The Last Monarch

"Why don't you go back to sleep, Rip van Winkle?" Remo suggested, agitated.

"I have tried. But the tawdry soap opera that is your life has murdered sleep for me."

"You were doing a good job faking it the first fifteen thousand miles."

"It is not clear where the Grappler is now heading," Smith persisted, interrupting Remo. "The likeliest route, however, would bring it into the Mediterranean."

"You said it was heading for South Africa."

"That was the stated destination. It altered course en route."

"Smitty, we're heading for South Africa," Remo pressed.

"Not any longer. I have issued an emergency course alteration to the pilot. Your new destination is Gibraltar."

"Gibraltar." Remo frowned. "Spain, right?"

"Actually, it is a colony of Great Britain," Smith said. "By the time you land there, we should have a clearer picture of where the Earthpeace vessel is heading. I will make arrangements for you to be picked up and transported to proximity with the Grappler when it arrives at its ultimate destination. "Has anyone else gotten wind of who's on board?" Remo asked.

"No," Smith said. "Fortunately for us, the efforts of other agencies thus far have been limited to the United States. However, that could change very quickly. I will continue to monitor the domestic situation and phone you when you land."

"Okeydoke," Remo said. He replaced the phone.

"Where will this goose chase take us next?" Chiun complained before Remo had sat back in his seat.

"You mean seagull chase," Remo said dully.

"I mean what I mean," Chiun sniffed.

Remo sighed. "Wherever these Earthpeace whackos go, we follow. They're the ones with the President, remember?"

A hint of a scowl touched the Master of Sinanju's weathered face. "He is not even your nation's current leader," he clucked. "Why does anyone even care?"

"Most people don't," Remo admitted honestly. "Then why not just forget him? The bloated nitwit who now rules from the Eagle Throne has the makings of a fine despot. He lies, cheats, betrays his closest allies and is as libidinous as a monkey. All are qualities endemic to the greatest dictators. Be content with him."

"A compelling argument," Remo said dryly, "but I think we'd better stick with the mission as outlined. We'll get the old President and bring him home."

"President." Chiun spit the word as if it were a curse. "Pah! What good are Presidents? Idiots appointed by fools to reign for but a few scant years. Every civilized nation knows that the only true leader is a monarch who is born and bred to rule. Preferably a tyrant."

"Presidents have paid your salary for more than twenty years," Remo pointed out.

"Smith pays me," Chiun stated firmly.

"Only because a President started the agency."

"And not even the one for whom we now search. To say that this is a fool's errand is an insult to fools." As he spoke, his eyes suddenly narrowed to slits. "I see your lunch is ready."

Chiun nodded to the front of the plane.

Remo's stewardess was coming up the aisle, arms laden to overflowing with tiny bags of peanuts. The small plastic-wrapped packets that fell to the carpet in her wake were gathered up by two more flight attendants. All three women wore perky, hopeful expressions.

"I think I'll lock myself in the cockpit for the rest of the flight," he said, turning to the Master of Sinanju.

Chiun's eyes were already closed tight.

"Can't talk. Sleeping," the old man said just before he started to snore.

Chapter 18

The hot, white Mediterranean sun that poured in through the bridge windows of the Radiant Grappler II washed warmly over the dripping chest of Bryce Babcock.

Even though Earthpeace had lobbied against the use of air conditioners, no one in the group thought the ban should extend to themselves. After all, they were changing the behavior of countless millions in their fight for Mother Earth. They above all others should be rewarded for their years of tireless effort.

Although the air conditioning aboard the ship chugged relentlessly, it wasn't enough for Bryce Babcock.

"My goodness, it's hot, isn't it?" he commented to the skipper. "It's global warming, right?" He used an already damp handkerchief to mop the sweat from the back of his neck.

The captain, who was a hired hand and not an Earthpeace member, smiled tightly. "This is the Mediterranean, sir," he explained thinly. "It was hot like this long before hairspray and shaving cream."

The handkerchief came back soaked. Babcock had to wring it out before returning it to his pocket. "Almost makes you wish for the days when science swore we were entering a new ice age, hmm?" he commented.

The captain didn't respond.

As the sailors went about their busy routine, Babcock found himself being shunted off to a corner of the bridge.

The camouflage had worked perfectly. No one had given the Grappler a second look as it sailed through the towering rocks that lined the Strait of Gibraltar. They were already well past the Gulf of Tunis and in the Strait of Sicily near the Island of Pantelleria. Malta was already 120 miles away. At the rate they were traveling, they'd pass the Maltese Islands in under two hours.

Babcock was actually surprised at the lack of resistance the Grappler was encountering. They had sighted commercial vessels and warships from dozens of nations on their journey thus far. All had been supremely disinterested.

It was as Babcock had hoped. The Grappler was now a commercial fishing boat with a Greek registry. As long as it wasn't fishing in the territorial waters of any of the countries it passed, who cared?

From his small corner near a window, Babcock spotted another vessel far across the unusually calm, sun-dappled waters. It was like an overturned skyscraper floating in a sea of scattered diamonds.

The skipper was peering at the new ship through a set of big binoculars. It seemed to be on a course parallel with that of the Earthpeace ship.

"American." The captain frowned. He lowered the binoculars.

"What is it?" Babcock asked worriedly. Even from that distance, the ship was huge.

"Aircraft carrier," the captain said. "Not many of them left these days."

The interior secretary allowed a flutter of fear to creep into the pit of his stomach.

"Let me see those," he hissed, holding out a hand for the captain's binoculars. Brow furrowing, the sailor handed them over.

They were as heavy as lead. Palms sweating, Babcock trained the glasses on the distant ship.

The binoculars enlarged the carrier to a frightening degree. As he ran the glasses along the ship, it seemed almost close enough to touch.

Sailors peppered the deck, their trousers flapping in the gentle breeze. There was no sense of urgency as far as the interior secretary could detect. No one was even looking in the direction of the Grappler.

As he followed the sharp contours of the dull gray hull, Secretary Babcock saw the ship's name. USS Ronald Reagan.

"Are you all right, sir?"

The voice rang hollow in his ears. Babcock pulled the binoculars away. The captain was staring at him, a concerned expression on his face.

"What?" Babcock asked, gulping. His heart was thudding like mad.

"That gasp you just made," the captain began, "it sounded- Are you okay?"

"Yes. Yes," Babcock snapped. He stabbed an anxious finger to the aircraft carrier. "Are they onto us?"

The captain shook his head. "They're in no hurry," he replied. "If they hold speed, we should begin to outpace them in the next ten minutes or so."

"So they're on routine maneuvers," Babcock suggested hopefully.

"That would be my guess," the captain nodded. Babcock exhaled relief, handing back the glasses. "Can you get us away from it any faster?"

"We're practically full out now, but I'll see what we can do." Turning to his men, he began to issue commands.

Bryce Babcock melted into a corner of the bridge until the Grappler pulled abreast of the aircraft carrier.

In spite of the intense heat, he'd felt an involuntary shudder the moment he laid eyes on the American warship. It was a bad omen. He hoped he'd feel better once the ship was in their wake. However, the chill remained even as he watched the aircraft carrier begin to fall slowly behind.

Even when they had outdistanced the U.S. Navy vessel, Bryce Babcock couldn't shake a feeling of intense unease.

A sense of dread weighing on his slight shoulders for the first time in days, the secretary of the interior quietly left the bridge.

Chapter 19

Terror hadn't worked.

He wished for all the world it had, but it had not. Nossur Aruch liked terror. Lived for terrorism. In his day, he had found it to be a mighty weapon. A sword that could be brandished from the dead of night against an unsuspecting enemy. An arrow that always struck its target. A bullet fired with unerring accuracy.

Of course, few in the so-called civilized world agreed with Nossur Aruch, leader of the Palestine Independence Organization and director and chairman of the Free Palestine Authority. In the soft capitals of the Western imperialist nations, terrorism was soundly condemned. Practitioners of the art of terror were even hunted down.

They thought it sloppy. A bomb lobbed onto a bus, a grenade tossed into a crowd, a foreign leader shot.

But Aruch knew better. These acts only seemed haphazard. Terrorism was a precise game. But, lamentably, the game had been lost. Practically before it got started.

"Timing is everything," Aruch said, sighing wistfully.

"Sir?"

On the vine-enclosed balcony of his Hebron office in Israel's West Bank, Nossur had thought he was alone. He had forgotten about Fatang, the young PIO soldier who was assigned to protect him. If Nossur Aruch's beloved terror campaign had worked, he would not need such a guard.

Aruch smiled sadly as he glanced at the young man.

"I am a man out of time," he said. "The great war of terror could have been fought a century ago. Two would have been even better." There was sadness in his voice. He sighed into the warm evening air. "Do you know why the Americans won their independence from the English, Fatang?"

"I do not, sir," the youthful soldier replied. His olive face was earnest, his eyes burning with the intensity only the very young and very idealistic could muster. That flame had long ago winked out for Nossur Aruch.

"They fought a terrorist campaign. The British soldiers of the time were used to fighting armies that lined up on one side of an open field. Obeying the laws of civility, the British would line up on the other. Once everyone was in place, each side would shoot and shoot until the last man standing was declared the winner."

"That is foolish," Fatang volunteered.

Aruch nodded sagely. "The Americans thought this, as well. That is why when the British formed their skirmish lines, the American colonists did not. They hid in trees and behind rocks. They used guerrilla tactics. They were most uncivilized in the way they fought their war. And because of this, they won their independence."

The soldier seemed surprised. "Is this true?" he asked.

"Oh, there were other factors to be sure-" Aruch waved "-but this contributed to their victory." The PIO leader's face took on a faraway look. "Of course, they did not go far enough. Had I been there to guide them, the Americans could have fought a real war of terror. With my knowledge, London would now be the capital of the United States. I could have been a colossus in another era, straddling the globe. But thanks to an accident of birth, I am a man out of time."

A morose expression on his face, Aruch turned away from the much younger man.

The FPA chairman wore the plain olive drab fatigues that had become his sartorial trademark. They were so wrinkled it looked as if he balled them up and stuffed them under his mattress every night.

A deep gray mustache scuttled from beneath his large nose, fading into a scruffy white beard.

His eyes bordered on psychotic. They were so wide they gave the impression of a man who didn't blink. Dark irises floated in circular seas of white.

A black-and-white-checked kaffiyeh adorned his head. To foreign observers, it seemed to get larger with each passing year. This was obviously a false impression. The fact was, Nossur Aruch had been shrinking for much of the past thirty years. By his calculations, if he lived longer than another decade, he would disappear into his black army boots.

Many people thought that he was an uglier, hairier, dumpier version of Beatles drummer Ringo Starr. Not Nossur Aruch, however. When he looked at himself in a mirror, he saw a Palestinian matinee idol. Although, granted, a depressed matinee idol.

Lost in thought, Aruch sighed deeply at the growing dusk. His forlorn exhalation of air seemed almost like a recrimination. Knotted hands rubbed the rough concrete of the balcony rail. Tangles of grapevines ensnared the railing. He stared off into the distant twilight.

Less than thirty miles to the north of his secluded balcony sat Jerusalem, a fat target waiting to be struck. Yet it was out of reach.

Actually, that was only true in the metaphorical sense. In point of fact, it was infinitely reachable. Nossur pushed away from the rail.

Fatang stayed at silent attention just outside the French doors that led into the PIO leader's office. He watched as his superior squatted near the edge of the balcony's sturdy inner railing.

In the early nineties, the Nobel committee had awarded the former terrorist its coveted Peace Prize.

To Nossur Aruch, the million-dollar award had been found money. Splurging, he had blown it all on a single special item.

A vast section at the center of the balcony seemed to be overgrown with vines. Aruch grabbed hold of a chunk of what appeared to be branches, tugging them aside. They folded with a plastic-sounding crinkle, exposing a heavy black base hidden beneath.

Aruch pulled back farther, exposing a single white fin.

The young soldier wasn't surprised by what he saw. Often on nights like these, Aruch's trips to his balcony would end in a maudlin moment like this. The ex-terrorist would pine over the road not traveled.

The camouflage netting Aruch peeled back revealed the rocket boosters of a slender missile. Nossur had used the "mad money" granted him by the Nobel Committee to purchase a surplus British long-range Bloodhound MK2 missile.

It was aimed at the heart of Jerusalem.

Obscured by trees and vines, the balcony was set back in an alcove at the center of the private courtyard. The yard itself was surrounded by a high wall. The missile was well hidden from prying eyes.

Aruch had bought the missile on the black market and had it smuggled into the West Bank piece by piece.

An impotent gesture. For, although Nossur Aruch loved terrorism almost more than life itself, he would never use his weapon. He had employed terror tactics in his younger life, but he was a diplomat now. And diplomats did not drop bombs on the heads of their enemies. No matter how strong the desire to do so.

Tears welled in the corners of his crinkling eyes as he studied the magnificent lines of his beautiful prize.

It was a giant paperweight. Nothing more.

He drew in a mucousy sniffle as he pulled the camouflage back across the missile's exposed tail section.

As he headed across the balcony to the open French doors, Nossur blew his big nose on the sleeve of his fatigues. A honking, wet bray. By the look of the splotches up and down the arm, it wasn't the first time.

Fatang marched in behind him.

The leader of the Palestine Independence Organization stepped over to his cluttered desk. The weight of the world on his drooping shoulders, he slumped into his chair.

Although the desk was a jumble of half-crumpled papers, Nossur knew where everything was. He spotted an unfamiliar sheet atop the pile the moment his gaze fell upon the desk.

He scooped up the note.

"What is this?" the PIO leader asked.

"It came while you were napping," the soldier said from his sentry post near the open balcony doors. Sounds from the deepening Hebron night filtered in across the dark yard.

Aruch frowned as he quickly scanned the paper. He groaned before he'd even finished.

"Yahrak Kiddisak man rabba-k," he cursed softly.

"Is something wrong, sir?" Fatang asked. Aruch glared up at the young man, a sour expression on his face.

"Things could not be better," he spit sarcastically. He crushed the paper in his hand, dropping it to the clutter on his desk. "I am to meet with the American secretary of the interior tomorrow morning."

"The Americans?" the guard asked. He seemed disgusted at the very prospect.

"Not the Americans. An American. The fool contacted me several weeks ago. He said something about a secret mission that only I would appreciate. The man is irredeemably stupid. He is what is called an environmental activist."

"Ah, I have heard of these." The soldier nodded. "Is it not their desire to have men live in caves like beasts?"

"That is true," Anuch said. "And I am told this Bryce Babcock is one of the worst. In settling their West many years ago, the Americans slaughtered every last wolf in an area known as Yellowstone Park. Babcock actually had wolves flown in from Canada and set them loose in the preserve. This is a spot where families vacation, mind you, Fatang." The young soldier was incredulous.

"Were the people not outraged?" he asked, stunned.

"Americans are apathetic," Aruch explained with a wave of his hand. "As long as it is not their child that is mauled, they do not care."

Fatang shook his head in disbelief. "Americans will forever remain a mystery to me, sir."

Aruch nodded. "To me, as well. But I must deal with them, for such is the life of a diplomat." As he spoke the contemptuous word, he cast a longing eye beyond the soldier at the shadowy contours of his precious Bloodhound. His eyes grew watery as he studied the tangle of vines painted on the plastic sheet that concealed his balcony missile.

The truth was, he didn't really care what Babcock had to say. The meeting was just another in a long line of pointless summits he had attended since renouncing the use of terror.

"More of the same," he muttered, thinking of the following day's meeting with Bryce Babcock. "The fool mentioned something about ushering in a new era of peace. The Palestinian people are doubtless about to be asked to capitulate once more."

Fatang smirked. "The Americans still believe that Muslim and Jew can live together in harmony." Aruch tore his eyes away from his beloved missile.

"They can," he said softly. "As long as the Muslim stands above the ground and the Jew lies below it."

The former terrorist rose to his feet. Shuffling wearily on his black boots, he headed out the office door.

He didn't cast a backward glance at his cherished Nobel missile. The thought that it would never be launched against Jerusalem brought him far too much pain.

Chapter 20

The plane touched down at the airport that had been constructed on the mile-and-a-half-long sandy isthmus that separated the crown colony of Gibraltar from the Spanish mainland.

The complaints had started the instant the pilot announced that they were being rerouted. They had continued unabated throughout the flight and were still going strong even as the passenger jet taxied to a stop in the shadow of the great limestone mass that was the Rock of Gibraltar.

Before the plane had stopped, Remo and Chiun rose from their seats. They waded through an ankledeep pile of unopened peanut packets on their way down the aisle. At the front, Remo's flight attendant was just opening the door when they arrived.

"Oh, now you're up." She pouted as the ramp was rolled to the side of the plane. "I tried to wake you a bunch of times."

"Peanuts make me sleepy," Remo explained.

The woman's eyes widened. "You said they put you in the mood," she accused angrily.

"Yes." Remo nodded. "The mood for sleeping. But if it's any consolation, I dreamed only of you."

"Fat lot of good that did me," she snapped. She practically shoved him onto the ramp.

The air outside was cooler than Remo expected. The airport extended out into the Bay of Gibraltar. A stiff wind blew in across the bay, causing the wisps of hair above the Master of Sinanju's ears to twirl madly around his bald scalp.

"Smitty was gonna call," Remo said as he and Chiun descended the ramp.

"I do not even see a telephone," the old Korean commented. The tarmac was deserted. A few buildings speckled the distance in the direction of the Rock.

"Guess we walk till we find one." Remo shrugged.

They struck off together toward the control tower. "He could have at least had a car waiting," Remo said as they strolled across the windswept field.

"Add it to the list of insults heaped upon us by our current employer," Chiun replied. "A true monarch would have arranged for proper transportation."

"A while back you were saying you liked working for Smith," Remo said.

"Bite your tongue," Chiun retorted. "I merely said I work for Smith, not some temporary occupant of the Eagle Throne. The madman provides the stability of a paycheck. That is all. In spite of our association with the lunatic Smith, a true king is always preferable to any alternative."

"Not for me, Little Father," Remo said. "I kind of think Smitty's okay."

Chiun struck a bony fist against his own chest. "Go ahead, Remo," he insisted. "Stab the knife farther into your poor, poor father's heart."

Remo was surprised to detect the shadowy flicker of a light undertone. Barely perceptible. He didn't have time to press it.

He'd been aware of the great mechanical cry of a helicopter almost since they'd deplaned. The aircraft was sweeping toward Gibraltar from the harbor. Remo had assumed it was part of some routine British naval operation, until the helicopter slowed to a hover above their heads.

"You order a chopper?" he asked the Master of Sinanju over the roaring wind of the downdraft. As displaced air swirled around them, the bluishgreen Westland Naval Lynx settled on three fat wheels to the tarmac before them. The main rotor didn't stop its chopping whir as the side door slid open.

A British Royal Navy officer stuck his head out. "Gentlemen, I've been sent to collect you!" he shouted.

Remo glanced at the Master of Sinanju. The old Korean's face was blandly curious.

"I don't think so," Remo called back to the RN officer.

The man shook his head firmly. "Your Aunt Mildred sent us," he yelled over the wind.

Remo recognized it as one of Smith's code names.

"He came through after all," Remo commented to Chiun. "This make him a true monarch?"

"Not at all," the Master of Sinanju replied. "And in spite of that, he is still head and shoulders above any mere President." Hiking up his kimono skirts, he scurried inside the belly of the Lynx, slapping away the offered hand of the British officer.

Remo climbed in behind him.

The door slid shut. A moment later, the helicopter was pulling up into the sky, screaming a metallic protest.

Nose dipping, it soared away from the airport, flying over the small isthmus and out across the brilliant blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea.

"OUTBREAK OF PEACE." In death, Remo's Earthpeace contact had provided Harold W. Smith with the posthumous clue that had finally revealed the frightening power in the hands of the environmental group.

Smith had ignored the enigmatic phrase for much of the past two days, but with the Radiant Grappler located and Remo and Chiun's plane rerouted to intercept it, he had finally found time to investigate its possible meaning.

The time spent researching Earthpeace while the CIA was locating the missing boat had yielded much information.

