Waste Not, Want Not

Zhilnikov didn't care so much about himself. He was more concerned about the treatment of his men. Still, the most important thing of all was that revenge had been served. There were cameras waiting when he arrived at shore. He shouted Garbegtrov's name at all of them. Although Zhilnikov hadn't heard anything yet, the former premier was certainly disgraced by now.

The captain of the Novgorod was smiling once more when he heard keys jangling outside his door. The cell door swung open. Two men in suits loomed in the doorway.

"Get up. You're coming with us."

Zhilnikov assumed he was being brought before some sort of magistrate. Climbing out of his bunk-which was more comfortable than his old worn mattress back on the Novgorod-he followed the two men out of the cell.

When he saw some of his men already standing in the hall, Zhilnikov frowned. There were more Mayanans in suits in the dank corridor. They were turning keys in locks, releasing the rest of the Russian submarine crew.

"What is meaning of this?" Zhilnikov asked.

"It's judgment day," the Mayanan replied. "And you fellows have bought yourselves a front-row seat."

Puzzled, Zhilnikov looked to his men.

The Mayanans had drawn handguns. They were waving the weapons at the sailors, herding them together and steering them toward an open rear door. The door didn't lead to the main street. Zhilnikov saw an alley wall. The men began shuffling out into the late-afternoon sun.

"I am confused," Gennady Zhilnikov said, hesitantly trailing his men. "Are we going before judge now?"

At this, the Mayanans shared a wicked smile. "You're going before the ultimate judge," one promised. "And woe to you sinners, his wrath shall be great."

With a rough shove between the shoulder blades, the Mayanans propelled Captain Gennady Zhilnikov out the prison door and into the lengthening afternoon shadows.

Chapter 27

By the time Remo and Chiun finished supper, dusk was sweeping away the last of lingering daylight. He'd asked for recommendations from the hotel staff. Their restaurant was near the dock where the Novgorod had been brought. Remo parked his rented car near a seaside bar that had been built on a pier above the gently lapping waters of a deep inlet. The windows of the bar had been recently boarded up. A closed sign hung on the door.

The inlet was home to a large marina that was virtually abandoned. There were no people to be seen. Unused pleasure boats lined both shores. The houses on the far side were walled and gated. Remo saw for-sale signs on many of them.

It was no wonder. Junk from the scows that had sunk in the Caribbean had washed in to shore. Garbage from around the world clogged the beaches. Chunks of Styrofoam, plastic bottles and other trash floated atop the sparkling water.

"Tough luck for anyone who bought retirement property down here," Remo commented as he and Chiun strolled the sidewalk along the shore. "Although, actually the climate's pretty good. If the land's selling for cheap enough, maybe we should relocate the entire population of Sinanju here. It's a lot warmer, and the shit smell isn't half as bad."

He glanced at his teacher for the reaction his Sinanju-bashing usually provoked.

Padding along beside him, Chiun wore a concerned frown. Through the afternoon and into early evening, the old man's expression hadn't changed. It had started when he answered the cell phone Remo had found in the hotel hallway.

"I have a dream," Remo announced all at once.

"If I give you a dollar, will you promise to keep it to yourself?" the old man asked blandly.

Remo was undeterred. "I have a dream," he repeated, "that one day you'll let me in on everything. I have a dream that you won't just make me memorize every Master of Sinanju without telling me their legends, just so you can dish the stories out on a need-to-know basis. I have a dream you'll let me in on what kind of contract you cut with Smith. I have a dream you'll let me know exactly what you're planning for your retirement, so I don't wake up one morning to find you've gone back to Korea forever. But mostly I have a dream that now that I'm Reigning Master of Sinanju, you'll finally let me in on all those tiny little everyday secrets you've insisted on keeping from me for the past thirty years."

Chiun nodded thoughtfully as Remo spoke, giving weighty consideration to his pupil's words. When Remo was finished, the former Reigning Master of the House of Sinanju raised his wattled neck from his kimono collar. He turned as if to address an equal, not a student. And he did say, in low and serious tones, "Keep dreaming, round eyes."

"Why am I not surprised?" Remo said with a shrug.

"As long as we are on the subject of desires, I would live in an ideal world where I would have trained a pupil who trusted his Master enough to mind his own business."

"In an ideal world Julio Iglesias would have been born sterile. We play the hand we're dealt."

As they closed in on their car, Remo noted something in the air that was more than just the omnipresent odor of garbage. Soft pressure waves were directed at the two men.

"For cripes' sake, not again," he complained. Up ahead, Remo caught sight of a man in a suit lurking behind a bunch of shrubs. He recognized him as one of the gunmen who had attacked them outside their hotel room. He spied the other man behind some drying fishing nets.

"What did you say those guys you killed yesterday were-religious fanatics?" he asked Chiun. "What did you mean?"

"They mentioned something about suffering the wrath of their deity. In truth I did not listen to all they said. The selling moments were over and my show had begun again. Besides, I would give audience to a Calcutta leper before I would an American who knocks on my door to discuss religion."

"American? What makes you think that?"

"The rudeness? The smell? The big mouths? Stop me when you hear something you do not already know."

Remo was only half listening. Through narrowed eyes, he noted that another figure had joined the party.

Up ahead, a man was snooping around Remo's car.

As he lurked, Vlad Korkusku scowled at the world as only ex-KGB agents could. When he spied Remo and Chiun coming toward him, the scowl flashed to dread.

"Hello, American friend who frightens me," said Vlad Korkusku, slapping on an insincere smile. "I'm not your friend. And if you're the one trying to kill us, you're going to get the Chernobyl of wedgies."

