The Last Monarch

Destroyer 120: The Last Monarch

By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

Chapter 1

It would be the his last photo op.

His wife had objected. Insisted that it would never happen as long as there was breath in her body. Her unyielding passion on the subject would have surprised many of her harshest critics. Even a few of their oldest friends would have been stunned by her determination that the photo op not take place. "It's not so bad," one had ventured. He had been a close family friend since the California days. His once sharp face now sagged with age. "It might even be good for him to get out."

"No," she replied with icy firmness. Sitting across from him in the sunroom, she sipped tea from a China cup.

"The kids think it's a good idea," he advised.

She laughed at this. "Why doesn't that surprise me?"

He stiffened, embarrassed at her faintly bitter tone.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I thought that was all settled."

"It is." She sighed, setting cup to saucer with a tiny click. "It's just that they don't think things through very clearly. Everyone knows that."

He tried one last tack. "Forget about the kids, then. Think about the country. Things have gotten bad in the past ten years. America needs to have its hope restored. And people love him."

At this, the famous ice queen's veneer cracked ever so slightly. Her eyes began to well up as she fought back the memories. All the memories-for years they had been happy. Now they were bitter, tinged with great sorrow.

She straightened her back, seemingly embarrassed by her inability to control her emotions.

"No, Cap;" she replied, a steely resolve in her voice. "America or not, he's my husband, and I won't let him be used like some prop."

That was that. Or so she thought.

A few days after she'd spoken what she thought to be the final word on the subject, she flew back east for a weekend antidrug fund-raiser. Although she was reluctant to leave his side-especially now-the doctors insisted he was fine. At this point, there were no sudden changes expected in his condition. Besides, the fight against drugs had always been a pet project of hers.

Wifely concerns heavy on her mind, she left his side.

Her plane was barely taxiing down the runway before they came to collect him.

It was his daughter who betrayed him. The Goneril to his Lear. Now in her forties, she had been young when he was climbing the ladder to his great perch.

The girl had always been full of hate for her famous parents. This latest rebellion was more an act of revenge against the both of them than anything else.

Her mother was airborne-on her way to Washington. Her father was helpless to stop her. Perfect timing.

"Cowboy boots, denim shirt, jeans," she barked to the coterie of men who trailed her into her father's room. They began to dutifully raid closets and bureaus.

Clothes were tossed onto the quilt.

Through it all, her father sat there, oblivious. Perhaps a puzzled eyebrow arched as the men worked quickly. At one time the most famous face in the world, reduced now to a confused knot of sadly familiar wrinkles.

He did nothing to stop them as the strangers began to strip him of his nightclothes.

FORTY MINUTES LATER, they were on the range. Distant mountains undulated in blue-violet waves from the ruler-flat plain. Above, wisps of clouds reflected shades of orange and red from the fire of the setting sun.

The Jeep they were in stopped beside an empty horse trailer. Father and daughter got out.

Photographers were waiting. Two wranglers stood next to the trailer, one holding the reins of a big yellow palomino. The animal snorted nervously at the crowd.

The crush of people encircled them immediately. Her father was typically disoriented.

He had been enjoying the ride, the warm evening air sparking something in the hazy cloud that was his mind. But with the throng of people came confusion, almost a sense of fear.

Makeup was quickly applied.

"We're losing the light," a photographer complained tightly.

"Get him on it," another urged. He was clucking impatiently as he checked his light meter.

The old man's arms were grabbed. He didn't even try to fight them as they pushed and pulled him up on the horse.

It was almost a familiar sensation. This had been his experience with many things the past few years. He could almost feel, almost remember....

Almost, almost, almost.

He was lost in a sea of almosts. With nothing to hold on to. Nothing to keep his sanity afloat.

He had drowned long ago. Died. His mind was gone. It was only a matter of time before his body caught up.

He was in a familiar setting now-in the desert, on a horse. And he didn't even know it.

Coaxed by a wrangler, he grasped the reins.

A long-faced girl with dark hair and a lean body looked up at him. She was the one who had orchestrated this event. She seemed very angry about something. Maybe if he smiled at her she wouldn't be so angry. He instantly forgot to smile.

Below him, the horse snorted angrily at the air. Cameras clicked madly.

Men moved around, framing quickly. Click, move. Click, move.

The horse snorted once more, scuffing a thick hoof at the cracked and dusty ground.

Men swirling. Skipping, sliding, twisting all around him. He was becoming dizzy.

A loud whinny.

Other men coming forward, pushing past those with the cameras. The world dropping out below him. The horse rearing, rising furiously to its hind legs.

"Hold him!"

"Get beneath him!"

Sliding backward. Falling. The ground racing up to him.

There was a sharp pain at the back of his head. Stars exploding behind his eyes. A flash of sudden, stark memory.

Darkness. Then light.

They were all above him, faces cast in silhouette. Behind them loomed the vast orange sky.

And he remembered nearly all of them. Those he didn't recognize, he knew he had never met before. He knew. Remembered everything. And it was wrong.

Before losing consciousness once more, he murmured something to those kneeling above him. A single word. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he was gone.

Guiltily, his daughter cradled his head in her hands, less concerned with her father's health than with what her mother would do when she got back home.

"What did he say?" a Secret Service agent asked, unhappy with himself for not being more firm with the daughter of his charge.

"I don't know," his partner said.

"It sounded like 'cure,'" a photographer whispered.

"Cure? What do you suppose he meant?"

The photographer shrugged. "Who knows with Alzheimer's?" he said.

For an eternity on that dusty California desert bluff, with a soft breeze blowing down from the Santa Ana Mountains, everyone stood around in shock, not knowing what to do.

They looked down on the tired, weathered face of the former President of the United States, little realizing that their unauthorized stunt had unlocked a decades-old secret so dangerous it could very well topple the government of the nation he had served so well.

Chapter 2

His name was Remo and from where he was standing he couldn't see a single pitchfork or burning torch.

There were no chants. No banners, per se. A few signs here and there, but these were feeble at best. The only real effort shown by the protestors was their jockeying attempts to get their faces in front of the many television cameras that whirred up at them from the sidewalk.

The Bronx police station had become a magnet for protestors over the past few weeks. More than two hundred were there today.

Leaning against a fire hydrant across the street from the milling crowd, Remo frowned. After standing in the sunlight for just a few minutes, he'd come to a single, inescapable conclusion: They just didn't make mobs like they used to.

No one paid any attention to him. And why would they?

Remo was a thin man of indeterminate age. Height, weight, hair-everything about him was determinedly average. The only things an observer might think to be outwardly abnormal about his appearance were his freakishly thick wrists, which, at times of agitation, he would rotate absently. This was not one of those times.

As he studied the crowd, Remo's arms were folded firmly over his chest.

The men and women had dressed down for the occasion. They were all meticulously swathed in sedate designer jeans and coordinating shirts. Here and there, diamond or gold accessories peeked from cuff or earlobe, but for the most part the more ostentatious signs of wealth had been checked at JFK Airport.

A line of long black limousines waited like somber sentries down the block-away from the news cameras.

Everyone wore a serious face. After all, racism and police brutality were serious matters.

It had happened again. New York City, already reeling from a simple, tragic mistake that had blossomed into a racially charged incident, was being forced to contend with the second such event in less than two years.

A cabdriver had been stopped by police. A Haitian immigrant, the man spoke little English. He pulled his wallet and jumped from the car, screaming at the officers. Sadly, the black comb jutting from his wallet was mistaken for a gun barrel. The two police officers reacted instinctively. They opened fire.

Nineteen bullets later, they realized their mistake. But it was too late.

The cabbie died at the scene. And the protests that had been dwindling in the wake of the first terrible accident had erupted anew.

The usual Hollywood horde had taken up the call to action. The socialist elite from both coasts descended like well-dressed locusts on the steps of the police precinct where the two officers worked.

And there they sat.

During the day, they chanted. At night, they lit candles. And through it all, deals were discussed and lunches scheduled. It was less a protest than a three-week-long networking session. Plus the press coverage didn't hurt their careers.

Since he'd taken up his late-morning position on the sidewalk twenty minutes ago, Remo had singled out a bunch of celebrities he recognized.

There was Susan Saranrap and her companion, Tom Roberts. Remo made a point of avoiding their line of sight.

By the looks of it, Saranrap had followed through on a threat to became pregnant yet again. But at age seventy-six, she'd had to put an entire team of Frankenstein-inspired physicians to work revving up her dusty womb. Whatever injections they were giving her made her bugging eyes launch even farther from their sockets. The ability to blink over her trademark swollen orbs had been lost somewhere in the early part of the first trimester.

The famous Afrocentric movie director Mace Scree had abandoned his courtside L.A. Lakers seat to fly in for this day's rally. His slight frame was draped in an oversize basketball jersey. A goateed face that looked as if it had been borrowed from a cartoon weasel peered millionaire malevolence from beneath the brim of his omnipresent baseball cap.

Not one, but two former New York mayors had joined the cause. The first was an elderly man who looked like a frog starving for a fly. He'd found time to protest in the downtime between his twice yearly heart attacks.

The second ex-mayor was dressed in a thin cotton sweater, white shorts and carried a tennis racket. Though his detractors would have found it difficult to believe, this rally seemed to interest him even less than his stint in Gracie Mansion. Sitting on the precinct steps, bored, he bounced his racket off one knobby knee.

Crowded up on the stairs, farther from the news cameras, was the usual assortment of community activists and gawkers who were always a phone call away when the evil specter of racism reared its ugly head.

And presiding over them all was Minister Hal Shittman.

The clergyman had come to national prominence back in the eighties when a young black woman claimed to have been assaulted by a group of white men. Worse than the attack was the fact that her assailants had smeared her with excrement. Hal Shittman had taken up her cause with a vengeance, screaming for justice for this poor, frightened child.

After ruining the lives of the men she accused, the girl was exposed as a liar. Although it had been proved beyond any doubt that the young woman had fabricated the entire tale, Shittman's career had yet to suffer as a result of his involvement in the fraud. Indeed, by the looks of him, he hadn't missed a single meal in the past twenty years.

A purple velour jogging suit top had been zipped over the minister's great protruding belly. Matching stretch pants were tugged up over his massive thighs. His long hair had been ironed flat and swept into a mighty pompadour.

His fingers were like ten fat, dark-as-night sausages as he raised them beseechingly to the heavens. "How long!" Minister Shittman wailed. Diamond-and-gold rings worth tens of thousands of dollars sparkled on his pudgy knuckles.

The former mayor with the tennis-court date checked his watch. Even from so great a distance, Remo's supersensitive ears heard the man mutter, "I've been wondering that, too."

"How long?" Shittman cried out even louder. As if in response, a door opened. A middle-aged police detective appeared at the top of a second set of stairs farther down from the protest site. His every move was blandly courteous as he raised a megaphone to his thin lips. His polite voice carried loudly over the crowd.

"Good afternoon," he announced in a booming, staticky tone. "The New York City Police would first like to apologize for having kept you waiting so long." He raised one hand in a beckoning fashion. "Now, those of you who want to get arrested, please move over to this door in an orderly fashion. Those of you who do not wish to be arrested today, please remain in your current protest position. The NYPD thanks you for your cooperation."

As if drawn by some hidden vocal pheromones released via the plainclothes officer's affable voice, approximately half of the two hundred people sitting around the main steps got up and moved toward the megaphone.

Like a purple Buddha, Shittman shepherded his flock of celebrities and politicians to the second staircase.

"Let's get a move on," he urged, his gloomy, sweating face always turned to the nearest available camera. "We don' want none o' that plunger action if we late."

Other uniformed officers had come out from behind the megaphone detective. As Shittman's group began to form neat queues, the newer NYPD arrivals began processing the protestors inside.

Several of the uniformed men came down into the street just to make sure there weren't any hard-of-hearing stragglers wanting to be locked up. The line was just beginning to inch its way inside the precinct when one of the youthful policemen found his way over to Remo.

"Excuse me, sir," the young officer began agreeably. He squinted in the sunlight. "Did you want to get arrested today?"

Everything about him and his colleagues was agreeable. To Remo, it seemed that everyone was agreeable. It was annoying in the extreme. Which was part of why he was here.

"No," Remo replied, eyes leveled on the crowd. "I'm just wondering when the jugglers and elephants are gonna join this three-ring circus."

"Sir?" the policeman asked.

His eyes were blandly noncommittal-a Stepford Wives replacement for the human cops of days gone by.

"Nothing." Remo sighed, shaking his head.

The officer stubbornly refused to leave. He was examining Remo's clothing.

"Are you homeless?" the cop asked sympathetically. He was careful to keep a nonjudgmental face as he nodded to Remo's navy blue T-shirt and tan Chinos.

Tipping his head, Remo seriously pondered the question for a long second.

"No," he replied at last. "I just can't go home." It was true. It was too dangerous for him to go home right now. Not that Remo couldn't handle most dangers. But this was different.

Remo was a Master of Sinanju, an honorific so rare that only twice in a century, on average, was a single man allowed to hold that vaunted title. Remo was the Apprentice Reigning Master. His teacher was the Reigning Master.

Chiun, for that was his teacher's name, had trained Remo in the most deadly martial art the world had ever known. And all had gone well-more or less-for three decades.

But being the world's most lethal assassin was only Chiun's vocation. To Remo's eternal regret, the frail old Asian with the fatally fast hands had an avocation.

For years, the Master of Sinanju had wanted to be a writer. Since both men were in the employ of CURE, a government agency so covert its existence was known at any given time to only four men, it was problematic for Chiun to fulfill his dream.

Ordinarily, the risk of exposing the most damning national secret to exist in the country's short two-hundred-year history wouldn't have mattered a hill of beans to the wily Korean. But fortunately for CURE, for a long time Chiun's attempts at writing had been universally rejected. That had all changed a year ago.

It had all started with a trip to Hollywood, when Chiun had managed to secure a movie deal from a pair of oily film executives. Remo had been forced to keep Upstairs in the dark about Chiun's activities, lest he incur the old Asian's wrath. It was an uncomfortable time.

Luckily for Remo and CURE, the studio producing the Master of Sinanju's movie had gone bankrupt. And while the lawyers swarmed the soundstages and offices of Taurus Studios, picking whatever they could from its dead carcass, Chiun's film had been vaulted.

With the quiet demise of the movie, Remo had thought that his headaches were over. He was wrong.

Chiun had been impossible to live with since his return from the West Coast. Never the poster child for temperate behavior, the old man's attitude over the past three months had been volatile in the extreme. And the bulk of his anger had been directed at Remo.

It had gotten so bad that Remo had taken to using any excuse to get out of the house. The New York protests in the wake of the cabdriver shooting had been a godsend.

Remo was ticked off by the initial reports of the demonstrations on the evening news the previous night. It was maddening to him that the protesters seemed to care little, if at all, for the man who had been shot. It was clear to anyone with a functioning brain stem that they were merely standing on a corpse to inflate themselves. And, given his current mood, their phony sanctimoniousness was all Remo needed to set him off.

The line on the staircase before him was still annoying in its sheer orderliness. The celebrity protestors were allowing the proles to be processed first. The owner of every famous face in the crowd wanted to be last to enter that building. No one wanted to give up a single second of free camera time.

As Minister Shittman wrangled the celebrities into a manageable pack at the rear of the throng, Remo stuffed a hand deep into one pocket of his Chinos. A handful of quarters rattled obediently. He'd picked up two rolls from a bank back home. More than enough.

A hopeful face appeared before him, blocking his view of the stairs.

"There's no shame in being homeless. I can take you to a shelter," the youthful police officer offered. "Or to a counselor. Would you like to see a counselor? We have several inside. Free of charge, of course. The city mandated that we hire them rather than buy bullets."

Remo peeked around the man, irritated.

"What I'd like to see is at least a scowl on one of these cops. How much manpower are you wasting processing these nits?" He waved a thick-wristed hand at the line of filing protestors. "You should be furious."

"Oh, no, no, no," the young officer rapidly insisted. His worried eyes darted around, hoping no one in the vicinity had heard Remo's suggestion.

"The new New York police force is very responsive to the needs and difficulties of the community at large. See?"

The cop removed a tube of coiled pamphlets from the holster where his gun should have been. He peeled one off, handing it to Remo.

On the cover of the flyer, a rainbow coalition of police officers grinned agreeably. Women, Hispanics, blacks, Asians-all were represented. Missing from the group was a single white face. Beneath the men and women, a colorful banner read, It's Your Police Force: We Love To Help ...And It Helps To Love!

Remo looked up at the officer. "I'm going to retch," he said.

"Would you like me to run down to the store and pick you up some Tums?" he offered helpfully, stuffing his remaining pamphlets back into his empty holster.

Remo ignored the offer, as well as the man's eager expression. "What do you do if you need your gun?" he asked, nodding to the flyer-filled holster.

"Weapons cause concern in poorer neighborhoods," the cop explained. "As part of the new Responsiveness to Community Issues Program, police officers are only allowed to carry firearms into those communities with a per capita income higher than thirty-two thousand dollars per year."

Remo was stunned. "What if you get shot at?" he asked.

The cop shook his head firmly. "Doesn't happen. Crime in lower-income neighborhoods is a media fabrication created to discourage investment in said neighborhoods. Page three."

He pointed to the pamphlet in Remo's hand.

"I don't know what kind of drivel they put in here, but I've been in those neighborhoods plenty of times," Remo said. "Any cop who doesn't go in armed to the teeth isn't likely to be coming home that night."

He spoke from experience. A lifetime ago, before being framed for the murder of a petty drug pusher and sentenced to die in an electric chair that didn't work, Remo had been a simple Newark beat patrolman. As a cop, he had taken his life in his hands every day on the job.

The young officer before him was shaking his head firmly. "You're not a protestor, are you?" he said, the light finally dawning.

"Is my head up my ass?" Remo queried.

The officer thought very carefully, surreptitiously glancing at both body parts in question. "No," he admitted finally, brow furrowed.

"Then I'm not a protestor," Remo concluded. And before the man could speak again, he pointed to the first staircase. "Ron Silver looks pissed," he said abruptly.

A look of horror sprang full-blown on the face of the cop. Knowing that there'd be hell to pay if a Hollywood activist had somehow been left out of the day's mass arrest, the young officer quickly left Remo's side. Car horns honked as he darted back across the street to the police station.

As soon as the man had stepped from the curb, Remo brought a handful of coins from his pocket. The quarters were cool in his palm. Clenching his hand into a fist, he fingered a single coin onto the tip of his thumb.

He was trying to decide who would make the best first target when a limousine roared up the street. It squealed up to the curb near Minister Shittman.

The passenger in the rear didn't even wait for the driver to run around from the front. The door sprang open, and a familiar figure popped into view.

She was six feet tall and dressed in a pair of black jeans tight enough to launch her femur marrow up into her pelvis. Her white lace blouse was chopped at her sternum to expose a perfectly flat stomach.

Remo recognized Cheri, the unimonikered rock singer and Academy Award-winning movie star, the instant she got out of the limo. He'd had the misfortune of seeing part of one of her films a few years earlier. As far as he was concerned, as an actress, she made a great singer. Unfortunately, the opposite was equally true.

In a desperate and futile attempt to remain youthful in perpetuity, Cheri had spent more time in operating rooms in the past two decades than on movie sets or in recording studios. Behind her back, friends joked that she could no longer sit next to an open fire lest she run the risk of puddling. As the years of plastic surgery took their toll, her face began to take on the elongated shape of an Easter Island statue.

Remo remembered reading somewhere that she'd had the muscles in her face paralyzed to avoid wrinkling. It had the effect of turning her immobile features into a living death's-head mask.

"Get out of my way! Out of my way, dammit!" Cheri yelled. Her warbling, whining voice rose past lips that didn't twitch a millimeter.

For Remo, her timing couldn't have been better. "Wait your turn," a man groused.