Earthpeace had been founded in the late 1960s by a group of Canadian environmentalists whose credo was confrontation. The group was active in its approach, whether it was blocking fishing boats, stopping Eskimos from hunting seals or blowing the whistle on companies for illegal ocean dumping.

It seemed clear to Smith that, as a group, Earthpeace thrived on both confrontation and sympathetic media attention. That sympathy had reached its peak when, in 1985, French agents had sunk the first Radiant Grappler in the harbor at Auckland, New Zealand, while it was on its way to protest nuclear testing in French Polynesia.

Earthpeace representatives screamed bloody murder, and as a result of this blessing in disguise, donations to the group had risen along with its public profile. The infusion of cash allowed them the opportunity to hire more high-profile spokesmen. One of these mouthpieces was none other than Bryce Edmund Babcock.

At the time, Babcock was between positions. He had been governor of Arizona for a number of years, but had recently left office to pursue other career opportunities.

Everyone knew that Babcock had an eye on the Oval Office. With his days as governor behind him, it was important for him to find a position that kept him in the public eye. Earthpeace came with its offer at just the right time. The joining together of the two-term governor and the environmental organization had been a perfect fit.

Babcock was a firm believer in the rights of the state over those of the individual. If you had an endangered rat in your cornfield, you plowed somewhere else. If you had a slug living on the basement walls of your waterfront home, you vacated the premises to the invertebrate. If you had a slimy, mosquito-filled puddle in your backyard, it was an untouchable wetland.

The former governor and presidential hopeful relished his Earthpeace power. When he shook an admonishing finger in the Northwest, hundreds of lumberjacks were thrown out of work. When he frowned in New England, generations of fishermen were forced to scuttle their boats along with their livelihoods. Men who tilled the soil or toiled at sea shuddered and swore when they heard his name.

When the 1988 presidential race came along, there was no question that Bryce Babcock would throw his hat in the ring. The two years he'd put in at Earthpeace had been but a stepping-stone to the ultimate position of power to all environmentalists. The presidency of the United States.

Bryce Babcock ran. Bryce Babcock lost.

His showings in Iowa and New Hampshire had been pathetic. In both contests, he limped in as an also-ran.

The loss was devastating to Babcock, as well as to the rank and file of Earthpeace.

The timing couldn't have been worse for Earthpeace. The group's influence had waned in the years following the sinking of the Grappler. The public had begun to view its rolls as a bunch of hempworshiping loons. And on top of everything else, the world had maddeningly started to adopt the organization's message.

The whaling industry was dead in most parts of the world. Toxic dumping was nearly extinct. A moratorium on atomic testing was accepted by almost every nation on Earth. The Russians and Americans had even begun to roll back their nuclear stockpiles.

The fact of the matter was, Earthpeace needed a sympathizer like Babcock to win the presidency in order to boost its waning celebrity. When he lost, the group lost, too.

It was touch and go for a few years after the former governor's primary loss. Fortunately for Babcock and Earthpeace, all politics were cyclical. The party that had gone on to beat Babcock's in 1988 found itself on the outside looking in in 1992. With his impeccable liberal environmental credentials, Babcock was tapped by the new President to head up the Department of the Interior.

During the two terms of the current President, Babcock made his allegiance to Earthpeace clear in both attitude and policy.

Since Babcock's ties to Earthpeace had remained strong throughout his tenure as a cabinet secretary, Smith had decided to try a more private search. In perusing the interior head's e-mail, the CURE director had found a note from the Treasury secretary, under whose auspices the Secret Service fell. In it was mention of the former President's horseback-riding accident.

A red flag instantly went up for Smith.

The note had been sent before the event had become public knowledge. A follow-up letter from Babcock to the Treasury secretary very casually questioned the whereabouts of the old President, including hospital and room number.

Certain of the link now, Smith had checked the rest of Babcock's outgoing e-mail. Sure enough, the information had been forwarded to the Earthpeace cell in San Francisco.

Babcock was involved.

Further checking revealed that the interior secretary had purchased a plane ticket to Panama more than a month before. His arrival time coincided with the passage of the Radiant Grappler through the canal.

But surely Babcock could not have known about the ex-President's accident a month before it happened. There had to be yet another explanation for his trip.

Smith had uncovered the reason, once more, in Babcock's e-mail.

Dr. Ree Hop Doe. When Smith saw the name, he blinked in shock. The name was infamous in intelligence circles-should have been despised throughout the country.

Doe was a naturalized American citizen of Taiwanese birth. A scientist at Los Alamos National Scientific Laboratory, he had been indicted on charges that he had betrayed his adopted country by selling decades' worth of nuclear secrets to the Chinese. Thanks to Doe, the People's Republic of China had leaped a generation ahead in its offensive nuclear capability.

Doe was currently out on bond and awaiting trial. But his legal difficulties had not prevented him from corresponding with the secretary of the interior. And when he saw the topic of their hundreds of e-mail notes, Smith's very marrow froze.

The neutrino bomb.

Three of the most frightening words the CURE director had ever read. Mentioned dozens of times by both men.

When first he saw those words, Smith's mind reeled. So shocked was he, his ulcer medications were all but forgotten.

Although he knew of the preliminary research on the beta decay-causing neutrino bomb, the details since then were few and sketchy. Part of the military buildup of the 1980s, it was thought that the project hadn't progressed beyond the drawing board before the cutbacks at the end of that decade put an end to the research. Apparently, this was not the case. And this realization was almost more than Smith could comprehend.

Outbreak of peace.

No. It was impossible. They would have to be insane....

With shaking hands, Smith quickly called up the latest image of the Radiant Grappler II. He had taken over and automatically programmed the satellite so the Spacetrack system would continue to track the vessel. At the moment, it was well past Crete. Nearing Cyprus.

An outbreak of peace. In the Middle East. The neutrino bomb.

And as his heart thudded a concert of fear in his chest, Smith knew it to be true. To the very core of his rock-ribbed New England soul.

And if the CURE director's worst fear was realized, Bryce Babcock's scheme would have awesome global ramifications.

FROM THE BRIDGE of the USS Ronald Reagan, Admiral Jason Harris watched the British Lynx glide a perfect line of descent for the aircraft carrier's flight deck.

Rotor blades swished with blinding ferocity as the helicopter set down.

Before rubber touched deck, Admiral Harris was already off the bridge and clomping down the steep metal companionway to greet the helicopter. As he climbed to the lower level, he wore a deeply unhappy expression on his ruddy face.

A barrel-chested man in his late sixties, the admiral was a no-nonsense type who didn't cotton to the sort of shenanigans that were going on around his boat today.

The worst thing that could possibly happen in a military man's life had taken place. Admiral Hams was being given orders by civilians. His superior had spilled the beans when he called to inform Harris that a British helicopter out of Gibraltar would be bringing aboard two passengers.

"He claimed to be an Army General," the commander of the Atlantic Fleet had said. This was the admiral to whom the officers of the Second Fleet in the western Atlantic and the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean were answerable. "But he sounded like a spook to me."

"CIA?" Admiral Harris had asked, annoyed.

"Probably. But don't quote me on that, Jason. Whoever he is, he's got top security clearance. He arranged the thing with the British before he even contacted me."

"You mean they're already on their way?"

"They should be on your radar by now." Harris checked. They were.

"Do I have any say in this?" he snarled. "Not if you want to keep your command."

Admiral Harris had grown fond of the commanding view from his bridge. He decided to hunker down and take whatever came his way.

On the carrier's flight deck, Harris began to regret his accommodating nature the minute he got a load of the pair who jumped down from the helicopter.

One was a skinny white guy dressed casually in a white T-shirt and Chinos. His pants flapped wildly in the gale-force wind of the chopper's downdraft.

The other passenger looked like a soft breeze should have tossed him into the sea. He was a hundred if he was a day and wore a flaming orange brocade kimono.

The pair of them headed straight for Harris as he approached from the opposite direction across the deck.

Behind them, the Lynx was already rising back into the air. The British officer in the chopper barely had a chance to salute before the door slid shut.

The helicopter was soaring back across the water in the direction of Gibraltar by the time Harris met with the two strangers.

"Welcome aboard, gentlemen." Harris smiled tightly. He stuck out his hand to the arrivals.

The older man lifted his nose and pretended he didn't see the offered hand. When the younger one accepted it, Harris noticed that his wrists were unusually thick, as wide around as fat tomato-sauce cans.

"Mind telling us what the hell we're doing here?" Remo asked.

"Don't you know?" Harris said.

"No," Remo admitted, glancing around. "Except we're supposed to be looking for a boat. From what I can tell, this ain't it."

"I'm not sure of any of the specifics," Admiral Harris admitted, "but I was told to inform you that your mission has become more urgent."

"This isn't like Smith." Remo frowned at Chiun.

The Master of Sinanju had turned his attention to Admiral Harris. "On the contrary," the tiny Asian sniffed. He was examining the admiral's uniform as if its occupant were no more than a department-store mannequin. "He has only become more insane with the passage of time. As far as I am concerned, this is in lunatic character."

"Smith?" Admiral Harris asked Remo. "That'd be General Smith, I presume?"

"That what he's calling himself today?" Remo asked, uninterested. He nodded up to the bridge. "I'd better call him. This tub have a radio?"

It was a supreme effort for the admiral to not lose his temper at the insulting term. Adding to his agitation was the fact that the old man seemed to have taken an abnormally keen interest in Harris's uniform. The Asian's wrinkled face puckered as he examined the admiral's epaulets.

"I'm sorry, sir. No can do," Harris said through clenched teeth to the younger man. "I was given very specific instructions not to let you use any equipment that runs any risk whatsoever of being monitored. Once you're on the ground, you may call." His frown lines deepened. "Though that's odd to me. We've got some of the most sophisticated equipment in the world on board this ship. You're far more likely to run the risk of being heard from a public phone."

Remo waved a dismissive hand. "My boss majored in scrambling with a minor in bugging the hell out of me. Where's the nearest phone booth?"

Before the admiral could reply, Chiun interrupted. "Do not pester the man, Remo," he admonished before turning attention back to the seaman. "What is your station?" Chiun asked pointedly.

"What?" Harris asked.

"What?" Remo asked, as well. "Chiun, we don't have ti-"

"Shush," the Master of Sinanju insisted. "What station do you hold?" he pressed Harris.

The sailor towered over the old man. He looked down at the wizened figure, a strange expression clouding his ruddy face. "I'm an admiral," Harris said, unsure whether to be insulted or confused.

"Ah." Chiun nodded knowingly. "Amir-albahr."

Harris's face registered surprise. The old man's Arabic pronunciation was flawless.

"You know about that?" the admiral asked, an unintentional smile cracking his hard veneer.

"Of course," the Master of Sinanju replied. "Who would not?"

"Well, actually ...most people," Admiral Harris said. "Not many do in this day and age."

Standing between them, Remo frowned. "A mere what?" he asked the Master of Sinanju.

"It means 'prince of the sea,' O ignorant one," Chiun answered with thin impatience. "The leader of the Muslim fleet in these very waters was known by that name eight hundred years ago."

Admiral Harris suddenly found himself warming to his Asian passenger. After all, anyone who knew about amir-al-bahr couldn't be all bad. The young one, however, was still a vulgar landlubber. And seemed to go out of his way to prove it.

"Whoop-de-do," Remo said, twirling a finger in the air.

The admiral ignored him.

"Do you know about admirabilis, sir?" he asked Chiun.

Chiun made a displeased cluck. "The Christian corruption for the purer Arabic," he intoned. "And before you ask," he said to Remo, "they brought back the term during one of their silly Crusades, thinking it was analogous to the Latin word for admirable."

"I wasn't gonna ask," said Remo, who had been about to. "And who gives a crap in a hat?" Harris was finding it easier to ignore the young man.

He was positively beaming at Chiun. "Are you a sailor, sir?" he enthused.

The old man took a deep breath of clean Mediterranean air. "In my long life, I have spent much time on the sea." He nodded.

"Complaining every minute," Remo pointed out.

"You strike me as the nautical type," Harris said to Chiun, his smile interrupted for the briefest of glares at Remo.

Remo had had enough. "Listen, Captain Crunch, unless you want me to strike you as the nautical type, I suggest you get me to a freaking phone."

With great reluctance, Harris turned away from the delightful old man. "Yes, sir," he said icily. "I was told to inform you that your quarry has landed in Lebanon."

"Perfect," Remo groused. "More traveling."

"You need not be concerned," Chiun said. "For we are in the capable hands of Amir-al-bahr." He lowered his head in a slight bow to the Navy man. The wind threw his tufts of hair in crazy directions.

The old seaman smiled warmly. "You flatter me with the title, sir," Admiral Harris said, returning the bow. "But I don't think it's deserved. Why not just call me Jason?"

"Very well, Jason, Prince of the Sea," Chiun replied, a smile cracking his parchment face.

"Where do you stow the barf bags?" Remo asked.

Chapter 21

From the back seat of his bulletproof sedan, Nossur Aruch watched the countryside race past in shades of brown.

The sky above Lebanon was a thin pastel blue. The car's tinted windows made it seem much darker. A rich texture of color foreign to much of the sunbleached Middle East.

The shaded windows-also bulletproof-enabled Aruch to see out while preventing others from seeing in.

It wasn't vanity that put the one-way windows on his car, but survival. With so many people thirsting for his blood, the last thing he wanted was for someone to spot him on one of his infrequent trips to the countryside.

Fanatical Jews wanted him dead.

Fanatical Muslims wanted him dead, too, but only after they'd punished him. Knives, stones and boiling oil always topped the lists. Even after they killed him, the indignities would not end. The reformed terrorist didn't even want to think about what they'd do to his battered old corpse once he was dead.

Although fear for his life kept him hiding in his West Bank compound, death was the last thing on Nossur Aruch's mind at the moment-unless one counted being bored to death.

His driver turned onto the road that would take him to the port of Tyre in Lebanon, twenty miles from the Israeli border. Behind, a truckload of armed guards followed suit.

"I hate this," Nossur muttered.

"Sir?"

It was his driver's voice on the speaker. Aruch had raised the partition between the front and back seats but hadn't shut off the intercom.

Reaching a lazy hand for the control panel, he powered down the smoky privacy partition. Fatang was behind the wheel, a bodyguard seated beside him.

"Are we not there yet?" Aruch complained.

"Ten minutes more, sir," Fatang said.

Aruch leaned an elbow on the handle and braced his chin in one hand as he stared outside. The scruffy white whiskers felt like steel wool against his wrinkled palm.

"He had better be there," Nossur grumbled. The message from Secretary Babcock had been cryptic. He had mentioned Aruch's conversion to the peace process several times during a number of his rambling telephone calls and insanely long letters. The unhappy decision of the people of Israel to elect a prime minister from the conservative Likud party had soured Babcock on that country's commitment to peace. Even though they had recently corrected that mistake at the ballot box, the notion that they would do so in the first place was something he had found unforgivable. Only Nossur, Babcock had said, would appreciate the gift he was bringing to the Middle East.

Aruch wasn't certain what exactly to expect. But a clandestine mission for Washington likely meant that the current American President was trying yet again to secure a positive place in future history books. Aiding the Mideast peace process would somehow help everyone forget about his numerous personal and political failings.

Thinking of the words that would be written about him by the future histories of a free Palestinian state, Aruch sighed loudly. Whatever gift the interior secretary was bringing, it wouldn't be what Nossur really wanted.

As the car drew close to the Mediterranean shore, the houses grew more densely packed. Pedestrians crowded the streets. Many women wore the traditional black robes and veils. The men sported Western-style pants and boots. Shirts were opened to the third button, revealing dark skin.

The sheer number of guns slung over sweaty backs made Aruch all the more thankful that the people couldn't see beyond the closed window of his speeding sedan.

They arrived at the port of Tyre at the appointed time.

The streets gave way to huge docking areas at the rocky coast. Flocks of awkwardly ambling gulls scattered from their speeding path. Fatang guided the car to the proper berth, slowing to a stop beneath the great looming shadow of the Radiant Grappler II.

Aruch frowned at the famous Earthpeace vessel. Even as he scanned the deck, Fatang and the other bodyguard hopped out of the car. The armed men from Aruch's personal security detail swarmed in from behind.

With shouts and threats, the soldiers quickly cleared the area of curious onlookers. Running, they returned to the car. When Nossur Aruch stepped out into the warm air, he was surrounded on all sides by a living wall. Guards crushed protectively around his rumpled form. Within the mass of human flesh, Aruch's shoulders slumped.

"Let us get this over with," he grumbled with an impatient lisp.

Amid the thunder of stomping feet, his men hustled the schlumpy PIO leader up the boarding ramp to the deck of the moored ship.

"HE'S HERE!" Bryce Babcock said urgently. "How do I look? Too casual?" He stretched his arms out wide. He'd torn the plastic off his dry-cleaned khaki outfit five minutes before. His dove-fir Earthpeace pin was affixed to his lapel.

"It rook fine," Dr. Ree Hop Doe replied. Behind his thick, Coke-bottle glasses, Doe continually winced and blinked. The natural light streaming through the bridge windows was blinding. He had stayed belowdecks for the entire trip. Many of the crew had only just seen the Asian scientist for the first time.

"How's the bomb?" Babcock asked. "Is the bomb all right?"

"Bomb issa okay, Mr. Secretary."

"You haven't armed it?"

Doe shook his head. "Not without you terr me."

"Good. Good, good. Excellent. How do I look?" After summoning Doe, Babcock had banished the rest of the crew below. The ragtag Earthpeacers would be a distraction during this momentous meeting.

Babcock peeked anxiously out the side bridge window. The familiar tingle touched his bladder. Nossur Aruch was just stepping off the gangplank. PIO soldiers quickly secured the deck as the ex-terrorist climbed the steps to the bridge.

When Doe reached for the door, Babcock let out a horrified shriek.

"You're not here to open doors," the interior secretary hissed. "We used you people as slave labor to build the railroads, for Christ's sake. Is it too much to ask for a little less polite and a little more moral-outrage-inspired rudeness?"

When the door handle rattled, Babcock's eyes went wide.

"Chop-chop, Hop Sing," he snarled, shoving the Los Alamos scientist aside. The interior secretary flung the door open grandly.

"I bring you peace," Bryce Babcock announced. Nossur Aruch was framed in the doorway, an unshaved troll in rumpled fatigues. He looked like a trick-or-treater whose Halloween costume had gone horribly awry.

"May peace be yours, as well, Mr. Secretary," Aruch responded in his lisping, almost feminine voice.

As the men exchanged handshakes, Bryce Babcock's bladder tingled with watery excitement. He shifted his weight.

"I assume, Mr. Secretary, by your message and the manner in which we meet that this is a rendezvous of secret significance?" Aruch asked Babcock as he and a few of his guards were ushered onto the bridge. The former terrorist took special note of the subservient Ree Hop Doe cowering in the corner.

"Call me Bryce," Babcock chirped. "After all. We are to be partners in peace together."

Peace, peace, peace. The man was like a broken record.

Nossur had been right. This meeting was all about the Mideast peace process. Babcock was here at the behest of the American President.

It was an insult to send someone of lower rank than the vice president or the secretary of state to meet with him. In the old days, he might have shot the interior secretary. At the very least, Nossur would have turned right around and marched out the door. But Nossur Aruch was a politician now, and politicians were not allowed to shoot people. And, lamentably, politicians never, ever walked out on foreign dignitaries. No matter how lowly their station.

Holding his more violent impulses in check, Nossur smiled politely at Bryce Babcock.

"As you wish," Aruch said, deliberately not using the idiot's name.

For a moment, Babcock just stood there. Grinning.

"I'm sorry, Nossur," he suddenly gushed. "I really am. But I just can't wait. I'm like a kid at Christmas. Sorry. Christmas is probably verboten, right? Well, whatever the Muslim gift holiday is? That's what I'm like a kid on right now."

As the lunatic babbled, he moved over to a map table. Something large had been placed on it, with a sheet draped over to obscure. Babcock grabbed a corner of the material and gave a yank. The sheet fell away, dropping to the metal floor.

"Ta-dah!" Bryce Babcock chimed. He held both hands out to one side. A game-show hostess displaying a brand-new washer-dryer set.