"Kill you? No, no. Am not killing you," Vlad Korkusku insisted. "Hotel worker said I could find you here. I have come with message from Agent Bulganin. She is in needing of your assistance."

"Soon as I get a thanks for the first twenty times I helped her in the last two days, I'll consider it. Until then, Mother Russia can take a flying leap."

The SVR agent was standing in his way. Remo picked up the big man with the ease of a grandmother rearranging the wicker furniture. He set Korkusku to one side.

"Is important," Korkusku pleaded. "I was away from embassy for a time. Only just found message she left. She did not give full details for sake of security. Just said that there was great danger and to find you if I could, and to reassemble my squad if I could not. She took only one SVR agent with her to presidential palace. I have to be coming to Novgorod to round up rest."

"Yeah?" Remo scowled. He turned to his teacher. "Say, Chiun, maybe they don't care about us at all. Maybe they followed this schmuck."

"They are not watching him-they are watching us," the old Korean pointed out.

Korkusku was confused. "Who is watching who?"

"The killers who have us surrounded," Remo said, peeved. "Do you mind?"

Startled, Vlad Korkusku reached under his jacket. He found an empty holster. He looked pleadingly at Remo.

"No, I am not telling you where I hid your guns," Remo said impatiently. "If you've got the urge to kill and maim, use a Russian cookbook. Besides, they don't want you. Now beat it. I've had it with cleaning up bodies."

Korkusku didn't seem to know what to do. With great reluctance-and all the while studying the growing shadows-he left Remo and Chiun to get in their car.

The SVR man got no more than a few feet when there came a sharp pop. His black shoes skidded on pavement. There was a gasp that seemed strangled in his throat.

Korkusku spun back to Remo and Chiun, a look of panicked bafflement on his sagging face. One hand was clutched to his chest. Blood gurgled between his fingers.

"Crap," Remo said. "Never a minute's peace." This time when the men opened fire on him, Remo didn't head in the opposite direction. With an angry frown he headed straight for the gunman in the bushes.

The man took careful aim at Remo and fired. When he missed-and continued missing-he grew more and more panicked. With one bullet left and realizing now that there was no chance of hitting the stranger he had been sent to kill, the man sprang abruptly to his feet.

"Brother, the rapture is upon us!" he cried.

And, placing the barrel of his gun against his own temple, he pulled the trigger.

The man on the dock followed suit. By the time Remo reached them, the gunmen were two twitching corpses.

Remo checked for ID. Like the men in their hotel room, they had none. He returned to his teacher's side.

"You were right, Little Father," Remo said. "That guy wasn't Mayanan. He sounded like he was from the Midwest."

There was a gurgle from the ground. He went over to where Vlad Korkusku was gasping for breath on the pavement.

When Remo saw the condition of the SVR man's wound, he frowned morosely. "Too bad."

"I am going to die?" the Russian pleaded.

"Worse for me. You're gonna make it." He shook his head. "Life. Always it's gotta make more work for Remo."

Scooping the Russian agent off the ground, he dumped him like a sack of Ukrainian beets in the back of his rented car.

Chapter 28

The President of the United States leaned in close to hear the whispered words of his chief of staff.

As he listened, he tried not to chew the inside of his cheek. His wife had been on him to stop this old habit, which the Washington press corps had dubbed a smirk.

The press held the smirk up as proof positive that this President was an unserious frat boy who had somehow stumbled into his role as national leader. Which was strange, really, because the same press that dubbed this President unserious for a smirk found very serious his immediate predecessor, a man who had devoted so much time and energy to exposing himself to women during his time in office that once-after one exhausting, zipper-free summer vacation on Cape Cod-naval doctors at Bethesda had had to apply sunburn ointment to his very raw, tenderest of presidential areas. But that was then and this was now and this grown-up President who had learned from his mommy as a very little boy how to keep his belt buckled and his pants up at his waist was regularly eviscerated by the Washington press for his unserious smirk.

"I'm not sure who he was," the chief of staff was saying. He kept his voice pitched low. "But he had clearance. He wanted to talk directly to you."

"Let me guess," the President said, exhaling unhappily. "General Smith, right?"

"No," the chief of staff said, a hint of surprise in his voice. "Undersecretary Smith, actually. With the Treasury Department. You know him?"

"Just by reputation," the President replied.

"Oh. Well, I don't know who he is, and neither do any of the Secret Service here. He's in their database as a Treasury employee, but when I had them check out his office they said it was a storage closet."

"He doesn't have a regular office there," the President said, vaguely uncomfortable. "He's more of a floater."

"Oh." The chief of staff seemed to expect a more complete answer, but when he saw one was not forthcoming he forged ahead. "Well, it's just lucky the treasury secretary was with us to confirm this wasn't one of his regular staff. Otherwise they might have dragged you out of here."

"I'm not going anywhere," the President said firmly.

The chief of staff nodded. "I knew that," he said. "I just thought you should know. He sounded so serious. Like it really was life and death. But as long as you seem to know, I suppose everything's okay. Excuse me, sir."

The chief of staff hurried over to confer with the chief executive's press secretary.

As soon as he left the president's side, yet another group of men came up to shake the President's hand. The President politely obliged.

He couldn't begin to guess how many hands he had shaken since arriving in Mayana earlier that afternoon. Hundreds since that first handshake at the airport with Executive President Blythe Curry-Hume. There would be hundreds-perhaps thousands-more before this Globe Summit was over.

As he shook the hands of a delegation from a country that regularly denounced the United States at the UN, he considered his chief of staff's message.

The President wasn't surprised his chief of staff would be concerned. The man who had called had access to his private number and knew all the special codes. And the President himself might actually have been concerned. That was, if he had not been expecting the call.

