwell.

"Do you really think it's all right?" asked the man.

"I most certainly do," said Harrison Caldwell to the director of the Nuclear Control Agency. "And by the way, were these two gentlemen the ones you warned me about, the ones who were getting in the way?"

He pushed the two photographs forward across the table.

"I think so. I think they are the ones at the McKeesport site right now. I think they are plants by some agency I have yet to discover."

"You don't worry about that. I am sure I can trace them," said Caldwell, his dark Spanish eyes flashing with the joy of battle. "I will get the best information money can buy."

Chapter 6

Consuelo Bonner saw the bodies outside her house. She saw the bullet hole in the window. She felt her head grow light while the skyline grew dark, like winter.

If she were not dreaming, she would swear Remo and Chiun were arguing over who should clean up the bodies, as though they were garbage to be taken out. If she were not dreaming, she would have thought the Oriental really had explained to her:

"I have done so much for him, and yet he still tries to make me a servant."

She would have also sworn Remo had answered: "He never does his bodies."

She asked them to please throw some very cold water on her.

"Why?" asked Remo.

"So I will wake up."

"You are awake," said Chiun. "But even I would not dream of such ingratitude."

"They were trying to kill you," said Remo.

Consuelo nodded. She went to the window where the bullet hole was, and rubbed a finger over it to feel the edges of the hard glass. Remo looked on. She glanced back to him.

"I know," she said. "We must be getting close to them in some way. They don't try to kill you unless you're a danger to them."

"Or unless they made a mistake," said Remo.

"Or something else," said Consuelo.

"What else?" said Remo.

"This is my nuclear plant. My responsibility."

"You mean you don't want to admit you need us this much."

"Don't patronize me," said Consuelo. "I will do what any man does."

"Then why aren't you running for your life?"

"Because if I ran they would say I ran because I am a woman. I do not run." She steadied herself against the window. "I do not run. I do not run. I do not run." Chiun noticed this courage in the woman. She was not Korean, and who knew who her family was, but she did have courage. She also had the failing of so many women in this country. In trying to show they were as good as men, they tried to be what most men never were. They tried to be what men thought they were.

Then again, all whites were crazy. What were they doing in this country to begin with? Working for mad Emperor Harold W. Smith who never attempted anything honorable like seizing the throne, never asked for services that would accrue to the honor of Sinanju, never provided Chiun with anything he could inscribe in the histories.

How did one pass on to future Masters of Sinanju that one acted like a storeroom guard for an emperor one did not understand?

And who would there be to pass on to if Remo did not have a child?

Chiun watched the white woman closely. He would, of course, prefer a Korean for Remo, one from Sinanju. But Remo had not been able to see the true beauty in the fairest maidens of Sinanju, seeing only their physical properties instead of how good they would be to the child and of course to Chiun.

"What do you think?" asked the white woman. "Do you think we are getting closer?" She was looking at Chiun. She had black hair, that was good. But the eyes were blue. And the skin was so pale, like clouds in the sky.

"I think I would like to meet your parents," said Chiun.

"They're dead," said Consuelo, puzzled.

"Then never mind," said Chiun. He was no longer interested in Consuelo for Remo. There was no longevity in the family. Her parents might have died in accidents, of course. But then that would only mean they were accident-prone.

"What did he mean by that?" said Consuelo.

"Never mind," said Remo. "You don't want to know."

"You don't treat him kindly," she said.

"You don't know him. I know him and I love him. So don't get involved. Besides, your life is on the line."

"You want me not to report this to the police, don't you?"

"It would help."

"Help what?"

"Keeping you alive. Someone tried to kill you. We can keep you alive. Don't bet on the police doing that."

"What policeman is going to believe that bunch out there killed themselves in a gang fight and then stacked themselves up neatly for the garbage removal?"

"Tell them we stacked them for you."

"But weren't all those young men out there killed by hand? Won't they be suspicious? I know that if I were a policeman I would be reporting something like this as unusual."

"Don't worry," said Remo. "It'll work."

As Consuelo predicted, the homicide detectives of McKeesport were suspicious. Under normal circumstances this might have caused the investigators some confusion. But since their department had recently received instructions to report any deaths like this one-deaths caused by "no apparent weapon"-to a central bureau, the detectives' next move was clear. They would pass the buck.

What none of the police knew was that their report did not end up at the FBI but at Folcroft Sanitarium, where Harold W. Smith saw the computer flag the whereabouts of Remo and Chiun. He was the one who had the request issued to every police department in the country, not so much to keep track of Remo and Chiun as to make the local police believe someone was tracking the strange deaths nationwide. Smith didn't want local cops getting together and comparing notes; that might cause an outcry. There had been so many bodies, so many criminal bodies, that the liberal press could have had a lifetime supply of martyrs.

And it would be just as dangerous if there was an outcry in favor of such killings as there would be if it were against. It would attract attention. And that was the last thing the organization could afford.

But Smith paid little attention this morning to the McKeesport report. Something was happening in America, and he was getting only inklings of it. He could not prove it yet, but someone was building another country somewhere in America. Appearing on the computer screen was a network of people who were stockpiling the one resource that could build an empire-gold. Breaking down all the statistics, one could see they were already powerful enough to form an independent nation. Smith focused on that this morning. Remo and Chiun would be all right. They were always all right. The problem was never their survival. It was the country's.

Two days later, Consuelo Bonner began recognizing things. She recognized the subjects of the photographs that were spread across her desk. She recognized the badge of the man who handed her the pictures. He was from the Nuclear Control Agency. Last but not least, she recognized beauty. The man was beautiful. He had hair so blond it was almost white. His eyes were the lightest blue and his skin was as fair as snow. She would have called him handsome, but "handsome" was not nearly fine enough a description. His name was Francisco. He asked if she had Spanish ancestry too, because her name was Consuelo.

"You have the regal bearing of Spanish nobility," he said.

"You can put away your badge," she said. She had never wondered before what a man looked like nude, but she did now. And she wondered what his child would look like if she bore it.