He was an actor who had starred in The Search for Pink November, a movie about a defecting Russian submarine captain. In the denouement of that film, the titular sub had been able to perform acrobatics more appropriate to an aerial dogfight than an undersea battle. The only two things Remo really remembered about the movie were the ludicrous battle scene at the end and the wooden actor's flaring nostrils.

The angry star was flanked by his three untalented thespian brothers.

"I was first!" Cheri shouted. "My agent phoned ahead."

Neither the actor nor his three dull-eyed siblings seemed particularly impressed by her claim. As Cheri groused, they promptly offered her their broad backs.

It was the chance Remo had been waiting for. Across the street, he gave his thumb a simple flick. The quarter, which had been balanced on his cuticle, rocketed forward. Only Remo saw it as it zoomed at supersonic speed across the street.

The English Remo had put on the coin made it wobble from its deadly flat trajectory somewhere midstreet. Once it reached the curb at the far side, it had slowed considerably and was zipping along heads side first.

By the time the coin struck the submarine movie actor between the shoulder blades, it had no more force than a rough shove.

The actor was launched forward into one of his brothers. They both toppled over onto the stairs. "Hey, watch it, dude," the younger actor snarled, pushing his older brother away. He had been in the process of picking up another handsome young man. The older brother seemed shocked. As he got to his feet, he pointed back at Cheri.

"She pushed me," the actor insisted, nostrils stretching to heretofore unrealized expanses of indignation.

"What?" Cheri's ventriloquist's dummy mouth asked. "Eat shit, you asshole."

As she spoke, she suddenly lurched forward. Arms thrown wide, she collapsed onto the falling form of the stunned actor. No one heard the clatter of coin on pavement.

"Get off me, you freaking mummy!" the actor screamed.

As he yelled, a commotion broke out in the next line.

Apparently, one of the noncelebrities in the crowd had shoved Susan Saranrap's lover. Tom Roberts had scrambled to his feet and pushed the man back. Not recognizing Roberts's standing among the unassailable glitterati, the man had promptly socked the actor in the nose.

There was blood everywhere.

Someone unseen rammed one of the ex-mayors in the back. As he fell, the man's tennis racket accidentally swatted his predecessor at city hall in the bald head. The other former mayor promptly went into cardiac arrest.

It went downhill from there.

Fistfights erupted up and down the stairs. Men screamed and swore. One man was pushed over the railing and landed with a splat on the sidewalk.

Cheri was livid as she punched and kicked the submarine movie actor. So angry was she, her eyes nearly twitched.

Minister Shittman had been propelled onto Mace Scree. Only the trademark hat of the diminutive director was visible beneath the great, wobbling purple velour mound.

For some reason, the fattest of the submarine movie actor's brothers had stripped off every last stitch of clothing. Screaming, he raced naked up and down the street.

As the riot grew, a few people begged the police to do something. Unarmed, the best they could do was read loudly cautionary advice from their pamphlets on making racist assumptions about the intentions of mobs.

Without any nudging from Remo, the protestors on the other staircase began rioting, as well.

And on the sidewalk, through it all, news cameras dutifully recorded the brawl that had broken out among the peace-loving protestors.

Remo pushed away from the fire hydrant against which he'd been leaning. The remaining coins jangled merrily in his pocket. In all, it had cost him only $2.50 in quarters.

"Now that's a mob," he pronounced.

While the cameras captured the true nature of the men and women on the steps of the police precinct, Remo turned away from the wrestling crowd.

He was feeling so good, maybe he'd rent a movie on the way home. Because of Chiun, he hadn't done so in ages.

Hands thrust deep into the pockets of his Chinos, he began strolling, whistling, down the sidewalk. The August sun was warm on his face.

Chapter 3

The somber brick building with its ivy-covered walls hunched warily amid the chirping woods and clawing night shadows. Lights from shore and the waxing moon sent ripples of shimmering silver across the undulating black waves of nearby Long Island Sound.

At the rear of the big building, one lonely light shone out from the darkness. The dull yellow glow spread thinly across the damp, midnight-black lawn that stretched to the lapping waters of the Sound.

The window through which the light spilled was made of one-way glass. Beyond the thick pane, away from the prying eyes of the outside world, a solitary figure sat at a lonely desk in a Spartan office.

Although it was well after hours, Dr. Harold W. Smith had completed his day's work only twenty minutes before.

To anyone in the outside world who might note Smith's schedule, this would not have seemed unusual. More often than not, as director of Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York, Smith worked late.

However, all but a handful of people would have been surprised to learn that the work that occupied him was unrelated to sanitarium business.

Harold Smith led a dual life. To the public, he was the taciturn administrator of Folcroft, a bland man with a bland job. But in private, he was director of the supersecret government agency known only as CURE.

CURE was not an acronym, but a dream. A wish by a President-long dead-to heal the ills of a wounded nation.

At its inception, the agency was to work outside the tricky confines of the Constitution in order to protect it. A most illegal means to reach a most noble end.

Smith had toiled as director of Folcroft for the better part of his adult life. It was an irony not lost on the aging New Englander that the greatest lawbreaker in American history was also the nation's greatest defender.

He was a gaunt man, in the twilight years of his life. Smith's very being seemed to have been conceived in shades of gray. His dry skin was dead-fish gray. His thinning hair was grayish-white. Even the suit he wore was an unimaginative gray. The only splash of color was that of his green-striped Dartmouth tie, knotted tightly below his Adam's apple. Though at this time of night Smith was alone in the administrative wing of Folcroft Sanitarium, he still didn't loosen the four-in-hand knot.

Of course, in the unlikely event that anyone did stumble in on Smith, it would in all likelihood be necessary to neutralize that person as a threat to exposure. For although the agency Smith helmed had endured many dangers over the past four decades, the one thing CURE could not weather was public knowledge of its activities.

People had died who learned of CURE. Smith accepted this as an unfortunate fact of his covert existence. In his world, knowledge was danger. Not just a danger to himself or to his agency-those threats were fleeting. The danger was to America itself. For if it was learned that a succession of eight Presidents spanning much of the last half of the twentieth century had availed themselves of an unquestionably illegal agency, the very underpinnings of American democracy would be knocked loose. The country would topple.

"America is worth a life." Those were the words of an ally of Smith's, long dead. It was Smith's credo, as well. But it was a concept he applied not just to others. Smith would not exempt himself from this philosophy. The CURE director carried in his breast pocket at all times a coffin-shaped pill. In the event of exposure, he would take the bitter medicine without hesitation, insuring that knowledge of his and CURE's activities would be taken with him to the grave.

As he sat at his desk, he found that his arthritis-gnarled hand had strayed to his lapel. A gray thumb tapped absently against the poison pill in his vest pocket, pressing it against his thin chest.

Suddenly conscious of the movement, he pulled the hand away, placing it to the gleaming surface of his onyx desk.

Smith sighed, a mournful sound of rusty water trying to navigate up frozen pipes.

He knew why his hand had sought out the pill. Although in his younger years he wouldn't have given such things a second thought, he couldn't dismiss the obvious psychological explanation for his subconscious action.

It was death. Plain and simple.

Smith was undeniably old. Part of another generation. A throwback to another era.

A few months back, he'd had a run-in with the President. In and of itself, that was not unusual. There were more times in the past than he could remember that he had come to loggerheads with a given American leader. But in this particular crisis, he had finally admitted to a basic incomprehension of this current chief executive.

Someone had twice tried to murder the President. Both attempts were halted by agents of Smith. Usually this would engender a spirit of gratitude in any man. But the President of the United States had been angry, particularly upon learning that the man who had been trying to kill him was a friend. Not just a friend, but a financial benefactor. In the end, the President was not so much angry that he knew his would-be killer, but that the man had contributed money to him in the past and, by dying at Smith's command, could not contribute in the future.

After the President was through screaming at him over that particular crisis, Smith had briefly contemplated dismantling CURE. His poison pill had almost seemed preferable to living in this new era of warped agendas and bizarre loyalties.

Of course, that was never a real consideration. In the end, Smith had hunkered quietly down behind his desk to do what he had always done. His job.

But thoughts of mortality continued to play at the fringes of his conscious mind. Like now.

It wasn't necessary for him to be there at this hour. If a crisis arose, the cell phone in his battered briefcase would relay the message to Smith's home.

He could have left an hour ago. Could have trudged to his rusting station wagon and driven home. Could have climbed into bed next to his sleeping wife and tried to push away the demands of his solitary life with a few hours of sleep.

But Smith was finding it difficult these days to work up the energy to do anything beyond his work. And so he sat. Alone. In the shadows of his austere office. Embracing the dark night.

When the phone rang ten minutes later, the sharp jangle in the darkness startled him awake.

Smith didn't even realize he had dozed off. Alert now, he reached for the blue contact phone. "Remo?"

It was a silly question. Only CURE's two field agents, Remo and, less frequently, his trainer, Master Chiun, used the phone. But Smith was not a young man any longer, and old habits had a way of dying hard.

So much a creature of habit was Smith that he didn't at first know enough to be startled when the voice that answered him was not Remo's. "Smith?"

The older man's voice was hushed. Furtive.

For a moment, Smith thought that he had picked up the regular Folcroft line by mistake. He looked at the phone. It was blue. Remo's phone. But not Remo's voice.

The panic that had failed to materialize when he first picked up the phone suddenly manifested itself. "Who is this?" he asked, his lemony voice straining for calm.

"Listen, I can't talk long. They're checking on me nearly every minute. Is this Smith?"

It was a demand this time.

Smith wasn't certain what to do. This had never happened before in the history of CURE.

"I cannot confirm that you have reached the party you desire. Perhaps if you gave me more information about yourself, I could be of some assistance."

The voice warmed, as if it recognized something in the tone that was familiar.

"It's you, all right. Thank God. I didn't know if you'd still be there after all this time. The calendar in my room says it's 2000. Is that right?"

The wave of alarm that had overtaken Smith was slowly being eclipsed by worried comprehension. The voice was too familiar. The CURE director hadn't heard it in more than a decade. Certainly, he hadn't spoken to the man since the early days of 1989. But the voice was unmistakable.

Smith swallowed. "Mr. President?" he asked weakly.

There was a hint of mirth in the voice. Smith could almost see the familiar boyish grin over the line.

"Glad to see everyone hasn't forgotten about me. Guess I can't say I've returned the favor the past few years."

"Mr. President, I do not understand."

"You gave me this number years ago in case of emergency. You told me it was the contact line for those special people of yours."

"It is, Mr. President," Smith agreed slowly. "Forgive me, but you should not remember any of this."

"That's why I called." The former President's voice became grave. "Listen, Smith, we've got a problem. I don't know if you heard, but I had a little accident."

Smith's thin lips pursed. "I did not."

"You're slipping in your old age," the ex-President said with a chuckle. "Before you hear otherwise, the horse bucked me. I did not fall. Anyway, something happened to me when I hit my head. I remembered."

Smith felt a knot of acid sickness in his empty belly.

"How much?"

"Too much. I remember it all. Everything. You. Your group. Heck, I remembered the number to call you. Although it wasn't hard. A bunch of ones punched over and over. Not very original."

Smith was still trying to comprehend all this. "How is this possible?" he asked, shaking his head.

"You tell me. Your men were supposed to give me some kind of memory-suppression hypnogobbledygook. Selective amnesia, and so forth."

"Didn't they?" Smith asked, not knowing whether to be hopeful that Remo had dropped the ball on this one.

"Sure. I remember them coming to me in the Oval the day before my vice president was sworn into office. I remember the old one bowing and pledging undying allegiance in that flowery way of his. I even remember him doing the whole amnesia thing to me, which I didn't before."

"So you're saying it did work until your accident?"

"Too well. I think it must have gone wrong somehow. They say I have Alzheimer's. And I know it must have looked like that. I remember getting worse. It's strange, Smith. I can actually remember forgetting. Everything's clear."

Smith was attempting to absorb what he was being told.

Of course he knew the former President had developed a degenerative brain disorder after leaving office. It had been announced by the ex-chief executive himself in a poignant letter to the American people. But it seemed as if this were only part of the story. Now Smith was learning that he might be the indirect cause of the President's illness.

"How do you wish to proceed, sir?" Smith asked after a moment of consideration.

"I think it's pretty obvious," the President replied amiably. "Your people still work for you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Even the old one?"

"Master Chiun is well."

"No kidding?" the President said with pleased surprise. "Gee whiz, Smith, whatever he's got, you should bottle it. Anyway, I expect they should pay me another visit. Fix up whatever it is that went wrong in the first place."

"I agree. Where are you?"

"Weizmann-Teacher's Hospital in Los Angeles."

"You are not in any immediate danger?"

"Only if they try serving me the cafeteria's blueplate special."

Smith considered. "I will contact CURE's enforcement arm at once and dispatch him and his trainer to California. Expect them sometime tomorrow."

"That'll be fine," the former President said warmly. "Maybe this time, they'll get it right."

It was said jokingly. In fact, there was no rancor in the old man's voice. He didn't seem angry in the least that he'd been robbed of a good part of the waning years of his life.

"If all goes well, we should not speak again," Smith said. He was already swiveling toward the blue phone.

"Too bad. I've missed our little talks. I suppose it's necessary, though, isn't it?"

"Yes, Mr. President. If there isn't anything else ... ?"

It was a very obvious hint.

"No." The former President hesitated a beat. "Smith?"

The CURE director had been about to hang up the phone. He brought the receiver back to his ear. "Yes, Mr. President?"

"It's nice to hear your voice."

Smith paused a heartbeat. In the darkness of his Folcroft office, he thought once more of how much times had changed. He took a deep breath as he thought of an earlier time, a better time.

"Yours, too, sir," he said, then hung up the phone.

Chapter 4

As soon as Remo steered his leased car into the parking lot of the local All-Nite Bombshell Video Store, he felt his jaw drop.

A Die Down IV poster was taped to the interior window just beside the automatic In door.

That was Chiun's movie.

It was impossible, but there it was. On the flattened one-sheet poster was the familiar lopsided grimace of Lance Wallace, the star of all the Die Down films.

The sweating actor was proudly stripped to the waist, his ample belly hanging over his belt. Apparently, no one in Hollywood was willing to tell the star that he was in dreadful physical shape. Streaks of Karo blood had been applied to his slick skin. Pictured behind him were at least five separate explosions.

Remo fought waves of dread as he pocketed his keys. Head spinning, he walked into the store. Inside, he made a beeline for the action-adventure rack. After much searching, he found a copy of the film. There were only two others behind it.

Remo went up to the counter, dropping his membership card and the plastic case containing the video before the young clerk.

"Good flick," the young man commented as he scanned the bar code on Remo's card. He slid the piece of thin plastic back across the counter.

"You've seen it?" Remo asked worriedly.

The kid nodded. "Just came in last night. A bunch of us stay and watch the movies sometimes. This is a good one."

"I heard it wasn't supposed to be released for a while."

The clerk talked as he slipped the movie into a yellow-and-blue Bombshell bag. "Lawyers worked out some deal between the estate of Quintly Tortilli and Taurus Studios. It was all done kind of quiet. Usually a movie that cost that much to produce gets at least a limited theatrical release. This one went straight to video for some reason."

He slid the bag down the counter, skirting the upright electronic sensor so that the film box didn't activate the store alarm.

"You don't have very many copies," Remo said, trying not to sound hopeful.

"Bombshell didn't order many. The demand isn't supposed to be that great. You're the first person to rent one. Too bad. Tortilli was a genius. He's like a hero to me. But we get a bunch of promotional stuff from the studios. I'm trying to get something started with the poster in the window. You know, to honor his memory."

"Yeah, I know," Remo said thinly.

He had met Tortilli. The man was responsible for a great many deaths and two situations that nearly resulted in the assassination of the President of the United States. Hardly a man who should be posthumously deified.

Remo collected his movie at the end of the counter and slipped out the door.

After he was gone, the clerk pulled out a battered movie rating guide. As he was scanning a bored eye over some of the more infuriatingly wrong reviews, he heard the In door hum open once more.

Only after a moment did he realize that no one had come into the store.

He looked up, puzzled.

It had been a slow night since the start of his shift. There was no sign of anyone near the automatic eye of the entrance.

As he looked at the door, something didn't look quite right. Whatever it was, he couldn't put his finger on it.

Oh, well. Shrugging, he returned to his book.

IN THE PARKING LOT outside, Remo used a repetitive slashing motion to reduce the twenty-seven-by-forty-inch Die Down IV poster to confetti. The shiny strips of paper that gathered at his feet looked as if they'd been run through a shredder. A faint breeze snagged them, blowing the long curling strands toward the street.

Gathering up the Bombshell bag from the hood of his car, Remo climbed in behind the wheel. There was something he hadn't dared to look at on either poster or videotape. Screwing up his courage, he pulled the plastic case from the bag. Lance Wallace's name was displayed prominently above the movie title. Remo looked below the title, at the other names listed in the fine print. He was interested in only one.

When he found the screenwriting credit, he stifled a laugh of relief.

"All I can say is, they're lucky they're all dead." He chuckled, shaking his head. "And I still wouldn't want to be in any of their shoes."

Grinning, he tossed the box onto the passenger's seat. Turning the key, he followed the wind-tossed poster shreds out onto the main drag.

Chapter 5

Chiun, Reigning Master of the House of Sinanju, was absolutely, positively not in a snotty mood. Far from it.

Oh, considering all he had been forced to endure at the hands of idiots in the past few months, no one was more entitled than him to lapse into such a state. But it was a testament to his superior ability to cope with buffoons that he was able to rise above his snot-provoking id.

Snot. A disgustingly vile term.

It was Remo's, of course. At various times over the days and weeks since Chiun's unhappy return from Hollywood, Remo had described him as being "on the snot" or "in a snotty mood." Everything came up effluvium to that boy.

Chiun dismissed not only the term, but the accusation.

He was as happy and devil-may-care as ever. A carefree soul unaffected by the vicissitudes of life. This was what he insisted to himself as he stomped through the empty condominium he shared with his pupil. As he slithered from room to room an ominous wraith in a black kimono-he slammed door after door. The echoes reached the street with the report of rifle cracks.

Who cared that he had been lied to by Hollywood producers? Such was life.

What did it matter that an untrustworthy director had ruined Chiun's first foray into motion pictures? There would be other opportunities.

Why should it matter that the film was being held from release by endless litigation? It was no skin off his nose.

Even though the world dealt him misery and abuse at every turn in his hundred-plus years of life, Chiun was happy. Happy, happy, happy.

The old Korean's tour of the house brought him back to the kitchen. He had completed this circuit a hundred times since Remo's departure that morning.

One bony hand snaked out from the concealment of a kimono sleeve. Popping the door open, he slipped inside the room, flinging the door shut behind him.

It struck the frame with a house-rattling crack. He moved through the kitchen to the door on the opposite side of the room.

Chiun had opened this door and was about to slam it shut when he heard a familiar rhythmic heartbeat move into his sphere of detection. It came from out front.

Leaving the door to creak shut on its own, the Master of Sinanju slipped into the hallway. He deliberately lowered his own heartbeat and stilled his other life signs to avoid detection.

The front door inched open a few seconds later. When Remo tried to sneak inside, Chiun sprang like an angry feline from the shadows of the foyer.

"Where have you been?" the old Asian asked accusingly, his voice a squeaky singsong.

Remo jumped back, startled. "Geez, I thought I canceled the attack order for tonight, Cato," he groused.

"I will not be distracted by your crazed non sequiturs," Chiun challenged, hands clenched in knots of bony anger. A thread of beard quivered at the tip of his upthrust, accusatory chin. "You are late."

"I wonder why," Remo grumbled to himself. He shut the door behind him, careful to keep from turning his back on Chiun. "And you're lucky the neighbors didn't complain about all that door slamming."

"They are lucky they didn't complain," the Master of Sinanju sniffed, adding, "And I do not know what you are talking about."