So far the President had had members of his staff bring warnings to him from General Smith, Special Agent Smith, Field Director Smith and now Undersecretary Smith.

The President had to hand it to Dr. Harold W. Smith. The director of CURE was tenacious.

Smith had expressed reservations about the President's plan to attend the Globe Summit right from the start. His concern had only grown more acute these past few days. With the capture of the Russian submarine, the older man had relaxed some of his concerns. But now, not one day later, he had doubtless found yet another reason for the President to cut short his visit.

The President was not about to leave. Yes, there was potential danger in coming to South America. But the greatest threat had obviously been the rogue submarine off Mayana's coast, and that had been dealt with. According to intelligence, the Russian government was telling the truth. It was not behind the sub attacks. The Globe Summit was as safe-and as dangerous-as everywhere else in the world. The President of the United States couldn't alter his schedule based on undefined risk or he would spend his entire tenure in office hiding in a bombproof cave under the Rockies.

"Mr. President?"

The voice intruded on the President's private thoughts. He had been shaking hands with members of the Chinese delegation. He looked up to find Mayana's executive president standing before him. Some of the other world leaders had begun to gather around him.

"We're nearly ready for the demonstration," Blythe Curry-Hume said. "I'm sure you will find it fascinating."

With a friendly sweep of his arm, Jack James herded the world leaders through a nearby gate.

As he followed the Jamestown cult leader through the gates to the deck of the Vaporizer area, the President of the United States concentrated on controlling the smirk that so bedeviled and delighted members of the fourth estate.

REMO DUMPED Vlad Korkusku at the hospital in downtown New Briton around the corner from the presidential palace. After the injured Russian was wheeled off to surgery, Remo decided to try Smith again.

This time he didn't even bother to ask Chiun for the cell phone he was sure was still stashed up the old man's robes. Chiun was acting too weird and possessive to even try arguing. He went off and scraped up his own phone. He was back in a minute. He was happy when he managed to open it but stood blankly staring at the buttons for a long moment.

"Do you know what you are doing?" Chiun asked.

The two men stood near the glass-enclosed entrance to the emergency room. Outside, streetlights were winking on.

"Of course I do," Remo said. "A phone's a phone." He stared at the cell phone for a few more seconds.

"You have to press those little buttons," Chiun offered.

"I know that," Remo snapped.

He pressed some of the little buttons. Nothing happened.

"Nothing happened," Chiun pointed out.

Remo gave him a withering look. He tried pressing the buttons again, this time in a different combination. Still nothing. Frustrated, Remo collared a passing doctor and asked him for help.

"I think it's broken or the batteries are dead or something," Remo said as the balding man took the phone.

"No, no," the physician said with a helpful smile.

"See this little button here? You've got to hold that down for four seconds before you can make a call. That way it won't accidentally turn on if it's jostling around in your pocket. See? You're ready to make a call now. It's not that complicated really. I've got the same model."

"Thanks," Remo said, taking the cell phone back and feeling a little guilty for the fact that this nice and helpful man actually no longer had a phone like this one, since it was his pocket Remo had swiped the phone from in the first place.

Through some miracle he was able to place the call. He was amazed when Smith answered. "Remo, thank God," the CURE director blurted, his tart voice straining with barely controlled panic. When he heard Smith's tone, Remo's brow furrowed.

"What's wrong?"

"My God, he's still alive," Smith spluttered. "No one knows it. I tried to contact the President, but he will not take my calls. I almost issued a warning through some of the other governments there, but who would believe it? It sounds too incredible. But it's true. My God, I was helpless. If word got out, he might be alerted and do something rash."

"Deep breaths, Smitty. He who?"

"Jack James," Smith insisted. "He didn't commit suicide with his cult at Jamestawn. He is still alive."

Remo took a second to absorb the CURE director's words. "Is he still in Mayana?" he asked.

Smith blurted the whole story, as quickly and concisely as was humanly possible. When he was finished, Remo didn't bother to say goodbye. He tossed the phone into a trash can and whirled to his teacher. Chiun had heard everything. His parchment face held a look of deep concern.

"Next time I say I'm bored just hanging around Sinanju, remind me to take up basket weaving," Remo said.

Side by side, the two men raced out the emergency-room door and into the warm South American night.

THE WORLD LEADERS were asked to leave their entourages out in the parking lot. There was only a limited number of protective boots to go around, they were told, and this test would be a nice shared moment for the men who held the environmental fate of the world in all their hands.

The Vaporizer was just as most of them had seen on television. The black deck was surrounded on all sides by a wall made out of the same material that lined the pit. A chain-link fence prevented the men and women from falling in.

"What you witness here today is something the world will talk about long after you have all turned to dust," Executive President Blythe Curry-Hume promised as he ushered the last of the world leaders out onto the deck. "If you will all step to the fence. We will be ready to begin momentarily."

The President of the United States fell in with the prime minister of Britain and the president of Russia. The first few leaders had reached the fence. A ripple of confusion passed through the group as they looked in the pit. As the men and women glanced at one another-muttering in dozens of languages-another sound rose above them.

The President heard the muted sound of shouting voices.

"What's that?" he asked.

America's chief executive and the others hurried to the fence at the edge of the pit. When they looked down inside the Vaporizer, they were stunned to find not garbage, but human faces staring up at them.

Captain Gennady Zhilnikov and the rest of the crew of the ill-fated Novgorod looked pleadingly up at the world leaders.

"What is the meaning of this?" the President demanded. "Is this supposed to be some kind of sick joke?"

He turned to look for Mayanan Executive President Blythe Curry-Hume. Only then did he see that the black door had slid silently shut behind them, sealing them in. In the crowd of confused world leaders he didn't see the face of Mayana's executive president. And then he heard Curry-Hume's voice. It boomed at them over the public-address system.