But most of all she wondered what he was doing with pictures of Remo and Chiun. They obviously were taken at a great distance because of the plane compression of a telephoto lens. They were obviously taken with highspeed film. The images were so grainy they were barely discernible. Remo was smiling as though posing for a family snapshot.

"Have you seen these men?"

"Why do you ask?"

"We suspect they are dangerous."

"Why?"

"They kill people."

"That can be very safe if they kill the right people," said Consuelo.

"Spoken with wisdom, senorita," said Braun. "You should know that the Nuclear Control Agency has been watching your efforts. We don't blame you for the missing materials."

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

"They are looking to recommend you for a much higher position, one never before held by a woman."

"It's their loss if no woman ever held that position before."

Braun raised his hands in hurried agreement. "Absolutely. Absolutely. Of course women should hold these posts. And you will show the world just what women can do."

Gonsuelo looked at the pictures again.

"If I told you I knew these men, what would you do?"

"Ah, a good question. They are very dangerous, after all."

"What would you do?"

"What would you wish us to do? You are in charge of your security. We are only here to warn you about things, dangerous things like these two killers."

"I would want you to do nothing," said Consuelo.

"May I ask why?"

"If I told you, that would be telling you definitely I have seen them."

"You have already told me that," said Braun. He sat with relaxed grace in a chair before her desk. Consuelo had furnished her office without any frilly decorations. All the chairs and desks were cold and drab. The beautiful Francisco looked out of place.

Consuelo in her dark power suit, as she liked to call it, had dressed herself as she had furnished the office: starkly.

"I haven't told you anything," she said.

Braun noticed that she smiled too much. Buttoned a button that was already buttoned several times. Crossed her legs too much. Moistened her lips and then forced herself to be professional by drying them. He saw her struggling with herself.

He rose from his chair and walked to her. He put a hand on her shoulder.

"Don't do that," she said. She did not remove his hand.

He lowered his cheek to hers. She could feel the smoothness of his flesh next to hers. She could sense his body, smell the fragrance of his breath.

His whisper tickled her ear.

"I am only here to help you," he said. She swallowed.

"I am a security officer. I will not be treated any differently from a man." She said this with firmness in her voice, but she did not move away from his hands. One of them played with the top button of her suit.

"I make love to men also," said Francisco.

"Oh," she said.

"And women," he said.

"Oh," she said.

"You are very beautiful," he said.

"I was thinking that about you," she said.

"I will do nothing you do not tell me to do."

"Then you will not harm them?"

"I will not seek to have them arrested in any way. All I want is to know where they are. They are with you, aren't they?"

"Yes. I am using them to protect me."

"Fine. Where are they now?"

"Nearby."

Consuelo felt the smooth cheek leave her, the beautiful hands leave the folds of her suit. Francisco Braun straightened up.

"Where?" he asked sharply.

"Nearby. We're all going to La Jolla, California."

"Why there? You must protect your plant here in Pennsylvania."

Shaken from her trance by Francisco's sudden withdrawal, Consuelo refused to divulge what she had found out.

"You only asked to be informed where they were."

"There is no law against you telling me more," said Francisco. He glanced behind him. He had to make sure they were not in the room. "Remember-I can guarantee you your promotion if you cooperate. Ask your superior. Ask the head of the agency."

She did. She waited until he had shut the door behind him and then recovered her senses. Immediately she ran a check on him and was glad she did. The head of the NCA not only verified what Francisco had told her but also ordered her to render him any assistance he asked for. He also told her he was happy with her work.

"I'm glad, because when you lose as much uranium as this plant has, sometimes people tend to blame the security officer."

"We know how good you are, Ms. Bonner. We are not an agency that throws blame around."

"I hope you do throw credit, because I think I am onto something very hot. I think I am going to break this case."

"How?"

"You'll see when I do it."

Consuelo, Remo, and Chiun arrived in La Jolla the next morning. Consuelo thought she had never seen such beautiful houses so tastefully set against such perfect scenery. Remo said La Jolla had the best weather in America. It was always spring in this beautiful little city by the Pacific. Chiun noted that there were too many whites.

"It would be nicer if there were more Koreans," said Chiun.

"If there were more Koreans it would look like a fishing village," said Remo.

"What is wrong with fishing villages?" said Chiun.

"I've seen Sinanju. Though it is by the water, it is definitely not as nice as La Jolla."

"I'll do the questioning," said Consuelo. "This is the first break in the case."

"It's all yours," Remo said. He wondered what it would be like to live around here. He wondered what it would be like to own a home and live in one place with a family he belonged to. He wondered what it would be like to have his own car, to park in his own garage, and go to sleep in the same bed every night.

One person who did not have to worry about living in La Jolla was James Brewster, recently retired from the McKeesport nuclear facility.

He had worked all his life as a dispatcher for one power facility or another, retiring early from McKeesport with a pension of twelve thousand dollars a year.

With that pension he had just purchased a $750,000 condominium in La Jolla, California, a retirement home. The mortgage company had contacted the McKeesport facility to get a reference for a rather large mortgage. They were willing to give it to someone who had only twelve thousand dollars provable income, because he was putting down a half million dollars.

James Brewster was the dispatcher who ordered the last missing uranium shipment down Kennedy Boulevard in Bayonne. James Brewster was also Consuelo Bonner's lead to breaking the case. Obviously the thieves had reached this man. And she was going to reach him too.

"He's mine," said Consuelo as they entered what appeared to be the back of an exquisite town house. They could hear the Pacific on the other side. "I want this to be legal and official. No rough stuff. Do you hear me?"

"What does she mean by rough stuff?" said Chiun, who was never rough.

"She means that we can't help with the questioning. We have laws in this country about how you question people. She wants to get admissible evidence," said Remo.

There were three apartments in the town house condominium. Brewster's name appeared above one button on the brass entrance plaque. Chiun looked around. It was a modest dwelling which of course lacked the true Korean warmth.