"Yeah, right," Remo said. "I heard it down the block."

Chiun's hazel eyes steeled. "Do not 'yeah right' me," he said, his voice even. The wizened Korean tucked his hands inside the sleeves of his kimono. Placing both sandals firmly on the floor in an impersonation of a five-foot-tall colossus, he struck an imperious pose. "While you were out prancing about the countryside like a retarded grosshopper, I reached a decision."

"That's grasshopper." Remo sighed.

"I know what I said," Chiun retorted coldly. Remo seemed eager to leave the foyer, but Chiun barred his way. For some reason, the younger man seemed to not wish to skirt the tiny Korean. Leaning carefully back against the door, he crossed his arms. "What's the big decision?" he asked, perturbed.

"You need to show me proper respect."

"I do show you respect," Remo said, careful not to move.

"Saying that I am 'on the snot' is not respect. It is vulgar insolence. As well as incorrect."

"If you say so," Remo agreed.

"That is the sort of thing to which I am referring," Chiun said, stomping his feet. "Everything is 'yeah right' this and 'if you say so' that. The Apprentice Reigning Master of Sinanju should not speak thusly to his master."

Remo had a flash of anger. "I don't know why you're dumping this all on me. Ever since we got back from L.A., I've been your personal punching bag. I'm not even the one you should be mad at, but you're ticked at me because you already killed everyone who was involved. I'm your whipping boy by default."

"Do not be ridiculous," Chiun retorted. "I have already forgotten my miserable adventure in that land of lies. It matters not to me that the chimpbrained prevaricators of Hollywood snared me in their web of deception. Why should I be concerned in the least that producers and directors possessed of morals that would shame a Manila streetwalker have treated me as they would the oaf with the bucket who follows the horse in a parade? If that ever mattered to me-which it did not-it does no longer. What matters to me now is the constant scorn you show me, your father in spirit."

"I don't do that," Remo said, the fight draining out of him. "We both know that you're pretty much the only thing that matters to me in the world."

Chiun's wrinkled face puckered in unhappy lines. "I did not wish for you to become mawkish," he complained.

"So what do you want?" Remo asked. Although his tone was exasperated, his expression was sincere. "I'll do anything you ask."

Remo meant it. He'd lived on edge for too long. It was like walking on eggshells every day. He just couldn't take it anymore.

He braced himself as the old man's wrinkled lips parted. He was ready for anything.

"Stop saying that I am in any way connected to snot," Chiun said, his face looking disgusted to even utter the word. "It is gross. And untrue."

The tension drained from Remo's shoulders. "I'll try, Little Father." He smiled. "Promise. Look, if that's all-"

"It is," Chiun interrupted, "save one small thing." He tipped his bald head inquisitively to one side. "Tell me what you have hidden behind your back."

Remo instantly straightened. "Uh, what do you mean?" he asked, a note of forced innocence in his tone.

"Please, Remo," Chiun derided impatiently. "If you were any more transparent, I could see whatever it is you are hiding behind your back."

"I'm not hiding anything," Remo challenged. "And don't you have a kitchen door to break?" Chiun's gaze narrowed. He didn't budge an inch. The prickling electricity that preceded attack raised the short hairs on Remo's forearms. He braced himself, already knowing what he'd do. When Chiun grabbed for the videotape he had tucked into the waistband of his trousers, Remo would yank the movie out from the other side. While the Master of Sinanju was distracted by his own search, Remo would lob the box through the open door of the living room where it would land silently on the sofa. He could then collect it later. A blur of movement before him. Chiun lunged as expected. The old man feinted right and darted left. A bony hand snaked around behind Remo.

Remo's own hand flew right, grabbing for the hard plastic video box. He plucked it free just as he felt the rush of displaced air from Chiun's flashing hand.

In a move so fast it was light-years beyond blindingly quick, he slipped the box up next to his head. As he'd done with the quarters at the rally in New York, he flicked his thumb. The box rocketed silently from his fingertips.

It didn't make it more than two feet on its path to the living room before another blur raced to intercept it.

As Remo's heart sank, the box jumped into Chiun's palm as if drawn by magnetic force. The old man's face was smug as he waggled the Die Down box.

"Predictable, as well as insolent," the wily Korean proclaimed with a superior smile.

"You don't want to see that," Remo cautioned quickly, grabbing at the box.

But Chiun held the video away from Remo. Curious eyes darted to the cover.

The rectangle of cardboard under a sheet of laminate was a shrunken version of the poster Remo had torn from the Bombshell store window. When Chiun read the title, his eyes grew wide with rage.

"What is this?" he demanded.

"I warned you," Remo replied. "Give it here." He made another fruitless grab at the box.

"How long have you known of this?" Chiun accused.

"I just found out tonight. It only came out this week."

Angry, Chiun flipped the plastic case around in his hand. Remo knew what he was looking for. He also knew that the Master of Sinanju wouldn't find it.

"Where is my name?" Chiun demanded hotly, glancing up at his pupil. His eyes were furious.

"I think that's it." Remo pointed at a name three lines up from the movie's director.

Chiun's eyes squeezed to walnut slits. "That is not my name," he said levelly. Every word dripped menace.

"It must be some kind of mistake," Remo offered with a shrug. "No one contacted you to make sure it was right?"

"Of course not," the old man spit viciously. "Do you think for one minute I would have allowed this-this slur to pass without my notice?" He brandished the video like a dagger beneath Remo's nose, so that his pupil could read the name on the box.

" 'Mr. Chin,'" Remo read obediently.

Chiun clapped palms to ears. "Do not speak it aloud!" he shrieked.

"It sounds Chinese."

"A worse insult there has never been," Chiun lamented, hands still pressed to the sides of his head. The video box stuck out like an angry black dorsal fin. "Why did they not make me Thai, or the lowest of the low-French?"

"I think I've got an explanation," Remo said. "Did you tell them you were Master Chiun?"

The Korean's shoulders straightened. "It was a term of respect. Something you would not understand."

"Oh, I understand," Remo nodded. "They thought Master was Mister."

"And this offense?" Chiun demanded, dropping his hands. His long, tapered index fingernail quivered as he indicated the name Chin.

"A simple typo," Remo suggested.

"Rest assured, simple type O will flood the streets of Hollywood when I lay hands on he who is responsible for this egregious insult," the Master of Sinanju warned.

"Before it gets that far, maybe we should check the movie itself."

"Why?" Chiun snapped. "What use is it to burrow inside a garbage heap?" He flung the box away in disgust.

"Because," Remo said reasonably, snatching up the video before it hit the floor, "it might not be wrong on the tape. I was going to check after you went to bed."

He popped open the box, removing the videotape. Chiun dogged him into the living room. Remo stopped in front of the VCR. After more than twenty years and a succession of replacements, he still wasn't sure how to use the device.

"You are saying that the mistake might only be on the case?" Chiun pressed from his elbow.

"I don't know," Remo said, frowning as he studied the VCR. "Does that top-hat-looking symbol mean on?"

Clucking, Chiun tugged the cassette from Remo's hand. With a slap, he fed the tape into the VCR. Whirring, the machine loaded the tape and began to play automatically.

As it ran through the first of several commercials, Remo picked up the universal remote and switched on the big-screen TV. In the meantime, Chiun settled to a lotus position on the floor before the television.

"Can't we fast-forward this?" Remo complained as the tape ran through an ad for the second Die Down film.

"Shh!"

Remo sank to the floor, as well, careful to stay out of hand or foot range. He braced his chin on one hand. In addition to commercials for the first three Die Down movies, there were ads for a soft drink, a candy bar, a minivan, two competing software companies and an upcoming animated feature from the Walt Disney company.

"I thought people rented movies to get away from ads," Remo griped as the commercials passed the twenty-minute mark.

"Leave the room if you cannot be quiet," Chiun ordered.

He had barely spoken before the movie finally started.

The opening credits were superimposed over a scene depicting some sort of terrorist training camp. Apparently, it was supposed to be in Ireland if the pathetic accents the actors were attempting were any indication. To Remo, they all sounded like bad versions of the leprechaun from the Lucky Charms ads.

When the screen terrorists began to slaughter a group of drug-dealing Catholic church officials, Remo sat straighter. The scene appeared to be coming to an end, which meant the credits had to be almost over.

As a blood-smeared bishop carrying an Uzi he'd had hidden in his miter dropped in slow motion into an open grave, the thing they had both been waiting for finally appeared: "Story by Quintly Tortilli "

"Aiiee!"

The scream rose up from the wounded depths of Chiun's very soul. So quickly did the old man spring from the floor, not even Remo's highly trained eyes could follow. The Master of Sinanju materialized next to the VCR in an instant. He slammed his hand to the machine's face.

As Chiun ejected the tape, Remo jumped to his feet.

"Chiun, wait-!" Too late.

The tape popped out into Chiun's bony hand. The other hand swung around, kimono sleeve billowing like an angry black cloud. When the hands met, the tape between them was pulverized to tiny black shards. Spools of black tape exploded out either side.

Chiun dusted the plastic fragments to the floor. "Heads will roll!" he exploded.

Remo ignored the tirade. He knelt beside the smashed remains of the videotape.

"Dammit, Chiun, I rented that with my card," he complained. "Now I'm gonna have to pay for it."

"Oh, someone will pay," Chiun intoned seriously, his face a menacing mask. "But it will not be you."

With that, the old Korean spun on his heel and stormed from the room. When he slammed his bedroom door a moment later, the entire house shook with the vibrations. Remo felt the rattling dissipate beneath the soles of his loafers.

"At least for a change it's not me," he muttered. Rising to his feet, he went off in search of a dustpan and brush.

Chapter 6

The nine o'clock sun the next morning was shining warmly through the kitchen window the next morning and Remo was trying to decide what to make for breakfast when he noticed the broken telephone.

The phone sat on the counter. The plastic tab that plugged into the wall jack had been crushed. Only when he was looking at this phone did Remo notice that the one that ordinarily hung from the wall was missing entirely. A bare spot stared back at him from where it had been.

He found the phone stuffed in the trash.

Since the previous night's outburst, the Master of Sinanju had yet to emerge from his room. Remo went to the bottom of the stairs.

"Chiun! Did somebody call while I was in New York?"

"Go away!" Chiun's disembodied voice shouted back.

Remo didn't press the issue. Walking into the living room, he noted that a few black plastic videotape chips had been ground into the rug. He'd vacuum them up later. For now, he looked for the phone that was ordinarily on the lamp table.

He found it. Or what remained of it.

The phone was little more than a pile of stringy multicolored wires and broken tan plastic. Chiun had stuffed the remnants underneath a corner of the rug.

"Smith," Remo muttered with a certain nod. He pushed the phone debris back under the carpet. Leaving breakfast for later, he stepped outside into the morning sunlight. Enjoying the warming rays on his face, he walked down the street to a pay phone.

Humming, Remo stabbed the 1 button repeatedly. The familiar connections sounded in his ear as the call was routed to the Folcroft office of Harold Smith. The CURE director answered on the first ring.

"Hello?" Smith's tart voice asked sharply.

"Hiya, Smitty."

"Remo?" There was a cautious edge to his tone.

"Of course it's me," Remo said. "Hey, did you call me last night?"

Any relief the CURE director might have felt was overwhelmed by annoyance.

"Where the devil have you been?" Smith demanded.

The older man's aggravation was contagious. "You're on the rag a little early this month, aren't you?" Remo asked.

"I tried calling a number of times," Smith insisted. Some of the tension drained from his voice. He seemed relieved to finally be talking to Remo. "There is something wrong with your phone line."

"Yeah," Remo dodged. "Gotta have Ma Bell look into that. What's up?"

"An unusual assignment that requires a certain level of both delicacy and discretion has presented itself," Smith said. "It involves the Sinanju amnesia technique. It would seem that a former United States President has regained knowledge of us."

Remo was instantly concerned. "Not Peanut Boy?" he asked.

The President to which he referred now worked on the Hovels for Humans program, building shanties and lean-tos for indigents. Remo had a sudden mental image of a crack-addicted, pregnant teen runaway roofer with a mouthful of nails accidentally dropping a hammer on the retired President's head.

"No," Smith replied, setting Remo's mind at ease. "His successor. The former chief executive was bucked by a horse and knocked unconscious. The accident triggered his memory."

Remo was stunned. "Smitty, he's got to be a million by now. What the hell's a guy his age doing on a horse?"

"It was supposed to be a photo opportunity," Smith answered thinly. "A foolish stunt, given his condition."

"You got that right," Remo agreed. A thought occurred to him. "Plus, doesn't he have Alzheimer's? How do you even know he remembers?"

"He called me," Smith stressed. "It seems that our agency is not all that he remembers. If his conversation with me was not simply a moment of bizarre clarity, I assume that the symptoms he has displayed over the past few years have been a direct result of the Sinanju amnesia technique."

"Hmm," Remo mused. "I never heard of it affecting anyone like that. In fact, I don't know of anyone who it's ever come undone on before except Hardy Bricker. Remember that whole RX thing a few years back?"

"Of course," Smith said vaguely. "And perhaps you should discuss this with Chiun. After you have taken care of the President."

"Gotcha. He still in California?"

"Yes," Smith said. "I want you to visit him as soon as possible. There is no great urgency to the situation, but I do not feel comfortable having someone outside the loop with knowledge of our existence. Not even a former President."

"No sweat. We'll give him a double whammy."

"Er, Remo," Smith offered slowly, "perhaps you should handle this alone."

"Chiun's better at this than I am," Remo replied. "But is he not the one who performed the procedure the first time?"

"Yeah," Remo replied. "But you can't say this is his fault. By my tally, he's four and one with retired Presidents."

"I understand that," Smith agreed. "But news of the accident has leaked. The press has staked out the hospital. It will not be easy for you and Chiun to get in undetected. If I had been able to contact you last night-"

"But you didn't," Remo interrupted. "Guess you dropped the ball there." Before Smith could bring up the trouble he'd had calling, Remo asked, "What hospital is he in?"

Smith sighed. With practiced patience, he gave Remo not only the hospital's name, but the top-secret room number of the ex-President.

"Relax, Smitty. This'll all be a memory by tonight," Remo promised once the CURE director was through. "And don't worry. All follow-up visits are freebies."

Smiling, he hung up the phone. Hand still on the receiver, he turned toward his house.

"Now comes the tricky part," he muttered. Leaving the pay phone, he headed back down the sidewalk toward Castle Sinanju and its stewing occupant.

Chapter 7

The former President of the United States could not believe how much he had forgotten. Nor how much he now remembered. It was as if for the past six years he had been in a long, foggy twilight from which he was only now emerging.

The sunlight that shone through the tinted glass of his private hospital suite was brilliant. The blinds were partly angled to keep out prying eyes.

Touring the rooms in his blue pajamas, hands stuffed in the pockets of his terry-cloth robe, the President paused at a bedroom window. He used his fingers to crack two blind slats.

Reporters were on the street eight stories below. Camped out like vultures. Most had accepted the assignment gleefully, thinking they were on a death watch. It wasn't surprising. The press had never had a kind word to say about him.

"You fellas are in for the shock of your life," the ex-President whispered in the soft, playful tone that was at one time familiar to all Americans.

He checked the digital clock on his nightstand for what seemed like the millionth time.

It was 6:00 a.m., Pacific Standard Time. He had called Smith late the previous evening.

He wasn't concerned that Smith's men wouldn't show up. Smith had always been reliable. The lemony voiced man had gotten America out of more than a few scrapes during the former President's tenure in office.

Once Smith's people got here and worked their magic, the ex-President could get on with what remained of his life. He would lose his memory of CURE, but that was as it should be. It wasn't right for more than four people to know of the agency at one time: Smith, his two special people and the current U.S. President. That had always been the way with CURE. Four was enough. More than that would risk exposure.

He tried to think of how many ex-Presidents were still alive.

One had died a few years back, he thought. If memory served, there were four remaining, including himself. If those men who were retired hadn't been given amnesia, that would make eight men total to know of CURE. Far too many. Smith was right to make departing Presidents forget.

The President released the blinds. He wandered back across the room, taking a seat at the foot of his bed.

It was difficult to reconcile some bits of memory. His mind had struggled to record some things over the past few years, but it seemed as if they hadn't been properly filed. Everything before the onset of his brain disease was crystal clear, however. Smith told him on the phone the previous evening that both of his operatives were still with the agency. Things were still fuzzy last night, so soon after the accident. But the more he thought of it, the more he knew that wasn't right.

The young one was dead. That's what Smith had told him years ago, during the waning days of his presidency. Not only that, but the old one had supposedly quit CURE over a contractual clause.

For some reason, Smith had lied to him. It didn't trouble the former President in the least. If there was one thing he remembered about the taciturn Smith, it was that he was a good man. The kind America used to turn out like good, solid reliable cars or black-and-white two-reelers where the black hat always lost and the white hat always, always won. The former President trusted that the director of CURE had a reason for keeping him in the dark back then. Just as he trusted that Smith would send his men as promised to right their mistake.

As he sat patiently, hands upon his knees, the door to his bedroom opened. A doctor in a white coat and green surgical scrubs entered. The blue stitching on his coat identified him as Dr. Kahler.

For an instant, the former President saw the familiar black suit of one of his Secret Service guards standing stoically in the hallway.

The doctor frowned as the door swung shut.

"You should be in bed, Mr. President," he said seriously.

"Do you have any idea how much sleep I've gotten the past six years?" the President asked with a wry smile. "That sandman fella and I are on a firstname basis."

The doctor's expression remained somber. "Be that as it may, you're going to have to lie down while I examine you. Please."

Dr. Kahler tried to ease the former President onto his back. Although he was much older than the doctor, the President didn't budge.

"I know you're just trying to do your job, and that's fine," the ex-President said, his voice firm. "But I've been examined all night long. If you want to poke and prod me again, you're going to do it while I'm sitting up."

The doctor pursed his lips. "Yes, sir."

When he tried to unbutton the blouse of the President's pajamas, strong hands pushed him away. Mouth twisted in mild displeasure, the President opened his own shirt.

Dr. Kahler saw at once that his famous patient was in amazingly good shape for a man his age. Some old, faint scarring around the chest from an assassination attempt nearly two decades before. A stethoscope showed that lungs and heart were fine. His pulse rate would have put to shame a man a quarter of his age.

"How's the head this morning?" the doctor asked as the President buttoned his pajamas once more.

"On straight," the former President replied.

"Headache?"

"A little. It hurts behind my eyes."

Dr. Kahler nodded. "We were worried about a concussion, but everything looks okay today. X rays don't show any fluid build-up like the last time you fell off your horse."

"I was bucked," the President insisted. "And if it was a concussion, why didn't you folks keep me awake? Isn't that what you're supposed to do?"

The doctor hesitated. "Actually, we kind of thought under the circumstances...ah..." His voice trailed off.

"My daughter, right?" the President said, eyes level.

The physician shifted uncomfortably. He cleared his throat. "She thought it would be best."

"To let me just drift off." The President shook his head. "She was always so worried about everyone else's shadow, she never really tried to cast one of her own." He exhaled loudly. It was a sigh of regret. "What about my wife?" he asked, looking up suddenly.

"According to the news, she's on her way back from Washington," Dr. Kahler said.

At the mention of his former residence, a wistful smile drew up the deep crags of the old man's face. "The shining city on a hill," he uttered softly. The doctor's brow furrowed at the words. The man on the bed obviously hadn't been to Washington in quite a while.

The ex-chief executive's tan, wrinkled face had taken on a contented expression as he stared into space.

This wasn't right, Dr. Kahler thought. Everyone knew that the former President was suffering from Alzheimer's. He had a degenerative brain disorder that was incurable. There was no way the man should ever have been this lucid for this long so far into his bout with the disease.

But he seemed fine. He recognized faces of family members when shown pictures of them. The same for people from his days as governor of California and as President. Even though he'd only awakened a few hours ago, he already knew many of the doctors and nurses on staff at Weizmann-Teacher's Hospital by name.