"'And there was given to him the key of the bottomless pit,'" Curry-Hume recited in a tone suited more to a carnival revival meeting than a summit of world leaders. "'And he opened the bottomless pit and there came up smoke out of the pit like the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and air were darkened by the smoke of the pit.'"

The President felt his blood run cold. There was no way out. The door was sealed. He glanced into the pit.

The crew of the Novgorod was growing more frantic. Some clawed at the walls. The President now saw why. The lights in the walls had gone from a dull glow to a brilliant white. The deck beneath their feet hummed with energy.

"'For they are spirits of demons working signs,'" Blythe Curry-Hume shouted, "'and they go forth unto the kings of the whole earth to gather them together for the battle on the great day of God almighty.' That day is upon us!"

There was a flash. White and all-consuming. And in a series of pops so fast they seemed to happen simultaneously, the crew of the Novgorod vanished from sight.

Even as understanding of what had just happened was sinking in, the world leaders had a fresh shock. All around the upper deck, little pressurized caps began popping off the walls, one at a time. Beneath the caps winked on the sightless eyes of glowing nozzles.

The realization fell softly over the crowd like a settling shroud. And like the crew of the Novgorod, many of the leaders of the world screamed and ran for the walls.

"'And there came forth a loud voice out of the temple from the throne, saying, "It has come to pass!" the man who had been Jack James cried out with joy.

And at the edge of the upper deck, a few of the leaders who held their ground-the President of the United States included-watched with stoic countenance as the little lights continued to twinkle to life in the walls all around.

REMO'S CAR SQUEALED to a stop at the rear gate of the Mayanan presidential mansion. As it rocked on its shocks, he and Chiun were already out the doors and racing to the gate.

Two uniformed guards tried to stop them. Remo put them to sleep and dumped them in the bushes while Chiun kicked open the gate. The old man swirled inside, Remo behind him.

They met no other guards on their way to the building.

"I don't like the looks of this," Ramo said. "This place is like a ghost town."

"The Reigning Master of Sinanju Emeritus fears neither ghosts nor living men," Chiun intoned. Ducking beneath the shadow of a long canopy, the old Korean cracked the shatterproof doors that led into the mansion. Sheets of bulletproof glass imploded, crashing to the floor and scattering like glistening sand.

The sound finally attracted attention. Guards came running up the hall, rifles aimed at the two men who were charging toward them.

"Emeritus?" Remo asked as the men opened fire. He twisted and twirled around volleys of screaming lead.

"It is a title conferred on Masters who, while technically on the edge of the Time of Seclusion, still actively ply their trade," Chiun explained.

The guards were upon them. There were seven of them. Some dropped their rifles in favor of handguns. Others tried hand-to-hand attacks.

"How come I never heard of this before?" Remo asked suspiciously as he slapped a palm into a soldier's forehead. The man's eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped unconscious to the floor.

"If I am now expected to catalog those things which you do not know, I will have to plead with the gods to extend my life by another five hundred years," the old Korean replied. Darting hands slipped past the defenses of two charging, screaming men. Slender fingers pressed two throats and the men collapsed.

They made short work of the remaining guards. Leaving the men asleep on the floor, the two Masters of Sinanju flew for the stairs.

They found the presidential suite of offices all but deserted. Only one heartbeat issued from a back room. Remo kicked the door open. It screamed off its hinges, cracking to kindling against the far wall. The Mayanan president's office was empty.

They traced the heartbeat to a locked bathroom. Inside, Petrovina Bulganin was bound and gagged on the floor. The Russian agent had shattered the vanity mirror and was using a fragment to saw through the ropes at her wrists. Her hands and forearms were covered in blood.

On the floor near her was the male SVR agent she had brought along to help. The man had not fared as well as Petrovina. His skull had been fractured in several places. The body was rolled toward the wall.

When the door burst open, Petrovina looked up with fear. Her face quickly collapsed into relief. Chiun cut the ropes at her ankles and wrists with his long fingernails while Remo removed her gag. "Jack James!" she exhaled the instant the gag was loose. "He is alive!"

"Not for much longer," Remo replied coldly. "You know where he is? This place is deserted."

"He has gone to the Vaporizer site," Petrovina said, scrambling to her feet. "He was keeping me alive for his pleasure later on. I heard his plans. He will claim to give them a demonstration, but he intends to murder them all."

"Murder who?" Remo asked.

"Every leader in the world who is in Mayana," she answered. "World will be thrown into chaos. Governments will collapse. Panic could destabilize entire continents." There was a look of terrified urgency on her face.

"Every leader in the world, you say?" Remo asked, sitting down on the closed toilet lid.

"Yes," Petrovina replied sharply. "Hurry." She was edging anxiously for the door.

"Don't rush me," said Remo. "I'm thinking."

Chapter 29

From the window of the Vaporizer control shed, Jack James watched the frightened little men who thought they ruled the world. As the caps popped off the fully functioning upper level of the device and the lights of doom glowed brighter, the men and women tore at the walls. They screamed and climbed over one another in blind panic.

The walls were too smooth. There were no handholds. Thanks to distance and the weird soundproofing quality of the frictionless walls, their yelling wouldn't be heard by their staffs and the press gathered out in the parking lot.

Their cell phones had been confiscated. They'd been told that the devices could interfere with the operation of the Vaporizer. Trusting, wicked fools.

As the little men ran around in fear, James smiled. The sheep were scattering.