Chiun considered Remo's incomprehensible explanation. "What is admissible evidence?" he asked, afraid he was getting into that strange unfathomable tangle of doctrine that made Americans act crazy.

"Well, you can't get evidence by violating the law. The judge won't allow it."

"Even if what you're trying to prove is true?" asked Chiun.

"It doesn't matter if the evidence is true or not or whether the person is guilty or not. If you don't follow the rules, the judge won't allow the evidence to decide the case."

"Truth does not matter, then?" asked Chiun.

"Well, yeah, it does. It does. But the people have to be protected from the police too. Otherwise you have a police state, a dictatorship, a tyranny," said Remo, who could have told Chiun this twisted justice was the whole reason for the organization's being, but Chiun would never have understood that one. He simply refused to.

"There have been some wonderful tyrants, Remo. Never speak against tyrants. Tyrants pay well. In the history of Sinanju, we have been honored by many tyrants."

"Tyrants have a bad name in this civilization," said Remo.

"Which is why we do not belong here. What are you doing running after this metal that has been stolen, like some slave guarding a storehouse? In a tyranny an assassin is respected."

"Shhh," said Consuelo. She rang the buzzer.

"No rough stuff," said Chiun, looking around for a sane person to share this absurdity with. Of course, there was none. Just Remo and Consuelo. Chiun was, as ever, alone in his sanity.

"Who is it?" came the voice.

"Hello," said Consuelo. "My name is Consuelo Bonner, and we are from the McKeesport facility."

"Who is the funny-looking guy?"

"His name is Remo," said Chiun.

"I mean the other," said Brewster. Chiun looked around. There was no one else in the lobby. But he knew that before he looked. Chiun examined the perfect fingernails that reflected his inner grace, reexamined his perfect presence, and knew without looking that his face was the true reflection of joy and health and nobility. They were dealing with a person suffering either sight or judgment problems. Possibly both.

"I'm busy," said Brewster.

Remo folded his arms. He remembered his days as a policeman. There were certain forms Consuelo had to adhere to, restrictions on what to ask, and most of all prohibitions against threats. He would let Consuelo have all the rope she wanted.

"I would advise you to talk to us."

"I'm not going to talk to you without my lawyer. I want my lawyer."

"We just wish to question you."

"No lawyer, no talk."

They waited by the buzzer until a young man in his mid-twenties arrived. He had dark curly hair and a frenzied look. He charged Remo and Chiun with brutality.

"We're down here. Brewster is upstairs. How can we brutalize him?" asked Remo.

"Brutality by threats of stance," said the young man. He wore a very expensive suit, jogging shoes, and the eager look of an up-and-comer just a few years out of law school. His name was Barry Goldenson. He gave Remo a card.

"We are just here to talk to your client," said Consuelo. "My name is Consuelo Bonner, and I am in charge of security for the McKeesport nuclear facility. Your client is a former dispatcher for us. We want to find out about certain uranium shipments."

"My client will not testify against himself."

Then why talk to him? wondered Chiun. Of course, that was a logical question; therefore, it was a question not worth asking. When one began trying to apply reason to these people, one began unraveling seaweed. Barry Goldenson led Consuelo, Remo, and Chiun up to a very small living room. There was a bedroom, and one bathroom and a small kitchen.

"You paid three-quarters of a million dollars for this?" asked Remo.

"He got in before the big price jump," said Goldenson. "This is a bargain for La Jolla."

"What do you get for a hundred thousand?" asked Remo.

"Parking," answered Brewster. He was of average height with a graying mustache and a new tan. He wore an open shirt with a gold chain nestled in a forest of gray chest hair. On the chain hung a gold pendant. He sat back in the full comfort of a man with every confidence in his safety.

"I could get everything you want out of him and his lawyer in thirteen seconds," Remo whispered to Consuelo.

Consuelo shot him a dirty look.

"Now, Mr. Brewster, you were the dispatcher who sent a shipment of uranium that disappeared. In fact, you sent several shipments that disappeared."

"My client does not have to answer that."

"We have his name on the order. We have his pay records. We have his countersigned receipts. We have statements from others in the plant."

"Are you persecuting him for doing his job?" said Goldenson.

"Would you care to explain how he amassed a half-million dollars on a salary that for most of his life was ten thousand dollars? It only rose above that in the last few years. Would you care to explain how on a pension of twelve thousand a year this man can buy a three-quarter-of-a-million-dollar condominium?"

"America is a land of opportunity," said Goldenson.

"So after sending several shipments along some very odd routes, like Kennedy Boulevard in Bayonne, New Jersey, he's suddenly able to buy this condominium? Come on, Mr. Goldenson-nothing of value is in Bayonne, New Jersey," said Consuelo.

"Perhaps that's why he sent them through there."

"Perhaps that is why he suddenly opened a gold-bullion account after the first shipment and received a deposit of one-quarter of a million dollars immediately. Perhaps that is why every time a shipment got lost his account rose by a quarter of a million dollars." Consuelo shot the questions at both Brewster and the lawyer. She was cold and professional.

Brewster sweated.

"A man has a right to prepare for his retirement. He has a right to his golden years," said Goldenson.

"Not that golden," said Consuelo.

"Are you placing limits on a person's aspirations? America is a land of hope," said Goldenson.

Remo tapped his feet, annoyed. He wanted to know who gave Brewster the gold payoffs for shipping the uranium on those strange routes. Once he got that he could get to the person behind it all. No matter how many layers of protection there were, he could always keep cracking them until he got to the source. He stepped out onto the balcony that overlooked a magnificent view of a benign, warm ocean. Chiun did not join him. He stayed inside with the lawyer, Consuelo, and the suspect. Remo was sure he didn't understand a word of the conversation.

At worst, maybe a few crooks got away. But basically in America, more than anywhere else in the world, the people were protected from their government. That would always be the difference between Chiun and him. To Chiun, a government, any kind of government, was only as good as its treatment of the House of Sinanju. Remo could understand that. Sinanju was poor. But Remo was not brought up poor. There was always food; and once you had food and shelter, you wanted something else. You wanted things that only America could give. It was a good country, Remo thought. He was glad he did what he did, even if sometimes it seemed as though he was really swimming against a strong current.