Never in his thirty years as a physician had Dr. Kahler heard of an instance where a blow to the head restored memory in an individual with Alzheimer's. Even if one threw all logic out the window and accepted the premise that the former President's fall had somehow miraculously healed him, it still should only have arrested the progress of the disease, locked it in at its current level. Not only had that not happened, but somehow the irreversible process had been rolled back. It was impossible. Yet...

In his head, Dr. Kahler was already sketching the rough outline of the paper he would publish on this remarkable case when he heard the first sounds of commotion beyond the closed hospital-room door. There were muffled shouts, followed by something that sounded like firecrackers going off. "What's that din?" the doctor asked, taking a step toward the door.

Behind him, the President stood slowly, a worried look on his deeply furrowed face. "It doesn't sound good," he answered. The noises were familiar. He remembered similar sounds from a March day years ago.

"Well, this is a hospital," Dr. Kahler said, marching briskly to the door.

The President lunged. He tried to grab him. Tried to stop him. But Dr. Kahler was too far away. The physician flung open the door and marched into the hallway.

As the President held his breath, there came another pop. This one much louder than the rest. The doctor stumbled back into the room a moment later, a thin line of blood dribbling from a spot dead center in his pale forehead. Black powder burns surrounded the bullet hole.

Sightless eyes turning to the horrified former President, the doctor dropped to his knees. He flopped forward, a look of dull incomprehension on his face.

The President was already moving, propelled by shock. He raced past the body and over to the door.

A closet was beside him as he pressed his back against the wall.

Shouts issued from the hall.

The Secret Service men who'd been guarding the door were dead. Otherwise, they would have swarmed into the room to protect him. His detachment was small. Only a few men. Not like the old days. Not enough against an all-out assault.

Footsteps coming closer. Pounding up the hall. Holding his breath, the President fumbled behind him, curling one hand around the cold steel handle of the closet's door. The instant he did so, a face poked into the room. Furtive eyes darted over to the bed. A paisley bandanna covered both mouth and nose.

The intruder was armed.

Automatic rifle balanced before him, he took a cautious step into the room, not seeing the former President plastered against the wall to his right.

A sudden creak.

Eyes turned away from the unmade bed, opening in shock at the sight of the ex-chief executive. Something else cut into view. Fast. Hard.

The closet door slammed full force into the intruder's face. Forehead cracked and bleeding, the man fell backward into the hallway. His gun dropped, useless, to his chest. The President jumped forward and grabbed the man by the ankles, struggling to drag him back into the room. If he could just get his gun...

Other shouts. Running footsteps. A shadow falling over him. Crouching, the President froze. He glanced up.

Two terrorists towered above him. Like the first, bandannas obscured their features. Still more intruders ran up the hallway, jumping over the bodies of his Secret Service detachment.

"We got him, man!" a nearby voice exulted beneath a flowery bandanna. Sweat had broken out across the visible portion of his face. His pupils were pinpricks.

Still squatting, the President reached a rapid decision. If he was going to die then, dammit, he'd die like a man.

He lunged for the nearest man.

In his younger days, he'd been strong and spry. But he was old now. Slow. Too slow.

In a panic, the gunman sidestepped the old man's awkward attack, stumbling hard against the door frame. As he dropped back, another intruder jumped forward, swinging the butt of his rifle down against the side of the President's head.

The old man saw a brilliant explosion of light ...followed by a shroud of pure enveloping darkness.

The fog was thick and impenetrable. The President's last thought before he toppled onto the cold hallway floor was of his wife. He hoped she could forgive their daughter. The final light of reality flickered and was gone.

THE OLD MAN at their feet was a lifeless mannequin. The masked men swarmed around the weather-beaten body.

"You hit him!" one accused.

"Is he dead?" another asked.

"Get the tranq," commanded a third.

A syringe was brought forward. The needle was jabbed into the ex-President's arm.

"Should we get his clothes?" the man who had administered the injection asked, his bandanna sopped with sweat. He tossed away the syringe.

"Yes! But hurry!"

As one man dashed into the room, the others grabbed the former President under the armpits. He was deadweight. Grunting, they began to drag the old man rapidly down the hall past the bloodied bodies of the Secret Service agents.

"He's gonna be in for one hell of a surprise when he wakes up," one of them enthused, the outline of his mouth quivering wetly beneath his multicolored bandanna.

"If he wakes up," cautioned another. "We were just supposed to use the tranquilizers on him."

The man who had bashed the elderly ex-President in the head shrugged. "It's a kind of tranquilizer," he snarled. "Besides, he doesn't deserve any better."

They dumped the ex-President into a laundry cart near a nurses' station. Behind the desk, two RNs were sprawled on the floor, glassy eyes staring blindly at fluorescent lights. Crimson stains seeped from their bellies onto crisp white uniforms.

Two men helped up the groggy terrorist the President had coldcocked. Running now, the group wheeled the cart away from the desk and onto a rear service elevator.

A moment later, the silver doors slid across the bloody scene of carnage with barely a whisper.

Chapter 8

Chiun didn't kill anyone on the long cross-country plane trip from Boston to Los Angeles. Remo considered this not only a blessing, but a surprise.

At first, Remo was worried that the Master of Sinanju wouldn't even want to accompany him to California. The old Korean's troubles with Hollywood were far too fresh. But Chiun had agreed readily.

The flight had been surprisingly peaceful. On their way through the crowded LAX terminal, there were no sudden and mysterious bloody noses or severed ears on anyone they passed. In fact, as they headed off in search of a cab, Chiun even managed a sympathetic smile for a harried young woman hauling two crying children.

His teacher's uncharacteristically placid behavior made Remo intensely uneasy.

Chiun was building to something. The Master of Sinanju was planning to use his time on the West Coast to wreak some sort of terrible vengeance against those who he thought had perpetrated injustices against him. But to Remo's knowledge, there wasn't anybody left for the old Korean to kill.

"Quintly Tortilli is dead, Little Father," Remo reminded Chiun in the cab on the way from LAX to the hospital.

"And rightly so," Chiun replied calmly. "He was a foul-mouthed liar who endangered Emperor Smith's charge, the corpulent marionette. However, that is all water under the bridge."

"We're not stopping by Taurus," Remo warned.

"That studio no longer exists," Chiun answered.

"Neither do Bindle and Marmelstein," Remo suggested, naming the studio chiefs who had betrayed Chiun during the making of his film.

"This is true," Chiun mused. He tipped his head to one side, considering. "Perhaps I will visit their graves to pay my respects."

"You're not going to dig them up and try to kill them again, are you?" Remo asked worriedly. Chiun raised a thin eyebrow.

"Now, Remo, you are being silly."

"Can you blame me?" Remo asked. "Last night, you were ready to tear all of Hollywood a new A-hole. Now you're acting sweeter than a Prozac pixie stick. It's scary as all hell."

"Meet the new me," Chiun announced airily, waving a long-nailed hand. "I am like a duck."

"Short and greasy?"

Chiun frowned at his pupil. "Everything runs off my back," he explained.

"Yeah?" Remo said doubtfully. "We'll see." When they arrived at Weizmann-Teacher's Hospital, they found a gaggle of reporters standing in an unhappy knot in front of the main parking area. Dozens of news vans emblazoned with station call letters blocked the ambulance entrance. Satellite dishes from the network and local news vehicles pointed skyward.

Cables snaked from trucks to videocameras and lights.

Hoping to avoid the newspeople, Remo instructed the cabdriver to drop them off down the street. As the taxi drove away, he and Chiun walked up the sidewalk to the hospital.

Only a few reporters stood before cameras to offer taped digests for hourly news updates. The rest lounged around the area, bored expressions on their plastic-surgery-tightened and makeup enhanced faces.

There were several card games in progress. Smith had been worried that Chiun might call attention to them, but Remo saw as they approached that only a few faces looked in their direction. These quickly turned away in disinterest. A kimono in L.A. just wasn't news.

As Remo and Chiun slipped behind one cameraman, a female reporter was summing up her taped spot.

"Few have shown up here outside the hospital to wait out the end of the former President. No doubt, most have realized the damage his monster deficits and hate mongering caused this nation. The most evil man in American history, or just a misguided old fool? You be the judge. Konchacata Badadada reporting."

She waited a few seconds before dropping her microphone. The woman seemed very pleased with her unbiased work.

As the reporter handed off her microphone to an intern, Remo tapped her cameraman on the shoulder. "Did she just say they're waiting for him to die?" he asked.

"That's what we've been hearing," the cameraman said.

Remo frowned, assuming he'd just wasted his time coming all the way to California to give selective amnesia to someone who was already knocking on death's door.

"Who's saying it," he asked, "the hospital?"

The cameraman shook his head. "Him," he replied, pointing to a spot closer to the main hospital doors.

The Big Three networks had bullied their way to the front of the line as soon as they'd arrived on the scene, staking out the prime reporting real estate. Remo saw a giant A peeking out from one of the parked network vans. The other two letters were obscured by a bizarre-looking man in a dark blue suit and fire-engine-red tie.

He looked half vulture, half Vulcan and all Satan. Demonic eyebrows-painted black-rose at crooked angles above eyes that were twin lasers of focused malice. The mouth was twisted back in a constipated rictus. Worst of all was the hair. The man wore a ghastly jet-black toupee that was so flat it looked as if it had been run through a clothes wringer and secured in place with shellac.

Remo recognized the hairpiece even before he saw the man. Stan Ronaldman. Longtime political reporter for one of the big networks.

While the ex-President inside the hospital was in office, Ronaldman had been the White House correspondent. The reporter had a hatred for the President that was so obvious and so visceral it was almost as if he blamed the chief executive for the genes that had cursed him with his own hairless pate. His infamous bile was on full display as Remo and Chiun approached.

"Isn't he confirmed dead yet?" Ronaldman was complaining to a harried producer.

"There's still a news blackout," the woman replied.

"I think something might have happened." Ronaldman clapped his hands together ecstatically. Dull eyes bugged out over a corpselike smile. "Dead. That's the only explanation," he enthused.

"I'm not sure, Stan," the producer warned. The woman was listening to something on a headset that ran into the open back of the news van. "There's lots of weird radio stuff going back and forth. All kinds of yelling and code words that aren't in any of our source books. I think all those cars that showed up early this morning were Feds or something."

"More government waste," Ronaldman complained, shaking his toupeed head. "He specialized in that." His happiness at the thought of the former President's death shifted to anger, a change in expression so subtle it was barely discernible. "So I suppose now we'll have a big state funeral at taxpayer expense. Why don't we just throw him in a landfill somewhere and spend all that wasted funeral and B-1 bomber money where the people want it? On follicle-stimulation research and sheep-ranch subsidies."

"What's national defense or honoring a beloved political icon when you could be getting mohair aid from Washington?"

"Exactly," Ronaldman enthused. His tight smile returned as he sought out the source of the voice behind him.

The reporter was surprised at the very odd couple he found. One was an Asian who was as old as the hills around Ronaldman's own Arizona sheep ranch. The other was a thin Caucasian in a white T-shirt and black Chinos.

"Is the President okay?" Remo asked, noting the many news vans.

"Ex-President," Ronaldman stressed. "And he's dead. Dead as a five-hundred-dollar Pentagon toilet seat."

"Possibly," his producer cautioned from her post on the van floor. The woman turned away, grateful to have Ronaldman distracted, even if only for a moment.

"Don't listen to Madame de Gloom over there," Ronaldman insisted. "I say he's dead, and I should know. After all, I have been interviewed extensively on the subject by my colleagues in the press."

"Interviewed?" Remo asked. "Aren't you supposed to be reporting on this thing?"

"I have a history with the late former President," Ronaldman replied. "People are interested in what I have to say."

The reporter glanced momentarily at Chiun.

The Master of Sinanju had sidled up to Ronaldman. Hands behind his back, he was standing on tiptoes, the better to see the glistening black wig plastered to the man's skull. He dropped quickly to the soles of his sandals when Ronaldman looked his way. Chiun whistled casually.

"Forget about the fact that it's supposed to be your job to report, not offer commentary," Remo said, tearing his own eyes from Chiun. "What was the last official word from the hospital on his condition?"

"Of course I don't trust them to give the real story," Ronaldman sniffed. "But they claim he only bumped his head. There were early reports that his brain condition had somehow been miraculously healed, but I don't buy it. Propaganda. Plain and simple. Everyone inside the Beltway knows he had Alzheimer's when he was in the White House. If they don't know, I tell them."

As the reporter was speaking, Chiun surreptitiously signaled Remo. Pointing at Ronaldman's toupee, he covered his mouth with one hand, stifling a silent laugh.

"Knock it off, Chiun," Remo groused.

Sensing movement, Ronaldman twisted sharply to Chiun. He found the Master of Sinanju standing placidly, hands clasped behind his back. Face growing even more suspicious, the reporter turned back to Remo.

"So, as far as you know, he's fine," Remo pressed.

"He's dead," Ronaldman insisted. "About a hundred of those government cars showed up here around seven this morning. They're part of his funeral procession."

"Government cars?" Remo asked. "Are you sure?"

"I've been in Washington long enough to know what G-men drive," Ronaldman replied aridly. Satanic eyebrows rising in disdain, he turned from his insulting visitor.

Remo frowned at that information. Would so many government vehicles show up in the wake of a simple accident for a man who hadn't been President for more than a decade? Only if he had something important to tell them.

Remo's worried thoughts were of CURE as he turned to Chiun. "Let's go, Little Father," he said tightly.

Walking briskly, Remo and the Master of Sinanju headed for the hospital doors. They had gone only a few paces when Remo noticed something in Chiun's hands.

It was flat, black and shiny. And hairy.

"What are you doing with that?" Remo demanded. He nodded to Stan Ronaldman's wig, which dangled like a harpooned rat from one of the Master of Sinanju's long fingernails.

"He annoyed me," Chiun replied flatly.

"Dammit, Chiun, he annoys everybody." Remo shot a look back to the news van. Ronaldman was as bald as a plucked chicken. He fussed around the open door of the van, pale head slathered in dry glue, oblivious to what had transpired. The reporter had yet to notice the draft on his scalp.

A crowd of smiling gawkers was beginning to form.

"Is this some kind of latent hostility from this whole Die Down fiasco?" Remo whispered harshly.

"Latent?" Chiun asked blandly. "Forgive me, Remo. I thought I was being obvious."

"Har-de-har-har," Remo said, voice hushed. "Now get rid of that thing before we have to spray you for chiggers."

"It does look diseased," Chiun said, examining his prize. "Very well. But I do not want to hear a complaint when you get nothing on your next birthday."

With a snap of his wrist, he launched the toupee back in the direction from whence they'd come. The hairpiece soared like a flung Frisbee. It ate up the distance in an instant. With a thick splat, it attached itself like a remora over the C in the network logo on the side of the news van.

When Ronaldman turned toward the odd sound, he saw what looked like a giant, flattened tarantula glued to the truck's side. Only after he saw his own reflection in the glistening black surface of the nylon hair did he realize what it was. His eyes grew as wide as fried eggs.

"Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!" the reporter screamed. Desperate, he flung one hand, his arm, his necktie, anything he could up over his head, even as he unstuck the wig from the side of the truck. Wilted toupee in hand, he dove inside the van amid a chorus of laughter from the gathered media.

Remo turned from the rocking van, his eyes flat. "This an example of the new you?" he asked dryly.

"Do not worry, Remo," Chiun assured him. "Deep down, I am still the same person I always was."

Spinning on his heel, the old man marched toward the main entrance.

"That's what worries me," Remo muttered.

He trailed the Master of Sinanju through the throng of press to the hospital.

Chapter 9

According to Smith, the former President was in a private east-wing suite on the eighth floor. Remo intended to ride the elevator up to eight, but the car had other plans. It stopped on the sixth floor. The doors slid open on the solemn face of a muscular Secret Service agent. A thin white cord ran from jacket to ear.

"I'm sorry, but you can't go any higher," the agent insisted.

"Sure, I can," Remo said.

He pressed the button for the eighth floor, and the doors began to slide shut. The Secret Service agent pushed them back open.

"The eighth floor has been evacuated."

"But Aunt Iggy's expecting us," Remo informed him.

"There's been an emergency," the agent explained. "A gas leak."

"Sounds like Aunt Iggy." Remo nodded to Chiun.

"Stop being stupid," Chiun said. He jabbed a nail-into the eighth-floor button. The doors slid silently shut ...and promptly opened once more.

"The elevators will not function above this level," the agent informed them, "Because of the gas leak, floors seven through ten have been completely evacuated. If you're looking for a patient, I'd advise you to try the main desk."

Remo shook his head. "Nothing's ever easy," he mumbled. "And next time, I'd suggest the brain trust at Treasury come up with a better cover story. If the Secret Service is worried about gas leaks, you could've stayed in Washington. After his regular six Big Mac breakfast, the guy in the White House has it coming out both ends."

At Remo's mention of the Secret Service, the agent was instantly alert. A hand darted beneath his jacket.

Before the man even touched the butt of his automatic, Remo's own hand flew forward. He pinched a spot at the agent's elbow, locking the man's arm in place.

Desperate, the Secret Service man clamped on the wrist microphone in his other hand. It wasn't there. Trailing wires, the unit had been plucked from his belt. The earpiece came loose with a loud pop. When the agent glanced up, Chiun was examining the radiomicrophone.

"Are you able to hear The Jack Benny Program on this device?" he asked.

"You men are in deep trouble," the Secret Service agent threatened in reply. He yanked at his frozen arm. It wouldn't budge.

"No, Little Father," Remo supplied.

"A shame," Chiun said, shaking his head. "I used to listen to his program many years ago in Sinanju. He was quite amusing. Although Rochester was the true star."

With a blur of tapered fingers, he smashed the entire radio transceiver to shards.

"There's no way out," the agent warned. "Give it up."

"In a sec," Remo promised. "Questions first." As the Secret Service agent complained, Remo used his elbow grip to bounce the man into a nearby room. Two vacant beds with crisp white sheets were pushed against the wall.

"Okay, what's the deal?" he demanded after the Master of Sinanju closed the door behind them. "The guy bumped his head. I'm assuming you aren't all here to deliver aspirin."

The agent refused to reply. Screwing his mouth tightly shut, he leveled his eyes on the closed door. Remo pinched the agent's elbow.

Bolts of white-hot fiery acid burst from the joint, exploding out into his extremities. He gasped in pain.

"The old President was kidnapped," the man blurted.

Remo's stomach tightened. "Kidnapped? When?"

"Hours ago. Early morning." The agent's eyes were watering.

Remo glanced at the Master of Sinanju. "Looks like this is bigger than we thought," he said grimly.

"Why is that?" Chiun sniffed. "If one of your rulers is missing, vote yourselves another. Every time I turn around, you people are anointing a new one. What this nation needs is the stability only a lifelong despot can bring."

Remo wished he could share the old Korean's cavalier attitude. He turned his attention back to the Secret Service man. "Any leads?" he pressed, squeezing tighter.

"None that I'd be privy to." The agent winced. "The President's detail was shot. Lot of other people, too. Doctors, nurses. No witnesses. They got away scot free."

Remo's brow was dark. "What about all those ditzes out front with cameras?"

"Kidnappers used a back exit. No press there."

"Security cameras?"

"I don't know." The agent was pleading by now. He had given up everything he knew. Wordlessly, Remo tapped a single finger dead center in the man's forehead. The Secret Service agent stiffened as if in shock, then the air slipped from him and he slumped forward. Remo dumped the unconscious agent onto one of the empty beds.

"So much for the simple assignment," he groused as he flung a blanket over the man.

"Do not complain to me," the Master of Sinanju warned, folding his arms. "You were never called Chinese in a major film franchise. Everything else pales in comparison."