The history of this day would be written in blood on scrolls for wicked mankind. They would call it Judgment Day. The day that he, Jack James-Almighty Jack James-punished the evildoers for their sins and washed clean the face of the earth. It was the Flood, the rapture, the expulsion from Paradise.

All the sins of the world were concentrated in the hands of these, the stewards of this modern Sodom. With a calm that chilled the cold air-conditioned room, Jack James glanced down at the control monitor. The power levels were nearly at maximum. Only a few minutes more.

He was glad he had told them to simplify the Vaporizer commands. At the moment he was the only one there who could operate the device.

In the corner of the room lay Mike Sears.

When he realized what the executive president of Mayana had in store for the crew of the Novgorod, the Milquetoast American scientist had grown a backbone. It hadn't been enough to withstand the mighty rod of persuasion.

James's precious cane hung on the edge of a table. He had kept it throughout his years in exile. Through a life of adversity and persecution.

Blood dribbled down from the scientist's forehead. Sears was unconscious. For his disloyalty, James would finish him off when this was over. Just a few minutes more.

James sat down in Sears's well-worn chair to await the end. As he watched, the last of the little lights continued to come to life. Just as the very first light had been brought into existence on that first long-ago day, the day Almighty Jack James created the heavens and the earth.

THE ROAD UP to the Vaporizer was jammed with abandoned cars. Buses were being used to cart reporters and lesser dignitaries to the site. When Remo and Chiun arrived with Petrovina, they found that only VIP limos were being allowed past the yellow sawhorses.

"They took my purse with my diplomatic identification back at presidential palace," Petrovina said, frustrated. "Have you ID?"

Remo was hardly listening as he glanced around. "My dog ate it," he said.

"There is no way we will get in," Petrovina said.

"I hope you are listening to this, Remo," Chiun said. "You who would invite all manner of Russian trailer trucks to drive into your bed should realize that if you make a baby with this one, it will inherit not only its mother's mustache and swollen ankles, it will get that optimism for which all Russians are famous."

Remo was looking down the road. "Not all Russians are bad, Little Father," he said absently. "Anna was okay."

Face tight, Petrovina glanced sharply at Remo. "That's right," Chiun said. "Drive the knife deeper into your poor old father's dying heart."

A limousine was driving up from New Briton. It had diplomatic plates. One of the attendees of the Globe Summit was arriving late for the Vaporizer test.

When the car drew past them, Remo reached over and popped open a rear door while Chiun opened the driver's door.

Remo found himself looking into the familiar bushy-bearded face of the president of Communist Cuba.

Remo had met the man years before. There was a flash of recognition. When he opened his mouth to scream, his cigar flopped out, scattering burning ash on his drab fatigues.

"Glad we don't need a reintroduction," Remo said. "C'mon, Fuzzy, move it o muerte."

Unseen by the roadblocks up ahead, Remo dragged the Cuban leader out of the car, stuffing him in the trunk.

By the time he got in the back seat, Chiun had already persuaded the driver to continue without question. The Cuban behind the wheel was driving with one hand. The other arm hung limp at his side. He gritted his teeth against the pain.

They kept the tinted windows rolled up tight. Remo, Chiun and Petrovina were waved through the roadblocks and onto the main grounds. At the site they abandoned the limo, racing for the fenced-in Vaporizer.

The two Masters of Sinanju could already feel the thrum of power from the machine. It was the same buildup they'd felt during the test two days previous. "It's close to going off," Remo warned.

Luckily the rest of the dignitaries and reporters had been herded into the visitors' center. There were only a few guards and security personnel near the main gate. When they saw the small trio racing toward them, the men drew guns.

There was no time to argue. Remo and Chiun swept into their midst, fingers and palms putting to sleep all who came at them. As the men toppled left and right, Remo yelled over his shoulder at Petrovina.

"Get to the control booth! Try to shut it down!" She nodded, scooping up the pistol of a fallen Secret Service agent. She ran through the open gate and up the narrow, fenced-in corridor that separated the main driveway from the exterior Vaporizer wall.

Remo and Chiun quickly removed the remaining guards. The last man had not yet hit the ground when they were flying through the fence to the Vaporizer wall. Near the bin with the protective boots waited Jack James's disciples.

Only eight of the twelve remained. They had been ordered to hold their ground and not let anyone inside.

"The Lord shall punish the wicked!" one man shouted as the group assembled around Remo and Chiun, weapons drawn.

"Show of hands for whoever has heard enough of that crapola," Remo said. One hand rose. It, as well as the arm that went with it, was no longer attached to its owner.

Remo tossed the arm to the ground, taking out the one-armed gunman with a sweeping toe. He and Chiun flew through the rest. When the last disciple had fallen, the two Masters of Sinanju raced to the sealed Vaporizer door.

They could feel the hum coming through the black wall.

"Stay here, Little Father," Remo said.

The old man shook his head. "We go together."

"Can't risk it. Not both of us in there."

"I expect your superior knowledge of garbage to save me," the wizened Korean sniffed, reaching for the door.

"This isn't a debate," Remo snapped. "I'm Reigning Master. It's my decision. I need you out here."

Chiun saw the look of determination on his pupil's face. Jaw tightening, the Reigning Master of Sinanju Emeritus nodded sharp agreement. "Have a care," he warned.

Despite his concern, Chiun felt his heart swell. It was a moment of great import. Significant not just in Sinanju, but throughout the history of mankind. Fathers and sons. The passing of authority from one generation to the next.

Remo didn't seem to realize it. Like all the young, he was too concerned with the present.

Remo's face was grim. Whirling, the latest Reigning Master of Sinanju reached for the door.

THE PRESIDENT of the United States never dreamed he would meet his end like this.