Expensive boats dotted the placid ocean. Out on the horizon, he noticed a glint of sun off glass. Somehow the glass was steady on a rocking boat. Everything moved with the sea but that reflection. Remo glanced back into the room.

The lawyer seemed to be handling Consuelo rather well until Chiun stepped in. The Master of Sinanju started talking to the lawyer, asking him questions. Consuelo, losing her head, ordered Chiun to be quiet.

Remo stepped back inside the room. He tried to explain to Consuelo that that was not the right way to communicate with Chiun, that indeed she might get off the first sentence, but she might not get a chance to complete the second. Consuelo answered she could not be threatened.

Goldenson winked to his client. Chiun ignored Consuelo. He spoke directly to Goldenson.

"Does your mother know you are wearing sneakers?" asked Chiun. Remo looked out the window quite intently. He was pretending he didn't know this man. Consuelo almost threw her notes into the trashcan. Chiun ignored them both. Brewster smiled, confident. "Does she?" asked Chiun.

Goldenson looked to Consuelo and his clients as if to say, "Who is this lunatic?"

"Does she?" asked Chiun.

"I don't know if she knows what I wear for shoes," said Goldenson. There was a condescending smirk.

"If I may get on with the questioning," said Consuelo.

"Of course," said Goldenson.

"Does she?" asked Chiun.

"Please continue your questioning," said Goldenson, concentrating on ignoring the Oriental.

"Does she?" asked Chiun.

"Why don't you phone her and ask," said Goldenson. Brewster laughed and patted his lawyer on the back. Consuelo just sighed. In Korean, Remo said to Chiun: "Little father, this young man is obviously as good a criminal lawyer as money can buy. You can't get anywhere with him by speaking to him like a child. He's a tough legal adversary for Consuelo here. You don't know anything about American law. Please. Let her handle it. As a favor."

"What is her phone number?" Chiun asked Goldenson.

"Really," said Goldenson.

"Can I go out for a swim now?" asked Brewster. As far as he was concerned the danger was over.

"I cannot continue," Consuelo told Remo.

"What is her number?"

"Do you really want it?" asked Barry Goldenson. He adjusted his seven-thousand-dollar Rolex watch. Chiun nodded. Laughing, Barry Goldenson, Esquire, gave Chiun a number with a Florida exchange.

Chiun dialed the number.

"I am going to die of shame," said Consuelo. She didn't have to ask Brewster to hang around. He decided to stay for the amusement. There wasn't anything funnier than this going on in La Jolla, anyhow. This Oriental was phoning the mother of one of the top criminal lawyers in the state.

"Hello, Mrs. Goldenson?" said Chiun. "You don't know me and I am not important. I'm calling about your son ... No. He is not in any trouble or danger. No, I don't know what kind of women he is going with.... I am calling about something else. I can tell that such a fine boy has to have been raised with care. I understand that because I have had troubles with raising a boy myself."

Chiun looked at Remo. Remo was now rooting for the young criminal lawyer. Remo was also rooting for the woman to hang up on Chiun. Remo was happy to root for anyone but Chiun.

"Oh, yes.... You try and try, but when your loved one ignores your needs to fend ... Oh, yes ... The entire family treasure for generations back . . . missing and I only asked for a little help in looking ... but that's my problem, Mrs. Goldenson. . . . Your son can still be helped because I know you have taught him right . . . a nothing ... a little thing ... successful lawyer, Mrs. Goldenson, and such a success should not be wearing ... I hate to say it ... I won't say it ... you don't want to hear it ... sneakers."

Chiun was quiet a moment, then handed the telephone to Goldenson. Goldenson adjusted the vest of his three-piece suit and cleared his throat.

"Yes, Mother," he said. "He's not a nice man, Mother. I am on an important case and he is on the other side. They do things, anything to distract ... Mother ... he is not a nice man ... you don't know him ... you haven't seen him ... As a matter of fact, I happen to be wearing what many California businessmen wear for the comfort of their feet.... Do you know who wears jogging shoes in courtrooms? Do you know the famous . . ."

Goldenson clenched the receiver as his face flushed. He broke eye contact with everyone in the room. Finally he handed the receiver to Chiun.

"She wants to talk to you."

"Yes, Mrs. Goldenson. I hope I didn't cause you any worry. You're welcome, and if I ever get to Boynton Beach, Florida, I will be happy to see you. No, there is nothing I can do with my son. The treasure is lost but he thinks someone else's useless metal is worth more than the family history. What can you do?"

And then Chiun offered the phone to Goldenson, asking if he had anything more to say. Goldenson shook his head. He opened his briefcase and quickly wrote out a check. He handed it to Brewster.

"This is your retainer."

"Where are you going?"

"Shoes. I am going to get a pair of dark leather shoes. Thank you, Mr. Chiun," said Goldenson bitterly.

"What about me?" asked Brewster. "Who's going to look after me?"

"Try your former employer, Ms. Bonner."

"A good boy," Chiun said to Goldenson as he left. With Goldenson on the way it took Bonner exactly seven minutes to have Brewster sweating and making up alibis. Finally she warned him that anything further he said might be used against him and warned him not to leave La Jolla. An arrest warrant would be sworn out that very afternoon.

Before they left, Remo glanced back out at that strange reflection on the water. It hadn't moved. Other boat windows bobbed and pitched with the gentle swells of the Pacific. That reflection did not. And then Remo knew why.

On board the boat, beneath the deck, Francisco Braun checked the large gyroscope. The heavy spinning wheel kept his electron telescope balanced as steady as in a laboratory. The boat could pitch and rock, but the telescope set on that gyroscope would never move from the level created by the force of the motion.

This telescope could expand a thumbprint at two miles. It could also aim a small cannon.