The falling sheet revealed a gleaming stainless-steel object. So big around was it, Arach could have taken it in a bear hug and not touched fingertips on the other side. A small pad with glowing multicolored lights was affixed to its side. A few of the small lights winked hypnotically.

"What is this?" Nossur Aruch asked, a catch of intrigue in his soft voice. Eyes wide and unblinking, he took a hesitant, reverential step toward the device.

"The solution to all the world's ills," Babcock intoned. He beamed through his jowly face.

The former terrorist looked at the interior secretary.

"It is a bomb of some sort?"

"It is the bomb," Babcock explained. "The last bomb ever needed."

"It is atomic?"

Babcock glanced at Doe. The scientist nodded. "Ye-es," Babcock replied vaguely. "Technically it does work on the atomic level. But it's far more sophisticated than your garden-variety nuke. You must know that Earthpeace would never have anything to do with a common nuclear device." Aruch didn't seem interested in the moral distinctions the environmental organization drew between one bomb and the next. His fascinated gaze was leveled on the bomb before him.

"They are supposed to be available on the black market," the Palestinian commented as he stared at the stainless-steel casing. He reached out a tentative hand. "Former Soviet warheads are alleged to be popping up the world over. I have yet to see one, however. Radioactive junk is all one can get these days. This is the genuine article?"

"No, actually," Babcock admitted, frowning slightly. Aruch seemed a little too interested in the bomb. "As I told you, it's not a typical nuclear device."

"It will level a country?" Aruch asked hopefully. Babcock retreated a step. The glimmer of cunning in the PIO leader's eyes was unexpected and disturbing.

"Not in a standard way," the interior secretary offered slowly.

"Oh." The former terrorist's shoulders slumped. Hope instantly returned. "A city?" he asked.

"Maybe," Babcock admitted. "Listen, I'm not quite sure I like the way this is going."

"How big a city? Like Tel Aviv? Or Jerusalem? Do you have more than one? Where did you get it? Can you get more?" The questions came out in a flood.

Aruch didn't even wait for an answer to any of them. He wheeled to the men who had followed him onto the Grappler's bridge.

"Load it in the truck," he commanded.

"Now wait just a goldurned minute there, Nossur," Bryce Babcock warned. He slid protectively between Aruch and the bomb. "I don't know what you have in mind, but-"

Without a look at the secretary, Nossur Aruch snapped his fingers. Guns instantly rattled up.

The interior secretary's sagging jowls locked in midprotest. His face registered utter shock.

Silent now, Babcock was shoved roughly aside. Helpless, he watched as two PIO soldiers hefted the prototype neutrino bomb off the console, carting it out into the sunlight.

Babcock cringed when they accidentally banged it on the metal door frame.

"He knows how it works?" Aruch demanded. He aimed a stubby finger at Ree Hop Doe.

When Babcock nodded dully, Dr. Doe's hooded eyes opened wide.

"I onry hera for cash," the scientist pleaded. "Rawyer costa much money. Appear process taka rong time. China no foot birr anymore." He wheeled on Babcock. "Terr him I no wanna be stuck with clummy Mexican marr rawyer!"

Aruch ignored the man's pleading eyes. Fatang stood near the door. Turning to the soldier, Aruch pointed at Doe.

"Bring him," the PIO leader commanded.

The guard directed two men to drag the whimpering scientist outside.

"What of this one?" Fatang asked, indicating Bryce Babcock with a jerk of his automatic rifle. Sudden, intense fear gripped the secretary. Babcock's bladder reached critical mass. The warm release flooded down his legs and into his leather boots.

"He may yet be of use," Aruch admitted with some reluctance. "Bring him, as well."

There was no time for relief. Fatang grabbed the stunned Babcock by the arm, shoving him outside. A military urgency seized the Radiant Grappter. Aruch quickly deployed his men around the ship, instructing them to look for other bombs. The first was loaded by soldiers onto Aruch's canvas-covered truck on the dock far below.

"There aren't any more," Babcock pleaded as PIO soldiers swarmed down into the bowels of the Earthpeace ship.

"We will see," Aruch said, big nostrils flaring. A muffled popping sound was audible beneath their feet. Gunshots.

Babcock and Doe exchanged sick glances. Standing in the warmth of the soft Mediterranean breeze, the pops seemed to go on forever. One for each Earthpeace crew member.

At first, Babcock's trousers clung wetly to his inner thighs. By the time the PIO soldiers returned to the deck, the same white sun that had browned the skin of pharaoh and bedouin for thousands of years had begun to dry the damp material to salty stiffness.

The soldiers cried ululations of triumph. Above their heads, they carried a lumpy bundle. Running, panting, they dumped their prize at the feet of Nossur Aruch.

The PIO leader raised an unhappy eyebrow beneath the great peak of his checkered kaffiyeh.

It was a man. He was lying on his side, his face turned away from Aruch. It was unclear if he was dead or alive.

"What is this?" Aruch scowled, nudging the body with the ice of his black boot. The man plopped over onto his back.

When the face became clear, Nossur Aruch's eyes sprang wide. His mouth formed a shocked O.

"It cannot be," he breathed. Arms flailing, he whirled on Bryce Babcock. "It cannot be!" he sang, delighted now.

Babcock shrank from the grubby, ecstatic little man.

"I thought it'd be poetic." The interior secretary shrugged, afraid. "He was always a warmonger." The PIO leader's wild eyes flew to the slumbering form of the elderly former United States President. He was the devil. A saber-rattler who had set back the cause of terror a generation. At least. A man whose time in office had put people like Nossur Aruch virtually out of business. To finally have this hated creature. Here.

It was a dream come true.

Joy bloomed like a desert flower on Nossur Aruch's face.

"He lives?" Aruch hissed.

"Pumped full of tranquilizers," Babcock admitted. "But, yes, he's alive."

"Take him," the terrorist ordered Fatang with growling delight.

As the ex-President was hoisted into the air, Babcock's eyes took on a look of wild helplessness. "You want him? You can have him. He's yours. No fuss, no muss. Signed, sealed and delivered. Bomb, too. Hell, I'll even throw in the Chink, no charge." He stabbed a shaking finger at Ree Hop Doe. "Just let me go."

Nossur Aruch turned slowly to Bryce Babcock. The Arab was a crushed beer can in wrinkled khaki. A demonic smile split his stubbly face.

"Do you not wish to see the peace you have brought?" he asked with soft menace.

"Me? Nah. Not really," Babcock dismissed. "I really should get back to America. The department's got this new program where we're gonna be releasing grizzlies into Central Park. I really should be there to head off the protests. But, hey, don't let me stop you."

He spun. A rifle barrel was aimed at his face. He turned back to Aruch.

"Or I could go with you. See how this plays out." He nodded agreeably. "You know. Whichever."

Aruch ignored Babcock's panicked rambling. With a crisp nod, he turned away. PIO soldiers shoved Bryce Babcock and Ree Hop Doe forward.

With Nossur Aruch leading the way, the entire group hustled down the long gangplank of the Radiant Grappler.

Chapter 22

Admiral Harris saw to it that the USS Ronald Reagan brought them as close to the maritime boundary of Lebanon as possible.

Concerned for Chiun's safety, the Navy man offered to have them taken ashore under cover of darkness. It was Remo who refused the assistance. He had the carrier's crew throw the smallest inflatable life raft they could find into the gently chopping waters.

Chiun climbed down onto the reinforced rubber seat in the front of the boat. Remo took to the rear with a paddle.

On the way to shore, they managed to avoid all boat traffic. Remo beached the raft in the rocks north of Tyre. Once they were on land, he grabbed the raft by its slippery rubber skin and tore it apart at the seams. It quickly became a flat yellow stain, washing back out to sea.

The two Masters of Sinanju scurried up the rocks. A sun-bleached road ran parallel to the shore. Side by side, they began the long trek down to the port city of Tyre. The sun beat hot on their faces.

"I know what you were doing back there," Remo commented as they walked along the empty roadway.

The Master of Sinanju was taking in their surroundings. "Isn't it a lovely day?" he said, ignoring Remo.

"Don't change the subject. I finally figured out what that act was you were playing with your pal, the prince of the sea. And why you've been doing the nice-nice thing so much lately."

"Act?" Chiun queried, all innocence. "Do not presume you know everything about me, Remo. I have had a love of the sea ever since my childhood in Sinanju. I was merely engaging in polite conversation with a fellow maritime enthusiast."

"Baloney," Remo said. "You were cozying up to him just to bug me."

"What?" Chiun frowned.

"Don't deny it," Remo cautioned. "I know what the last few days have been all about. You're trying to piss me off. This Abu ben Bubbie bullshit is just the latest installment."

"You are babbling nonsense," Chiun said. "I have always had an abiding love for the sea. It is the pool from which all life sprang."

"Aha! Aha!" Remo exclaimed triumphantly. "You don't believe that, either. Koreans think man was crapped out by some big hairy bear."

"Trust you to reduce the miracle of human creation to an excretory function," Chiun said blandly. "And get it wrong."

"Don't change the subject," Remo countered. "You're being deliberately weird just to annoy me. And I know why. Even though you're claiming you're not, you're ripped at this whole Mr. Chin thing. But everyone you want to go after in Hollywood is already dead, so you're doing the next best thing. You're trying to bug me with all this nice and agreeable malarkey. You wanna put me on edge by making me think that every minute you might explode. Well, it's not gonna work, so you might as well cut it out. You're not bothering me one bit." He clenched his jaw accusingly.

"I do not know which I would prefer this to be a product of," Chiun said, shaking his head, "dementia or stupidity."

"Har-de-har-har. And don't even bother. I'm on to you," Remo announced. He outpaced the Master of Sinanju, marching with angry determination up the road.

Behind him, a barely perceptible smile crinkled the cobweb vellum corners of the old Korean's mouth. The smile remained fixed to his face the rest of the long walk to Tyre.

WHEN THEY GOT to town, Remo decided to find the Earthpeace ship before making his call to Smith. According to the histories of Sinanju, Alexander the Great conquered the ancient city of Tyre by constructing a causeway that extended the mainland to the island on which the city was built. Once they had reached what had once been ancient shore, Remo and Chiun crossed the causeway and found their way to the docks.

It didn't take long to locate the Radiant Grappler II.

The Earthpeace vessel was berthed alongside a flat expanse of concrete. Its huge steel hull loomed high above them. The shadow cast by the Grappler was enormous, stretching across dozens of smaller ships docked nearby.

A single stenciled word on the prow of the ship identified her as the Mykonos.

"If they were trying to disguise it, they should've picked up a couple hundred crates of Renuzit," Remo commented. "The crate stinks like a floating bong."

They took the long gangplank up to the deck. "Blood," Chiun said, the instant his sandals touched metal plating.

Remo was already sniffing the air like a dog on a scent. "This way," he announced.

Taking the lead, Remo stepped across the deck. The two men slipped through an open door that led into a narrow passageway.

The air conditioning was off. In the merciless Lebanon sun, it hadn't taken long for the interior of the boat to become oppressively hot. The warm-blood scent grew stronger the deeper they traveled inside the ship. A spiral staircase at the end of one hall led down another level. Both Masters of Sinanju climbed down to the lower deck.

The blood stench was thick here, intermixed with the stale sweat of old fear.

"It is coming from the hold," Chiun commented gravely.

Remo nodded, his face etched in lines of deep concern.

During their journey through the Grappler's bowels, neither man had sensed even a single, faint human life sign.

After a few labyrinthine turns in the corridors, a final straight passageway brought them to the hold. They spied the bodies from the catwalk.

The Earthpeace crew had been shot. Coagulating blood-a blackish-purple after so many hours-clung to tie-dyed clothes and torn jeans. The human corpses had been dumped onto a pathetically small pile of rotting tuna.

Adding a surreal edge to the grisly tableau, a few of the Earthpeacers had apparently surrendered their hammocks to the largest tuna. The fish swayed ever-so-gently in their final resting places, pennies over their dead eyes.

Remo ignored the bizarre scene. His worried eyes had alighted on the steel zoo cage in the center of the hold.

They took a ladder to the floor.

The stench was powerful. They picked their way past Earthpeace corpses and rotting fish to the solid-metal cage. When he nudged the door open, Remo wasn't sure if he should be relieved or even more concerned.

The cage was empty. Just a few handfuls of hay tossed on the rusting floor.

"Looks like someone else has him," Remo commented, looking up from the empty cage.

Chiun didn't respond. Bent at the waist, he was examining the cage door. Remo was about to ask him what he was looking at when he was distracted by a sound behind them.

A cough. Wet and feeble.

Turning from both Chiun and the cage, he trained his senses on the field of Earthpeace dead, quickly isolating a single, thready heartbeat. Hurrying over, Remo found one of the men near the base of the tuna pile still clinging to life.

Lying in Remo's shadow, Bright Sunshiny Ralph's lip twitched. His eyes fluttered beneath ashen lids. Blood gurgled from a sticky wound in his abdomen.

Remo stooped next to the dying Earthpeacer. "Who did this?" Remo pressed.

Sunshiny's eyes rolled open. They were distant, unfocused.

"Murderers," he gasped. Fresh pain made him wince.

"I gathered," Remo said, with arid urgency. "Who? Who's the murderer?"

Sunshiny sniffed blood. "Us," he wheezed. "All these fish. Our ocean brothers. We murdered them in cold blood." His eyes grew teary. "And even worse, I participated in dolphinicide. I killed Flipper," he wailed.

His life signs were ebbing.

"Who shot you?" Remo insisted.

"Oh. Nossur Aruch," Sunshiny wheezed. "His PIO soldiers." He was fading fast. A final thought seemed to come to him. "Are there dolphins in heaven?" he asked.

Remo nodded tightly. "Three meals a day," he replied.

Sunshiny Ralph carried the look of horror that blossomed on his face over to the afterlife.

Remo left the body, returning to Chiun's side. "Looks like Nossur Aruch's our party crasher," Remo commented to the Master of Sinanju.

"I heard," Chiun replied. He had completed his examination of the cage. His wrinkled face was gathered into a frowning mass.

Remo knew the old man's expression could bode no good.

"Okay, what's the latest bad news?" he asked. "The man imprisoned in this cage has been attempting to escape." He extended a long nail to the side of the door near Remo.

Following Chiun's finger, Remo felt his stomach clench. There were fresh silvery scratch marks all around the lock. Someone had been trying to pick it. The heavy hinges bore similar marks, as if the prisoner had tried to pry the fused bolt. Dumbfounded, Remo stared at the scratches.

"They cracked him over the head," he insisted. "And doped him up."

"He is stronger than his enemies suspected," the Master of Sinanju replied gravely. "He has recovered."

As Remo stared at the empty cage, a creeping realization slowly replaced the numbness of discovery.

The kidnapped President had been taken hostage by yet another group, this one more radical than the first. And the veil of safety afforded them by unconsciousness had been lifted. When he spoke, Remo's voice echoed hollow off the faraway walls. "I better make that call to Smith."

Chapter 23

The former President of the United States had to admit it. The past couple days had sure been a mixed blessing. That was perhaps too genial a thought for a man who was bouncing in the back of a terrorist truck along some pothole-filled Lebanese road.

They'd dropped him to the floor, which was coated with a thin film of desert sand. Something cool and metallic pressed against his right cheek.

All around was joyful shouting.

The President was a prize. A spoil of war. Something to be waved over their heads like a captured flag.

As the whoops of joy fill the old President's ears, there came another, displeased shout. A sharp burst of angry Arabic. Afterward, the men grew silent.

The President was grateful to whoever had admonished the jubilant soldiers. Their screaming could get on a fella's nerves.

The truck continued to bounce along the road. A turn? Were they heading up another street?

It didn't really matter. While the President knew the country he was in, even before the onset of Alzheimer's he'd been fuzzy on the geography of the country's interior.

Opening his eyes a sliver, he could just make out a pair of boots. Beyond them, the gaps in a dark burlap flap revealed a sun-drenched yet barren desert landscape.

Careful not to move his head, he strained to see with his peripheral vision.

The object that pressed against his face was silver. A stainless-steel casing as smooth as glass. The coolness was dissipating in the transfer of heat from his flesh.

He knew what the object was.

Thinking he was still unconscious, his Earthpeace captors had talked freely about it during his captivity aboard the Radiant Grappler.

The neutrino bomb.

The former President's administration had pressured Congress into funding preliminary research into the device. After he was out of office, his immediate successor had caved in to the unilateral-disarmament contingent on Capitol Hill and defunded the project.

As far as the President could remember, the work had proceeded only to the early-prototype stage. If memory served, he was cheek to cheek with the only weapon of its kind in existence. And it was now in the hands of the PIO.

The President knew that he was frail. During his long, murky twilight, therapists had made certain that he was kept as physically fit as his condition allowed. He was in exceptional shape for a man of almost nine decades, but the years had clearly taken their toll.

Obviously, he couldn't possibly hope to fight the whole gosh-darned PIO all by himself. But he also knew that he couldn't sit idly by and allow a fellow like Nossur Aruch to control one of the most dangerous pieces of military hardware ever developed.

Jostled on the floor of a PIO truck smack in the middle of a bunch of hostile black hats, the President made a decision.

When life deals you a lemon, well, make yourself some lemonade.

If push came to shove, in spite of his failing body, the ex-President would do what he'd always done. He would act. Whether it meant his own death or not.

After all, he had died in his mind years ago. If he tried now and failed, alone and forgotten in the dusty wastelands of arid Lebanon, his body would finally catch up.

Chapter 24

Anxiety had kept Harold Smith glued to his desk for hours. When the blue contact phone finally jangled to life, he grabbed for it with both hands. "Report," he snapped.

"'The President's been kidnapped, again," Remo's somber voice announced. "And just so we get all the bad news out of the way up front, Nossur Aruch and his merry band of PIO minstrels have him now."

Alone in his office, Smith's lids blinked over bloodshot eyes. His sleep-deprived brain attempted to absorb this latest information. Shock alone dulled his natural urge to panic.

"When did he change hands?" he asked woodenly.

"Judging from the dried blood- What do you say, Little Father?" he called away from the phone. "Hour and a half?"

"Two hours, Emperor Smith," Chiun called from the nearby background.

"You get that?" Remo asked.

"Yes," Smith said, his tone hollow.

"Oh, and add this to the crappy-news pile. He's awake now."

The shocks were coming so rapidly Smith was no longer even trying to keep up.

"Are you certain?"

"At least he was when Earthpeace had him. The PIO could have clouted him again when they picked him up."

Smith pushed his rimless glasses up off his nose. "The PIO," he said, rubbing his eyes wearily. "So they have taken possession of the device, as well."

"Device?" Remo asked. "What device? And what's with me not being able to call you with Navy equipment? You've got me phoning from some dump of a restaurant in Tyre."

An offended shout from the background indicated that the restaurant's proprietor spoke at least some English.

Smith took a deep, steadying breath. "This has gone far beyond your original assignment. From what I have learned, Earthpeace has transported a neutrino bomb to the Mideast."

Remo hesitated before speaking. "I hope this is a bad connection, Smitty," he said evenly. "Did you just say Big-Nose Aruch has a neutron bomb?"

"No, neutrino. A neutron bomb is a small battlefield or tactical hydrogen bomb. We encountered one once before. Remember the incident outside of Palm Springs?"

"How could I forget?" Remo asked bitterly.

Smith heard the sound of distant glass breaking. A muffled shout in a foreign tongue.

"I possess the darkest memories of that time," Chiun's squeaky voice protested.

"Okay, so you do," Remo called back, peeved. "Did you have to throw my rice on the floor?"

"It slipped."

Smith forged ahead. "With a bomb of the type we encountered before," he persisted, "man is susceptible to neutron irradiation due to the abundance of hydrogen in the human body. Neutrons are able to travel great distances through matter until they are stopped by collision with these light atoms."

"You're losing me, Smitty," Remo warned. "A neutron bomb kills people, leaves buildings. What's the difference between it and this other cockamamy thing?"

"They are basically the same in design. However, the neutrino bomb, when detonated, is the inverse of the neutron bomb. The type of radiation released attacks a more specific type of heavy atom. It is harmless to light atoms."