Mayanan Executive President Blythe Curry-Hume had apparently gone insane. The President could see the crazed man's shadowy face peering down from the control booth.

There was nowhere to go. No way to call for help. The President and the other world leaders were effectively standing inside the Vaporizer. The President had seen the device being demonstrated on television. He understood what was about to happen to all of them.

Many of the others couldn't seem to accept the inevitable. Across the deck they kicked and screamed, pummeling one another with fists as they pounded on the door.

As the lights glowed brighter all around, the President stood his ground, determined to meet his end as a man.

In his mind he recited the Lord's Prayer. He didn't know he was speaking the words aloud until he heard the prime minister of Great Britain saying them alongside him.

The two men glanced at each other. The President gave a smile and a sharp nod. As he did so, he heard fresh shouts from over near the sliding door.

The other world leaders were backing fearfully away from the door, babbling in dozens of languages. As the President watched, hope tripping deep inside his chest, the door began to bow inward. The regimented lines of glowing lights stretched out across the bubbling surface.

With a shriek the door burst off its sliding track. Men scattered. Trailing wires, the door slid across the deck, bouncing off the chain-link fence and skittering away.

A man appeared behind it. With dark, deep-set eyes, he viewed the stumbling, panicked world leadership.

"There's six billion people out here who'll probably want to lynch me for this," Remo Williams grumbled.

And with an unhappy scowl, Remo grabbed the collars of two nearby diplomats.

With a sharp tug, the chief of government of the Principality of Liechtenstein and the president of South Africa were dropped to their backsides. The deck was black ice. The two men zipped across the frictionless surface and disappeared through the opening.

And like a shot, Remo launched himself out on the deck.

He had not donned a pair of frictionless boots. Forward momentum carried him on sliding soles. He snagged the prime minister of Niger and the president of Honduras. Both men were launched back across the deck.

Outside the open doorway, Chiun grabbed these two as he had the first. The old Korean stopped them, stacked them to one side and spun back just in time to accept the next pair.

Inside the Vaporizer, Remo was picking up speed. They flew in his wake-blurs of presidents, prime ministers, princes and kings. He banked off each set, changing direction in a slivered second, flying off to the next.

By the time he reached the President of the United States, prime minister of England and president of Russia, Remo was a barely visible blur.

Each man felt a sharp tug. In the next instant he was flying through the door of the Vaporizer and into the flashing hands of the former Reigning Master of Sinanju.

And in a flash Remo was off to the next set of world leaders, ever mindful of the awesome manmade power that was swelling up all around him.

AT FIRST JACK JAMES didn't see the commotion down on the upper level of the Vaporizer. He had been preoccupied watching the monitor. The device was nearly powered up.

When he glanced down, he blinked in shock. There were fewer men than had been there just a moment before.

Impossible. There was no way out. He had sealed the door himself. They couldn't have broken out. And yet there were definitely fewer world leaders on the deck.

As he watched in amazement, more vanished. It couldn't be. The device wasn't yet ready. Blurs across the deck. On the security camera he caught sight of men appearing through the door. The open door.

In that moment the impossible registered in his dull mind. Something was throwing the men to safety.

There was still a way. He had hoped to savor his victory, hoped to live to tell the tale. But the fools didn't know. Jack James would go, but he would take them all with him. And Jack James was eternal. Jack James was light. Yes, he would die this day but, after, he would live forever in glory while all the other, lesser beings were thrown into the dark, there to wail and gnash their teeth.

A light flashed green. The Vaporizer was at full power. James reached for the keyboard, tapping a single key. The instant he did so, a voice shouted at his back.

"Step away!"

James wheeled.

Petrovina Bulganin stood in the control booth, her pistol trained on the infamous Jamestown cult leader. James smiled a twisted grin of triumph.

"Too late!" he cried, laughing maniacally. "You can shoot me if you want, but you are all dead! They told me the machine needs to remain perfectly balanced. With the door missing, it's not. When it goes off, the Vaporizer will consume itself, this hill, these grounds and every last one of us. I've won."

For an instant Petrovina Bulganin weighed her options.

Abruptly she turned the barrel of her gun from James, aiming it at the upright computer nearest the Mayanan president. Petrovina unloaded her clip into the hard drive.

Sparks exploded in the small room. There was a spluttering hiccup in the swelling hum of power. "No!" James flew to the window. He didn't care that the Russian woman whom he'd carelessly left alive back at his presidential palace turned and ran from the control room. Didn't care about anything but his failed act of vengeance.

He had been too slow. As he watched, the lights in the upper level dimmed. The newer section would shut down first. The lower level still glowed brilliant white.

Not that it mattered. The deck was clear.

He saw something rocketing toward the pit. It had the blurry shape of a man.

For an instant as it struck the fence that surrounded the lower level, James saw a face frozen in time. The dark eyes of the Angel of Death himself stared deep into the cold black soul of Jack James.

The fence bowed out over the pit.

The lights still glowed bright. There was a flash. And the man with the face of doom promptly disappeared. Vaporized into oblivion.

Chapter 30

The force needed to hurl the final world leader out to safety created an opposite reaction that had to be channeled somewhere. Remo used it to propel himself back toward the fence that surrounded the deep Vaporizer pit.

Up and out into empty air.

The soles of his loafers hit the chain link, bowing it out over the pit. Brilliant white lights glowed beneath him. The charge of ionized particles filled the air. But the true forces of nature could not be known to mere machines.

Remo was a full Master of Sinanju, his body trained to the perfection that lived unrealized in all men.

Out over empty air, the vast blackness of certain death stretched out beneath him, Remo Williams, Reigning Master of the House of Sinanju, felt the world flood his senses. And to every last atom, all was right and perfect.