Francisco Braun had seen all he had to see back in McKeesport. He had seen enough to know what would not work. A mere few hundred yards was not enough distance between Braun and his prey, against the white man and the ancient Oriental. The speed and reflexes of those two men were dangerous at that range. But launching a shell into a shorefront condominium from several miles out, where a boat was just a dot on the horizon, was like launching a shell from nowhere. If they couldn't see it, they couldn't avoid it. The key was staying beyond their awareness. And that meant distance.

He focused on the condominium until he could see the weathering on the wood, and then he lifted his sights to the second-floor balcony and the apartment of James Brewster. Consuelo and the two men should be there now.

Braun focused on the railing on the second floor. A hand rested on the railing. It was a man's hand. He had thick wrists, just like the white at McKeesport. Behind him, a kimono caught a breeze. The kimono was inside the apartment. That would be the Oriental.

Braun raised the level of the telescope. He picked up the buttons of the white man's shirt. He picked up the Adam's apple. The chin. The mouth. It was smiling at him. So were the eyes.

Francisco Braun did not fire his gun.

Chapter 7

Consuelo Bonner got a policeman, who got a judge, who gave an arrest warrant, and then she, Remo, Chiun, the policeman, and the warrant went to the condominium of James Brewster to read him his rights and place him under arrest. All according to the law.

"This is justice," said Consuelo. The policeman rang the buzzer.

The camera stared its one thick glass eye down at the foursome.

"Justice," said Chiun to Remo in Korean, "is when an assassin is paid for his work. Justice is when the treasures of those labors, stolen while the assassin is gone, are recovered. That is justice. This is running around with papers."

"I thought you said the real treasures of Sinanju were in the histories of the Masters, that it was not the gold or the jewels or other tributes but who we are and how we became that way that make us rich," said Remo in the same language.

"Will you two stop talking, please? This is an official act of the La Jolla Police Department," said the patrolman.

"No crueler blow than to have one's own words twisted and then thrown back."

"How are they twisted?"

"Badly twisted," said Chiun.

"How?"

"It will be recorded in the histories that I, Chiun, was Master when the treasures were lost. But it will be recorded most that you, Remo, did not aid in their recovery. Instead, you served your own kind during a moment of crisis in the House of Sinanju."

"The world was ready to go. If there is no world, if everything is in some form of nuclear winter, what would the treasure of Sinanju be worth then?"

"Even more," said Chiun.

"To whom?" said Remo.

"I don't argue with fools," said Chiun.

The policeman, having determined he could neither stop the two from talking in that strange language nor get an answer from the buzzer, did according to the rights of his warrant proceed to enter said domicile of one James Brewster.

But the door was locked. He was going to send for assistance in breaking into said domicile when Remo grabbed the handle and turned. There was a snap of breaking metal. The door opened.

"Cheap door," said the La Jolla patrolman. He saw a piece of the cracked lock on the other side of the door. He bent to pick it up and then quickly let go. It was hot. "Whadya do to the door? What happened here?"

"I let you in," said Remo. "But it won't do any good. He's not there."

"Don't be so negative. If there is one thing I have learned in criminology it is that a negative mind produces nothing. You have to think positive."

"If I thought it was snowing outside, it still wouldn't be snowing," said Remo. "He's not there."

"How do you know he's not there? How can you say he's not there?" ranted Consuelo Bonner. "How do you know until you go up and see? I am a woman but I am just as competent as any man. Don't go fouling my case on me."

"He's not there. I don't know how I know but he's not there. Believe me, he's not there. Okay?" said Remo. And he didn't know how he knew. He knew that others couldn't sense when someone was in a room behind a door. But he could no more tell her how he knew than he could tell her how light worked.

"Let me explain," said Chiun. "We are all part of a being. We only think we are disconnected because our feet are not rooted in the earth. But we are all connected. Some people have obliterated the sense of that connection but Remo and the room from which the man has left are joined in being."

"I prefer 'I dunno,' " said Consuelo.

"You people part of some cult?" asked the policeman.

"Who are these lunatics?" asked Chiun.

"Normal Americans," said Remo.

"That explains it," said Chiun.

James Brewster, of course, was not in the room.

He was at the airport with a sudden good friend. A man who looked Swedish and spoke as though he were Spanish. James Brewster never trusted good luck. But this good luck came when he couldn't afford not to trust.

He had sat trembling on a couch, his expensive lawyer having abandoned him, facing jail, disgrace, humiliation, cursing himself for ever thinking he could have gotten away with it.

When the phone began to ring he did not answer it.

"It's here. It's come apart. I'm done for. It. That's it. It." He poured himself a tumbler of Scotch.

"I took a chance. I lost. Done for."

There was a knock on the door. He didn't answer it. Let the police get him. He didn't care. A man's voice with a Spanish accent came through the door. It begged to be let in. It begged to save him.

"It's no use," sobbed James Brewster. Done. It was all over.

"You're a fool. You could be rich and live with servants beyond your wildest dreams."

"That's how I got into this pickle," said Brewster. He looked at the wall. Better get used to looking at a wall for the rest of your life, he told himself.

"You took a chance. You won. You will win even more."

"I want to go home."

"To McKeesport, Pennsylvania?"

James Brewster thought about that a moment. Then he opened the door.

He expected a Spaniard. But an incredibly beautiful blond man in a white suit stood in the doorway. He wore a dark blue shirt and a single gold chain under it, hiding a medallion of sorts.

"My name is Francisco. I have come to keep you out of jail. To give you an even richer, more splendid life than you have ever known before."

James Brewster stood in the doorway waiting. He tapped his foot, waiting.

"What are you waiting for?" asked Braun.

"To wake up," said Brewster. "This is a bad dream."

Francisco Braun slapped him across the face.

"Okay," said Brewster, his left cheek stinging like a swarm of bees had just struck him. "Awake. I'm awake."

"You are going to go to jail if you don't listen to me," said Braun.

"Very awake," said Brewster. "Really awake."

"But I can give you wealth and luxury beyond your wildest dreams."