"I thought we weren't talking about that," Remo said, only half listening. He was trying to think what their next move should be. "And this is much worse. Smith said the old President remembered all about us."

"Good," Chiun retorted with a satisfied nod. "Let the aged one sing our praises from the rooftops of the nation he once led. Maybe I will finally get some proper recognition."

"Smitty'd love that," Remo grumbled. "Speaking of which, I'd better call him. He's gonna want to know about this if he hasn't already heard."

Cruel face etched in lines of deep concern, Remo reached for the room phone.

HAROLD SMITH HAD LEARNED Of the former President's kidnapping an hour earlier. Although the news had not yet filtered out to the mainstream press, it was spreading like wildfire through official government channels. It was only a matter of time before the public learned of the abduction.

A blue bottle of antacid sat on Smith's desktop. He had opened the bottle three times in the past sixty minutes. Given the nature of the crisis, there was no sense putting it away.

Each new report Smith read added to the growing tidal wave of nausea welling up within him. Someone possessed with knowledge of CURE was in the hands of an unknown force.

The kidnappers were vicious and ruthless. They had killed more than twenty people in their murderous route from the hospital subbasement parking area to the ex-President's eighth-floor room.

Their identity was still a mystery.

Smith's mind reeled as he considered the possible suspects. As a result of this President's very public convictions, the list of potential enemies was vast.

The massive mainframes hidden behind a secret wall in the sanitarium's basement had been working overtime since the start of the crisis. Dubbed the Folcroft Four by Smith in a rare display of creativity, the computers had compiled a detailed list of the most likely suspects.

Smith had always found organization to be the key to every successful operation. To this end, he had initiated a program that divided the huge list into two separate sections: homegrown threats and those from abroad.

It was a coin toss to decide which category of potential culprits he should begin sifting through first. In the end, Smith decided to go with those at home, for the simple fact that the former President was kidnapped while on American soil. He would expand the search as circumstances dictated.

Alone in his drab office, Smith lowered his hands to the special capacitor keyboard buried beneath the lip of his gleaming black desk. Casting a final, longing glance at his antacid bottle, he began to sift through page after electronic page of likely suspects. He had barely gone over a dozen names when the familiar jangle of the blue contact phone cut through the tomblike silence of his office.

Behind his desk, Smith froze.

The ex-President had called on that very phone the night before. It was possible that this was him once more. This time in the hands of an unknown enemy.

Realizing that the ringing phone might be sounding the death knell of both himself and the organization he led, Harold W. Smith wrapped an arthritic hand around the receiver: With great deliberateness, he answered it. Blood pounded in his ear.

"Yes," he said, his voice totally devoid of any inflection.

"The President's been kidnapped."

At the sound of Remo's voice, Smith released a mouthful of bile-scented air. He hadn't even realized he had been holding his breath.

"I have heard," Smith said. He spoke in precise, measured tones. "You and your associate should return to home base at once."

Remo sounded puzzled. "My associate? You mean Chiun?"

"Please, no names!" Smith insisted sharply.

"Cheez, what's wrong with you, Smitty? Somebody spike your Maatox?"

The CURE director's heart did a somersault at the mention of his own name. "I am sorry, sir, you have the wrong number," Smith spluttered, lamely covering. Fumbling, he quickly hung up the phone.

It rang within three seconds. Smith did his best to ignore it.

Remo obviously didn't appreciate the gravity of this situation. If the former President had given away even a small bit of information to his captors-Folcroft, Sinanju, Smith-the organization could already be compromised. Right now, maintaining simple security protocols was more important than ever.

As the phone continued to squawk unanswered at his elbow, Smith attempted to concentrate on his work. Remo's persistence was greater than he'd expected. After a full five minutes of solid ringing, the blue phone finally fell silent. Smith breathed a sigh of quiet relief.

Head swimming with concerns, he threw himself back into his work. Smith had only time to scan a dozen or so names of potential kidnappers when there came a timid knock at his closed office door.

He lifted his hands from the keyboard. The amber keys faded to black. The special computer monitor beneath the surface of the desk was angled so that only the person seated behind it could see it. Confident that everything was in order, he lifted his head to the door.

"Come in."

Eileen Mikulka, Smith's secretary for the past twenty years, sheepishly rapped a single knuckle against the heavy door even as she pushed it open.

"I'm so sorry, Dr. Smith," the matronly woman apologized. "I know how you hate to be disturbed while you're working."

"What is it?" Smith asked, hurrying her along. Her lopsided smile was uncertain.

"Your friend Mr. Remo is on the phone," she explained. "He says that the fate of the nation is in your hands." She gave a little apologetic shrug.

By colossal effort, Smith fought down any hint of a reaction. "Put him through," he said levelly. Nodding, Mrs. Mikulka backed from the room. When the primary Folcroft line sounded, Smith depressed the blinking light and picked up the phone. "Use the other line," he ordered. He promptly hung up the phone.

This time when the blue contact phone rang, Smith answered it.

"You are behaving recklessly," the CURE director accused.

"Relax," Remo replied. "Your secretary's clueless. And you're acting paranoid."

Smith leaned an elbow against his onyx desk, cradling his patrician nose between thumb and forefinger. His rimless glasses bit into the bridge. "If we must have this conversation, we will make it brief," he said wearily.

"Fine with me. Why do you want me and-" Remo caught himself "-my associate to come back there?"

"It would be best during the current situation."

"Don't you want us to try to find you-know-who?"

"Possibly," Smith suggested. "Eventually. But as I understand it, there are no leads at present. It would be unwise for you to stay in the vicinity, given the knowledge that he has recently displayed."

"You think he might finger me to someone?"

"It is a possibility."

"No biggie," Remo said. "We can take care of anyone who comes our way."

"We do not know that," Smith replied. "This is a deadly serious situation, and we are dealing with a faceless enemy."

"You really think this is that big a deal?" Remo asked. "Aren't there about twenty ex-Presidents kicking around right now? Who's going to miss one?"

"This conversation is getting too specific," Smith cautioned. "Any more so and I will terminate it."

"Okay, okay," Remo relented. "Here's what I'll agree to. The two of us will do a little snooping on this end. If we come up empty, we'll hightail it back home."

"That is not wise," Smith stressed. He was thinking of all the FBI and Secret Service people already on the scene-not to mention the local police and national press who would swarm into the Los Angeles area once the story broke.

"Call me unwise," Remo said. "'Cause that's what we're doing. Toodles."

As the dial tone hummed in his ear, Smith released the grip on his nose. Adjusting his glasses, he slowly hung up the blue phone. If neither he nor Remo was successful in their respective efforts, it might be the last time he used the special contact phone.

His head had begun to throb.

Smith took two baby aspirins from a childproof bottle stored in his left hand drawer. He washed them down with a healthy swig of antacid.

Forcing the grimmest of scenarios from his orderly mind, Harold Smith focused his attention back on his computer. With a steely resolve, he threw himself into his work.

Chapter 10

The Radiant Grappler II was a fishing boat that had never fished. Designed and constructed by a French shipbuilding company, the high-tech vessel was promoted as the inevitable future of all commercial firms that plumbed the depths of the sea for their fortune. The ship was truly one of a kind. Unknown to its builders, it would remain such.

Although it had planned to reap great rewards on its new boat, the company that built it hadn't counted on the ensuing protests. On the day it was unveiled, a collection of environmental groups held a rally at the shipyard gates, denouncing the vessel, as well as the wholesale destruction of ocean life it represented.

They were torpedoed before they even set sail. As a result of waging its losing battle with the rabid environmental groups in the French press, the shipbuilding company found itself without a single buyer. It was a marketing disaster. Already millions of francs in debt, the company was forced to come to a final, reluctant decision. It declared bankruptcy. When the company's assets were sold off at auction, first in line with a bloated checkbook were agents for Earthpeace, the primary environmental group responsible for putting the company out of business.

The Radiant Grappler II was snatched up as the Earthpeace flagship, a replacement for another, ill-fated ship of the same name.

The Grappler was both functional and ceremonial. The activists could sail to environmental crisis points and-thanks to the way in which they'd acquired the vessel-gloat along the way.

The ship was large and menacing. At just under 450 feet long, it weighed nearly twenty thousand tons. Its hundred-thousand-horsepower engine propelled it through ocean waves at speeds in excess of sixty knots. It didn't so much break through the swells as crush them beneath its merciless hull. It was an awesome, frightening spectacle to behold.

Anyone viewing the Grappler now, however, would see an entirely different, much more helpless image.

At the moment, the ship's mighty engines idled softly. The ship was stationary between the Miraflores Locks on the Pacific side of the Panama Canal.

The locks outside the ship had already been sealed. Once the Grappler was in place, water was allowed to flood into the artificially created basin. With a steady movement that was so gradual it was nearly imperceptible, the ship rose slowly above the level of the ocean it had just left.

Inside the rusty hold of the huge vessel, two Earthpeace activists listened to the creak of metal as the ship began to reach equilibrium with the water level of Miraflores Lake.

"Yo, Jerry, dude. You know how long this'll take?" the first asked.

His torn jeans and flannel shirt looked as if he'd mugged them off a scarecrow. Although his buttondown Madison Avenue, Rotary Club-loving parents had named him Ralph, he liked to be called Bright Sunshiny Ralph.

"This part, or the whole trip?" Jerry asked absently.

Like his companion, Jerry Glover was dressed in rags that seemed held together by grime and stink. Unlike Ralph, Jerry was preoccupied. Bent at the waist, he was peering through the iron bars of a zoo transport cage.

The vast hold around them was otherwise bare. Rats scurried and squeaked in distant shadows. "Through the canal," Sunshiny Ralph said.

"Seven hours," Jerry replied.

Sunshiny didn't seem thrilled at the prospect of being stuck in the canal so long. Standing beside Jerry, he wrapped weak arms around his own chest, hugging himself the same way women used to during the Summer of Love. It had been a long time since a female had touched him that way. Such caresses had stopped around the same time his hairline and belly began their middle-age race in opposite directions.

"I feel I'm, like, trapped, man," he complained.

"Yeah, but how does he feel?" Jerry grinned, nodding to the cage.

Sunshiny glanced through the barred door.

In the shadows at the rear of the sturdy box, a familiar figure slept. The infamous face was visible in silhouette. Straw hung from steel-gray hair.

When he looked at Jerry, Sunshiny's face was filled with contempt. "He don't feel nuthin'. What's wrong with you?"

He seemed disgusted at Jerry for ascribing human emotions to their prisoner.

"I know that," Jerry said, backpedaling rapidly. "But if he could feel? Dude, imagine how he'd feel."

Sunshiny wouldn't hear it. "You're anthraxpromotizing," he insisted.

"Huh?"

"You know. It's when you give animals, like, human characteristics."

Jerry took a horrified step back. "I'd never do that!" he exclaimed. "Why would I want animals to behave like humans? Humans make, like, H-bombs and nuclear war and stuff. If we could only learn from animals, Earth would be, like, a real cool place to live. And pot'd be legal."

Sunshiny wasn't listening to Jerry's passionate defense. He was looking back inside the cage.

"He looks even more evil in person," Sunshiny Ralph commented softly.

"You hit him awful hard," Jerry said. "Are you sure he's even still alive?"

Another glare at the sleeping form of the former President of the United States. They couldn't tell if he was breathing.

"Maybe we should poke him with a stick," Sunshiny suggested.

Jerry shook his head. "Sticks ain't allowed, remember? Gotta protect old-growth timber and the rain forest."

"Oh, yeah. How 'bout a pipe?"

"Hash pipe or pipe pipe?"

"Pipe pipe," Sunshiny said. "That'd be okay. You got one?"

There ensued a fruitless search through their ragged clothing, during which the only sounds were of the creaking boat and the swelling water outside the hull of the Grappler. They turned up three hash pipes and zero pipe pipes.

It was finally decided that Jerry would watch the maybe-dead prisoner while Sunshiny went off in search of a good, solid poking pipe.

Sunshiny Ralph scaled the ladder at the side of the hold up to the cabin level. He had just struck off down the narrow corridor where he and the rest of the Radiant Grappler II crew bunked when he bumped into a man in a dark blue double-breasted suit walking in the opposite direction.

On the man's left lapel was a familiar pin: a single dove wrapped its wings around a lone fir tree. Everyone on board the Grappler wore the same insignia. Sunshiny sported one on the collar of his grimy shirt.

The instant the man in the suit saw Ralph, his jowly face drew up into an angry scowl.

"What are you doing up here again?"

Sunshiny opened his mouth wide. It remained agape even as his brow collapsed in utter confusion. "Um..." Sunshiny said. He scratched his bald pate.

The suited man emitted a hissing sigh. "Get back below," he ordered.

He had to guide Sunshiny by the shoulders to start him off in the right direction. He stood in the narrow corridor and watched to make sure Sunshiny didn't accidentally wander into one of the cabins and fall asleep. Again.

"And to think we're saving the planet for the likes of that," America's secretary of the interior, Bryce Babcock, muttered to himself.

Still scowling, Secretary Babcock headed down an adjacent corridor.

There were no portals so deep in the Grappler. Not that it mattered. Babcock knew precisely what was going on outside. He could feel the watery displacement taking place beyond the hull.

In spite of the small difficulties he was having with the Earthpeace crew, Bryce Babcock had to admit, everything else was going perfectly. No, better even than that. Flawlessly. The complex plan he had developed was unfolding without a single major error.

As he walked through the ship's maze of narrow passages, his drooping scowl re-formed into a sagging smile.

Once they passed through the Miraflores section, they would move on to the Pedro Miguel Locks. The eight-mile Gaillard Cut would bring the Grappler and its precious cargo across the continental divide to Gatun Lake. On the other end of the canal, the three flights of Gatun Locks would lower the water level by eighty-five feet, easing them gently into the Atlantic Ocean. They would then sail past Colbn and into the Caribbean Sea.

And, Secretary Babcock thought with a giddy shiver, into history.

Still smiling in his sad, drooping way, Babcock pushed open the door of an unmarked cabin. The room beyond was small and dimly lit. A dull fluorescent light shone down on a workbench against the distant wall.

A lone man sat on a stool before the bench, the sleeves of his white dress shirt rolled up to his elbows. His underarms were stained yellow with old perspiration. On the lapel of his discarded jacket was the familiar dove-fir pin.

Dr. Ree Hop Doe didn't even look up as the interior secretary stepped inside the muggy room.

With a tiny click, Babcock closed the small door. The air inside was fetid. Hours of human sweat and ripe body odor clung to the walls. The only ventilation passed through a small metal grate near the ceiling.

At the bench, Dr. Doe's hunched shoulders obscured much of the large, shiny object with which he continued to tinker even as Babcock crossed over to him. Tired hands used tweezers to lay out strings of multicolored wires.

For several giddy moments, Babcock watched in silence as the Asian scientist worked. He finally couldn't contain himself any longer.

"How's it going, Doctor?" he said eagerly.

Dr. Doe almost fell off his stool, so startled was he by Babcock's voice. He had been so engrossed in his work that he hadn't heard the secretary enter.

Eyes that had been staring too long at miniature components attempted to blink back into focus.

"I arr set," Doe said, his accent thick. He lay his tweezers on the bench. "It ready for arming."

At the news, an excited grin flickered across Babcock's saggy face. It disappeared almost in the same instant.

"It won't go off now?" he asked, suddenly worried.

"No," Dr. Doe insisted. When he shook his head, the greasy black hair plastered to his scalp didn't budge. "That not problem."

"Because now won't do any good," Babcock stressed. "We need the optimal location."

"Do not worry, Mr. Secretary," Doe said. It came out wolly. "Nothing happen till I make it happen." The secretary's smile returned.

This was the precious cargo. Not the former United States President. That old fossil was just gravy. The real reason for this trip sat on the oil-stained bench before him.

On the workbench, the stainless-steel casing of what appeared to be a small nuclear warhead reflected the wan light of the room. But even though it had the appearance of a standard nuclear device, Secretary Babcock knew that it was much, much more.

The smile on his flaccid face broadened as he considered what this one piece of hardware would mean for the world. Humankind was finally going to get its come-uppance. And it was about damned time. Bryce Babcock would bear witness to the event that would have global repercussions for generations to come.

Far below, the engines suddenly rumbled to life. The ship had reached equilibrium. Slowly, the Grappler began to move forward into the final set of Miraflores Locks.

Bryce Babcock felt a trickle of warmth at his groin.

It was a problem he'd had since he was a toddler. All the excitement, the movement of the ship and so much water all around had tickled his nervous bladder.

"I'll be on the bridge," he said quickly.

Hoping Doe hadn't caught a whiff of his very pungent urine, he excused himself from the room. Usually if he hurried fast enough, he had to change only his underwear.

As he hustled up the hallway, Babcock hoped he'd brought along enough spare pairs. This trip promised much excitement. It would be very risky for him to attempt to witness the event that would end Man's technological age without the backup safety of a good, thick pair of Hanes.

Chapter 11

Remo had left most of the IDs Smith regularly issued him on the dresser back home. He was worried that he'd have to try to bluff his way past the Secret Service with his blue Bombshell Video card when he found a spare ID next to his passport in the back of his wallet. As luck would have it, it identified him as Remo Blodnick, an undersecretary of the Treasury Department.

The laminated card got him and the Master of Sinanju through most of the security checkpoints between the sixth and eighth floors. Only on their way down the eighth-floor hallway toward the suite in which the former President had spent the previous night were they finally stopped.

The Secret Service man on duty inspected Remo's ID with great care. When he looked up, he nodded crisply. "You're okay, Mr. Blodnick," he said. "But he doesn't have clearance." He nodded to Chiun.

"It's okay," Remo assured the agent. "He's with me."

"No, I am not," Chiun interjected.

The man raised an eyebrow. "Sir?"

"He is with me," Chiun explained.

"Be that as it may, I can't allow you to pass without clearance."

Remo sensed a troubling stillness about the old Korean. Fearing a repeat of the Stan Ronaldman wig incident, he quickly stepped between the Master of Sinanju and the agent.

"It's okay, Chiun," Remo said. "I won't be long."

The Master of Sinanju gave each man in turn a vaguely dissatisfied glare before turning away. The drab wall suddenly became infinitely more fascinating to him than Remo.

Taking this for approval, Remo left Chiun in the care of the Secret Service agent and hurried down the hall to the President's hospital room.

At several points along the way, he spied bloodstains on the floor. The bodies of the slain had been removed-only very recently, it would seem-but there was evidence of a battle all around.

Black scuff marks marred the floor. Bullet holes outlined in pencil crayon pocked the bland green walls.

The deadly activity had come to a head in front of the suite itself. Here, the bullet-and-blood trail stopped.

When Remo stepped inside, he found an FBI forensic team methodically searching through the hospital rooms. They were being watched with great suspicion by a team of Secret Service agents. Most of the men were huddled near the door inside the bedroom. A man in an FBI windbreaker was lifting a fingerprint off the door of the closet.

"Let me guess," Remo said to the ten men near the door. "The stateroom scene from A Night at the Opera, right?"

The faces that turned his way were annoyed. Most were too engrossed in the single fingerprint being lifted to even bother to look at him.

One man separated from the rest. His face was angry as he approached Remo.

"You can't be here," he announced. A Secret Service emblem was emblazoned on the back of his blue windbreaker. His clip-on tag identified him as Agent John Blizard.

"Can," Remo disagreed. "Am." He flashed his ID. "Blodnick, Treasury. What have you got so far?"

Agent Blizard inspected Remo's credentials carefully. When he looked back up, his narrow face was pinched.

"Since when do undersecretaries get involved in investigations?"

"You haven't heard of me?" Remo asked. "I'm like the Miss Marple of Treasury. They put me on all the really big stuff. Every time the VP gets lost in the woods or needs help shaking down Buddhist nuns, I'm there."

The glint of mistrust in the agent's eyes sparkled more brightly. "I better call Washington," he said suspiciously.