"So people are safe?" Remo asked slowly.

"Essentially," Smith agreed.

Remo exhaled relief. "Dammit, Smitty, you had me worried."

"And rightly so," Smith said ominously. "One neutrino bomb could trigger events that might destroy the entire Middle East. Although the initial explosion is small, the aftereffects are the real danger." He closed his eyes as he explained. "The bomb acts on the atomic level. It has a plutonium charge triggered by a standard chemical explosive."

"Atomic. So it's radioactive," Remo said.

In his shadow-drenched office, Smith nodded. "Yes. But it is only lethal within the blast zone. The fallout beyond that limited area is within normal tolerance levels. When the bomb is detonated, it releases a charge of magnetizing ions in a widening ring around ground zero. I have seen only theoretical models, but they indicate this zone could be vast enough to encompass many miles. Light atoms, and thus humans, will be safe. But the magnetizing ions will render metal-based mechanical objects as useless as slag."

Remo had been listening with growing interest. "It melts metal?" he asked once Smith was through.

"Only literally in some cases. It depends upon the density of the atoms. But the practical upshot is the same."

"All metal?"

"Yes," Smith said, nodding. "Everything metallic within the enhanced radiation field would cease to function. This would include all industrial, residential and governmental devices. As well as military."

"The peace bomb," Remo intoned softly.

"What did you say?" Smith asked, surprised.

"It's what one of the Earthpeacers back in San Francisco said," Remo explained. "It just sounded like more goofball-fueled mumbo jumbo to me."

"Not in this case," Smith said. "I have learned that as a public-relations matter, the neutrino bomb was to be dubbed the 'peace bomb.' The name was thought to be more palatable for public consumption. Since the project was defunded years ago, the name is not known outside of Los Alamos."

"Los Alamos?" Remo demanded. "They're the ones responsible for this?"

"The neutrino-bomb prototype was stolen from that facility," Smith admitted.

"Figures," Remo snarled. "Somebody wheel it out past a guard while he was watching the head of the Energy Department on TV claiming that nothing was ever stolen from there?"

Smith's voice was deadly serious. "The weapon was apparently taken from Los Alamos by none other than Dr. Ree Hop Doe during the phase when he was conducting espionage for the Chinese. According to his e-mail records, although he at one time attempted to sell it to China, they were unable to meet his demands. Apparently, he had forgotten it in his garage for the bulk of the past few years. He discovered it when he was searching for items to offer at a yard sale to raise cash for his legal defense."

Remo was amazed. "What, did he run a for-sale ad in the Penny Saver?"

"It did not get that far. Dr. Doe has been a member of Earthpeace for years. When he offered to sell the bomb to them, word reached Interior Secretary Bryce Babcock. He is the one who negotiated the purchase with Earthpeace funds."

"Another screwball cabinet secretary," Remo said. "Doesn't surprise me with that bunch. Isn't Babcock the guy who had his department release piranha into Lake Michigan a couple years back?"

"That is he," Smith said. "According to my information, both Babcock and Doe couriered the bomb to your location."

"I look forward to catching up with them," Remo said, a cold edge to his tone.

"That can wait," Smith insisted. "Your first priority is to find Nossur Aruch before he is able to detonate the bomb. If he succeeds in doing so, every last weapon in the region could be rendered inoperative."

"Hmm," Remo mused. "Imagine the Mideast without weapons."

"Yes," Smith replied gravely. "It would be a disaster of incalculable proportions."

Remo sounded surprised. "Are you kidding?" he asked. "People over here live to beat the snot out of each other. Maybe if they can't shoot at, blow up or launch missiles at each other, they'll finally have to sit down and figure out how to get along."

Smith shook his head. "I see the situation much differently," he said, his tone serious. "I envision chaos on a colossal scale. Remember, Remo, there will be no radio contact with the outside world. Telephone and any other communications devices will also be rendered inoperative. Isolated from their neighbors in the region, suspicions will ignite. Everyone will blame everyone else for what has happened. Clan fighting will erupt. There will be looting and rioting. Fires will be unstoppable due to lack of working equipment. Armies and police forces will be helpless to stop the anarchy. It is a nightmare scenario. If Aruch has gotten hold of the neutrino bomb, it is imperative that you retrieve it from him before he is allowed to set it off."

"Fine," Remo said. "I'll pick it up when I get the President. But I don't necessarily agree with all your doom and glooming."

"About the former President," the CURE director said crisply. "The neutrino bomb is now your dominant concern. If it comes to it, the President cannot be allowed to become a distraction."

There was a familiar flatness to his voice. Smith had used that tone every time he had sent Remo on an assignment against a potential CURE security risk. To a man, they had all wound up dead.

Remo's voice took on a cautious edge. "I don't like the sound of this, Smitty," he warned slowly.

"Nor do I," Smith replied levelly. "But if it is detonated by Aruch in a strategically sensitive location, the neutrino bomb could destabilize that entire region of the world. The former President was already a liability before the bomb was added to the mix. If he becomes any kind of distraction at all, remove the distraction."

"Whoa, Smitty," Remo protested quickly. "Do you even hear what you're saying? You're asking me to kill a United States President."

From out the echoey depths of the Lebanese restaurant, Smith heard a whoop of sudden joy. The sound of breaking dishes and the crash of an upended table were followed by the rattle of an extension being lifted.

"How I have longed for this day, Emperor Smith," the Master of Sinanju sang jubilantly. "We will return to America in haste to dispatch the corpulent pretender to the throne. Once his deceitful head has been separated from his bloated body, the two of us will sit down and plan your coronation."

"Hang up, Chiun," Remo demanded, annoyed.

The Master of Sinanju ignored his pupil. "The patience you have displayed is remarkable, Emperor. In fact, I may now admit there were times when Remo and I had my doubts about your sanity. Mostly Remo," he said quickly. "But you have proved yourself a cunning and stoical man. Now, there are several options for assassination available. If you wish it to appear an accident, that can easily be arranged. A heart attack while jogging would be accepted by all. Especially with that flabby specimen. I, however, would recommend something loud and fun. Something that the public would enjoy. Something that says, 'I am me. Smith the Persistent.' A televised beheading would do the trick nicely. Prime time, of course."

"We are not talking about the current President, Master Chiun," Smith explained with weary patience.

The old Korean's voice sank in confusion. "Who, then?"

"It's the guy we're already looking for he wants us to ice," Remo supplied. "And I won't do it, Smitty."

"I agree with Remo, Emperor Smith," Chiun insisted. "If you wish to assassinate a President, why not the distended lummox who currently squats atop the Eagle Throne?"

"Chiun, please-" Smith began.

"If you feel we need first practice on past rulers, you may rest your regal mind. Our skills are as sharp as ever they were. Years of toiling on your behalf in the farthermost reaches of your kingdom have not diminished our abilities in the least. Our eyes are keen, our hands swift and deadly. We are fleet of foot and sharp of mind. Sinanju waits to aid your ascendancy to the seat of power of the new Rome, the Eagle Throne, O Smith the Patient."

"Will you hang up the freaking phone!" Remo shouted into the recesses of the restaurant.

"Think decapitation," Chiun intoned craftily. "We will talk later."

With that, he was gone.

"I'm not doing it, Smitty," Remo said once they were alone on the line. "I might not know much about politics, but I know who I'd like to bump off. And this guy wouldn't be my first, second or hundredth choice."

"Remo, be reasonable," Smith pleaded. "You know that he represents a liability to begin with. The presence of the neutrino bomb makes the situation even more dire. If he knew what was at stake, the President would agree with me."

"I am not killing a United States President, Smith, and that's that."

"Of course he is not," Chiun called. He was nearer now, listening in on every word of their conversation. "That honor must go to the Reigning Master, not his apprentice. Sinanju has not assassinated an American President for two centuries. We cannot allow Mr. Bent Elbow to taint such a momentous event."

"Will you calm down?" Remo said hotly to Chiun. To Smith, he said, "I'll call when this is all over, Smitty."

"People love a good disemboweling! Always give the people what they want!" the Master of Sinanju could be heard shouting as Remo hung up the phone.

Smith's face didn't even register a single twitch as he leaned across the black surface of his desk. His features could have been carved from solid granite.

The blue phone made a plasticky clatter in its cradle.

The crisis was huge. On several different levels and on multiple fronts. All out of his hands. All he could do now was wait.

Shifting his feet from beneath his desk well, Smith spun his creaking chair to face the big picture window at the rear of his office. Breathing deeply, he stared at the gently lapping waves of Long Island Sound.

Besieged by the soothing image, the CURE director was overcome by exhaustion before he even realized it. Within minutes, Harold Smith was sound asleep.

Chapter 25

"Khaddafi wouldn't treat me like this."

Bryce Babcock jutted his chin defiantly. His jowls flapped back against his neck like empty saddlebags. "That is true. He would have cut out your tongue by this time," Nossur Aruch replied blandly. He was inspecting the exterior of the neutrino bomb.

Babcock and Dr. Ree Hop Doe had been brought to the PIO leader's Lebanon satellite office. As a sign of disdain, their captors hadn't even bothered to bind their hands. A pair of PIO soldiers stood sentry by the door.

The interior secretary stood to one side, helpless, as the PIO leader tapped at the stainless-steel shell of the bomb. A hollow sound greeted Nossur's finger.

"Hussein," Babcock challenged. "What about him? I'll bet he would have known what to do with me."

"Yes. He would have shot you."

"Khatami, then. Iran would have helped me."

"An American cabinet member? They would have tortured you on videotape and mailed it to your State Department."

"Mujahideen."

"Bullets are at a premium in Afghanistan. They would probably have simply slit your throat. And you are going far afield with them, are you not?"

"The Middle East is the best place to set off the neutrino bomb," Babcock said, pouting. "A bunch of warring countries bunched closely together. I would have set it off in the United States, but the damage would have been too localized. The whole country wouldn't have been within range. I needed someplace that would feel the effects. Someplace that would be attention-getting."

From his half crouch, Aruch looked up.

"Oh, it will draw attention," he assured Babcock. The interior secretary glanced angrily at Dr. Doe as if this turn of events were all his fault.

"Don't rook at me," Doe whispered. "I onry in it fora cash."

Babcock turned away in disgust.

His eyes-now those of a prisoner-dragged across the unconscious form of the former President. Soldiers had dumped him on the floor behind Aruch's desk.

The old man's chest rose and fell rhythmically. The fact that he was still breathing made Bryce Babcock sick. He was to blame for all this. Him and his homespun warmongering. Of course, there hadn't actually been any wars, technically, for the eight years he'd been in office. But he had been responsible for building the bomb Doe had stolen. When it came right down to it, none of this was Bryce Babcock's fault. It was the former President who had delivered Babcock into the deceitful, violent hands of the PIO. Angry, he tore his baggy eyes away from the hated old man.

The dirty windows through which the desert sunlight spilled were built of a heavy Plexiglas. Even so, they seemed to have suffered damage fitting to a war zone. Chips and holes from bullets and ricochets riddled the thick panes.

Babcock noted that the walls opposite the windows were speckled with holes, as well. Some were so deep he could see straight through to the next room.

As he was peering through one of the larger holes, a sudden squeal of tires from the street out front caught his attention. Inside, Nossur Aruch and his men reacted instinctively to the sound. Eyes angry, they flung themselves to the floor, plastering hands over heads.

When Babcock glanced at Doe, the confused scientist was joining them. With perplexed reluctance, Babcock started to get down, too. He had just knelt to one knee when the first hail of bullets exploded through the wall.

Babcock and Doe collapsed to their bellies.

The attack was fast and furious. In a single, terrifying instant, a swarm of bullets ripped the office air. Screaming lead pocked walls and desk. Concrete dust and paperwork rained down upon them.

On the floor, a terrified Bryce Babcock felt a small puddle of warmth pool at his crotch.

When the shooting stopped as abruptly as it had started, Babcock didn't even notice. The furious shriek of gunfire still echoed in his ears.

Outside, more tires squealed, then faded in the distance.

Nossur Aruch scampered to his feet.

"Lousy teenagers!" he yelled. Bounding across the floor, he stuck his head out the window. "Why are you not in school!" he shouted after the rapidly speeding car.

He had to duck back inside to avoid another spray of automatic-weapons fire.

Muttering Arab curses, he stepped over the prone secretary of the interior and returned to the neutrino bomb.

Climbing unsteadily to his knees, Babcock blinked dust from his eyes. "What was that?" he panted. Concrete powder formed a clumpy paste near his damp zipper.

"That?" the terrorist said dismissively, as if nothing had happened. "My poor building suffers for the peace I have made with Israel. Or perhaps it is the Internet or music lyrics that causes them to act out. With kids, who knows?"

Expression dull, Babcock looked at the front wall. Many more holes now marred its surfaces. One of the windows had nearly been blown from its casing. It seemed ready to topple into the room.

He turned woodenly back to Aruch.

"May I go now?" Babcock asked numbly.

"Quiet," the terrorist snapped. He looked to the Los Alamos scientist. "You. Explain to me how this device works. Is it nuclear?"

Ree Hop Doe glanced quickly at Bryce Babcock. Gulping audibly, he turned back to Nossur Aruch. "You pay, we talk," he said, licking his lips. "Money order or cash. No personar check, prease." Very nearby, he heard the click of a bolt.

Out of the corner of his eye, Doe saw the hollow end of a rifle barrel aimed at his temple. Far down at the other end of the weapon was Fatang's eager young face.

The hope that he'd be able to hire even halfway decent legal representation for his espionage trial evaporated for the treasonous Dr. Ree Hop Doe.

"Yes, it nucrear," he admitted, shoulders slumping.

"This one said that it could blow up a city," Aruch said, nodding to Babcock. "Could it destroy Tel Aviv?"

Doe shook his head. "Inner brast zone onry extend about two mires," the scientist answered.

Aruch's stubbly face grew fierce. "Bah! Not good enough," he snapped. "What of the fallout?"

"That be much greater," Doe replied. "Test moder not clear, but incrusive range of two hundred mire possibre. Maybe more. From here could go far as Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Definitery Iraq and Syria."

"It would kill people that far away?" Aruch asked.

"No, no, no," Doe insisted. "For human to die, they need be in brast zone. But moder show bomb could break down the quadruple bond between adjacent atoms in transition metal compound far away as Pakistan." Sweating, he smiled hopefully.

Doe had obviously lost Nossur Aruch somewhere during his explanation. The PIO leader turned to Babcock.

"What is this nonsense?" he demanded.

"That's the whole point of the neutrino bomb," the interior secretary explained. There was pleading in his eyes. "It was built to render metal inoperative, not kill people. It's a weapon of peace."

Aruch shook his head. "There is no such thing," he spit. "A weapon has but a single purpose."

"Not this one," Babcock argued.

Aruch caressed the stainless-steel bomb casing with one stubby hand. "We will see," he said cryptically. "You will arm it. Now," he commanded Doe.

This time, there was no talk of bank checks. Dr. Doe stepped obediently over to the bomb. The PIO leader watched in distrust as the scientist popped the side panel. A row of user-friendly buttons and an LED panel were visible beneath.

It took less time than programming a VCR. Once the bomb was armed, Doe glanced at Aruch. "What time I set for?" he asked.

Aruch's eyes danced. "How far is the border to Israel?" he shouted over his shoulder to his waiting soldiers.

"Thirty minutes by land," Fatang replied sharply. "Set it for one hour," Aruch ordered.

Doe did as he was told. The time now entered, he clicked the steel panel shut. A red digital timer counted down the time to detonation-59:47 ... 59:46...59:45...

As the seconds ticked down, a thin trickle of drool appeared at Nossur Aruch's lip. Delighted eyes flashed to the two men who had brought him his prize.

"Who knows how to disarm it?" the terrorist asked.

"Onry me," Dr. Ree Hop Doe answered.

Both Babcock and Doe were shocked by the ensuing gunshot. Only when Dr. Doe fell away-hands clutching at the crimson stain that was already seeping across his white shirt-front-did Babcock see the gun in Aruch's hand.

As Doe dropped, gulping, to the floor, the terrorist slipped the weapon back into his black leather hip holster.

"Put it in the truck," Aruch commanded. Fatang and another soldier strode forward and collected the neutrino bomb. Stepping over Doe's lifeless body, they carted the bomb out the door. "Come," the terrorist said to the still stunned Bryce Babcock. "Let us usher in peace together." He extended a hand to the open door.

Babcock took an uncertain step. "What about him?" he asked, nodding dumbly to the sleeping President.

When Aruch glanced at the former chief executive, a wicked smile split his prickly stubble. "We will save that one for later. Some of the men you mentioned earlier would pay a handsome price for him, don't you think?"

Cackling, Nossur Aruch left the room.

Bryce Babcock didn't know what else to do. His feet lead weights, he stepped past the former President. He trailed the PIO leader out into the baking light of the Lebanese day.

AFTER THE DOOR clicked shut, the President waited for the engine sounds to fade into the distance before opening his eyes.

When he was certain they were gone, he climbed unsteadily to his feet.

Bones creaked with age and muscles protested the sudden movement after so many hours of inactivity. Head woozy from the blood rush, he had to rest for a moment, propping a big hand against the desk. His leathery face was flushed.

They were taking the bomb to Israel. He'd have to follow. Would have to try to stop them.

But he was old now. Just the simple effort to stand had seemed a great challenge.

His head began to clear. No time.

Hobbling, the President made his way to the door. He opened it a crack, peering outside.

Clear.

Opening the door wider, he slipped outside. Quiet for a moment.

All at once, a shout in Arabic. A single gunshot. Intense silence.

A second gunshot.

Followed by the whispering sigh of the desert wind. And nothing more.

Chapter 26

Remo stole a rusty old Buick LeSabre from the roadside in Tyre. The owner of the restaurant where he'd placed his call to Smith had given them directions to the offices of the Lebanese PIO branch. He spit on the floor as he did so.

The four side windows of the big blue American car were open wide as they bounced their way down the rutted road.

In the passenger's seat, Chiun hummed a merry Korean tune. For the first time in days, Remo didn't get the impression he was faking it. This time, it seemed like the real deal.

"Smith does not want you to ice the President, Little Father," Remo insisted as he drove.

Chiun was breathing dry desert air and basking in the brilliant sunlight shining through the filthy windshield.

"You are young," the Master of Sinanju said, patting Remo's hand paternally. "When you have seen as many winters as I, you will know better how to judge the mind of an emperor." He stroked his wisp of beard pensively. "How do you think Smith feels about public scourging?"

"Look, Chiun," Remo said reasonably, "even if he does want you to kill the President which he absolutely does not-how would it change your life one jot?"

"If Smith finally ascends to the throne of America, I will be at his side," the Master of Sinanju replied. "At long last, I may finally cease skulking in the shadows of anonymity where I have languished lo these many years and step out into the glorious light."

"And this couldn't possibly be motivated in part because you missed your fifteen minutes of fame when your movie tanked," Remo commented dryly.

"It did not tank, O crass one. It was not even released." He tipped his head. "Although now that you mention it, the notoriety I receive as official presidential assassin could boost rentals."

"Do you even get a cut?" Remo asked.

"No," Chiun admitted. "But I would. As a boon from President Smith for my many years of faithful service."

"Well, don't say I didn't warn you, Little Father," Remo said. "The best you can hope for is to bump off the guy who held the job two Presidents ago."

As they drove along the potholed road, a serious expression wrinkled Chiun's aged face. "He was the old one, was he not?" he asked.

"He was older than the other ones we've worked for."

Chiun folded his hands in his lap. "I liked him," he said, nodding. "He had the bearing of a true leader."

"Does 'leader' translate to 'despot' in this context?" Remo asked. "'Cause I don't think so."

"No," Chiun said. "While despots and tyrants provide sustenance for the babies of Sinanju, and so are much coveted as clients, only a handful have been great men. Many men lead, Remo, but few of them are leaders."

A particularly deep rut threw the front of the car to one side. Remo bounced the right rear tire through the furrow. The Buick rolled down, flew through and launched up out of the hole, landing in a cloud of dust. Undamaged, the sturdy old car soared down the road.