"Asleep again. Dreaming," said Brewster. "All done. Life is over."

"I will help you get away. You can live in hiding for the rest of your life," said Braun.

"Waking up."

"Fly to Brazil. No one can arrest you in Brazil. They do not have an extradition treaty with anyone. Many criminals live a high wonderful life in Rio. You have no doubt, senor, heard of wonderful Rio."

"Almost everything I have is in this condominium."

"I will buy it."

"Well, considering land values, I think I really want to hold on to it a little longer. This isn't the right time to sell."

"Are you joking, senor? You must sell. Or go to jail."

"I didn't want you to think you could get this for a bargain price. No one should ever sell real estate in desperation."

"I will give you in gold whatever you think it is worth."

James Brewster named a price that would have purchased half the town. Considering the town was La Jolla, it was higher than the net worth of two-thirds of the members of the United Nations.

They settled on a minuscule fraction. A million dollars in gold. It came to slightly over two hundred pounds. In two valises. For which he paid extra in baggage charges at the airport.

"I know Brazil. It is a beautiful country," said Braun.

"But you must know how to handle people." Braun rubbed his fingers together. Bribes were his kind of psychology.

Brewster understood bribes. That was how he got here.

"You must know how to protect yourself," said Braun. "What if they follow your trail?"

"But you said they couldn't extradite me."

"Ah, that is the problem with your situation. You see, you helped steal uranium."

"Shhhh," said Brewster. He looked around the airport.

"No one cares. This is a busy airport. Listen. You must know how to lose a tail, even if it comes from a government seeking revenge for your helping to steal atomic materials."

"Yes. Yes. Lose a tail. Lose a tail," said Brewster.

"When you get to Rio, you hire a boat to go up the Amazon. And use your correct name."

"I hate jungles."

"I don't blame you. That is why James Brewster will go up the Amazon but Arnold Diaz will live in luxury in another condominium. And for a mere quarter of a million dollars you will have space. All the space you want."

"Only a quarter of a million?"

"And you can hire servants for three dollars a week. Beautiful women will fall at your feet for ten dollars American."

"How much for making love? I'm not into feet," said Brewster.

"Whatever you want for ten dollars, all right? But don't forget to register for the trip up the Amazon. I have written down this name of a tour guide. Use him."

"Why him?"

"Because I tell you to. He can be trusted to take your money and take you nowhere."

"I don't have to leave America for that," said Brewster.

"It is important that he take you nowhere. These things are not for you to understand. And wear this," said Francisco Braun, giving Brewster a small oblong gold bar with a bullion stamp impressed into it. "It will show your gratitude. It is a symbol I have come to love and serve. You too may be asked to serve one day for all that we have done for you."

"For what you have just done, I would wear it on my you-know-what," said Brewster.

"The chain around your neck will do," said Braun. On the plane, comfortably seated in first class all the way to Rio, James Brewster looked at the little gold bar. It had an apothecary jar inscribed on it. With his first rum punch, he snapped the bar onto his gold chain, and rode the rest of the way to safety in absolute comfort dreaming of luxury for the rest of his life.

Consuelo Bonner did not tell Remo and Chiun how she knew James Brewster had fled to Rio. She knew and that was it.

"Policework. Straight-cut detection. You don't tell me how you know people aren't in rooms behind locked doors, and I don't tell you how I track down people."

"It would help if we knew," said Remo. "Maybe we could help you do things faster."

"Just keep me alive. That's all I want from you," said Consuelo. "If you do that, we can find out who is bribing James Brewster, and stop this uranium problem."

She noticed neither Chiun nor Remo ate on the many-hour flight to Rio. She also noticed neither of them seemed to be bothered by the oppressively hot Brazilian weather. When they were briefly out of sight, she peeked at the note she had written down back in the States when she had spoken to Braun. It had the address in Rio of a tour guide.

When they returned, Consuelo said:

"Given that a fleeing man chose a country without an extradition treaty with the United States, where would he go once he was in Brazil? Either of you two men figure that out?"

"Probably to the same sort of luxury condo he enjoyed back in the States," said Remo.

"No," said Consuelo. "The amateur mind might think that. I think he was panicked. I think I saw a frightened, terrified man back in La Jolla. I think our dispatcher who ships uranium to an accomplice and flees to Brazil keeps on fleeing. I would bet he has run up the Amazon."

"Only if you find someone who would bet with you," said Remo. "Are you sure he is in Brazil?"

"Yes," said Consuelo. She loosened the top button of her blouse. Her clothes felt like wet sacks stuck to her body. Street urchins seemed to grow out of the sidewalks. None of the travel brochures ever showed so many unwashed young people. They featured the beaches. Nor did they mention the smells of garbage. They gave you twilight photos of the city skyline. Maybe they could build high-rises in Rio but they could not collect garbage.

And the people. So many people. And it seemed that half of them were tour guides; most of them wanted to take them to nightclubs.

"We want the Amazon. We are looking for someone who has gone up the Amazon."

"To Brasilia?" asked each guide. That was the name of the new capital that the government wanted people to populate. There were state-paid bonuses for moving there. Consuela was sure that there were also bonuses for taking tourists there.

"No. Into the jungle."

"There is much jungle in Brazil. Most of it is jungle. I have yet to have anyone ask to visit it."

"I am looking for someone who has."

"No esta here, beautiful young woman."

Consuela waited for either Remo or Chiun to say they would never find the right guide, that the trail was lost, that she was a fool, that she was incapable of making a right decision because she was a woman. But by noon when Consuelo was hot, tired, and disappointed that neither of her companions accused her of feminine frailty, she gave up and headed right for the name she had taken down back in the States.

The guide was in a hotel. And he remembered a James Brewster. The man seemed nervous. He left the day before on a trip up the Amazon. The guide pointed to a map of Brazil. It was like a large peculiarly shaped pear. The green represented jungle. The dots represented civilization. The pear had very few dots. A thin dark line ran hundreds of miles into the green. That was the Amazon.