The others had returned to their duties. No one was even looking their way. Remo nodded to the agent.

"Be my guest," he said, smiling tightly.

"Be back in a minute," Agent Blizard announced to no one in particular.

As soon as they stepped into the hallway, Remo frowned. The Master of Sinanju was nowhere to be seen. Nor, it seemed, was the agent Remo had left him with.

"Swell," Remo griped to himself.

"What's wrong?" Agent Blizard asked.

"What's always wrong?" Remo grumbled as they headed down the hall. "He's got a bug up his ass and he's taking it out on me."

"Who?" Blizard asked. He suddenly wasn't interested in a reply. He had just noticed that there was no longer an agent posted near the stairwell door. "Hey, where's-"

It was all he could manage to say before he felt a strange tightening sensation at the small of his back. His spine instantly went rigid.

"This is just like him," Remo muttered as he guided Secret Service Special Agent John Blizard down the hall. "Doesn't give a damn about me or anyone else. It's all the time him, him, him."

Agent Blizard tried to yell for help, but found he couldn't even speak. There was no pain, just Remo's hand and the knot of tense muscles in his lumbar region.

"He says he's turned over a new leaf," Remo stated as he kicked open the fire door at the end of the hall. "But that's bullshit," he added, hauling Agent Blizard into the stairwell. "And I know it's bullshit," he insisted, kicking the door shut with his heel. "And he knows I know it's bullshit. He's this frigging Korean volcano, and I wish he'd just erupt already and get it over with."

Alone in the stairwell, Remo released the agent. "You know what I mean?" he asked, spinning the man so that they were face-to-face.

Up until now, the only responses Agent Biizard had been capable of consisted of frantic, Morse-code blinks. The instant Remo's hand fled his spine, Blizard grabbed for his side arm. Remo pulverized it in its holster. Thick metal fragments clanked to the concrete landing. The Secret Service man's face registered shock.

"I'm tired, I'm cranky and I can do the same thing with skulls," Remo warned. "Plus I'm on your side. So why don't you do us both a favor and tell me what I want to know?"

Agent Blizard wasn't buying it. He fumbled in his pocket for his retractable truncheon. Desperate fingers had just closed around it when he felt a fresh sensation in his back. This time, it wasn't like before. This time, there was pain.

The Secret Service man sucked in a shocked gulp of air.

"We've got nothing so far," Agent Blizard gasped. "Couple of fingerprints. Could be from anyone. Witnesses all dead. Kidnappers wore masks."

Remo's face clouded. "If the witnesses are dead, how do you know what they wore?"

"Surveillance cameras," the Secret Service agent explained. Beads of sweat had erupted on his forehead.

"They got a good look at them?" Remo asked. "For what it's worth, yeah."

Remo considered. If the only evidence available was the security tapes, he'd better look at them quick. For all he knew, Chiun was somewhere in the hospital doing something that would insure they both wound up on the Treasury Department's most-wanted list.

"C'mon, Eliot Ness," he said, sighing.

Hand firmly in place, he guided the Secret Service agent down the stairs.

WHEN REMO PUSHED open the door to the security room, he was surprised to see a familiar wizened figure.

Chiun stood before a bank of television monitors, arms folded imperiously over his narrow chest. Seated near the old Korean was the Secret Service agent that had stopped them in the eighth-floor hallway. The man held a blood-speckled handkerchief firmly against his left ear. He and another man-this one wearing an FBI tag-were operating the equipment.

"Where have you been?" Chiun asked blandly as Remo entered the small room in the basement. "We have been waiting hours for you."

"You've been waiting all of ten minutes," Remo replied, pushing Agent Blizard into the room before him. "And you could try giving me a little warning when you take off like that. I figured you were in some other wing of the hospital terrorizing Liz Taylor."

"And why would you think something so foolish?" Chiun asked, all innocence.

The seated Secret Service agent interrupted. "This is it," he offered, glancing up. He leaned back to allow the Master of Sinanju a better view of the monitor before him.

The camera that had collected the footage was stationed at the end of the eighth-floor hall beyond the former President's room. The image was in color, but grainy, as if the tape had been reused many times. The sharpness was washed out.

Their own conversation forgotten, Remo and Chiun stepped forward. Alert eyes watched the recording of the morning's events.

At first, little happened. A pair of Secret Service men stood at attention outside the former President's room. A doctor entered the room, closing the door behind him.

"This is dead space," the FBI agent said. He fast-forwarded through five minutes of footage, during which nothing at all happened. He stopped when the first sign of trouble appeared.

Men swarmed from both directions. Some came from down the hall near the elevators and others from the stairwell beneath the surveillance camera itself.

Bandannas masked their faces. Hats were pulled low. Even given the condition of the tape, the guns were obvious. With eerie silence, they fired.

The Secret Service agents near the door didn't have time to draw their own weapons before being cut to shreds. The doctor emerged in the doorway briefly, only to be blown back into the President's room.

A masked man hurried into the President's room. He collapsed back out into the hall almost instantly, legs jutting, unseen, inside the room. The unconscious man's body shook, as if someone were trying to drag him into the room.

The three agents in the security room were drawn in by the silent, unfolding drama. They watched alongside Remo and Chiun, grimly fascinated.

A kidnapper wielded his gun like a club against an unseen target in the room. Afterward, the former President made his first appearance, toppling into the hallway.

The kidnappers flocked around. A needle was injected into their captive's arm. Once empty, the syringe was flung away.

Remo's face was severe. "What did they give him?" he demanded.

"Three distinct compounds," the sole FBI man volunteered. His voice was hollow as he stared at the tape. "Methohexital and a diazepam variant. That's a barbiturate and a heavy-duty tranquilizer. They're still working on the third compound, but I'd guess it's more knockout juice. They didn't want him waking up for a while."

Smith would find some small comfort in that. Whoever had grabbed the former President wouldn't be getting anything out of him anytime soon.

Remo shot a glance at the Master of Sinanju. The old man's expression was unreadable. Flickering images from the monitor lent his face a ghostly cast.

When Remo looked back to the screen, his face hardened.

"Freeze the tape," Remo ordered urgently.

The seated FBI agent glanced furtively to his Secret Service colleagues before pressing Pause. The image locked in place. The kidnappers were struggling to lift the former President.

"It's no good," Agent Blizard grunted unhappily. "Too blurry without enhancement. Whatever you think you see, it's nothing."

Remo ignored him. "You see it, Little Father?" he asked Chiun.

The Master of Sinanju nodded. "However, it is unfamiliar to me."

"What's unfamiliar?" Blizard asked. "What do you see?"

"I'm pretty sure I've seen it before," Remo mused, brow furrowed.

"Seen what before?" Agent Blizard demanded. He leaned forward, examining the monitor, trying to see if there was something new, something he could possibly have overlooked.

He saw only a blurry jumble of disguised kidnappers and the ex-President limp in their arms. "There's nothing to see," the Secret Service agent insisted. Face a sour mask, he turned back to the man who claimed to be an undersecretary of the Treasury.

He was stunned to discover the guy who had dragged him down here was gone. So was the old Asian.

The door to the security room was closed tightly. It was as if they were never there.

With deliberate slowness, Agent Blizard turned back to the other two men. They were glancing around the room, surprise and relief visible on their faces.

"We better get somebody after them," the FBI man said, clearly not thrilled with the prospect of crossing Chiun. He reached for the phone.

A hand quickly pressed on the receiver, holding it firmly in the cradle.

"Whoa," Agent Blizard said, his voice soft. His hand never left the phone. "I think we should keep this one quiet."

A puzzled expression formed on the FBI man's face as Blizard dragged his own gaze back to the surveillance video.

On the monitor, the scene remained unchanged. Agent Blizard had a gut feeling that these guys were on the level. But no matter who they were, they were wrong. The image on that tape hadn't changed one iota since Blizard had first laid eyes on it that morning.

"Shut it off," the Secret Service agent commanded, a note of fresh revulsion in his voice. Possessed as he was of normal human eyesight, Agent John Blizard could not have hoped to see what Remo and Chiun had noted pinned to the shirt of the man who held the ex-President.

When the tape was shut off, the grainy white insignia depiction of a snow-white dove with wings wrapped around a lone fir tree disappeared from the monitor, and was gone.

Chapter 12

Remo and Chiun swept back out the gleaming front doors of the prestigious hospital, sliding easily into the throng of patiently waiting reporters.

"Why didn't you wait for me back there?" Remo complained as they glided through the thick cluster of cameras, lights and reporters.

"Forgive me, Remo," Chiun replied dryly. "I was not aware that it was my duty to be tethered at inconvenient moments like some mangy canine."

"It's your own fault," Remo said. "Where did you put the Treasury ID Smith gave you?"

"The dog ate it," Chiun said blandly.

"Can we can the fido motif?" Remo said. "And if you're going to blow up, I wish you'd hurry up and get it over with, for crying out loud."

"Blow up?" Chiun queried. "Whatever do you mean?" The Master of Sinanju's wrinkled face was chillingly serene.

"That. That's the sort of thing that scares me," Remo insisted, pointing to the old Asian's tranquil expression. "You're a ticking time bomb just waiting to blow, and I'm sick of cringing every time I think you're gonna go off."

"I do not know why you persist in this," Chiun said.

"Twenty years of mood swings is why," Remo muttered.

Remo had been searching the crowd as he walked. He found whom he was looking for near the line of news vans.

Stan Ronaldman had plastered his shiny black toupee back onto his scalp. The reporter was scrupulously checking his hair in the side-view mirror of his network truck when Remo and Chiun sidled up to him.

"What whacko group uses a pigeon hugging a Christmas tree for its logo?" Remo demanded. Ronaldman jumped, cracking his forehead on the mirror. When he spun to face the voice, his eyes opened wide in horrified recognition.

"You!" he gasped. His jet-black devil eyebrows formed frightened triangles alongside a freshly swelling forehead bump.

"C'mon, c'mon," Remo encouraged, snapping his fingers angrily. "I don't have all day. What's the group?"

"I'm calling the police," Ronaldman proclaimed. When he tried to bully past them, Remo reached out and plucked the toupee from the reporter's head. Ronaldman shrieked like a woman. Even while he threw the tail of his suit jacket over his shiny bald scalp, he was making desperate grabs for his wig. Remo held the clump of nylon hair at arm's length.

"What group?" Remo repeated.

"I don't know!" Ronaldman pleaded. "You said a pigeon?"

"No," Chiun interjected. "It was a dove."

"What's the difference?" Remo asked.

"For some, the dove is a misguided symbol for peace. A pigeon merely symbolizes filth."

"Hugging a Christmas tree?" Ronaidman's worried voice asked from beneath his jacket.

"Yes," Remo said.

"No," Chiun stated firmly. "It was a simple fir tree. There was no Druidic ornamentation."

"That sounds like Earthpeace," the reporter volunteered.

Remo snapped his fingers in sudden recognition. "That's it," he announced. "I knew it was from some nutbar group."

"Oh, Earthpeace isn't nutty," Ronaldman insisted from the recesses of his jacket. "They're very concerned with issues dealing with the environment and disarmament."

"And the people who dedicate their lives to either are never complete flakejobs," Remo said dryly. He dangled the reporter's toupee in front of the shadowy opening of his jacket. Far in the back of the Brooks Brothers cave, a pair of eager, bloodshot eyes opened wide.

"Their address gets you back your Woolworth's tresses."

Stan Ronaldman couldn't speak quickly enough. "San Francisco!" he said. "Somewhere near Golden Gate Park. I don't know where exactly. I could check. Hell, I'll drive."

"Pass," Remo said, tossing the limp wig into the jacket hollow.

By the sounds of the ensuing happy growl, Ronaldman had snagged his hairpiece in his sharp teeth. Coat still draped over his head, he spun and ran straight into the side of his news van.

As Stan Ronaldman sprawled, unconscious on the ground, wig drooping from his mouth like a furry, distended tongue, Remo turned away.

"Let's get a move on," he announced.

"Should you not first call Smith?" Chiun asked.

"Not this time," Remo replied, shaking his head. "He's worked himself up into too much of a lather already. I don't want to talk to him until we have something concrete."

"Where you go, Remo Williams, I will follow," the Master of Sinanju proclaimed. "After all, I am agreeable." His dry lips curled to form a mummified smile.

"Stop doing that," Remo groused.

The two men walked away from the gathered reporters, who persisted in their death watch even though the man whose death they were so eager to report was no longer there.

Chapter 13

In the San Francisco headquarters of Earthpeace, located south of Golden Gate Park in a small office complex off Lincoln Way, Brad Mesosphere smiled the oily, superior smile he'd perfected as a PR flak for the world's most famous environmental organization.

His five-pack-a-day cigarette habit had turned his once yellow teeth a dirt friendly brown.

"My allies," he announced to the five Earthpeacers arranged around the grubby conference table, "I have just learned that phase one has been a complete success."

The faces that looked back at him were eager. "They made it to South America?" one man asked, awed. His filthy clothes looked as if they'd been used to mop out the monkey house.

"According to what I just heard, they're through the Panama Canal already and are heading into the Atlantic." Brad's grin broadened. "Tomorrow, the world as we know it will be changed permanently and irrevocably."

There was a quaver of pride in his voice.

It was a quaver well-earned. Man was about to be hoisted on his own petard. The blind worship of technology would be his undoing. And the deindustrialization cause would be advanced as never before.

Brad was a man who lived his life for the Cause. He had even changed his surname from the hideous white Anglo-Saxon "Hayward" to the more enviroconscious "Mesosphere," in honor of the late great scientist-activist Dr. Sage Carlin. In one of his many groundless theories, Carlin had claimed that methane released from overbred beef cattle was depleting the mesospheric layer of Earth's atmosphere.

In taking the name, Brad felt as if he were honoring Sage Carlin's memory. Even though lately there were rumors that Carlin's death was greatly exaggerated, Brad thought that this was neither here nor there. The fact was, Carlin-dead or alive-had cared. Brad cared, too.

He'd cared even when he'd worked at NASA as a legitimate scientist-the kind who seemed to diligently struggle at squandering all professional credibility on every half-baked, fly-by-night environmentalist scheme to come down the pike.

In the seventies, Brad had screamed about the coming Ice Age. In the eighties, it was nuclear winter. The nineties brought fresh, frightened tantrums about global warming.

That in the geologically insignificant span of twenty years he'd gone from claiming Earth would soon become a freezing ball of ice to a burning ashen cinder was perfectly acceptable in his job at NASA. Hell, most of the folks who worked there had made the same cold-to-hot journey with nary an eye blink from the higher-ups.

His performance at his space-agency job had been without a single complaint. Until one fateful day just a few short years earlier.

NASA had just landed a small probe on the surface of Mars. The pictures taken by the miniature robotic dune buggy had captivated the world.

On a tour of mission control, Congresswoman Shirley Magruder-Jacklan was impressed by the images displayed on the large suspended screens. Dull eyes earnest, she turned to her guide, the soon-to-be-unemployed Brad Hayward.

"This is amazing," Congresswoman MagruderJacklan said of the grainy pictures being broadcast from the red planet. Cameras flashed images of her for newspapers and magazines. Spools of videotape whirred for the nightly news.

"Truly amazing," she repeated. When she turned to Brad, her face was deadly serious. "Now, can your little car thingie drive on over to where our brave astronauts planted our proud American flag?"

It was the earnestness of her tone that did it. Although he was in political lockstep with everything the congresswoman stood for, her supreme ignorance in that single moment was too much for Brad to endure.

Before he knew it, he laughed right in her face.

He laughed and laughed and laughed some more, even as it was explained in hushed tones to the congresswoman that man had never set foot on Mars. He laughed as she was ushered hastily away, scowling back at her tour guide. He laughed until he cried, right up until the point he was fired.

Only then did reality set in.

As a former NASA scientist, Brad was employable in two fields: the environmental movement or the food-service industry. He chose the former.

After a quick name change and a move to the West Coast, Brad found a new home at Earthpeace. And, as luck would have it, he was blessed to be a member of the movement during its greatest hour. The moment that would get them all written up in the history books. Assuming it was even possible to print history books after the following day.

At the head of the Earthpeace conference table, Brad could barely wrangle in his idiot's grin.

"No longer will Homo sapiens rape Mother Earth for sport," he proclaimed grandly. "We're on the cusp of a great new age. Thanks to us, mankind will finally be made to understand his true place in the natural order."

Although use of the masculine was universally frowned on within the Earthpeace organization, Brad's usage here was clearly acceptable. When talking about the destruction wrought on the poor, pitiful, defenseless little blue planet, male pronouns were not just encouraged-they were mandatory.

"Nothing in the press yet?" a grossly overweight woman in a paisley dress asked, her rapid-fire voice quivering. She'd been a pop diva twenty years and two hundred pounds ago. As her weight rose, her career had fallen. Over the past two decades, she'd been forced to resort to gimmicky big-band and Spanish-language albums.

A nine-by-thirteen-inch cardboard tray filled with greasy French fries sat on the conference table before her. As she listened to Brad, the singer continuously stuffed fries into her bloated face.

"Not yet," he admitted. "The media's still treating it like the old fascist is in the hospital."

"Shouldn't we call them and tell them?" one of the men asked.

"Absolutely not," Brad stated firmly. "Anyway, he's only window dressing. The real cargo is too important to let them know about our involvement just yet. We can't risk them intercepting the Grappler before it reaches its destination."

The pop singer belched loudly. A hail of half-eaten fries splattered the table. She swept them up with greedy, fat fingers, stuffing them back in her maw.

"So what do we do now?" one of the men asked, one eye on the pop singer. She was sucking halfchewed fried potato from her chubby fingertips.

"Nothing we can do now but wait," Brad replied, shaking his head. "Except-" he threw his hands out wide, a grand expression on his beaming face-

"-this is a cause for celebration!" he yelled. "Fruitopias all around!"

And as a cheer rose up from the gathered Earthpeacers, a jubilant Brad Mesosphere marched to the minifridge that chugged away in the corner. Freon-free, of course.

INCENSE BURNED in smoldering tin dishes that resembled battered bedpans. Potpourri smells wafted from genuine Native American and Mexican clay pottery that looked to have been made with diligence by an ungifted preschooler.

The desks and chairs within the office had been recycled from the nearest landfill. To conserve water, they hadn't been rinsed off. The scent of coffee grounds, slimy banana peels and rotten eggshells filled the air.

Remo's nose was bombarded with competing noxious aromas the instant he stepped through the front door of Earthpeace's San Francisco headquarters.

"Pee-yew," he griped. "What the hell died in here?"

Behind him, the Master of Sinanju's face puckered in intense displeasure.

"It stinks of rotting garbage," the old Korean complained. The air seemed to have curdled his button nose. He pressed one broad kimono sleeve over his face. The other, he fanned frantically before him.

"I've smelled better garbage," Remo disagreed. "Let's get this over with before our noses drop off." They kept their breathing shallow as they stepped over to the reception area.

Behind a filthy desk, a middle-aged woman with a bandanna tied around her hair sat reading a copy of Mother Jones, a pair of tinted granny glasses perched on the end of her nose.

She lowered her magazine as they approached, a perpetual scowl on her blotchy face.

"Can I help you?" she asked.

"Not unless you've got a can of Lysol stashed up your caftan," Remo said. "Just get me your boss."

The woman instantly frowned at the term. "There is no boss here," she said frostily. "We're a collective. Everything is voted on and done for the good of all."

"Vote yourself a bath," Remo suggested. "Look, somebody's in charge here. Get him."

"I feel ill," Chiun's muffled voice announced through his kimono sleeve. He started to lean against the woman's filthy desk for support but at the last minute thought better of it. He opted for swooning in place.

The receptionist ignored Chiun. Her dagger eyes glared malevolence at Remo. "Why do you automatically assume a man is in command?" she asked, bristling.