"Smith is certain the Emptying Basin technique has reversed?" Chiun asked, referring to the Sinanju term for the type of selective amnesia they employed.

"According to Smith, he remembers everything he was supposed to forget. Just like that conspiracy-theory movie director we dealt with a few years back."

"Hmm," Chiun mused. "This has happened before."

Curious, Remo pulled his eyes away from the flat road. Signs of life had begun to spring up alongside the highway. Rough vegetation signified a nearby source of water. Trees sprouted in the distance. "There were others?" he asked, surprised.

"Not others," Chiun said, perturbed. "We are the most feared house of assassins on Earth, not some family of blundering nincompoops. There was only one other."

"What undid it, surgery or a smack on the head?" Remo asked. These were the only two techniques he knew of that had thus far reversed the Emptying Basin.

The old man's reply surprised him.

"It was love," Chiun intoned somberly.

The Master of Sinanju sounded so serious when he spoke the words that Remo resisted the urge to crack wise.

"Have you never wondered, Remo, why Smith's desire for secrecy extends to the assassination of all who learn of his silly organization-friend and foe alike?"

Remo frowned. "Not really," he admitted. "He's always had a hard-on for security. I figured that was all."

Chiun shook his head. "When first I entered into his employ and learned of his paranoia, I told Smith of the Emptying Basin technique. He was pleased to know that it was possible to make someone forget about his existence rather than eliminate them. However, when he asked if it was possible for the Emptying Basin to come undone, I responded truthfully.

One time, many years ago, it did. Although there was only this single instance, Smith decided that the risk was too great for his precious secrecy. This is why, Remo, we only use the amnesia technique on your retiring Presidents and no others."

"I didn't know that." Remo nodded thoughtfully. "I guess from Smitty's viewpoint, it makes sense, too. It'd sure as hell raise more than a few eyebrows if every President who leaves office up and drops dead on January 21. So who's the one it stopped working on?"

"It happened in rather recent times," Chiun began, "in what inferior Western dating would call the thirteenth century. You know of the Mamelukes?"

Remo looked sheepish. "Big dog in the funny papers?" he ventured.

"I only wish I could be certain you were joking," Chiun said, eyes hooded. His voice took on the cadence of instruction. "The Mamelukes were a powerful aristocracy of landowners who ruled throughout the Muslim world for seven hundred years. Their influence was felt in India and Persia, as well as other nations, though to a lesser degree. But nowhere was their strength felt more than in Egypt.

"Now, the Mamelukes originally descended from slave stock. Their ancestors had been plucked from the ranks of non-Arab slaves to serve in the households of Muslim rulers and soldiers. But it did not take long for their masters to grow fat and lazy. The Mamelukes soon subverted power from their owners, seizing control for themselves."

"Good for them." Remo nodded.

"And for us," Chiun agreed. "To consolidate their power, the former slaves imported more military slaves."

"Wait a minute," Remo said. "The slaves had slaves?"

"It was customary and quite proper at the time."

"It's also repulsive," Remo said.

"I agree," the Master of Sinanju replied.

He glanced around, as if someone running at sixty miles per hour beside the speeding car might hear what he was about to say. When he again spoke, his voice was conspiratorial.

"Slavery is not a good thing, Remo."

"I know that, Little Father," Remo said dryly. "The only specimens in all the human race worthy of slaves are Masters of Sinanju, and we no longer keep them."

"I don't agree with that," Remo said, shaking his head firmly. "I don't think we're any better than anyone else just 'cause of all the stuff we can do."

Chiun gave him a baleful look. "I agree that you do not think. I will ignore the other nonsense." Eyes flat, the old Korean looked back out at the dusty desert road. He resumed his tale.

"The influence of the Mamelukes grew as time went on. Eventually, their power became so great that they were able to afford the services of Sinanju.

"Now the Master at that time was named Suo-Lok. Traveled he from the sunny shores of Sinanju to the Egyptian seat of power of the Mamelukes in Cairo. From this ancient city did these sons of slaves wield influence from Syria to Arabia, from Libya to Sudan in far-off Africa. A mighty empire had they built, these slaves, and powerful they were, but they did not see trouble on the horizon."

"Another slave uprising?" Remo asked hopefully.

Chiun shook his head. "Mongols," he intoned. "Although this was after the time of the mighty Genghis, the Mongol hordes were still a feared enemy to much of the known world. Word had come to the Mamelukes that forces of Kublai Khan intended to invade Syria."

"Wait a minute," Remo interrupted. "We worked for the Mongols. Wouldn't it have been a conflict of interest for Suo-Lok to hire out to the other side?"

Chiun shrugged. "Contracts expire. Emperors pass to dust. It is the way of things."

"Okay," Remo said, nodding, "so we double-dealt the Mongols."

The Master of Sinanju forged ahead. "The Mamelukes were always fighting amongst themselves. Though it is thought that they eagerly united when threatened by an outside enemy, this is not so. However, the sultan who hired Suo-Lok, as well as the neighboring sultans, feared so greatly for their kingdoms that they grudgingly put aside their differences to repel the invaders. But unity alone does not a victory make. Only with Suo-Lok's aid were the Mameluke horsemen adequately trained to fend off the army of attacking Mongols."

"Where's the whole Sinanju amnesia thing figure into all this?" Remo asked, feeling they'd gone far afield.

"I am coming to that, impatient one," Chiun droned. "The sultan was so pleased with the Master of Sinanju's training of the Mameluke horsemen that he did hire him to the full-time position of royal assassin. While occupying this post, Suo-Lok did befriend the son of the sultan.

"Now, the sultan's son was a vile and cunning creature whose eyes were firmly set on the throne of his regal father. Many nights he did plot against the one whose seed did give him life. Always in the company of a servile concubine."

"Uh-oh. I smell a femme fatale," Remo said.

"You are correct," Chiun agreed. "One day, after he had failed to compliment her hair or give her a bauble to commemorate a particular date or smiled when he should have frowned-who knows what motivates women?-this young wench turned against her prince, fleeing to his father to report his treachery. Fearing for his own life, the prince did beg the Master of Sinanju to stop the girl before she could inform the sultan, thus sealing the prince's fate. However, he pleaded that she not be killed, for the faithless harlot was a favorite of his whom he loved deeply."

"Sounds like a job for selective amnesia," Remo said, growing intrigued. "Did he do it?"

Chiun nodded. "As a personal favor to his friend, the treacherous prince, Suo-Lok did intercept the consort and perform on her the technique of the Emptying Basin."

"Suo-Lok gave the guy a freebie?" Remo asked, surprised.

"Of course not." Chiun scowled, as if Remo were an idiot. "He was paid handsomely by the prince."

"Whew," Remo exhaled. "My universe nearly collapsed. I thought for a minute a Master of Sinanju had opted for friendship over cold hard cash."

"I implore the gods that such a thing does not happen in my lifetime," Chiun intoned. "In any event, Suo-Lok had created a dilemma for himself. He was already under contract to the father when he was hired by the son. To provide service to an enemy of the crown while in service to that crown-even if it was a prince of the realm-not only had the appearance of impropriety, but it was bad business."

"So what happened?"

"The hussy lived in blissful ignorance until one day she was kicked in the head by an ass. Memory returned to her and she did report the false heart of the prince to his father. Enraged, the sultan slew his son at once. Afterward, Master Suo-Lok was discharged from the Mameluke's service with only partial payment-this for subcontracting to the prince."

"So I was right," Remo challenged. "It was a smack on the head that brought back her memory."

"Essentially," Chiun admitted.

"So why'd you tell me it wasn't?"

"You might not have listened otherwise," Chiun sniffed, "and thus missed a riveting tale. We have arrived."

The Master of Sinanju tapped the slender fingertips of one hand to the dashboard. Annoyed, Remo glanced ahead.

The road from Tyre had taken them to Nahal Litani, a river northeast of the port city.

Settlements like border towns in an old Western grew among the trees alongside the road. They had just reached a sprawling collection of simple tenements and flat houses.

Using the directions given to them by the restaurant owner, they located the headquarters of the PIO. When they arrived at the dilapidated building, there were already several vehicles, mostly trucks and jeeps, parked in front. Angry men with coarse beards, automatic rifles and sloppy military garb stomped around the vehicles.

"Front door or back?" Remo asked, eyeing the men as he slowed the car. The men, in turn, looked on them with shock.

"This is Lebanon." Chiun shrugged. "Neither is safe."

"Front door it is."

Remo parked the Buick next to a jeep. The Arabs were like jackals on a carcass. The Buick was surrounded before he even shut off the engine.

Rifle barrels jammed through open windows. Wild eyes glared hatred at the two obvious foreigners. As he stabbed his gun muzzle against Remo's chest, the closest man let out a furious torrent of unintelligible Arabic.

Remo looked blandly from gun to Chiun. "What's he saying?" he asked.

"He wishes us to get out of the car," the Master of Sinanju replied. He was looking disdainfully at the multiple gun barrels jutting through his own window.

"You still in an accommodating mood, Little Father?"

The old man's nod was so subtle only Remo saw it. It was all Remo needed.

Remo's hand flew to the door handle. At the same time, Chiun's bony fingers flashed forward. They popped their respective handles simultaneously.

Doors flew open at speeds nearing Mach 2. Metal slammed flesh with meaty slaps. PIO soldiers were launched from the sides of the Buick like scattered seeds. Before the bodies struck dust, Remo and Chiun were already springing through the open doors.

The doors had taken out a total of seven men. They hadn't even crumpled to the ground before another thirty were flooding in to fill the void.

Automatics exploded to life, riddling the Buick with bullets. Tires erupted in coughs of dust and rubber.

Even as the old car was settling like a deflated balloon to the ground, Remo and Chiun were swirling into the midst of the furious PIO soldiers.

Remo snagged two kaffiyehs, one in each hand, yanking them together in a simple forearm snap. Skulls cracked open, popping squishy clumps of fat gray brain into the crystal-clear Mideast sky.

On the other side of the car, the Master of Sinanju's hand flashed up to the barrel of an extended rifle. A push popped the gun free of its owner. Unfortunately for the PIO soldier, his arm popped loose, too.

The rifle soared back, arm in tow. The gun became a missile unto itself as it pierced the chest of another PIO man. Shedding the excess baggage of its human appendage, the rifle continued straight through the soldier. It screamed in and out another advancing man before coming to a quivering stop in a third.

As the three men fell to the dust, Chiun was finishing off the original one-armed soldier with a sharp toe to the forehead. It had happened so quickly, the PIO man hadn't had time to mourn the loss of his arm before the blackness of oblivion overcame him.

Spinning from the body, Chiun whirled into the thickest cluster of men, catching up to Remo at the front of the car.

A mound of bodies decorated the ground at Remo's feet. Though their weapons were raised, the PIO soldiers seemed hesitant to use their guns in such close quarters.

"How many you get?" Remo asked Chiun as he worked.

The Master of Sinanju sprang off the ground, twisting in midair. Pipe-stem legs swirled into the throng of armed men. Two heads snapped around with brittle spine cracks.

"Six," he announced, kimono skirts settling around his ankles.

"You're slowing down," Remo chided. "I'm up to nine."

As he spoke, he launched an elbow back, catching a PIO soldier in the Adam's apple. When the man fell, clutching his throat, a heel kick collapsed his face into an angry smear of crimson.

"That is because I allowed you to work without distraction," Chiun retorted.

Sharpened fingernails slashed forward, ripping the throats from a pair of soldiers. Even as the first men were dropping, the old Korean threw his hands out to either side, catching two charging men in the chest. They stopped dead, quivering on the ends of extended index fingernails. When he pulled the nails away, the men collapsed.

The rest had gotten the message by now. The tattered remnants of the small PIO platoon decided to disperse. Abandoning their cars, they opted to leave on foot. Obviously, they thought screaming would somehow accelerate their pace. A theory not entirely unjustified given the speed at which they were flying down the street. They waved hands over heads as they shrieked.

"We're even," Remo announced, coming up beside Chiun. "Ten for you and ten for me."

A tie was apparently not good enough for the Master of Sinanju. Bending quickly, he wrapped one bony hand around the bumper of their Buick. With a painful wrench, he tore it free and hefted the heavy, rusted strip of metal high above his head. With a whoosh, it vanished from his fingertips.

Remo tracked the bumper as it flew end-over-end down the sun-cracked street. It soared only twenty yards before it lopped off the head of one of the fleeing PIO men. The body continued to run a few more steps as the head and bumper thudded to the road.

After brushing a cloud of imaginary dust from his palms, Chiun replaced his hands inside his kimono sleeves. He smiled triumphantly at Remo. "I win," he proclaimed.

"We'll settle up later," Remo said. "Let's go." On the way inside the building, they found a crumpled body lying facedown in the dirt. Remo toed it over.

Ree Hop Doe's glasses were askew, but his Asian features were unmistakable.

Remo's thoughts at once turned to the former President. "I smell a Los Alamos rat," he commented thinly as they viewed the body.

Leaving Doe to the desert sun, he pushed open the door.

There were PIO men inside, as well. These ones seemed to be more high-ranking than the corpses outside. Instead of rifles, they wore side arms. Once Chiun had liberated a few arms from a few sides, the initial anger they had displayed at the sudden appearance of the two men was replaced with intense agreeability. All around were nervous smiles.

"Where's Aruch?" Remo demanded of the man with the biggest epaulets.

Like the rest of the PIO membership, he wore a scruffy beard and fatigues.

"Gone." The man grinned, sweating. "Did he take the bomb with him?"

The PIO soldier nodded. Terrified eyes darted beyond Remo to the pile of arms the Master of Sinanju had stacked near the door. The old Korean stood impassive beside them.

"Dammit," Remo growled. "Where'd he go?"

"Israel."

"Where in Israel?"

"I do not know."

"Chiun, this guy wants to shake hands." The Master of Sinanju took a step forward.

"I swear I do not know!" the man begged. Remo frowned. The PIO soldier was telling the truth.

"What about the President? He take him with him?"

"No," the soldier said. "The old devil is loose."

"What do you mean loose?" Remo demanded. "Where is he?"

"He escaped. Two men were killed."

Remo couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Where did he go?" he snapped.

"I do not know," the PIO man replied. His pleading eyes showed how hard he was straining to be helpful. "He left not long after Chairman Aruch. With his dying breath, one of the men he attacked said that he was going off in the same direction as our beloved leader."

"Perfect," Remo snarled.

With an angry slap, he smacked his palm into the man's forehead. Twin geysers of blood spurted from the soldier's ears. Spine snapping audibly, he folded back over Nossur Aruch's desk at a perfect right angle. Remo wheeled on the others, furious fire burning in his eyes.

"Get outta here," he ordered.

Rats escaping a burning building could not have fled faster. Using door and windows, the remaining PIO men dove out into sunlight. Remo followed.

"We better hurry, Little Father," he said tightly.

"We do not know where to hurry to," the Master of Sinanju noted as he trailed Remo out the door.

"Doesn't matter," Remo said gravely. "We've got a President as old as George Washington's grampa out trying to fight the bad guys, and a bomb that's about to melt every gun from here to Damascus." His face was dark. "We'd better drive like hell until we find one or the other."

The brittle door swung slowly shut behind them.

Chapter 27

The ground had been broken on the planned Israeli settlement during the tenure of the previous prime minister. Houses had not yet been built, but the plans had been laid out for the tiny Jewish community just outside Nablus, a town north of Jerusalem, in the mostly Arab West Bank.

Protests against the planned construction had been ongoing, some violent. Although the new Israeli government was wavering, its citizens who had bought the land were not. The land would be settled. It was just a matter of time.

Nossur Aruch had other plans.

"This is perfect," the PIO leader announced to Fatang as his car crested a stone-covered hill. "Stop here."

The three PIO trucks trailing the big sedan came to squeaking stops along the hillside road.

Aruch didn't wait for his phalanx of bodyguards to run up the hill and surround him. He jumped excitedly from his car, hurrying to the lead truck.

Bryce Babcock got out after Aruch, his drooping face hanging in fleshy sheets of fear. With great reluctance, he trailed the terrorist down the hill. By the time the interior secretary caught up with the PIO leader, Aruch was already overseeing the unloading of the neutrino bomb from the rear of the truck.

"Careful!" Nossur lisped angrily. "Do not damage it."

When the men finally slipped the bomb from the shadows in the rear of the truck, Babcock saw that the timer was down to twenty-seven minutes.

Like an anxious child, the interior secretary tugged at the back of Aruch's sleeve.

"Uh, we should hurry," the secretary suggested.

"We are, we are!" Aruch snapped. "Get out of the way!"

Shaking Babcock away, the PIO head herded his men up the hill. They huffed beneath the weight of their heavy burden.

The Jewish settlement was to be built at the hill's plateau. String tied to posts that had been driven into the rocky ground indicated where the future foundations would be. Aruch brought his men through the field of scrubby green brush and white-and-gray boulders to the very heart of the future development. Snapping the string with a thick boot heel, he ushered the men into the living room of a home that would never be built.

"There," he ordered, pointing. "That flat rock." Aruch climbed down to his knees, helping the men balance the bomb on the rock. Babcock grew more ill when he looked at the timer. Four more minutes had drained away.

"A statement to those who would steal Palestinian land," Aruch was saying to his men. "If only this area was inhabited..." There was disappointment in his wet eyes.

"Would you like a Kleenex, sir?" Fatang asked quietly.

"Hurry," Babcock pressed.

This time, Aruch didn't resist. When the PIO leader got to his feet, the interior secretary's relief was obvious. With one last longing glance at the neutrino bomb, Aruch led the charge back to the waiting cars.

When they cleared the edge of the flat hilltop, a vision more terrifying than an endangered condoregg omelet greeted Bryce Babcock.

Down the slope, an Israeli convoy had parked behind the PIO vehicles. Curiosity had led them to investigate, but when the armed PIO contingent burst into view, the spark of alarm charged through the Israeli forces.

"Halt!" an Israeli colonel shouted. He raised his Uzi the instant the PIO soldiers appeared atop the hill. His men followed suit.

The PIO soldiers skidded to a stop, reflexively aiming their weapons down the hill.

"We don't have time for this," Babcock warned Aruch.

The PIO leader's eyes darted from the Israeli soldiers to his own men. The Palestinians didn't look at their leader. Their collective gaze was fixed on the hated soldiers below.

For a moment suspended in time, nothing happened. Tension in the Mexican standoff grew to a pounding drum of fear in Bryce Babcock's ears. All at once, the head of the Palestine Independence Organization drew in a deep breath. When he spoke, he did so loudly and clearly, so there would be no misinterpreting his meaning.

"Fire!" Nossur Aruch screamed, wild-eyed, at his men.

And as the PIO leader and the American interior secretary dove for cover, the peaceful, rock-strewn hillside erupted in gunfire.

REMO HAD STOLEN a PIO pickup to replace his crippled Buick. The truck flew south.

Keeping the gas pedal flat to the floor, Remo drove like mad for the Israel border. He prayed Nossur Aruch wasn't taking the scenic route to the Jewish State.

At speeds in excess of ninety miles per hour, they reached the border in less than fifteen minutes. The soldiers on the Lebanon side wished to detain them. Two foreign nationals driving in what was likely a stolen Lebanese truck cried out for arrest. Remo convinced them to look the other way by breaking all their noses. Faces gushing blood, they waved the two men through.

"Has Nossur Aruch been through here?" Remo asked on the other side as the young Israeli border guard checked his and Chiun's phony passports. The guard was all of eighteen years old.

"He passed through a few minutes ago," the soldier replied.

"Did you search his car?" Remo asked, shocked. He hoped Aruch hadn't ditched the neutrino bomb somewhere.

The soldier looked up, his face bland. "There were four vehicles in his motorcade. We let them all go without inspection."

"Are you nuts?" Remo asked. "The guy's a terrorist."

"We have standing orders from the new government. We are not to create an incident with him."

"What if I told you he plans to blow up your country?" Remo snapped.

"He would have to get in line," the soldier said, not even looking up. He handed back Remo's and Chiun's passports. "You may proceed."