The fence was a bow that launched him like an arrow back across the deck.

At a speed even his teacher could not follow, Remo was out through the doors. The shaken world leaders who stood with the old Korean felt little more than a hiss of violent wind as he zoomed through their midst.

Down the path he flew, banking up along the inside of the chain-link fence. He was up the stairs and in the control room even as Jack James was still registering his disappearance from below.

When the cult leader saw Remo appear before him the instant after he had seen Remo disappear from down below, his eyes grew wide. He fell back, shocked.

"You can't be alive," James gasped.

"Said one dead man to another," Remo replied. "In your case what say we make it official?"

And he lifted the cult leader off the floor.

Jack James saw the control-room window come toward him very fast. The glass shattered and he was out in empty air. And like a god, Jack James soared on angel's wings.

He flew until he fell.

All at once the lights of the Vaporizer, which had been distant, grew very large all around him.

And Jack James looked into one of the lights, and that light became very bright, and Jack James was flying toward it. And then he was one with the light. A god propelled forward on a stream of pure energy in a tunnel that was warm with the heat of his creation. For an instant Jack James was the god he always knew he was.

Then the mouth yawned open at the far end of the magnificent, light-filled tunnel.

It was not heaven waiting on the far end. For Jack James it was an altogether other place.

And in one terrible instant, a lifetime of all the pain and anguish he had ever inflicted on others was heaped upon him. And in the first moment of his ultimate fall from grace, the wonderful path of light to the kingdom that was never his collapsed behind him, sealing the distinctly ungodly Jack James in misery and torment for all eternity.

FROM THE CONTROL BOOTH, Remo watched the lights of the Vaporizer splutter and die. The pit went dark. The power hummed silent beneath his feet.

Jack James was gone. The Jamestown cult leader had disappeared in the instant just before the lights went dark.

Alone, Remo nodded satisfaction. "Garbage in, garbage out." Turning, he headed back out the door.

Chapter 31

It was all over.

He could tell from the shouts and from the activity out near the Vaporizer. He could see it all through the tiny window in his little cinder-block shed. Security personnel from dozens of countries were swarming in. Tires squealed. Dignitaries were being hustled out to waiting cars.

Yes, it was over. At least for now.

He would find another. There was no doubt that he could. He had skills that the shadow world would pay dearly for. Jack James had been a client. Not a partner, not a visionary, not anything. There were plenty of other clients out there just like James.

The man who was thought to be a janitor, but who had been the real mind behind the Vaporizer, hastily stuffed a few items in a knapsack. A few floppy disks, some schematics. He had already destroyed his hard drives. All of the data he had stolen. He could use it to re-create his work here. Or adapt it in other ways the world would not expect.

This last thought flitted through his racing mind even as his hand brushed across an item on his workbench.

It looked like a soldering gun with a miniature satellite dish attached to the end. He picked it up to put it in its special case when a voice from behind startled him.

"You stupid fool. You stupid, stupid fool."

The woman's voice was flat with cold contempt. Keeping his back to her, he looked up only with his eyes. He saw her reflection on the screen of his dead monitor. The beautiful woman with the blond hair was framed in the open doorway of the shed. In her hand was some sort of pistol. She had it aimed at his back.

"Did you even care what might happen?" she asked. She spoke in his native language. "I read the data. Shifting atoms like this is dangerous on a small level. An accident where a single atom materializes inside another could cause a nuclear explosion. With what you have been doing here, we are lucky all of South America wasn't blown into orbit. Or worse. You knew this, yet you did not care."

His hand still rested on the strange-looking gun on his desk, shielded by his body. Unseen by his guest, he lifted it, a smile brushing his pale features.

"I was paid handsomely for my skills," he admitted. "But I was not paid to care." And he whirled.

He squeezed the trigger once. But only once. He had fired wide. Anna Chutesov did not. Anna's bullet caught the janitor square in the chest. With a shocked look on his face, he spun on one heel. He died sprawled across his workbench. Still scowling, Anna crossed to check the man's pulse. Satisfied that he was dead, she holstered her weapon. When she heard scuffling feet behind her, she glanced up.

"Director Chutesov!" Petrovina Bulganin exclaimed from the door. She noted the janitor's body. "Is that him?"

Anna nodded. "I came just as this confusion began," she said, aiming her chin to the bedlam out in the parking lot. "They were all more interested in spiriting their charges to safety. No one saw me come here."

She began collecting the janitor's things. She would destroy everything the first chance she got. "Those men are here," Petrovina said. "The ones who know about your amnesia. They both seem to know you."

"Your phone?" Anna asked as she hurriedly worked.

"The old one still has it as far as I know."

"Good." The last thing Anna picked up was the strange gun the janitor had used against her. With careful blue eyes she followed the path the fired weapon had taken.

A hole as big around as a coffee mug was visible in the door frame. There was no splintering of wood. No bullet had been fired. Beyond, in the same path of the fired weapon, a similar hole had been bored through the trunk of a tree.

Anna's eyes narrowed as she studied the strange phenomenon. "I was never here," Anna Chutesov announced.

Tucking the gun into its box and tucking the box up under her arm, Anna hustled past Agent Petrovina Bulganin. And was lost in the growing confusion.

Chapter 32

They drove a government Jeep up into the hills. Mike Sears was behind the wheel, a bloody bandage wrapped around his injured head. Remo sat beside him. Chiun and Petrovina sat in the back. When the guards at the booth saw Sears, they obediently opened the gates to the special road above the Vaporizer.

It was nearly a two-hour drive, from paved road to treacherous dirt path. All along the side of the road, even in dense jungle, ran telephone poles. Black lines of cables stretched up from far below, sometimes hidden by the jungle canopy, sometimes breaking out into stark sunlight.