Remo rolled his eyes. "Lady, I don't care. Him, her, it, you. I don't care. Just get them. This place reeks like sweaty hockey equipment."

Her severe frown lines deepened. A long, dirty fingernail unfurled. "Take a seat," she commanded. Remo looked at the nearest chair. Some unidentifiable viscous goo dripped down the plastic back. "I wouldn't sit on that with your ass," he said. Her face was stuffed back into her magazine. "Sit, stand, hop on one foot. It doesn't matter to me."

"How about if I kick?" Remo suggested. Before she could protest, he skirted the desk. There was a closed door beyond. He brought the heel of his loafer into the warped wooden surface. The door exploded from its frame, skittering in thick fragments into the hallway beyond.

Behind him, the woman leaped to her feet, chair toppling backward onto the floor.

"What are you doing?" she shrieked.

"Giving someone an excuse to kill another tree," Remo offered.

It was a split second before she realized what he meant. Only when he took his first step through the shattered remnants of the door-the door that would now have to be replaced-did the truth dawn.

"You're one of them!" the woman screeched behind him.

"If by 'them' you mean people who've figured out that Right Guard works on both sides, guilty as charged," Remo called over his shoulder.

She wasn't listening. As he and the Master of Sinanju slipped into the corridor, she was wrenching open her desk drawer. Remo could hear her fumbling frantically even as his finely tuned senses honed in on the cluster of six heartbeats dead ahead.

The smell wasn't as bad in here. An open window carried fresh air into the corridor.

"You want to do the honors?" Remo offered, pausing before the closed conference-room door.

"Just be quick about it," Chiun urged, his face still firmly planted in his sleeve of brocade silk. Remo nodded sharply.

The inner door surrendered to his kicking heel. When the two Masters of Sinanju breezed inside, they were greeted by half a dozen shocked faces.

The room was a continuation of the squalid decor of the lobby. Colorful posters thumbtacked to the pressboard walls expressed such sentiments as Have You Hugged A Seal Today? and No Nukes Is Good Nukes.

At the appearance of the intruders, Brad Mesosphere's Fruitopia bottle slipped from his fingers. It cracked, spraying its contents across the grimy linoleum floor.

"Oh, my God," he gasped, his voice tremulous with soft disbelief. "They're here."

"The dirt mother in the lobby had the same reaction," Remo mused. "Looks like we were expected."

Brad blinked at his words, a hint of terrified realization in them.

"What do you want?" he chirped, frightened.

"My ability to smell back," Remo said. "But thanks to the cavalcade of stench out there, that seems out of the question right about now, so I'll settle for the President." His eyes got suddenly very cold. "Where is he?" he demanded.

The jaw of one of the younger group members jutted defiantly. "In Washington, man," he said, sneering.

"You wanna get this one, Little Father?" Remo asked.

Chiun impatiently removed the sleeve from his face. "If only to hasten our departure," he snapped. The arrogant young Earthpeacer was fouling the air a few feet from the Master of Sinanju.

His face was a cast of youthful disdain. A curling, contemptuous mouth snarled within spotty patches of goatee and mustache. Eyes glistened with wet malevolence.

The man didn't seem to find Chiun a threat, directing his contemptuous attitude solely at Remo. He was stunned, therefore, when he felt a sudden sharp pain in his chest.

Sucking in a shocked gasp of air, he looked down. The fingertips of one bony hand were pressed against his grubby Green Day sweatshirt. Only four long fingernails were accounted for. When the pain exploded within his chest, he realized where the fifth had gone.

Chiun whipped his hand away, his curving index nail slipping out through the incision it had made between ribs.

Pulsing blood erupted through the tiny snick the Master of Sinanju had made in the man's pulmonary artery.

With a sudden surge of crazed energy, the Earthpeacer clutched both hands desperately to his chest. Face turning ashen, his eyes bugged wildly as his mouth opened and closed in pained confusion. As the last powerful squeeze of his heart pumped blood into his chest cavity, the man pitched forward, landing spread-eagled on the conference table.

A final twitch, and he didn't move again.

Brad Mesosphere watched the scene with growing horror. When he tore his gaze away from the body, he found that he was staring into Remo's dead eyes. "Where?" Remo repeated.

"Halfway across the Atlantic by now," Brad blurted. "He was flown down to Central America after we snagged him. We put him on the Radiant Grappler."

Remo felt his entire body tense.

Out of the country. More great news for Smith. "The Radiant Grappler?" Remo snarled. "I thought the French sunk that barge."

"That was Radiant Grappler I. This is the RG II."

"Great," Remo complained. "Now I have to schlepp all the way out to the middle of the ocean. Do you even care how big a nuisance that's gonna be? The guy isn't even in office anymore. Why'd you kidnap him?"

Brad gulped. He seemed like a death-row inmate who was only just beginning to come to terms with his fate.

"He was taken as an example to all the fascist warmongers in the world," the Earthpeacer offered. "As the greatest living illustration of oppressive capitalist imperialism, it's only fitting that he be present at the first outbreak of true peace."

Remo turned to the Master of Sinanju, a blank expression on his face. "Okay, I'm lost. Do you know what the hell he's babbling about?" he asked.

Chiun had taken up a sentry position next to the doorway. "Do not ask me," he sniffed. "I speak English, not American."

"The peace bomb, man," Brad insisted. "The final ironic twist to humanity's adoration of technology."

Remo had heard enough nonsense. "Okay, here's where it gets painful, Maynard G. Krebs," he said. He took a single step toward Brad. It was as far as he got.

"Long live Gaia!" a voice screamed from the hallway.

All eyes in the room turned to the corridor. Lumbering up the hall, an automatic clutched in her filthy hands, was the woman from the reception desk.

Remo assumed the gun was for him and Chiun. But when she squeezed the trigger, the first rounds slammed into Brad Mesosphere's chest with meaty thuds.

The Earthpeace member was thrown backward, crashing from chair to floor.

She whipped around the weapon to target another Earthpeacer.

At the table, the 1970s pop singer had moved on to dessert. She continued to shove brownies into her mouth even as the bullets ripped into the back of her head. She fell face first into her plate.

"Stop her, Chiun!" Remo yelled to the Master of Sinanju, even as the woman swept around to the last remaining environmentalists.

"Who, me?" the Master of Sinanju called.

But it was too late. The final three were ripped to shreds in an instant.

Quickly, the woman turned the weapon on herself. Her grin was one of vicious, gleeful victory as she yanked the trigger. Her head popped like a dirty red balloon.

A few feet away, Chiun had to step back to avoid the grisly spray. The body collapsed near his sandals.

Far across the room, Remo's face collapsed into a scowl.

"Dammit, Chiun, why didn't you stop her?" he snarled.

Chiun looked at the body at his feet. When he looked back up, his eyes were bland. "You were closer."

Remo threw up his hands. "I'm sick of this passive-aggressive crapola," he snapped. "Thanks to you, we don't even know where that dingdong boat of theirs is heading. Now if I want to find out from this guy, I'm gonna have to use a Ouija board. I hope you're happy." Scowling, he kicked Brad Mesosphere's leg.

"I am always happy," Chiun replied placidly. "In fact, there are times when I am positively ecstatic."

And, stepping over the receptionist's lifeless body, the old man slipped back into the hallway. As he disappeared from sight, his wrinkled face was a mask of utter calm.

Alone in the Earthpeace conference room, Remo slowly shook his head. It seemed to take all his effort.

"And I thought you'd be insufferable if your movie was a hit," he muttered.

Still shaking his head, he trailed the Master of Sinanju outside.

Chapter 14

Smith's voice on the phone was fraught with tension.

"Report."

"What do you want first," Remo asked, exhaling, "the bad news or the really bad news?"

He was on an outdoor phone in a small park. Behind him, the Golden Gate Bridge with its garishly painted cellular steel towers rose red from the Golden Gate Strait, the waterway linking San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean.

Smith was instantly wary. "What went wrong?" he asked.

"Chiun and I are in San Francisco," Remo explained.

"No names, please," the CURE director pleaded.

"Yeah. Right. Anyway, Earthpeace is behind the kidnapping. Assuming it's all right to say 'kidnapping.'"

Smith didn't respond to the sarcasm. His lemony tone took on a hopeful edge. "You're certain of their involvement?"

"Sure as shootin'," Remo replied.

"Where is the, er, package they collected?" Remo knew he was referring to the former President.

"Now this is where it gets a little tricky," he said. At the pay phone, Remo glanced around for the Master of Sinanju.

Chiun was standing several yards away down a gravel path. The old Asian had a handful of pebbles that he was tossing-one at a time-into the air. A flock of eagerly circling seagulls, which assumed the old man was throwing pieces of bread, dove for each stone. Each time at the last minute the birds would discover they'd been had. As the pebbles dropped back to earth, the seagulls would break away, flying back up to join the swirling flock.

It was a cruel trick, Remo knew, but it could have been a lot worse. So far, none of the birds had bought the farm.

"We tracked them to their headquarters," Remo said, turning his attention back to the phone. "I barely started to question them before one of their own members gave them all 9mm enemas."

Behind him, the seagulls began to squawk in greater agitation. He did his best to ignore them. On the phone, hope had drained to hollowness. "Then this is the end." Smith's voice was perfectly level. "I will make the necessary arrangements. Remo, you and Chiun are relieved of your contractual obligations. Good luck and Godspeed." Remo's eyes shot open. He pressed the phone more tightly to the side of his head. "Are you out of your mind?" he whispered. "If Chiun hears you, I'll be picking melons in Persia by next week. And what happened to all that 'no names' garbage?"

"It no longer matters," Smith explained. "This will be our last phone conversation. I will initiate the shutdown procedures that will make tracing impossible."

"Keep it down, will you?" Remo said.

He shot a glance at the Master of Sinanju. Fortunately, Chiun hadn't heard Smith. He was still taunting the flock of seagulls.

"Smitty, there's got to be something we can do," Remo insisted. "From what I saw on the security tapes, they pumped him full of knockout juice before they carted him away. He's in no position to talk."

"But how long will he remain unconscious?" Smith asked reasonably. "This is a security risk like none we have ever faced. There is someone out there who knows of much more than our existence. He knows specifics of our operation, as well as details of events to which we are tied. That information could topple our form of government."

"No one listens to ex-Presidents, Smitty," Remo insisted. "Hell, half the people in the country probably couldn't name the current President. Not that I'd blame them for pleading the Fifth."

"They would listen to this. Even you must see that," Smith said patiently. The older man was infuriatingly calm.

"Okay, okay," Remo said. "It's big and it's bad. Possibly. But before we take down the tents and move on, why don't we wait until we've exhausted all our options? One of the Earthpeace freaks told me they've got the former President aboard the Radiant Grappler."

"The Radiant Grappler?" Smith interrupted sharply.

"Yeah," Remo said. "It's the boat they use whenever they want to nudzh out on the high seas. Guess they're not content to just pester people on dry land. "

"Why didn't you mention this before?" Smith asked, annoyed. "Wait a moment."

In the background, Remo could hear the dull, persistent drumming of Smith's fingers as he typed. When he returned to the phone a minute later, his voice was tight.

"Remo, the Radiant Grappler passed through the Panama Canal several hours ago. It made it into the Atlantic without incident. If the President was on board, he was not discovered."

"Can you say 'big fat bribe'?" Remo asked thinly.

"That is possible." Smith's voice was distant, as if he were having difficulty digesting this new information.

Across the country, the CURE director gripped the edge of his desk with one hand, knuckles white. He felt light-headed. His acid-churned stomach clenched in knots of growing fear as a wave of concern swelled within him.

"You still with me, Smitty?" Remo asked after a moment of silence.

Smith was trying to will himself calm. The air he drew into his abdomen was ragged and searing; his breath was labored.

"The President is no longer in the country," Smith said at long last.

"Yeah..." Remo said leadingly. "I think we determined that."

"Since the outset, I had assumed this was either an old enemy seeking vengeance or a simple kidnapping for ransom that had taken place at an unfortunate time for us. It is likely it is much more than either now. I doubt they would take him out of the country if they desired only ransom."

Smith was trying to force his reeling mind back into focus. Since learning of the President's abduction, he had been preoccupied with both the risk to CURE and the search for the former chief executive. He had been so busy that he had not contemplated a more sinister reason to the abduction than those he had initially assumed. Now it seemed as if it could be for a larger purpose.

"Remo, the Radiant Grappler is en route to South Africa," Smith said. "According to my information, it will be in Cape Town in three days."

Remo nodded. "Okay. Great," he said. "Chiun and I can head them off, no sweat." He was relieved when Smith didn't argue.

"I am curious as to what possible motive Earthpeace could have. Why kidnap a former United States President and take him to South Africa?"

"Don't put too much hope in finding a why with these nudnicks. They said something about having him around for the outbreak of peace. I figured it was another dog-and-pony show for sixties rejects to plant daisies on Siberian missile silos."

"Outbreak of peace?" Smith sounded puzzled.

"Don't read too much into it, Smitty. Everyone in that place was probably looped on something. My guess'd be a contact buzz from whiffing the lobby seats."

There was a sudden loud squawk behind Remo. Phone in hand, he spun.

The Master of Sinanju stood below the flock of seagulls, no longer tossing pebbles. The wizened Korean's bony hands were tucked inside the wide sleeves of his kimono.

Remo frowned. Did the flock seem thinner? "Okay," he said into the phone, still eyeing Chiun. "So what's the story? We still in business, or what?"

"For now," Smith replied. "But we must act quickly. I want you in South Africa before their arrival. You must be there to greet that ship. If they manage to sneak their cargo off before you arrive, the risk of exposure multiplies to unacceptable limits. So far, we can only hope that their passenger has remained unconscious."

"Gotcha," Remo said. "Light a candle in the window."

He hung up. Turning from the pay phone, he struck off toward Chiun. As Remo headed down the gravel path, the Master of Sinanju made a point of keeping his back to his pupil. The seagulls had begun to disperse, flying in ever widening circles around the old Asian.

As the birds began to separate and fly away from one another, Chiun's bald head bobbed appreciatively. The smile on the old man's face was a disconcerting sight.

"Looks like the avian population's been made to pay for Hollywood's transgressions," Remo commented dryly once he'd caught up to his teacher.

Chiun's face was perfectly calm. "I do not know what you are talking about," he said. "A refrain, I might add, that I have been forced to use far too often in our interminable association."

"Yeah, right," Remo said, deadpan. "Let's go." On the way to their rental car, Remo glanced once at the sky. The fleeing seagulls were black specks against a tapestry of brilliant blue.

As they climbed in the car and drove away, Remo briefly wondered what Chiun had done with the missing birds. He knew enough not to ask.

Ten minutes after they were gone, the first wispy seagull feathers began floating gently to the ground.

Chapter 15

At the edge of the Columbian Basin, before the Radiant Grappler II had even passed the divided island of Hispaniola on which sat the tiny countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, a change was taking place aboard the huge vessel.

Potbellied men in tie-dyed shirts swarmed up from belowdecks, hauling buckets and heavy burlap bundles. Thinning hair blew wildly in the warm breeze; breath came in rasping puffs as they ran through their arranged routine.

Knives were produced. As the heavy sacks were dropped to the deck, frantic hands sliced them open. Thick fishing nets spilled out, the smell of the salt ocean already strong in their fibers.

The buckets held drab gray paint. Screwdrivers pried the tin lids. Another burlap bundle yielded paintbrushes. The men shouted encouragement to one another as they raced along the deck, buckets and paint in hand.

Some stayed behind with the nets. These were hooked into the trawling arms that had been left affixed to the deck after the ship's conversion from its original purpose.

As the men were fastening their nets, Secretary of the Interior Bryce Babcock stepped from the Grappler's bridge into the brilliant Caribbean sunlight. He surveyed the activity on deck.

It was all going according to plan. The men worked quickly, efficiently.

They appeared not to notice the secretary as they hurried past him on the broad deck, each lost in the minutiae of his own assigned duties. Here, men painted. There, nets were unfolded and hooked into place.

As he viewed the activity, Babcock felt the familiar excited tingle in his bladder. He dared not take a bathroom break. Not now. Not when the most brilliant part of his plan was coming to life right before his very eyes.

As the ship picked up steam for its trip past Puerto Rico and the Leeward Islands, Babcock could not avoid congratulating himself.

The scheme was flawless, masterful. He had hoped it would go well, but he hadn't dared dream that the plan would be executed with such exacting precision.

They were moving fast now. Barreling through the waves at sixty-two knots. The massive, intimidating form of the Radiant Grappler pummeled ocean beneath her enormous, merciless prow.

They would be out in the Atlantic in no time. And then...

Another tingle. Standing, Babcock crossed his legs.

"Mustn't get ahead of ourselves," he murmured, resisting the urge to squeeze his privates like a three-year-old. "We have to get there first."

But the fact was, they were on their way!

Salty spray pelted Babcock's basset-hound face. An observer would never have guessed he was ecstatically happy. Judging by his face alone, it looked as if he'd just come back from putting his dog to sleep. Bryce Babcock had always had that same hangdog expression. Even in grammar school, the other kids had called him Droopy, after the cartoon character. Even when he was elated, Babcock looked dejected. But he was absolutely not unhappy. Not now.

His sagging face drawn up in what, for him, was the closest thing to delighted he could manage, Babcock strolled along the deck.

All around, men worked and yelled. And beyond them all, the beautiful blue ocean.

"Water, water everywhere," Babcock said. He tried to avoid looking at the sea.

He walked a little farther, each droplet of salt water that collected in the worry lines of his hanging face reminding him of the heaviness that was swelling beneath his belly.

The bathroom was enticing, but the view here was too splendid. All of the men working on the plan. On his plan. He couldn't go now. He'd tough it out a little longer.

Bryce Babcock tried not to think about the pressure that was building in his bladder as he made his way down the deck.

In the stern, he noted the sadness on the faces of the men near the trawler arms. Unlike the others who were still hurrying to complete their chores, these sailors were sitting around. Waiting. They were staring into the churning white wake of the Grappler.

The men back here knew what their next task would be. And they did not revel in it. They looked up with sad eyes as Babcock approached. Fat tears streamed down long faces. Squatting on the deck, Bright Sunshiny Ralph sniffled.

"Tell us again why this is necessary?" the Earthpeacer asked the secretary when he'd stopped beside them.

"You know why," Babcock replied. "We've got to make this as authentic as possible." He placed a firm hand on Sunshiny's shoulder. "It's the only way."

"I know," Sunshiny Ralph said morosely. "It just seems so-so human." He used the word like a curse.

Babcock couldn't argue the charge. His face reflected deeply somber sympathy. It was an expression identical to his delighted look of a moment before.

"I feel your pain," Babcock intoned. "But remember, what we do here today we do for a higher cause."

There were nods among the sniffles. Though most still fought back tears, they sat more proudly, shoulders forced back, chests thrust forward.

Babcock flashed the men a dyspeptic wince that might have been a smile of encouragement before turning away.

It was time to deal with more pressing matters. The endless churning water had had a negative effect on his already full bladder. The pressure was too great to ignore any longer.

Turning from the men, he began to hurry back along the deck. He had taken barely a step before something far above caught his eye. It was framed against the azure sky of the Caribbean.

He stopped dead.

On a lone mast high above the giant ship fluttered a green flag. On it was embroidered the familiar dove-and-tree symbol of Earthpeace. Bryce Babcock's sour face collapsed as he watched the flag snap crazily at the sky.

He wheeled back on the men.

"What is that still doing up there?" he demanded, jabbing an angry finger mastward.

"Uh, dude," Sunshiny said, "we thought, you know, fly the colors till the bitter end."

"That's the first thing that should have gone, you idiots!" Babcock snapped. "Get it down from there! Now!" His baggy eyes suddenly widened. "Oh, no."

Face sick, the interior secretary glanced down at his trousers. A seeping wet stain was easing over his crotch. As he gasped in anger, warm rivulets began the remorseless trickle down the front of his thigh, dampening the band of his black dress socks.