"He took our main boat but we can get another," said the guide. He spoke English. Much business was done in English, though the main language of the country was Portuguese.

Consuelo reserved the boat.

"Even if you find him," asked Remo, "why should he tell you anything?"

"Because I'll promise not to follow him anymore if he tells me who paid him. You and I are after the same thing," she said.

"No we're not," said Remo.

"What are you after?" she asked.

"Honestly, I don't know. I just keep doing my job, and hoping someday I'll figure it out."

"I have already figured it out," said Chiun. "Your purpose in life is to make mine miserable."

"You don't have to stay. You don't have to come with me."

"It is always nice to feel welcome," said Chiun.

The Master of Sinanju did not like South America. Not only did it bear little resemblance to the modern travel brochures but it was unrecognizable from the accounts given in Chiun's histories. The Masters of Sinanju had been here before. They had served both of the great South American empires, the Mayan and Incan, and were paid well for their services. But since the Spanish and Portuguese had moved into the neighborhood, nothing was the same.

What had been great cities were now slums or areas overgrown by the jungle that had reclaimed terraces and parapets. Where gold-clad emperors had walked, monkeys now chirped in trees that grew from crevices in what had once been royal walkways.

The place, as Chiun commented on the way up to the Amazon, had become a jungle.

Consuelo, who was part Spanish, wanted to know the history of South America. Her mother's family had come from Chile.

"The tales of the Masters are only for other Masters," said Chiun.

"You should be grateful for that," said Remo.

"What can one do with a son who despises the family history?"

"Is he your son? He doesn't look Oriental," said Consuelo.

Their boat chugged through swarms of flies hovering around the mud-brown river that seemed to go on forever. The flies landed only on the guide, Consuelo, and the sailors.

Remo and Chiun seemed immune.

"He denies any possibility of Oriental blood," said Chiun. "I have to live with that."

"That's awful," said Consuelo. "You shouldn't be ashamed of what you are."

"I'm not," said Remo.

"Then why do you hide your Koreanness?" she asked. "I don't hide that I am part Hispanic. No one should be ashamed of who he is."

"He's ashamed that I'm white," said Remo, "if you want to know the truth."

"Oh," said Consuelo.

"Oh," said Remo.

"I'm sorry," said Consuelo.

The boat turned into a tributary, and the crew became nervous. The guide did not. Remo picked up little comments about something called the "Giri."

The guide said it was nothing to worry about. There were no more Giri near here. They were less than fifty miles from Rio. Would poor pitiful savages remain near Rio?

Remo checked the map. On the map, everything outlying Rio was built up but the dark green patch and the brown line they were traveling on. All it said was "Giri."

"What is Giri?" Consuelo asked a crew member when the guide had gone into the cabin to briefly escape the bugs. The Amazon and tributaries had bugs that feasted on normal insect repellent.

"Bad," said a crew member.

"What's bad about it?"

"Them," said the crew member. And then, as though even the sky might be listening, he whispered, fearful even to mention the name.

"Giri all around here. Bad. Bad." He made a motion with his hands about the size of a very large cantaloupe; then he made his hands smaller, to the size of a lemon. "Heads. Take heads. Small."

"Headhunters. The Giri are headhunters," said Consuelo.

"Shhh," said the man. He looked to the thick foliage on the banks and crossed himself. Consuelo went directly to Remo and Chiun to warn them.

"Not Giri," said Chiun. "Anxitlgiri."

''You know them?" asked Consuelo.

"Those who know their past respect the past of others," said Chiun. The warm winds rustled his pale yellow kimono. He looked to Remo. Remo did not look back. He was watching the bugs. Any kind of bugs. Intently.

"He knows them," said Consuelo. "Will you listen to him?"

"You don't understand," said Remo. "He doesn't know them. What Sinanju remembers is who pays the bills. We probably did a hit for them, a half-dozen centuries ago or so. Don't even ask. He doesn't know."

"My own son," said Chiun.

"You poor man. What a beast he is."

"That's all right," said Chiun.

"I am sorry. I misjudged you at first because you made a sexist remark. I'm sorry. I think you are a wonderful person. And I think your son is an ingrate."

"They're still headhunters," said Remo, now looking at the riverbank. He had seen them. And they were following the boat. He was just waiting for the first arrow as Chiun described the Anxitlgiri: they were a happy people, decent, honest, and loving, with perhaps some tribal customs that would not seem familiar to whites.

Francisco Braun knew them only as Giri. He had bought heads from them before. They were dishonest and deceitful as well as vicious. But they loved gold. They loved to melt it and then pour it over favorite things, for decoration. Some of those favorite things happened to be captives whom they made slaves.

The Giri welcomed missionaries. They liked to eat their livers. A road crew, with the Brazilian army there to protect them, tried to build a highway through Giri territory. Their whitened bones ended up as hair ornaments for the Giri women.

Francisco Braun knew that one day he'd find a use for people this vicious and untrustworthy. That day in La Jolla, California, when he found that the pair could not be surprised from even a great distance out at sea, was the day he found the Giri's niche.

What Francisco knew he needed was a distraction. And the finest distraction in the world was a Giri warrior. While the pair were fighting against the poisoned arrows and spears of the Giri, Francisco would put them away.

The question was how to get two men and one woman down to a miserable patch of jungle.

The answer was James Brewster, the man he knew they would follow. And the vehicle was the woman who was chasing him, Consuelo Bonner. She trusted Francisco. And even if she did not trust, Francisco trusted the fact that her desire for him was strong enough to overcome any wariness.

That was the way he routinely made use of her kind.

Knowing they would follow, he had come down the day before and gone through the nauseating ritual of buying the Giri. The bugs had turned his fair skin into a painful red mottle. Even the repellent burned now.

Carefully he had laid out a small pile of gold at the edge of the jungle and sat down. This showed the Giri they could kill him anytime. It also indicated that the gold was a gift. If that was all there was to it, these ugly little men with haircuts like upside-down bowls would kill him as soon as eat a snack.