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph," Remo muttered. As the soldier headed back to his shack, Remo stuck his head out the window. "You at least have any idea where he might have gone?" he called.

The soldier shrugged as he walked. "He has an office in Hebron. In the West Bank."

"You know where that is, Little Father?" Remo asked the Master of Sinanju.

"Yes," Chiun replied, bored.

Remo gunned the engine. As they sped past the guard shack, he yelled, "And if you see a mushroom cloud, I'd suggest you duck and cover."

They raced down the road into Israel.

BRYCE BABCOCK FELT like one of the precious crocodiles his department had released in a downtown Kansas City park back in '97. They'd been shot at, too.

Bullets zinged all around.

The Israeli soldiers fired relentlessly, unleashing efficient, controlled bursts from their Uzis. The PIO's return fire was sloppy and impassioned.

Bullets whizzed crazily in every direction above the interior secretary's head.

Babcock and Aruch had taken cover behind a pear-shaped boulder. Endless ricochets sang off the rock. Chunks of stone and clouds of pebbly dust pelted their heads and backs.

The PIO leader had deliberately not unholstered his side arm. If push came to shove and his side lost, he intended to claim that his men had gone trigger-happy at the sight of the Israeli soldiers. He could probably make it stick. The current government in Jerusalem had already signaled great willingness to accept every cock-and-bull story Aruch pitched at them.

Beside the PIO chairman, Bryce Babcock was shaking visibly.

"We can't stay this close to the bomb!" Babcock screamed over the gunfire, his fingers stuffed in his ears.

Uninterested, the Arab brushed dust from his kaffiyeh.

"Your colleague said it had a short range. This will be over soon. We are safe."

"No, we're not!" Babcock cried. "There could be a radiation-leakage problem before the bomb even goes off! It has a plutonium charge. If the shell gets pierced by a bullet while we're still in range, we could all end up with radiation poisoning!"

"I had not thought of that." Aruch frowned. "I suppose we could attempt escape."

To Bryce Babcock, sweeter words had never been spoken.

"How?" the interior secretary pleaded.

Aruch considered. "My car," he said finally. "It is closer than the trucks."

With saucering eyes, Babcock peeked around the side of the boulder. When he dropped back down beside Aruch, he was shaking his head violently.

"That's got to be a city block away," he said.

"An eighth of a mile. Perhaps a little less," Aruch said, reluctantly unholstering his handgun. As he was rising to a squat, Babcock grabbed his arm.

"We'll both be killed," the secretary whined.

Aruch's smile was thin. "Do you know how to drive?" he asked, cocking his automatic with calm assurance.

"Yes," Babcock admitted, momentarily confused.

"In that case, do not talk. Run."

With that, Nossur Aruch ran out from behind the rock. Keeping low, he raced for his big bulletproof car. Bullets screamed all around him.

Babcock gasped. He had no desire to follow, but he was more terrified of dying alone. Shaking in fear, he made an instant, albeit reluctant decision. Jumping out from behind the rock, he followed the terrorist at a gallop through the deadly cross fire.

REMO ASKED the first Arab they passed if he had seen Nossur Aruch. The scowl that appeared on the old man's face told Remo that he had.

"The traitor took the road to Nablus," the man snarled, spitting on the ground. It seemed to be a common Arab reaction to Aruch's name. "He thinks we do not know him in his bulletproof car."

The man was leading a rag-covered donkey down the lonely road. From his stolen truck, Remo observed silently that his style of dress and the beast of burden trailing behind him were a passport to another time. The man could have been transported to the same road two thousand years before and not attracted one second's worth of attention.

"Nablus. You know where that is?" Remo asked Chiun.

"Am I now a walking atlas?" the old Korean complained.

"Please, Chiun," Remo pressed.

The Master of Sinanju frowned. "Yes, I do," he admitted. "But I am getting you a globe for your next birthday."

"Beats pasting Stan Ronaldman's ratty wig in my scrapbook," Remo said. "And you're assuming any of us is having another birthday."

Tires spun, spitting clouds of dirt around the Arab and his donkey. With a desperate lurch, Remo launched the truck down the road.

BY FAVOR OF THE BLESSED Earth Goddess herself, Bryce Babcock managed to survive the Israeli-PIO cross fire.

Bullets ripped the air around him as he ran the final few feet to Nossur Aruch's waiting car. Arabs screamed curses dawn at Israeli soldiers. Some of the PIO men had already run out of ammunition. These were gunned down as they tried hurling rocks down the hill.

The PIO leader had dived for cover in the back seat of his sturdy sedan. Through the partially open window, fur-lined lips screamed encouragement to Bryce Babcock.

"Run, you fool, run!" Aruch yelled.

Panting from panic and exertion, the interior secretary's shaking hand grabbed the silver handle of the driver's door. Before he could pull, he felt something hard press into his back.

Babcock froze.

"Do not move."

The words came from a young Israeli soldier. The man had sneaked up around the PIO vehicles in order to get behind the firing Palestinian soldiers.

As his bladder drained down his leg once more, Bryce Babcock raised his hands numbly in the air. An angry hiss issued from the rear of the car. Through the crack where a moment before Aruch's lips had been, there came a flash of white.

Babcock's ears rang from the nearness of the explosion. The soldier hopped back, a fat red hole in the center of his forehead.

Hands still raised numbly in the air-trousers soaked through-Babcock watched the soldier drop to the ground.

Aruch's automatic vanished from the window. His fuzzy lips reappeared.

"Get in, fool!"

Heart pounding, Babcock scrabbled for the door handle. Springing the door open, he fell behind the steering wheel. The keys were still in the ignition. The engine started with a rumble.

Aruch was hanging over the back seat. "That way," he commanded with a sharp flip of his gun barrel.

Obediently, Babcock steered the car in a wide arc. They headed back down the road toward the waiting line of Israeli soldiers. Babcock winced as the Jewish troops opened fire on the runaway car.

"Do your worst!" Aruch shouted gleefully. "You will not pierce the skin of this mighty Palestinian beast!"

They plowed through the line of soldiers. Although the men continued to fire from every direction at the escaping car, their weapons had no effect.

Aruch bounced giddily from window to tinted window. Even though the men couldn't see him through the dark glass, he stuck out his tongue at them.

In the front seat, Bryce Babcock's eyes were sick as he watched the display in the rearview mirror. "How can you be so calm?" he asked in horrified wonder.

Nossur shrugged, settling back in his seat. "Welcome to the Middle East," he replied.

With bullets pinging off its rear windshield, the sturdy car raced down to the main, winding dirt road.

And on the rocky hill high above them, the red digital timer on the stainless-steel casing of the neutrino bomb continued to count remorselessly down to zero.

THE TRIO OF YOUTHS, each barely in his teens, carried old Russian AK-47s.

Remo was getting sick of having to ask for directions, but he didn't have much choice. He pulled alongside the teenagers.

"You guys seen Nossur Aruch?" he shouted across the seat, out Chiun's open window.

The name brought a reaction. The three boys raised their guns to Remo.

The Master of Sinanju was quick to react. Bony hands a blur of motion, Chiun snatched hold of each of the weapons, twisting barrels to useless angles.

The youths blinked. They looked at Chiun. They looked at their guns, which were now bent to boomerang angles and inexplicably pointing at the arid ground.

As if connected to a single brain, three frantic hands stabbed simultaneously in the same direction. "When are you gonna take that job counseling troubled teens?" Remo asked as he pulled away from the trio.

They hadn't gone much farther down the road before Remo felt a sudden strange sensation through the tires of the truck. Whatever it was, it was new to him. And huge. Face a granite mask, he glanced at the Master of Sinanju.

Chiun had felt it, as well. Expression grave, his gaze was fixed on the distant hills. When he saw the look on his teacher's face, tension thinned Remo's lips.

"It was too big for conventional explosives," he commented worriedly, his own eyes trained on the far-off landscape.

Chiun nodded. The yellowing white tufts of hair above his ears were ominous thunder clouds framing a troubled parchment face. "If it were nearby, we would have seen the flash," the old Korean replied in a subdued tone.

Although both Sinanju Masters were trying to gauge the direction from which the vibrations were coming, it was difficult to tell with an explosion of the magnitude they'd just felt. All the earth beneath them seemed to be trembling. It was Remo who came first to a tentative conclusion.

"South?" he ventured, unsure of his own deduction.

Chiun nodded slow assent. "The vibrations appear to be coming from that direction," he agreed. At the moment, they were driving south. Fast. "Hang on!" Remo yelled.

He slammed on the brakes, at the same time wrenching the wheel left. The truck squealed a shriek of protest as the pickup's brakes caused tires to tear road. A thin film of desperate dirt rose from beneath the empty bed as the truck whipped around in a 180-degree turn.

Remo didn't wait for the pickup to complete the turn around before slamming on the gas.

The truck lurched forward, spinning out against the shoulder of the road before roaring back in the direction from which they'd come.

And as they fled, the cloud appeared over the darkening horizon. An unaccustomed tug of fear took hold of Remo the instant he saw it in the rearview mirror.

It rose above the spinout cloud the truck had made. Expanding across the pale desert sky, the fat blob of thick thrown-up dirt was balanced atop a heavy stalk of pulverized earth. Until he saw the mushroom cloud, Remo had hoped he and Chiun were wrong. But they were right.

Someone had detonated the neutrino bomb.

No escape. Too close. Screaming forward, the shock wave would reach them any second.

In the side-view mirror, the Master of Sinanju was watching the cloud rise higher in the sky. His weathered face betrayed awe and worry.

"Faster!" Chiun commanded over the growing wind.

"I've got it flat out!" Remo yelled in reply.

A sudden gust of wind burst forth across the desert. A violent artificial sandstorm. The cloud rushed forward, swallowing up the truck. The road before them vanished.

Remo felt the truck pulling away from him. The wind had taken control of the vehicle. In an instant, they were being propelled ahead of the gale at speeds in excess of the indicator. The needle jumped impossibly to the farthest point on the speedometer and locked there. Remo felt like Dorothy caught in the twister. He fought to keep the truck under control.

The wind seemed to cut away all at once. For the briefest of moments, it appeared the storm had stopped.

All at once, they were struck from the front with the force of a solid moving wall of air.

"Hold on!" Remo yelled, just as the windshield shattered across them.

The wind had turned around, rushing in to fill the vacuum created by the exploding bomb.

Even a Master of Sinanju was no match for so awesome a man-made force.

The truck was lifted off its tires. Sand blew in through the vacant windshield.

The truck hit something-a hill, the road. It was impossible to know.

Hit, roll. Hit, roll.

Horrible metallic crunching noises rose over the monstrous wind. Fenders buckled as if beneath a mighty fist. The hood ripped away and was flung into the depths of the roiling dust cloud. Through half-squinting eyes, Remo caught sight of the Master of Sinanju.

The old Korean was being thrown around the cab. From what little Remo could see, he appeared to be weathering the storm. Until the section of seat he was holding unexpectedly gave way.

Chiun's parchment face registered a brief instant of surprise. That was the last thing Remo saw before the violent wind grabbed hold of him. The Master of Sinanju disappeared out the window and was swallowed up by the sandstorm.

Just like that. He was gone.

"Chiun!" Remo yelled, the words inaudible in the terrifying gale. Remo felt his mouth fill with gritty sand.

The twinge of fear he'd felt before exploded fully. Chiun was gone.

And in that moment of panic for his father in spirit, Remo allowed his concentration to lapse. He did not feel the steering wheel coming loose. It popped free without a sound. When he realized what had happened, it was already too late to do anything about it.

The howling wind plucked him from the cab, lifting, flinging him roughly through the air. There was no time to think of Chiun or of his own safety. Remo flew face first through the open windshield.

And in a screaming whisper that issued from the very mouth of Hell itself, the swirling, ferocious sandstorm consumed him utterly.

Chapter 28

Baghdad's elite Republican Guard, pride of the Republic of Iraq, was on maneuvers in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley in the land once known as Mesopotamia.

It was a special day for the highly trained soldiers. President, Prime Minister and Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, Saddam Hussein himself was on hand for the latest military exercises.

Hussein sat in an open Jeep above the field of battle. A frozen smile gripped his face beneath his bushy mustache as he reviewed his mighty troops through his field glasses.

Hundreds of massive tank treads kicked up huge plumes of dust as the armored vehicles rumbled across the arid plain.

Beyond them, a network of cunningly deceptive trenches had been dug by foot soldiers for this battlefield mock-up. From his vantage point, Hussein could see the men lined within the trenches awaiting the attack.

The Gulf War had done much to deflate the confidence of the Republican Guard. Convinced that they were invincible, the soldiers had been stunned by the rapidity, as well as the severity of the United States-led operation. It had been necessary in the years since for Hussein to rebuild the morale of his once feared army.

Between the soldiers in their trenches and the approaching line of tanks, another group of men stood out in open desert. Tiny in comparison to the mechanized beasts, these soldiers bravely awaited the approaching vehicles.

Hussein ran his binoculars along the ragtag collection of men, pitifully small in the vastness of the Iraqi desert.

His smile broadened.

Kurdish rebels. Hundreds of them.

The men hailed from the mountainous north of the Mideast nation. Hussein had slaughtered most of them several years before, but he had kept some alive for special occasions. Like this one.

The Kurds had not been given guns. They were armed only with knives. This was a sensible precaution, for only a fool would arm a Kurd. Even for a battle simulation. After all, someone could get hurt.

Ragged in their surplus Republican Guard uniforms, the Kurdish soldiers stood, bravely awaiting slaughter.

The president of Iraq was dressed identically to all of the men below him, with one great, unseen exception.

In the war with America, any strip of white cloth available to the Iraqi troops had been employed as a flag of surrender. This included one uniform item in particular. That problem had been addressed by Saddam Hussein himself. In the newest incarnation of the elite Republican Guard-no underwear.

Right now, Hussein's Fruit of the Looms were riding up on him as he shifted his ample rump on his hot leather seat.

Tugging at his backside, he kept his binoculars as steady as possible. He didn't wish to miss one moment of the action.

The tanks were rumbling close. Only a few yards from the helpless men.

The Kurds stood their ground. There was no point in running. They would be shot from behind if they tried.

The great thundering rattle from the massive metal machines could be felt throughout the valley. Watching through his field glasses, Hussein chewed his mustache in gleeful anticipation. But as he watched, something odd seemed to happen.

All at once, the air in the valley shimmered. It was as if the world for a moment turned slightly out of focus. As quickly as it had come, the disturbance passed.

The desert wind picked up, blowing from the field of battle the plumes of smoke that had been rising from the treads of the approaching tanks. Hussein's olive skin was pelted with a fine spray of sand.

A normal desert wind. That was all.

No. Not all. Something below him had changed. His precious tanks had stopped moving. All two hundred of them were now frozen in place. Nothing seemed to happen for a long time. After a pregnant silence, a tank lid sprang open. It was followed by another, then another. Soldiers began to scurry out into the sunlight.

"What is happening?" Saddam Hussein demanded of his coterie of subordinates. "Why are they not grinding those Kurdish dogs beneath their treads?"

Haste was made to learn the reason for the lack of tank movement in the field of battle.

Far below, the Kurds were hesitating, unsure this wasn't some kind of trick.

When the lack of movement continued for another handful of minutes, Hussein knew that it had gone on too long. Something was desperately wrong.

The Kurds sensed it, as well.

There came a fearsome cry from the belly of the great valley. Hundreds of Kurd mouths let flow whoops of explosive rage. Knives raised above their heads, they swarmed toward the row of inert tanks.

Behind the Kurds, the armed men in the trenches didn't act. They were a safety measure to keep the Kurds in line, yet they did nothing to stop them. When Hussein swung his binoculars over, he saw that the men in the trenches were struggling with their guns.

"Shoot them!" Hussein shouted into the valley.

He wheeled on the men nearest him. "Order those fools to fire!"

The man nearest him slammed the portable phone with his fist. "The radio does not work, my president."

Hussein whirled back around. The slaughter had already begun.

Men fell to the sand. His men. Saddam Hussein's vaunted and feared Republican Guard.

Men clutched bellies and throats. Blood flowed into the sand of their forefathers.

The soldiers in the trenches still had not fired. Hussein realized with a horrid, sinking feeling that the only reason they would not shoot was because they could not shoot.

The Kurds finished with the tank soldiers in less than three minutes. Charged with the thrill of victory-knives dripping blood-they raced back for the men in the trenches.

The Republican Guard soldiers had already stripped off their trousers. Naked from the waist down, they waved their pants in the air atop the barrels of their useless guns.

The Kurds did not recognize their surrender. They had for too many years been victims of Iraq's celebrated Republican Guard.

It was a massacre. In minutes, pools of dark blood stained the powdery sand in the trenches. Sickened by the spectacle, Hussein turned to his men, his face ashen.

"Let us leave," Hussein intoned hollowly.

"The jeeps do not work, my President!" a frantic aide announced.

Hussein's head whipped to the valley.

Below, the Kurds were almost finished with the slaughter. There was only one place left for them to go. And with a sinking feeling, Hussein knew where that was.

Throwing his binoculars to the sand, Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council Saddam Hussein spun from the field of battle and ran like a jackrabbit for home. In his haste to run back to Baghdad, he did not even bother to pick at his wedged underpants.

THE TWO SOVIET-BUILT MiG-23s raced along the sticky black tarmac of the Syrian Arab People's Airport in the low-lying hills south of Damascus.

Fuselages shuddered as the cooler mountain air grabbed the swing wings of both planes. With a piercing cry, the airport fell away and the powerful jets screamed into the heavens.

At one time, the Syrian air force had seventy of the aircraft. But in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse came a serious equipment shortage. Parts were being scavenged from donor planes just to keep the dwindling aircraft of the Syrian air force aloft. These were two of the last complete multirole all-weather fighters of this type still in service.

The MiGs left Damascus far behind, soaring along the lower hills of the Anti-Lebanon Mountains.

In the distance, Mount Hermon rose majestically from amid the lesser mountains. At more than nine thousand feet, it was the highest point in the country. According to the history of the area, Hermon was the site of Christ's transfiguration before his disciples.

Of course, the Syrian pilots did not believe such nonsense. Hermon was a mountain that, along with the rest of the Anti-Lebanon range, separated the Syrian Arab Republic from its geographical neighbors. That was all.

Hugging the mountains to the east, the MiGs soared in the direction of the disputed Golan Heights. Sunlight glinted off the cockpit domes.

In spite of speeds nearly exceeding fifteen hundred miles per hour, Mount Hermon seemed not to move. It stayed patiently beside the roaring fighters as they flew, an ancient, watchful sentry.

The routine patrol continued south as far as As Suwayda, then looped north for home.

As the bleak terrain raced beneath the bellies of the twin planes, one of the pilots thought he saw something in his peripheral vision. He glanced over his shoulder in the direction of Mount Hermon.

The mountain seemed to shiver.

Behind his goggles, the pilot blinked his eyes. When he looked back, Hermon was stationary once more, as if nothing had happened. But something had-

Perhaps it was a problem with his goggles. Or perhaps there was fog on the interior of his cockpit dome. At this height and in this climate, ice should not have formed on the exterior of the craft, but that was a possibility. It might have even been an earthquake. Whatever had happened, there had to be some explanation.

The pilot thought to report the strange phenomenon once he landed. He would never get the chance. All at once, a stiff breeze blew in out of the west, engulfing his aircraft.

The nose of the MiG seemed to wobble. Just as Mount Hermon had.

The wind passed.

Another bizarre occurrence to report. The pilot adjusted the stick slightly. It failed to move.

Concerned, he tugged harder. Nothing. It was locked in place.

Checking the other systems, he found to his horror that they were all the same. Frozen solid.

The MiG began to lose altitude.

Looking over, the pilot saw that his sister craft was in the same predicament. Nose dipping forward, it had begun an inexorable screaming dive for the lowland mountains.

No way to pull out of the dive. Controls frozen.

Nothing more he could do. The plane was going down.

The pilot hit the eject switch. Nothing happened.

He hit it again. Still nothing.

Ground racing up now. Faster, faster.

Pounding the switch. Banging hands against the dome above his head.

Nothing moved. Everything fused.

Ground visible on the other side of the dome. In front of the nose.