"Dammit," he griped. "I knew I should have lined with plastic."

Shaking the growing wetness from his leg, Bryce Babcock hustled belowdecks on squishy shoes.

BY ORDER of the interior secretary, the Earthpeace flag was lowered. It was folded reverently and placed in a simple cardboard box in the hold. At the same time, the last white lapel pins were collected.

Jerry Glover had the honor of bringing the shoebox containing the insignias down below. He hid it behind the former President's cage. Sneaking a peek at the prisoner, he found that the ex-chief executive was still snoring, oblivious to all that was going on around him.

"You're gonna be in for one mother of a shock when you wake up," Jerry whispered. "This ain't no bourgeois National Review cruise."

Leaving the old man in the darkness of the damp hold, he hurried back up on deck.

The catwalk door closed with resounding finality. The noise echoed through the shadowy hold.

For several long seconds, intense silence filled the rusty belly of the ship. The only sounds were those that filtered through the Grappler's thick hull. Waves crashing. Creaking metal. Muffled shouts. Muted, distant.

Another sound. Closer. This one originating within the hold itself. So soft was it that it could have been mistaken for background noise.

A soft, urgent scratching noise. Very faint.

And this new sound issued from out of the dark cage interior.

AT THE PUERTO RICO TRENCH, the Grappler made an unexpected course alteration. Instead of turning south for the run to the southernmost tip of Africa, the ship veered northeast, aiming for the wide expanse of the Atlantic.

Scaffolding was lowered over the sides. Paint strokes removed the last of the Grappler's identifying marks. New identification numbers were stenciled in large white letters on the gunmetal-gray hull.

The men in the stern were given word to begin the task that had caused them such grief.

Nets were lowered from heavy steel arms into the churning ocean water.

Sonar in the helm was quick to locate a school of fish. In a matter of minutes, the dripping nets were hauled back up to the deck, laden with bluefin tuna. The fish were dumped unceremoniously onto the deck.

Men who had held themselves together until now broke into tears at the sight of the hundreds of fish slopping out around their ankles.

"The carnage!" Sunshiny cried. "The viciousness! Oh, the humanity!"

"Humanity is right," another Earthpeacer blubbered, wiping at his runny nose. "Fish would never kill one another for food. They don't have it in them."

Sunshiny Ralph steeled himself. "We're supposed to be a fishing boat now. We need to have something in the hold if we're stopped."

Jerry Glover sniffled, nodding agreement. "This is necessary. For the greater good."

The men waded into the pile of live fish and began to load them, as gently as possible, into a special metal sluice. The tuna disappeared down the chute, flopping moments later into the hold of the big ship.

The work went on for only a few minutes. The cries of the men, which had died down after a time, grew frenzied once more when the last of the dumped nets revealed the familiar shape of a large dolphin. The creature was dead.

Gasps went up all around.

"Oh, my God!" Sunshiny shrieked. He hopped up and down in front of the dead mammal.

"This is awful!" Jerry echoed, clutching his own throat.

Another man dropped to his rear end on the deck, knees pulled to his chin.

"Greater good ...greater good ...greater good..." he muttered over and over as he rocked back and forth.

As Sunshiny attempted mouth-to-blowhole resuscitation, buckets of ocean water were hastily brought up in a futile attempt to revive the animal. To no avail.

The mood went from frantic to funereal. No one seemed to know what to do with the dead creature. A burial at sea seemed the most fitting, but someone argued that this was just a fancy term for dumping the poor creature overboard.

"These are the geniuses of the deep," Jerry wept. "We can't just chuck it out like garbage."

"If they're so smart, why do they keep getting caught in nets?" one timid Earthpeacer asked. The rest joined Sunshiny and Jerry in pelting the blasphemer with a dozen flapping, undersize tropical fish.

Afterward, they wrapped the dolphin's corpse in a spare Earthpeace flag and lowered it gently into the sea.

There was no joy aboard the transformed Radiant Grappler II after this incident. The dark mood remained with the crew like a stubborn black cloud on the remainder of their uneventful trip across the Atlantic.

Chapter 16

The summer sun was dying long and slow across the reddening New York sky. As the afternoon blurred into dusk, a palpable sense of loss seemed to rise with the gloaming-the sort of wistful malaise that began to set in on the last full month before the start of autumn and the winter it presaged.

A soft breeze off Long Island Sound touched the shadow-smeared leaves of ancient oak and maple. Alone in the drab confines of his Folcroft office, Harold W. Smith noticed neither the sigh of leaf nor the encroaching darkness.

Fingers moved with perfect efficiency of motion, striking silent keys. Smith was lost in his element. As he surfed the Net, page after electronic page reflected in his owlish glasses.

For the moment, he had put aside his greater concerns. Even so, while it was not yet an actual crisis, it remained a far worse potential crisis than any he'd ever faced.

The situation as it was playing out was clearly an unfortunate quirk of fate, rather than part of some deliberate scheme.

The former President hit his head and regained his memory of CURE. An ecoterrorist group saw the opportunity his hospitalization presented and abducted him. The group ruthlessly seized the moment, oblivious to the damning potential of the information that had surfaced in the ex-President's mind.

A series of unfortunate coincidences. Nothing more.

Under other circumstances, Smith might have hesitated to use Remo and Chiun against Earthpeace. After all, other agencies would certainly be involved in the search. They would find him eventually. And even if they did not, well, the truth was that, lamentably, ex-Presidents were expendable.

But the CURE information this President possessed made this situation unique. In having the President, Earthpeace had CURE. Whether they realized it now or not.

A potentially disastrous situation. Smith had tried for several hours to put it from his mind as he worked, with varying degrees of success. At the moment, as he studied his monitor, concern had been eclipsed by confusion.

At his keyboard, Smith paused.

"Odd," he said quietly. So engrossed was he with the information on the computer screen he did not realize he had spoken the word aloud.

On the monitor buried below the dark surface of the desk was a photograph. Taken from a satellite, it showed the area of the Atlantic where the Earthpeace flagship should now be, given its reported course and likely speed.

But the Grappler wasn't there.

At best, the Radiant Grappler II wasn't due in Cape Town for another twenty-nine hours. Remo would arrive before that. All any of them could do in the meantime was wait.

To fill the idle time, Smith had been doing research on the Earthpeace organization. At the same time, he had logged on to a military satellite in geosynchronous orbit over the Atlantic. Efficient to a fault, Smith wanted to be certain the ship was on schedule. He farmed out the task of actually locating the Grappler to the CIA.

It was a procedure he had used in the past. Analysts at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, were assigned the job of finding the Earthpeace ship by some unknown superior. Taking a break from his own work, Smith had just checked the satellite images to see if the CIA had made any progress.

They had not.

Smith's gray eyes were hooded by his frowning brow as he studied the latest real-time image. There were red circles on the map. Tiny boatslike miniature bathtub toys-threw up frothy wakes of white within the small circles. Some of the vessels were labeled. None was the Grappler.

"Very odd," Smith said aloud.

This time, he realized he had spoken the words to his empty office.

Smith leaned away from the computer. He adjusted his glasses with one hand, even as he tapped the other on his desk.

They should have found the ship by now. He had issued the order almost two hours ago.

It was taking far too long. Even by CIA standards. Even if it was traveling at half speed, they should have found the Earthpeace vessel by now.

Assuming it was where it was supposed to be. A fresh tug of concern.

Empty belly grumbling, Smith leaned forward, his chair creaking. A scrambled phone line gained him entry to Langley. The young voice that answered was bored, but efficient. A low-level functionary not yet disinterested enough in his work to be indolent. "Imaging analysis."

"This is General Smith," the CURE director said, using the cover ID that had gained him access to both the military satellite and the CIA. "To whom am I speaking?"

The voice grew tighter, bored tone fleeing. "Mark Howard, General. I'm afraid you're not going to be happy with what I've got."

Though he labored to subdue it, Smith's worry deepened.

"Explain."

"We've searched the corridor you gave us, but we're coming up empty. There is no ship remotely resembling the Radiant Grappler in Atlantic waters from Antigua to the Cape of Good Hope."

"Is it possible you are in error?"

"No, sir," Howard insisted. "The Grappler isn't an ordinary tug. It's as big as a small cruise liner. If she was there, there'd be no missing her."

"Widen the search parameters," Smith instructed.

"We have. Three times already. I'm sorry, General, but your boat isn't out there."

Smith thought of the former U.S. President. Held captive on a phantom ship, lost somewhere in the Atlantic. Even now, he could be speaking to his abductors about CURE.

"Widen them again," Smith ordered with forced restraint.

"You know, General, Spacetrack probably followed that ship through the Panama Canal. It might be smarter to review their older satellite photos to get a positive locate on her. Like, say, from six hours ago. If she veered off any other way, we could extrapolate a route from there. Maybe."

Smith pursed his thin lips. "Do it," he said.

"The satellite I'm using now is real-time. I'll need current Spacetrack access and the full day's records."

Smith entered some rapid commands into his computer.

"The access codes have been sent to your terminal."

Howard seemed impressed. "That was quick," he said.

Smith ignored him. "If there is nothing more you require, I will be in touch," he said crisply.

"General, you should consider another alternative," Mark Howard said quickly before the CURE director had a chance to break the connection.

"What is that?"

"It's possible your boat went down."

In his Folcroft office, Smith's expression remained unchanged.

"I had already entertained that possibility," he replied as he replaced the phone.

DEEP IN THE BOWELS of the CIA's Langley headquarters, Mark Howard scowled. The sleek white phone in his hand released a steady hornet's buzz from its earpiece.

"You're welcome, you old buzzard," he griped. In the privacy of his drab, gray cubicle, he briefly considered dragging his feet on the search. It would be a fairly easy thing to do, considering the work it entailed. The volume of information he'd been given access to by the mysterious General Smith was vast. After a moment's blank hesitation, Mark Howard blinked hard. "Ah, the hell with it," he muttered. "Better to get him off my back fast."

Rubbing his tired eyes, he turned back to his worn keyboard.

Chapter 17

On the flight from San Francisco International Airport, Chiun took his usual seat on the left-hand side of the plane above the wing. Remo settled in next to him. Only when they were safely in the air and Chiun was thoroughly convinced that the wing wasn't going to fall off did the old man turn away from the window. His face was disturbingly calm.

The sunlight that glinted off the fuselage streamed through the small window, surrounding the old Korean's vellum-draped skull with an almost ethereal nimbus.

It was the halo effect that did it for Remo. The damnably serene expression on the Master of Sinanju's wrinkled puss didn't help.

"You know you don't have to keep this up," he snapped, annoyed.

"Keep what up?" Chiun asked blandly.

"This phony tranquil front."

Chiun regarded his pupil with hooded hazel eyes. "I am going to take a nap. Please wake me if you intend to make sense."

"Don't pretend you don't know what I mean. I know for a fact you're ticked as all hell about this movie thing. The only thing keeping you from splattering all over this cabin is the fact that you don't have anyone left to disembowel. You're this close to blowing your top."

"Will you be comforted, Remo, if I tell you my top is secure?"

"Tell it to the seagulls," Remo said. He shook his head resignedly. "I just wish you'd get it over with already. This waiting for you to erupt is driving me nuts."

"Your feeble grip on sanity notwithstanding, I am truly not upset. I have implored the gods to grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change that which I am able and wisdom to see the difference."

In spite of himself, Remo snorted. "Where'd you pick that one up?"

Chiun raised a haughty eyebrow. "I do not pick up. Remember, I am a writer."

"Well, you didn't write that. That's an AA prayer."

"Is it?" the old Korean asked vaguely. He settled back in his seat. "They probably stole it from me. Doubtless the rum-soaked walls of Triple-A offices throughout this fetid nation are adorned with my poignant words. Credited to Mr. Chin, of course."

Chiun closed his eyes, indicating that he was through speaking. He folded his hands neatly across his belly. After a moment he was fast asleep.

Remo watched the Master of Sinanju's calm, rhythmic breathing. It was as if he didn't have a care in the world.

It was irritating to Remo. He knew Chiun was pissed, yet Chiun wasn't displaying any signs of being pissed. And that had the practical effect of pissing Remo off.

"No matter what you say, I still think you're upset, you old faker," he whispered to Chiun's softly sleeping form.

"Think quieter," Chiun squeaked.

IT HAD TAKEN several hours, but he'd finally found her.

The contours were right, and it was certainly the right size. Mark Howard had enlarged the image just to confirm.

He copied the photo to a ROM disc and brought it down to a screening room. Once he'd doused the lights and displayed the image against the white wall, he'd removed all doubt.

The Radiant Grappler II.

Alone in the shadows of the small room, Howard compared the computer-enhanced image to the file photos he'd dragged up from the CIA archives. It didn't quite match.

By the looks of it, the vessel had undergone some modifications to make it look like an innocent fishing boat. A waste of time. The ship was so distinctive, there was no mistaking it, no matter what was done to its exterior.

"You can't paint stripes on a cow and call it a zebra," Howard whispered in the darkness of the empty room.

The cosmetic alterations weren't the only odd thing about the Grappler.

Howard glanced at the longitude and latitude displayed at the bottom of the picture. On the screen, the enlarged numbers were three inches high. Unless the pilot was high or a complete idiot-both possible, given the Earthpeace rolls-the vessel had deliberately changed course. No simple navigational error could possibly put the ship five thousand miles away from where it was supposed to be.

Flipping on the lights, he popped the disc from the CD-ROM drive.

Howard left the room, returning to the seclusion of his cubicle. The phone rang the instant he sat in his swivel chair.

"Imaging analysis," he said, tucking the receiver between ear and shoulder. The smaller satellite image of the Grappler was still on his monitor.

"Mr. Howard, General Smith. What have you learned?"

The voice was as sour as a sack of squeezed lemons. Howard placed the silver disc softly on his desk.

"For starters, your ship didn't sink, General," he said.

"You have located it?"

"Yes, sir. And not at all where you expected it to be."

"Where is it?" Smith demanded.

"Right about now, it's southeast of the Azores and tearing through the ocean like a bat out of hell. It should be passing through the Strait of Gibraltar by morning."

"Are you certain?" Smith asked.

"I've got the real-time satellite feed on my monitor right now," Howard said. He spun his feet into the footwell of his desk. The image of the Grappler updated at twenty-second intervals. As he spoke, the old picture was eclipsed by the newest snapshot. "If you can get access to Spacetrack, you'll see what I'm seeing."

Howard heard some rapid tapping from Smith's end of the line. It was more precise than drumming fingers. If he was typing, he didn't have a standard keyboard.

The tapping stopped.

"This is not clear enough," General Smith complained.

"I enlarged the image, sir. It is your boat," Howard insisted.

As he spoke, Howard was stunned to see the image on his own screen enlarge. The larger image of the Radiant Grappler II came into starkly clear focus, much clearer than any photographic reproduction.

Howard stared at his computer in disbelief. Not only had he not touched his keyboard, his system shouldn't have been capable of enlarging a real-time satellite feed.

General Smith was accessing the Spacetrack data through Howard's own computer.

On his monitor, the bird's-eye photo of the Radiant Grappler II showed the ship continuing its remorseless trek across the cold Atlantic.

Howard bit the inside of his cheek. This was all too weird. "General, may I ask what this is all about?" he ventured hesitantly.

But the nasal voice on the phone acted as if he hadn't even spoken.

"Thank you for your assistance, Mr. Howard," General Smith said.

The line promptly went dead. A moment later, the image of the Earthpeace ship vanished from Howard's computer screen. When he checked, Howard found that his uplink to the Spacetrack system had been severed.

Howard leaned back in his seat, crossing his arms thoughtfully. He stared at his monitor for a long time without actually seeing it. Even when the screen saver came on, he didn't notice.

"Interesting" was all he said after many pensive minutes. The word was a soft murmur.

He picked up the CD on which he'd downloaded the satellite data. Fingering it for a few lingering seconds, he finally slipped it into a plastic jewel case. When he stored the disc far back in his desk drawer, there was a thoughtful expression on his pale face.

He closed the drawer with a muted click.

REMO'S PLANE from San Francisco had taken them as far as New York. He and Chiun had boarded the first direct flight from JFK to South Africa.

They were well into the second leg of their journey when Remo felt a gentle tap on his shoulder. Since the start of his Sinanju training, he'd had a problem with women finding him irresistible. Flight attendants were always the worst.

Although he had discovered a few years ago that shark meat was a natural inhibitor to his pheromones, he hadn't had any in days. Obviously, the effects of his last shark meal were wearing off.

As the stewardess persisted in tapping his shoulder, Remo feigned sleep.

"Excuse me, sir?" she pressed. Her breath was warm and close and smelled strongly of peppermint. Remo kept his eyes twisted shut. "Can't talk. Sleeping."

It didn't work. She gripped his shoulder and shook.

"Sir?"

From the seat beside Remo, the Master of Sinanju snorted impatiently.

"Answer it or it will not go away."

This irritated Remo even more. He was already ticked at Chiun for taking so long to get upset about the whole Mr. Chin fiasco. Now, after pretending to sleep practically the whole way from California to the middle of the Atlantic, the old crank roused himself just long enough to drag Remo into a conversation with some sex-crazed flight attendant.

"Thanks a heap, Chiun," Remo growled. Thinking foul thoughts of the Master of Sinanju, he turned a baleful eye on the woman.

Everything about her that would traditionally be considered attractive in the female form had been inflated to near-comic proportions. Her lips, hair and nails were huge. As she leaned into his seat, her massive breast implants threatened to put out his eyes.

"In the event of a water landing, do those things double as flotation devices?" he asked, his voice devoid of any trace of enthusiasm.

"Hmm?" she smiled. She didn't seem to hear him. "I'm terribly sorry to wake you, sir," the woman cooed in a sweetly Southern drawl, "but you have a call." She nodded apologetically to the seat phone in front of Remo.

"Oh," Remo grumbled, inwardly relieved.

But when he reached for the phone, a pair of soft, scented hands grabbed hold of his.

"Why, was there something else you wanted?" the stewardess asked coyly. She caressed his wrist lovingly.

"The use of my hand will be just fine," he replied.

"In due time, sugar," she purred. "When I'm through with it."

"I am going to be ill," the Master of Sinanju said from the adjacent seat.

"No comments from the peanut gallery," Remo growled. He pulled his hand from the woman's strong grip.

The flight attendant's face clouded.

"But it's my job to make you happy," she said, pouting.

"I'm plenty happy," Remo said, snapping up the phone.

Chiun snorted.

"I don't want to lose my job," the woman whined. "I refuse to leave till you let me do what I'm paid for." She crossed her arms over her massive, artificial pontoons.

"Remo?" the confused voice of Harold Smith asked over the seat phone.

"In a minute, Smitty," Remo said. He clapped the phone to his chest. "You know what I want?" he asked the morose stewardess.

Her cloud of dejection broke. Hope sprang anew on her makeup-slathered face.

"Me?" she sang. "You know, these seats recline."

She bent to show him.

Remo shook his head. "Peanuts," he insisted. "All you can get."

She crinkled her nose and bit her lip. "Hub? Why?"

Remo pitched his voice low. "They get me in the mood," he said with a conspiratorial wink.

It was all she needed to hear.

The woman made a mad dash up the aisle to the service area. As she went, she plucked the complimentary packets of nuts from the trays of the other passengers. A few she yanked right out of people's hands.

"That should buy me about ten seconds," Remo muttered as he brought the phone to his ear. "Okay, Smitty, what's up?"

After waiting so long, the CURE director seemed ready to explode. "There has been a change of plans," he announced breathlessly. "The Radiant Grappler II is nearing Portugal."

"Portugal? That's in Europe."

"I doubt the emperor phoned to administer a geography quiz," Chiun's squeaky voice said blandly. When Remo glanced over, the Master of Sinanju's eyes were open. He was casting a bored eye out the window.