But Braun knew their minds. Within a half-hour the little men with their bows and arrows, wearing bones in their noses, were poking around his clearing. The first one there took the gold. The second one there took the gold from the first one. The third and fourth took it from the second. Four of them were dead and rotting in the jungle before anyone thought to speak to him.

In Portuguese, he told them there was a great deal of gold to be had. Much more than the small pile he gave them today. He said he would pay this gold for whatever they could pillage from three people who would be coming up the Giri tributary very soon. They would come on a boat. One would be a yellow man, one a white man, and one a white woman.

Who, they asked in broken Portuguese, would get the liver and the heads of the people?

He said they could keep them. He just wanted what the people had and, in exchange, he would pay ten times the amount of gold he offered as a mere gift.

Francisco knew how their minds worked. First, they would think he was an incredible fool to give up the best parts of the victims. Second, they would assume that the trio had to have much more gold with them than he was offering to pay; otherwise why would he pay it at all? And third, they would plan to kill the three, keep the best parts, take their gold, and then collect the gold Francisco offered, as well.

For the Giri it was a foolproof scheme.

For Francisco it was a way to finally eliminate the men with the incredible powers. While a hundred men fired hundreds of little poisonous arrows, Francisco would get off three good clean shots. Then he could fly out of this armpit of the planet and return in triumph to Harrison Caldwell.

When Francisco heard the coughing engine of the river craft, he knew it would only be a few moments. The forest seemed to wriggle with the beetlelike bodies of the Giri. The whole tribe had heard of the great treasure and the good pickings that would be coming up the river. The warriors packed themselves into the slice of jungle that overlooked a narrow bend in the river. Some of the women brought pots for cooking, old iron pots taken from Portuguese traders now of course long passed through the intestines of the ancestors of the Giri.

"The Anxitlgiri are an innocent people," Chiun said as the craft chugged up the churning mud of the tributary toward a leafy point so dense with foliage no light shone through. "They do not know evil, but are susceptible to the blandishments of the more sophisticated. They served the ancient great empires as hunters and guides. What has become of them now, who knows, but they were good hunters at one time."

"Probably hunted babies," said Remo.

"Don't you ever give up?" said Consuelo.

"I've known him a bit longer than you," said Remo. "Ever heard of Ivan the Good?"

The crew did not notice the leaves in the brush, but Remo saw they did not move with the wind. They jostled in peculiar ways. Up ahead, at the point, he sensed a great mass of men. Something was going to happen. He thought of moving Consuelo behind the cabin of the river craft now, keeping her facing the farthest shore.

But Chiun refused to let him do this. Instead, the Oriental raised a single finger and ordered the boat to go directly into the shore.

"What are you doing, little father?" Remo asked in Korean.

"Shh," said Chiun.

The boat headed into the hidden mass of men. Chiun strode to the prow, letting the wind rush against his flowing yellow kimono, a small man like a flag in the front.

On shore the Giri could not believe their good luck. Sometimes riverboats got through their arrows and they would have to chase in their canoes. Sometimes they lost many men storming a boat. But this one had come ashore among them. Some of the women asked if they could start the fires now for the pots. The Giri saw the wisps of white hair floating on the breeze. They watched the beautiful pale yellow cloth billow in the wind. The men were already planning to cut it into strips for loincloths when they saw the yellow man on the prow raise his arms. And then the Giri heard a strange sound, an ancient sound, a sound they had heard spoken only around their campfires during the great ritual times.

They heard the old language of their ancestors. The small yellow man did not call them Giri, but their full proud name: Anxitlgiri. And what he was telling them in their own tongue was shame. Shame on the men and shame on the women, and shame on the children who followed.

"You move through the forests like logs, like whites. What has happened to the hunters who served the great empires? What has happened to the Anxitlgiri men who moved like the wind kissing the forest leaf, or the women so delicate and pure they hid their faces from the sun? Where are they now? I see only clumsy stumbling fools."

So shocked were the Anxitlgiri to hear their ritual language spoken that they rose from behind their cover. A few pots falling softly on the forest floor could be heard.

"Who are you?" asked an elder.

"One who has memory of what the Anxitlgiri were, one who knows of your forefathers."

"There is no need to do the hard work of our ancestors anymore. There are people to kill. Fat animals raised by the whites to steal. We need no such skills," said a younger hunter.

"The tales of our ancestors are but stories for children," said another.

In Korean, Chiun told Remo to listen to what they were saying. Remo answered: How could he, he didn't know the language-and Chiun said that if Remo had learned all the histories of the Masters he would have known Anxitlgiri.

Remo answered: The only thing he wanted to know about them was which direction was upwind. Consuelo, fearful of all the little brown men now rising from the forests, many with human bones in their noses, asked Remo what was happening.

Remo shrugged. The boat crews shut themselves in the cabin and loaded guns. The pilot, panicked, threw the engines into reverse. Chiun told him to quiet the engines. He wanted to be heard.

He challenged the Anxitlgiri to send forward their best archer. He opened his palm.

"Come now," he said in that ancient language. "Hit this target."

And he held out his right hand, his long fingernails separating, indicating he wanted the archer to hit the center of the palm. But the archer was hungry for the gold and other things. He aimed directly at the center of the pale yellow cloth covering the man who stood on the prow, the one who had challenged the honor of the whole tribe.

The short arrow sang out from the bow. And was caught in the old man's left hand, right in front of his chest.

"How much do you miss by, little worm of a man?" Chiun asked in the old tongue of the tribe.

The archer lowered his head in shame, and put another shaft against the hide of his bow. Carefully he drew it back, and then fired at the palm. He had felled flying birds with this bow. The arrow sang out and stopped where the palm had been, clutched in the hand of the visitor.

The man had caught it. Women cried out old praises for the hunt. They banged the kettles. Youngsters cheered. Old men wept. There was pride again in the Anxitlgiri. They could hunt animals, not men. They could show pride in themselves. As one, the entire tribe began to chant the glories of the hunt.