Too fast ...too fast...

The two MiGs impacted against the rolling base of Mount Hernion twenty seconds later. Twin explosions of yellow and orange gouted a spray of metal and stone.

And though the crashes and ensuing fires were fierce, through it all Mount Hermon stood. Unchanged.

THE SCENE PLAYED OUT the same way from Cyprus to Saudi Arabia, from Egypt to the west of Iran. Afterward, some claimed they had felt something. All said they saw something. A strange shimmering of the land, followed by a warm wind.

Guns seized up at a rally in Lebanon. King Abduilah's plane nearly crashed during takeoff in Jordan. Elevators, automobiles, kitchen appliances, construction equipment-indeed all metal-on-metal hardware within at least a seven-hundred-mile radius around Israel's disputed West Bank-became inoperative. As if clenched in a powerful, invisible fist. And around the world, stunned governments nearly tripped over one another as they sprang to sudden action. All of them with the same goal: to gain a foothold in the suddenly powerless region.

Chapter 29

Their car suddenly seized up on the road into Hebron.

Behind the wheel, Bryce Babcock desperately turned the key, at the same time pressing his foot on the gas.

Nothing happened. Not an engine struggling sound, not a feeble click. Nothing.

"The peace bomb," Babcock exhaled, nodding anxiously.

Nossur Aruch leaned over the front seat. "Give it more gas," he instructed angrily.

"I already did."

"You flooded the engine," the PIO leader accused.

"How could I?" Babcock whined. "We were driving fine. It just stopped. It must be the neutrino wave."

Aruch growled, dropping back in his seat. "Now what am I supposed to do? I cannot walk back to my office. They will slaughter me in the street."

"What about this stuff?" Babcock suggested. He lifted a few articles of clothing that had been left on the seat by Fatang and the other bodyguard. Aruch's facial stubble gathered into a prickly frown. Reluctantly grabbing the clothes, the PIO head improvised a disguise.

Aruch abandoned his beloved checkered family kaffiyeh for a more traditional, less cumbersome head wrapping. A pair of dark sunglasses obscured his crazed, unblinking eyes. That was it. On another man, two minor changes like these wouldn't have mattered, but on Nossur Aruch they managed to obliterate his two most distinctive features.

"I shame my ancestors to dress like this," Nossur Aruch complained as he stuffed his beloved head covering inside his wrinkled fatigue jacket.

Disguise in place, he grabbed the door handle. The door refused to budge.

"What is this devilry?" Aruch demanded, furiously rattling the handle.

"The neutrino wave would have fused virtually all metal on metal," Babcock grunted from the front seat. He, too, was attempting to open his door. It was stuck fast.

The shatterproof windows refused to power down. "So how do we get out?" Aruch snapped.

It took twenty more minutes and the removal of the back seat. On their backs, both men were able to kick open the sedan's trunk. Sweating profusely, they climbed out the back and onto the rock-strewn street.

"What's that noise?" Bryce Babcock panted when they were safely outside the car. His khaki shirt was drenched.

Aruch tipped his head. "It sounds like a mob," he replied, puzzled. "But if it is, it is not like any I have ever heard before."

The two men headed off into the city, threading their careful way to Aruch's Hebron office.

They had not gone far before they found the source of the noise.

Aruch had been right. It was a mob-and it was also unlike any he had seen in his lifetime.

"They are not using guns," Aruch breathed to the interior secretary, his voice a hoarse lisp.

"They wouldn't work, either," Babcock explained. "Metal on metal, remember?"

The crowd had formed a semicircle around a short, garbage-strewn alley. The center of attention, an emaciated old man stood at the far end of the lane.

Men had gathered up chunks of crumbling buildings and roads. Laughing and shouting, they hurled the rocks at the cowering, bleeding old man.

"He has a gun," Aruch hissed, indicating a man who had just joined the crowd.

The man aimed his weapon. Aruch watched in interest.

As soon as the new arrival depressed the trigger, there was an explosion. However, it didn't come from the barrel.

The gun blew up in the man's hands, ripping them to shreds. Screaming in pain, he fell to his knees. The crowd didn't notice. Their stone throwing had reached a fever pitch. The pathetic old man surrendered to the jagged rocks without so much as a sigh. He died in a bloody heap at the rear of the alley.

Aruch turned to Babcock. When he peeked over his sunglasses, there was sad understanding in his eyes.

"No guns?" he asked, disappointed.

"I told you," Babcock replied nervously.

"But this was to be the Great Holy War," Aruch complained. "The Jews have lost their teeth. Detonating that bomb was a symbol for my people to rise up for a free Palestine. How can we have a proper jihad without arms?"

"Please, Nossur," Bryce Babcock begged. He was thinking of all the peace bomb was supposed to have done. It was supposed to be a shining example to the rest of the world. Not a prelude to chaos. "It wasn't supposed to be this way. This was supposed to be for the good. Like when I set those leopards loose in Pennsylvania. If you'd only surrender to the loving embrace of peace, all will be well." His attempt at a benevolent smile made him look constipated.

Aruch's expression fouled to disgust.

"Peace is for those who have not the stomach for war," the PIO leader proclaimed. He raised a stubby, threatening finger to the interior secretary. "And for your sake my beloved missile had better work," he menaced.

Whirling from Babcock, he hurried from the mob, heading deeper into the city. Casting a last, frightened look at the bloodied dead man, Bryce Babcock hustled in Aruch's wake.

Chapter 30

The desert storm screamed off into the arid hills where it had been born, and was gone.

Remo had concentrated on weightlessness during his time hurled through the air and so was featherlight when he finally landed softly on his stomach, a quarter of a mile back from the spot where the forward rush of air from the neutrino bomb had caught his truck.

The wind had not yet died away before he sprang up. Unharmed, his worried eyes scanned for the Master of Sinanju. He found him immediately. The old Korean was up and padding across the desert toward him, his face a stony frown.

"Your driving skills are appalling," Chiun accused as he approached. "If you wish me dead so that you may assume Reigning Masterhood, please tell me. I would rather send myself home to the sea than participate in any more of your one-man demolition derbies."

"Don't start on my driving again," Remo warned, masking his intense relief. "Even you can't possibly blame me for that."

At Remo's side now, Chiun puffed out his chest. "Perhaps," he admitted. "Nevertheless, you are crashing carriages with alarming frequency of late. When we return home, I am enrolling you in a driver's-education program."

As before, Remo detected a light undertone-very faint. He now suspected he knew why.

"Look who's talking," he replied. "Ted Kennedy laughs at your driving."

He looked back to the point they both knew to be ground zero.

The mushroom cloud was dissipating into thin smears of puffy lines above the hills. Even the wind was dying down.

"I guess we were far enough away to avoid the radiation," Remo commented.

"It is in the air," Chiun pointed out.

"Not bad," Remo said. "The sun on a weak ozone day."

"Nonetheless, we should leave this area." Remo nodded.

They walked a half mile down the road when they came upon what was left of their truck.

The roof was crushed as if beneath a dinosaur's foot. The bed was twisted to a right angle from the cab. One axle had snapped. Half of it-along with the attached tire-was missing altogether.

"I guess we don't really need it anymore anyway," Remo commented. "It's pretty obvious we won't be bringing the neutrino bomb back with us."

"What of the emperor-in-exile?" Chiun asked.

"Yeah, the President," Remo said, exhaling. "He was going after Aruch. If we're lucky, we'll find both of them together. Assuming we can scrape up transportation."

"Ye of little faith," Chiun replied, eyebrow arched. He nodded down the road.

When Remo turned, he saw that a group of men on camelback was riding in from the north. They had seen the cloud and survived the terrifying gust of wind and were now coming to investigate the cause of the strange phenomenon.

When Remo turned back to Chiun, he was shaking his head.

"I am not riding one of those things," he said emphatically.

"We haven't a choice," Chiun insisted.

"They could probably give Ronaldman's wig lice lessons," Remo groused. "And I thought thanks to Master Na-Kup that you didn't like Mountain Monsters or Hill Humps or whatever the hell the Sinanju scrolls call camels."

"Hush," Chiun admonished. "I am about to negotiate with bedouins-the most crafty and avaricious hagglers in the world-and I do not need your constantly flapping lips as a distraction."

"Yeah? Well, I hope you have a plan," Remo muttered.

"Of course I do," Chiun sniffed.

The old Korean waited patiently for the men to arrive. Remo stood beside him, tapping his foot on the road.

There were nine of them, all dressed in traditional robes and kaffiyehs. They slowed their beasts near the pair of strange pedestrians.

Faces dark as a desert night, their suspicious eyes peered out over sand-coated veils.

"Greetings!" the Master of Sinanju called up to the Arabs. "My son and I require two of these fine animals. Remo, pay the nice men."

"Some plan," Remo griped. Grunting, he dug in his pocket, removing a wad of bills.

Apparently, the bedouins didn't have a problem with American currency. Remo peeled off several hundred dollars, handing the bills to the eager men.

Two camels were separated from the rest. The Master of Sinanju scampered quickly onto the hump of the larger beast.

"Try not to crash this, Lead-Footed One," Chiun announced to Remo. With a twist of the reins and a kick of his heels, the camel began to trot down the road.

"I'll crash you," Remo grumbled. Grabbing a fistful of fur, he pulled himself up onto the hump. Grinding his heels into the animal's sides, he sent his camel after that of the Master of Sinanju.

Chapter 31

Though the media liked to think he had slept straight through his eight years in office-save, of course, the single time he managed to pad, yawning, down to the Oval Office to approve a secret arms deal to a fundamentalist Islamic nation-the former President of the United States had been as attentive as his post would allow. As luck would have it, he remembered from White House briefings that the main office of the Palestine Independence Organization was in Hebron. Problem was, it was miles away across hostile terrain.

A stolen robe and headdress had gained him anonymity after his harrowing escape from his PIO captors in Lebanon. The features that peeked out around his veil had not brought unwanted attention. His dark tan and weathered skin were common enough for men in this part of the world.

A stolen jeep and dumb luck helped him slip across the border from Lebanon into Israel. His biggest problem came once he was inside the Jewish State.

His jeep ran out of gas. Carrying his disguise in a lumpy bundle beneath one arm, he was forced to continue on foot. He hadn't gone far before he was spotted by a border patrol.

Fortunately, in another lifetime, the President had been a bit of a thespian. His acting skills had come in handy when he was being questioned by the soldier.

The former President claimed to be an American tourist who was visiting Israel with his wife. He said he had become separated from the rest of his bus tour.

The soldier was very young. So young, he failed to recognize the old man standing before him. After admonishing the tourist for his carelessness, the soldier drove him back to within a few miles of the disputed West Bank where the President claimed his tour bus was scheduled to arrive any minute. After the soldier had gone, the President donned his Arab disguise once more and headed into the West Bank.

As he made his way through the busy streets, the former President caught a few curious glances from passersby.

In his robe, with head and face covered, he was dressed rather formally for the disputed zone. Most Arabs in the area were comfortable wearing a simple open shirt and slacks. However, in spite of the interest some might have had, they left the President alone.

Aruch's office...Aruch's office...

He wasn't quite sure where to go. For some reason, he seemed to think it was on the south side of Hebron.

The buildings were all at least three stories tall and set directly on the roads. They lent a feeling of intense claustrophobia to the narrow streets.

The President pushed himself forward. He felt the strain of labor burning in his lungs. His heart pounded. Muscles ached from effort.

He was exhausted. Ten years before, this would have been a grueling test of endurance. But at his age and after all he had recently been through, it was nearly too much for him.

It was a struggle to move on.

But he had to. Nossur Aruch had the neutrino bomb. The PIO leader had to be stopped.

As he trudged on, puffing ragged breaths through his sweat-and-saliva-soaked veil, the President thought ruefully how much easier it would have been for him fifteen years ago.

Back then, all he would have had to do was pick up the red phone in the White House. Smith would have answered, and within minutes his men would be deployed. Aruch, Babcock and the neutrino bomb all would have been stopped.

But he could not live in the past.

Smith's men were doubtless looking for him. The President himself had seen to that. But they might not know where he had ended up. They could still be wandering around the California hospital. No, the President was here, now. The only man who knew what was going on. The only man who could make a difference in time.

Panting, trying to run. More a hobble. A rumble in the distance. Thunder?

The buildings around him seemed to shimmer. For a moment, it looked as if they might flicker away altogether, fading into the desert, joining the dust of countless civilizations that had squatted for a brief time beneath the same heartless sun, only to be absorbed by the sand.

Wind followed. Strong, but not fierce. Kicking up great clouds of dust in the narrow passageway between the tightly lined buildings.

The dust began to settle moments later. Even before it had, the President knew he was too late. Tiny battered cars stopped dead on the street around him. Their drivers could not get them to start again.

Shouts from buildings. Confusion. Fear. Panic.

The anarchy would come quickly. He was too late. There was nothing more he could do here. The President turned, hurrying back the way he had come. He would get back to Israel. To safety. Aruch hadn't brought the bomb to Hebron. The wind had been to the President's back. He had planted it somewhere closer to the border with Lebanon.

After forty-five minutes of running back and forth in this squalid city, he was growing dizzy from his exertions. The frustration of failure piled atop the strain of effort.

An old man. He never should have tried. Never should have taken the risk.

Even as he thought the words, he knew they were wrong. They were foreign to him. Not what he expected from himself.

He had tried. He had failed, but he had tried. Sweating profusely. The chaos in the streets growing around him with each tortured step. Gangs grabbing strangers. Fearful shouts. Sudden bursts of anger. Somewhere nearby was a cheering mob.

His heart pounded. Mind swirled. Couldn't breathe. Too much effort.

Have to stop. Have to rest. If only for a minute. He paused against the side of a building at a quiet intersection. Panting, he leaned against the hard wall. A wrinkled hand pulled the veil from his face only for a moment.

Fresh air. He breathed deeply a few times.

The air was like sandpaper on his raw throat. Still, it felt good. Refreshing. Bracing.

Keep moving.

He pushed away from the wall, reaching to replace his veil as he did so.

The President took a step around the corner... ... and plowed directly into Nossur Aruch. Colliding with the rushing figure, the PIO leader was forced to take an awkward step back. He was slammed from behind by Bryce Babcock.

When he saw whom he had bumped into, the whites of Aruch's eyes became visible above his dark sunglasses.

"What is this!" the terrorist demanded, fumbling a curving dagger from a scabbard at his waist. He pressed the knife to the belly of the ex-President.

The President was too out of breath to reply. Wheezing, he allowed the veil-which he had not fully reattached-to drop from his hand. It swung down to his shoulder.

"No. Put it on," Aruch commanded.

Nodding weakly, the elderly man did as he was told. Once his face was hidden, the PIO leader nodded.

"I do not know how you got here, but you are coming with me, ancient one," Nossur Aruch growled. With a shove, he propelled his captive forward. All the while, he held the knife menacingly close to the older man's side.

The former President was too weak to resist. He allowed the PIO leader to guide him at knifepoint. Bryce Babcock fell in behind the others.

Together, the unlikely trio hustled off through the growing chaos of Hebron.

Chapter 32

The Master of Sinanju rode into the ancient city of Hebron like a conquering hero, perched carefully atop his magnificent galloping desert-brown camel.

Remo's camel was struggling to keep up. The animal spit and hissed and made a general nuisance of itself as it clomped on broad-toed, furry feet into the chaotic streets. It would have stopped running altogether if not for the judicious coaxing Remo occasionally applied.

"Why is my camel so winded?" Remo complained as they waded into the surly crowds of Arabs.

"You are too fat," Chiun called back. "See how my beast accepts its precious feathery cargo with speed and grace."

"It's as graceful as a frigging camel, Little Father," Remo said. "We would have been better off saddling two pigs." His own mount wheezed suddenly. Remo grimaced at the sickly sound. "I think mine has asthma."

"Stop complaining. Camels all make similar noises."

"Wanna trade?"

"Why would I want your sick camel?" They rode deeper into the city.

Packs of men with mischief as their purpose prowled the streets. Apartment windows had already been smashed on most buildings. Cars whose engines had been frozen by the neutrino wave sat abandoned in the middle of roadways. Molotov cocktails had been tossed into some of the vehicles. From the open car windows, orange flames licked up into plumes of thick black smoke.

Remo was nearly shocked by the speed at which the inhabitants of the town had descended into feral behavior, but then he realized that-at least according to the regular images on the nightly news-they hadn't been too far away from it to begin with.

Riding down a particularly ravaged street, a group of men took evil interest in Remo and Chiun. One Arab with a board in his hand separated from the rest. He ran over to the Master of Sinanju, screaming a torrent of unintelligible Arabic while waving the chunk of wood menacingly.

With a toe-kick to the nose, Chiun sent the man sailing backward onto the hood of a stalled car. After that, the crowd cut them a wide swath.

In the next three city blocks, they passed seven rock fights, five knife imbroglios, three immolations by fire, an impalement, six savage chain beatings and two stonings.

"It's nice these people haven't forgotten their roots." Remo commented aridly as they rode past a group of Arabs who were pounding one another over the head with particularly thick copies of the Koran.

"Man has raised hand against his fellow man since the beginning of time." Chiun nodded. "Be thankful it is so, for if it was not, we would be out of work." The old Korean's eyes narrowed. "There," he announced abruptly.

He aimed a tapered finger down the road to where the street curved away between tightly packed buildings. A group of five Arabs was working near a jeep. "What about them?" Remo asked.

"They are of the Aruch clan," Chiun replied.

"How can you tell?"

"Do you not recognize the kaffiyeh?"

Remo looked over at the black-and-white-checkered headdresses some of the men wore. He shrugged. "One dirty dishrag's the same as the next to me," he said.

Chiun fixed him with a hooded stare. "Observe, O educated one," he said dryly.

Using his ankles, the Master of Sinanju gently pinched his camel's furry hump. The beast lowered obediently to the ground. Chiun had no sooner slid off the animal than he was marching over to the Arabs.

Remo's camel wasn't at all obliging. Even though he copied Chiun's technique exactly, the animal only spit and snorted. It even twisted its head around, trying to bite him. He finally gave up altogether and hopped to the ground. He trotted up beside the Master of Sinanju.

"I miss having a car," Remo complained as they walked.

"Cars are filthy inventions," Chiun replied.

"Camels are filthier," Remo said. "And I never had a Chrysler try to bite me on the leg."

The Arabs heard them talking. The men had been fussing about, attempting to figure out why the jeep would no longer run. But at Remo and Chiun's approach, they grew instantly alert.

AK-47s had been abandoned to the hood of the car. They grabbed them now, brandishing the weapons like clubs.

"Banu al-Asfar!" one of them screeched, at the same time swinging his gun toward Chiun's head. There was a satisfying crunch of bone as gun butt met cranium. Unfortunately for the Arab, the rifle failed utterly to make contact with the intended skull.

The man watched in horrified wonder down the length of his gun as the side of one of his comrade's heads collapsed into a visible V-shape. Somehow the man had moved into the spot previously occupied by the ancient intruder.

As the first dead Palestinian fell to the ground, the man became aware of similar noises all around him. Horrid crunches of bones being irreparably broken. When the Arab wheeled, he thought he saw flashes of movement. Never in the same spot, and never resolving into human form. When the last of his companions fell to the ground at the front of the jeep, the Arab looked up, his eyes sick.

The old one was back in his original position. The young white stood nearby, ankle deep in bodies. "We need a tour guide." Remo smiled. "You're it."

The Arab looked down at his dead companions. He looked back up. He gulped.

"I will lead you to the very portal of hell and beyond," the Arab enthused.

"PIO headquarters'll do," Remo said.

"Anything you wish," the Arab replied with a frantic nod.

Chiun's face was impassive. "Remo, lash this dog to the reins of your camel that he might precede us to the evil one's lair."

Nodding, Remo grabbed hold of the Arab and began to drag him back down the street. He took only two steps before he noticed that his camel was nowhere to be seen. Only Chiun's animal remained.

Remo stopped dead. "Hey, my camel is gone," he griped.

"Tether the Arab to your neck for all I care," Chiun said, breezing past him. "Just do not let him get away."

Leaving Remo to deal with their guide, the Master of Sinanju marched quickly down the street, lest Remo get any designs for his own mount.

THE DOORKNOB HAD FUSED to a solid mass on the front of the Palestine Independence Organization building. Luckily, a few of Aruch's men were loitering outside the building. They managed to pop the door open with a minimum of effort.

"Get out of my way!" Aruch commanded the instant the door sprang into the foyer.

He bulled his way through the mass of men and into the main hallway. The others followed him inside, propelling Bryce Babcock and the former President before them.

Aruch led the parade to his office.

"The day has arrived at long last!" Aruch sang merrily as he stomped across the room.

Passing his cluttered desk, he breezed onto the veranda. Outside, Nossur Aruch didn't seek the help of his men. This was a special moment. One he wished to keep for himself.

Like a selfish child with a birthday gift, he tore at the netting surrounding his precious rocket.

It was difficult at first. Much of the camouflage remained stubbornly attached to the uppermost portion of the long rocket. A final mighty tug brought the entire plastic covering tumbling to the balcony.

The missile was a slender white tube with two sets of wings-one halfway down the length of the assembly, the other, smaller pair near the tail. A stabilizing dorsal fin extended from the rear.

Two sustainable ramjets were fixed to the dorsal and ventral sides of the missile. In addition to these, four jettisonable rocket boosters were attached in a fan arrangement around the housing.

The menacing black nose of the Bloodhound pointed to the northwest.

At the base of the missile, Nossur Aruch glanced at his guests, tears of joy in his eyes,

"She is beautiful, is she not?" the PIO leader said, sniffling. He ran a hand lovingly along one of the slender boosters.

The former President of the United States remained silent. He stared at Aruch, a grim expression on his weathered features.

"That's a rocket," Bryce Babcock said, shocked.

"A Bloodhound Mk2. British long-range. It will strike Jerusalem minutes after launch."

"It won't work," Babcock blurted.

"Do not attempt to talk me out of it," Aruch warned. "I have waited years for this glorious day."

"That's not what I meant," the interior secretary said. "The rocket won't work. It's metal on metal. The neutrino wave would have neutralized its working components."

Aruch glanced in horror at Babcock. "You lie!" Babcock shook his head.

"Please, Nossur. You saw the evidence out in the street. With your own car. If you try to launch that thing, it will not go up. Worse, if some of its components survived the neutrino wave, it could detonate right here on the pad."

"It could have survived?" Aruch ventured hopefully.

"No," Babcock insisted. "It will never launch like it's supposed to. That's the whole point of the peace bomb. But some of the inner workings could have survived. Lead could have shielded some of the smaller metal parts. Silicon or plastic might have made it through. Enough might work in there to detonate whatever explosives are inside."

Nossur Aruch listened carefully to what was being explained to him. He made an instant decision. "You," he announced, pointing to one of his men. "Fire this missile in precisely two minutes." While the PIO soldier stepped dutifully onto the balcony, Nossur Aruch hightailed it back inside. Running through the halls of the headquarters, he led his entourage--which still included Bryce Babcock and the former President-into the courtyard on the far side of the building.

They had barely gotten outside when the ground was rocked by an explosion.

Leaves shook and fell from carefully tended trees. Birds took flight. The blast shook the three-story building behind them to its very foundation. The rear wall teetered for a long moment before finally crumbling inward. When it fell, it revealed a pile of rubble beyond it. The rest of the building had already collapsed in on itself.

Choking dust filled the courtyard. Thick black smoke poured up from the ruins.

Nossur Aruch took in the devastation with a look of dull incomprehension. That expression slowly melted into one of pure, unadulterated horror. With a shuffling deliberateness he turned, panting, to face the interior secretary of the United States. His insane eyes were as wide as saucers.

"You blew up my headquarters!" Nossur Aruch yelled at Bryce Babcock.

"I warned you," Babcock whimpered, shrugging fearfully. He cringed as if waiting to be hit.

Aruch turned back to the smoking remains of what had for years been the home of his beloved PIO.

"You blew up my headquarters!" he screamed again.

"Sorry," Babcock offered weakly.

"Even the accursed Jews never did that!" Aruch screamed.

Babcock said nothing more, fearful that he might inspire more anger in the PIO leader.

Head shaking in disbelief, Aruch stared at the ruins of his headquarters. Only the back steps remained. He kicked at a piece of shattered brick.

"What made this happen?" Aruch demanded.

"The peace bomb lets off a powerful magnetic force," Babcock said. "It would have fused the missile to the platform. I explained all this to you before."

"Yes, yes, yes." Aruch waved impatiently. Although he had heard the words, he had found them foolish and, consequently, had disregarded much of what was said. But now...

"What is the effective range of your bomb?"

"No one's really sure," Babcock admitted. "Could be a couple of hundred miles."

"This would be the same in all that area?" he asked, flapping an arm to the destroyed building.

"Yes," Babcock said, relieved that Aruch seemed to finally be getting the whole point of the peace bomb.

"So whoever gets weapons into this region of the world first will rule it," Nossur Aruch said. A wicked smile began to form within the graying stubble on his wrinkled face.

"Um-" Babcock began warily.

Aruch cut him off, a smile appearing in full bloom. "We need guns, bullets, explosives. And a radio. One that will have survived your peace bomb."

"None of them would have," Babcock insisted.

Aruch's response to this was a knowing smile. "I will need money," the PIO leader continued. He walked around Babcock to stand toe-to-toe with the President. "What do you think, old one? I am certain Iran would be interested in having you as a prize. Libya would also pay a handsome price. For that matter, a dozen countries in this region. Many more around the world. You will make me the last great monarch of all the Mideast."

He spoke it as a challenge.

The former President looked down at Nossur Aruch. His sun-creased face held an expression of bland contempt.

"Why is it that little fellas like you always have such big mouths?" he said in his soft-spoken, awshucks twang.

The PTO leader's smile vanished into his whiskers, replaced by a scowl. Wheeling to his men, he snapped a thumb to the President.

"Take him," he barked, at the same time marching for the gate at the rear of the courtyard. "His worthless hide is as good as gold. We ride this hour to my ancestral land. And to glory."

"I PAID GOOD MONEY for that camel," Remo groused.

"You should have watched it better."

"I think that bedouin ripped me off. Is there such a thing as a homing camel?"

Remo was trudging morosely beside the Master of Sinanju, who was seated grandly on the hump of his camel. Up ahead, leading the two of them through the streets of Hebron, was their captured PIO soldier.

"Do not complain to me because you cannot be trusted to care for pets," Chiun said. "You should have started with something smaller. Perhaps a hamster."

"Yuk it up," Remo muttered. "I'm glad one of us is having a good time."

Truth be told, despite the long walk beneath the hot sun and his own complaints to the contrary, Remo found that his mood, like Chiun's, was lighter than it had been of late.

After a miserable, self-indulgent three months, the Master of Sinanju seemed to finally be putting his movie deal behind him. This little jaunt around the world had turned the Korean back into his old self again, and in spite of all the kvetching and insults, Remo was happy to have him back. Of course, he kept his own mood masked, lest Chiun, sensing complacency in his pupil, revert to being the pain in the neck he'd been since last spring.

"I just hope the President is with Aruch after all this," Remo commented.

From the distance, they felt a sudden rumbling. It was a much smaller explosion, nowhere near as powerful as that from the neutrino bomb.

"What was that?" Remo asked as the aftershocks rolled away beneath their feet.

As if in reply, a thin finger of black smoke began to rise in the pale blue sky above the distant rooftops

"Whatever it is," the Master of Sinanju intoned, "it comes from the direction in which we are headed."

It took another fifteen minutes to wend their way through the maze of streets to the spot where the explosion had originated. When they got there, they found the pile of smoking debris that was all that remained of the West Bank offices of the PIO. "This was the headquarters?" Remo asked their Arab companion.

"It is the home of the Palestine Independence Organization," the guide replied.

"You think Aruch was inside?" Remo asked Chiun.

The Master of Sinanju had dismounted from his camel and was walking around the brick and mortar rubble with his pupil. He paused in the rear courtyard.

"No," Chiun said. He pointed at some footprints, recently made in the dusty earth. "Several men escaped injury. And look," he added, "the former occupant of the Eagle Throne was with them."

"The President?" Remo asked. "Are you sure?" Chiun gave him a baleful glare.

"Okay, so he went with him." Remo nodded reasonably. "Now we've got to figure out where they went."

"There is no figuring necessary," Chiun explained. "Aruchs are born of the desert. That is where he will return."

"How can you be so sure?"

Chiun folded his arms matter-of-factly. "A dog never tires of smelling the same mound of excrement," he replied.

"Since I'm lousy with pets, I'll have to take your word on that," Remo said. Surveying the damage, he exhaled in annoyance. "Well, if we're going into the desert, I'm not hoofing it."

"There is a stable nearby," the PIO guide offered hopefully.

This sounded good enough to Remo.

"Scrounge us up four horses and I'll consider letting you live," he said to the soldier.

Face brightening, the man spun, hurrying from the rubble-strewn courtyard.

"Let's hope the President can keep his mouth shut a little longer," Remo said to Chiun as they followed the man out to the street. "If he spills the beans this late in the game, Smitty'll have a stroke."

Chapter 33

A few hours of untroubled sleep at his desk had faded into a waking nightmare for Harold W. Smith. Remo and Chiun had failed to halt the detonation of the neutrino bomb. That much was painfully obvious.

The world had been turned on its ear following the events in the Middle East.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

The sound came from Smith's computer. More raw data.

Scanning it quickly, he filed it. It was like spooning out the ocean. Another bulletin raced in to fill the space.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

The CURE director was looking at one of the greatest crises he had ever faced.

The range of the neutrino bomb's magnetizing wave was far greater than even the wildest guesses of the scientists at Los Alamos. Even though the small plutonium bomb had been set off in the north of the West Bank, it had caused a technological catastrophe nearly eight hundred miles away in some instances.

Due to the effects of the bomb, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan and Cyprus were totally cut off from the outside world. Nothing technological appeared to be working in any of the small nations nearest the blast site. Much of Iraq was similarly affected.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt as far as Aswan, Izmir, Turkey, on the Aegean, Syria-all had experienced the devastating sweep of the magnetic neutrino wave. The invisible wall of heavy atoms had even reached as far as Abadan, Iran-some 780 miles from the blast zone.

It was a cataclysm of incalculable proportions. The only information coming out of the region was that available via satellite.

Smith had shifted his focus almost immediately. At that point, the neutrino bomb was the old news. What was happening in the rest of the world as a result of the blast was what worried the CURE director now.

The situation was grim.

As he had secretly feared, other nations viewed the incident as an opportunity.

Smith was in the process of reading the latest report, this one from Cuba.

Castro had acted on the news out of the Mideast with surprising speed. The head of the former Soviet client state was in the process of rounding up weapons to ship to Arab sympathizers. A fleet of three banana boats had been assembled to sail the arms to the Mediterranean. For Castro, it was both a moneymaking scheme and an attempt by the forgotten dictator to gain a toehold in the region.

While Castro's eagerness to take advantage of the situation was almost laughable, the actions of other nations were far more serious.

Smith dumped the terse Cuban report back into the growing file of international opportunists. He pulled out an update of one of the more troubling cases.

Russia was involved in a massive collection of arms. Even as Smith read the report, he knew that crates of guns and ammunition were being airlifted to ships in the Black Sea.

The former superpower clearly saw the events in the Mideast as an opportunity to regain some of its past glory. Smith had even intercepted a private memo to the United Nations that had originated somewhere high up in the Russian Duma. Before the end of the day, there would be official condemnation from the Russian government for the actions of the United States in the West Bank. At the same time, the vessels would already be on their way to the Middle East.

America would be helpless to stop them.

The Sixth Fleet was in disarray. The aircraft carrier that had brought Remo into Lebanon was out of commission. At present, it was unknown whether it was damaged beyond repair. Smaller battleships in the vicinity had been similarly affected.

The Russians would have no interference entering the region. There would be no objection from the helpless U.S. ships nor from their impotent crews. They would be forced to watch in silence as the Russian flotilla sailed with its deadly cargo into the silent ports of terrorist nations.

And the United States would not be alone in silence. The navies of virtually every nation in the area had been crippled by the neutrino wave. At the moment, hundreds of vessels were floating helpless in the sea, targets to be boarded or blown out of the water by hostile forces. The crews did not even have arms to resist.

While the Russians presented the greatest threat, they were by no means alone. Libya and Iran were involved in an air war-limited at present to see who would have the pleasure of annexing the entire affected region.

The French saw an opportunity to retake some of their former possessions.

China was thrilled with the chance to spread its military influence into a new region and, if anyone attempted to stop them, perhaps employ some of the American technology they had obtained with Dr. Ree Hop Doe's aid.

Even the British-worried that others would get there first-were preparing arms shipments. A force was already on its way from those western areas of the Mediterranean not overcome by the neutrino blast. More were heading in from the Atlantic. America was also responding.

Worried that some hostile nation would be first to lay claim to the wide-open oil fields of several of the countries in the magnetized zone, task forces from the Second Fleet were already being pulled out of the western Atlantic and sent into the Mediterranean. Ships from the Pacific were being spread thin into both oceans to compensate. But the repositioning would take two days at best.

Fortunately, it seemed that, at least for now, everyone was experiencing the same disarray. Smith dreaded the moment that someone realized the real opportunity was not in the Mideast, but elsewhere in the world. Many nations were so eager to race for the pot of gold they saw in the Mediterranean they were leaving their own territorial waters nearly undefended. It was a blind feeding frenzy, the likes of which the modern world had never before seen.

Smith watched it all from his Folcroft office, helpless to do anything about it.

Hopefully, Remo was nowhere near the bomb when it went off. If he had survived the blast, he was somewhere in the area. Even though he had failed to stop the bomb, there was still the matter of retrieving the former President.

At this point, Smith would have liked more than anything to send CURE's enforcement arm after whoever had set off the neutrino bomb. It appeared to be Nossur Aruch and his PIO. Bryce Babcock was not alone in this; that much was certain. But there was no way to contact Remo in the field. If he found the President, Remo might just bring the former chief executive back without going after the PIO leader.

In the end, the villain in this might get away. Smith would have to satisfy himself with the fact that having the former commander in chief returned to American soil might be the only resolution to this dire situation.

And the tinderbox that was the Middle East would have to decide its own fate.

As he worried over this inescapable conclusion, Smith's computer emitted a sudden electronic beep. Typing rapidly, he brought up the latest information the CURE mainframes had culled for him.

Behind his rimless glasses, his gray eyes scanned the newest lines of text.

Spain was now in on the act. The European country was sending several naval vessels to the Mideast. At present, the data on the latest nation to join the growing tide of warships was incomplete. Intelligence sources had yet to determine how much weaponry the Spanish State was shipping to the region.

Smith dumped this latest report in with the others and backed out of the system. Before shutting off his computer, he disabled the automated beep that alerted him to incoming information concerning the region. It had been sounding almost nonstop since the detonation of the neutrino bomb.

Smith was only one man. There was nothing he could do from his Folcroft office that would remedy this crisis.

Even Remo and Chiun, with all their abilities, would be unable to stop the situation from playing out in whatever manner was destined.

One way or another, it was already over.

With this thought in mind, Smith got up from his computer and climbed wearily from behind his desk. With both hands, he rubbed his aching lower back.

The Folcroft cafeteria had received a shipment an hour before. He had heard the truck back in behind the building.

The cafeteria director was supposed to have gotten in some of the prune-whip yogurt he enjoyed. Smith left his office in search of his guilty little pleasure. The only one in his dour life.

Chapter 34

The army had grown from a handful of ragtag PIO soldiers to a mighty force of shouting, triumphant Palestinians. By the time they passed through the Ghor depression through which the Jordan River flowed to the north of the Dead Sea, they were five hundred strong.

Horses panted and frothed, propelled by frantic kicks from jubilant Arabs. They screamed the war whoops of their ancestors as they passed the border of Israel into Jordan. Two meaningless names. Both nations would soon be one. Along with many others.

At the front of the army, Bryce Babcock struggled to stay in his saddle. The horse between his legs pounded forward in spite of its rider's limited equestrian skills.

Beside the interior secretary, the former President of the United States rode into the encroaching night, his body moving in perfect rhythm with the animal beneath him.

And, on his magnificent sleek black steed at the head of the victorious pack-sweat glistening off its muscled rump, hoofs digging half moons in the clayish earth-Nossur Aruch was a conquering god. They had sensed his purpose, these sons of Palestine who followed him. Gone were the feelings of mistrust from the past few dark years. Gone, too, was the anger. The hatred. He was power; he was the future. And they were his.

To lead.

To govern over.

To send to their deaths if he so commanded. He was their caliph. Their sultan. Their king. Nossur Aruch was finally, at this late point in his life, the monarch he had always hoped to be.

He had tossed away his pathetic disguise in Hebron. There was no longer a need. He wore his white-and-black-checkered kaffiyeh proudly once more. Many others in his band wore the same headdress. The new mane of power in the Mideast. Symbol of a dynasty that would last longer than the pyramids themselves.

Although he had declared himself president-in-exile of Palestine years before, he was not actually of the region. He was Jordanian, born to Palestinian parents. The land of his forebears was east of the Jordan. It was to this spot this haven-that Aruch and his army now rode.

The day was growing short. Night was sweeping in upon them, brushing the last of the white-hot desert day from the sky by the time they reached the oasis of the Aruch family.

In his youth, he had always thought of it as a place of coolness and shade. A sanctuary in the fire that was the desert. In his adulthood, he saw it for what it was. A pitiful lump of washed-out green in the Jordanian desert between As Salt and Madaba.

The sun was gone. Melted into fat blobs of orange as they rode into the oasis. Long shadows cast from ill-watered trees became specters of black across the sand.

The army pounded to a thundering halt.

They had no sooner stopped when the ragged tents that were speckled between the trees began to disgorge hordes of pitifully filthy men and women. Inhabitants of the oasis. The family of Nossur Aruch. They crowded around the army, pawing at boots and trouser legs, all the while wailing pathetically.

Aruch kicked at the faces of any who came near him. There were at least a dozen of his sisters jostling them. Even more nieces and nephews.

"Leave me, wanton trulls and whoresons!" Aruch shouted, viciously booting his older sister, Shaboobatez, in her fuzzy jaw. It would have knocked out her teeth had she had any left.

Hands raised in supplication, his family backed away.

Aruch slid off his horse.

The women of his clan were notoriously ugly, snagging as mates men who floundered at the stagnant end of the gene pool. The homely children they produced wouldn't have surprised anyone with a passing knowledge of genetics. The world would have been shocked to discover that Nossur Aruch had gotten the looks in his family.

The PIO head was like a movie star at his high-school reunion as he pushed his way through the sea of grabbing hands.

A filthy nylon tent checkered in white and black to match his kaffiyeh stood out in front of the rest. Aruch made it to the rear of the crowd, slipping through the closed tent flaps.

Inside was bare. It was no surprise. Years ago, on his first trip to the outside world, he had returned to find his tent completely stripped. His family had a tendency to steal anything that wasn't nailed down. Fortunately, their avarice was matched only by their laziness.

Dropping to his knees in the center of the tent, Aruch used his palms to push away the powdery sand that was the floor. A few short sweeps revealed a trapdoor. At one end was a wrought-iron loop.

Clawing for the handle, he pulled. At first it was a struggle, but soon the fused trapdoor hinges popped. He lifted the door.

At once a generator hummed to life. Fluorescent lights flickered on a moment afterward, revealing a steep staircase that ran down into an unseen chamber.

Aruch hurried down the stone steps.

Another metal door was at the bottom-a necessary precaution just in case his family found the heavy lead trapdoor above. A key hung in perpetuity around his neck. Aruch stuck it in the lock, saying a quick prayer to Allah that the neutrino wave hadn't somehow damaged the bolt.

With a satisfying click, the door rattled open. Aruch exhaled relief.

The lead construction of the upper door had shielded down below. And if things in the stairwell worked, that meant everything beyond did, as well. Including his radio. His conduit to the outside world. The thing that would make him king of all the Mideast.