"What happened to the people who put up the poles?" Remo asked Sears as they drove.

The scientist looked sickly. "I don't know," he admitted. "When they were done, they just sort of vanished. Maybe they work for a utility company in town?" His look of hope faded when he saw Remo's hard expression.

The ravine between the mountains brought them to a vast valley. Sears stopped the Jeep on a plateau above.

A sea of rotting garbage stretched out before them-every scrap of trash that had been processed through the Vaporizer from the first moment it had been switched on.

In the back seat, Petrovina turned to the scientist. "It was all hoax," she accused.

Sears nodded. There was shame on his face. "It would have taken years to fill this valley. We had plenty of room. I always figured it would be found out sooner or later, but by then everyone would be in the habit of sending their trash here and wouldn't stop. I mean, it didn't matter where it ended up as long as someone was willing to take it, right? But I guess that wasn't the plan at all." He still seemed shell-shocked from the events below. "See, the Vaporizer doesn't disintegrate trash, it just sort of moves it."

The telephone poles fanned out in either direction, forming a semicircle around the near end of the valley, connected by cables. At the top of each pole a black box that looked like a miniature outdoor speaker was directed down into the valley.

"The demolecularized trash we sent up from the Vaporizer traveled the cable and was redirected back out through those," Sears explained. As the four of them climbed out of the Jeep, he pointed up at the boxes on the poles.

In the distance some trash had materialized on trees, bending them low. In most places it had obliterated the local flora. The valley floor was a growing mountain of trash. Seagulls flew above while rats played on the piles.

"Your great work," Remo said acidly.

"I didn't invent it," Sears said defensively as he looked down on the valley. "They brought the technology to me. They needed a public face to keep the secret. I learned enough to keep it running, but I didn't come up with it."

"Yes, your secret," Petrovina spat. "That you did all this with technology stolen from Russia." Remo had kept quiet on the subject for the ride up. He shook his head firmly.

"Only after Russia stole it from Japan," he insisted.

He spoke with utter certainty. Both Sears and Petrovina saw the confident cast of his face. As he looked out across the valley, Chiun nodded agreement.

"What are you talking about?" Petrovina demanded.

"Russia doesn't do complex, Petrovina," Remo explained. "Russia does clumsy. Tanks and trucks and missiles that rattle apart as soon as they're driven off the showroom floor. Russia can't build a toaster small enough to fit in your garage. If they can't build it with hammers, they can't build it. This was the Japanese. If you want specifics, it was the Nishitsu Corporation that came up with all this."

Both Sears and Petrovina knew the company well. Nishitsu was huge. Like most people in the West, they each owned several Nishitsu appliances.

"How do you know?" Petrovina asked skeptically.

"Because we've had experience with this stuff," Remo replied.

And he told them about a man both Remo and Chiun had encountered before. A man who wore a suit that could compress atoms and redirect them through telephone lines. The suit had been developed in Japan by Nishitsu and stolen by the Russians. Twice Remo and Chiun had gone up against a Russian in the suit. One time they had met a Japanese who worked for the corporation that had developed it.

Petrovina remained skeptical, but Mike Sears was nodding with growing enthusiasm.

"The suit," he said excitedly, eyes wide with interest. "You actually saw it? I mean, you saw it work?"

"It was a thing of evil," Chiun said coldly. He made a point of tucking his long fingernails deep inside the sleeves of his kimono.

"Wow," Sears said. "I never saw it myself. It was in the specs he brought. There were schematics and everything. We were able to reverse-engineer the technology from the data he stole and adapt it to the Vaporizer."

"You are saying this is true?" Petrovina asked.

"It's basically the same thing," Sears said, nodding. "Only on a much bigger scale. We were redirecting a lot more matter than is present in a single human being. No sweat, because the fiber-optic lines gave us much more capacity than even we needed. The only real problem was that the suit was built to protect the wearer. It reconstructed on the far end after transport because the matter was contained. Our open version couldn't reconstruct like that. Not a problem for inanimate matter, but for organic material..."

His voice trailed off. He had seen the look on Remo's face.

Remo was peering down into the valley, his expression dark with disgust. Wordlessly he left the others, taking off down the hill.

"Where are you going?" Petrovina asked. She started after him, but Chiun held her back.

"Leave him be," the old Korean cautioned. "He cleans up the mess Russian meddling has wrought." Remo found his way down the stone slope to the valley floor. The trash stretched up high before him. He had spotted the deformed bundles from above. They decorated the nearer slope of the trash heap.

The Russian sailors from the Novgorod looked like mutated mockeries of human beings. Misshapen white bones jutted out like armor-plated spines on deformed dinosaurs. Uniforms were intermingled with flesh. Buttons were fused to the exposed radius of one man's twisted forearm.

From the mound of garbage, Remo heard a pathetic wheezing. He quickly scaled the pile. Gennady Zhilnikov had survived the process. The Russian submarine captain was deformed almost beyond recognition. Yet there was a glimmer of human intelligence in his pleading eyes. He held his arms out in prayer.

Remo killed him gently, mercifully.

Afterward he went through the others, checking for signs of life. No more had survived.

Just to be certain he searched for the body of Jack James. He found the Mayanan executive president lying dead on a rotting heap of trash, his head haloed by his own twisted limbs.

Turning, he hiked back up the hill. The others were waiting for him in the Jeep.

"I guess they just don't make gods like they used to," Remo announced as he climbed into the passenger seat.

As seagull squawks echoed loud and shrill across the valley behind them, the Jeep turned lazily around. They headed back down the rutted ravine path.

Chapter 33

They had no choice but to release him.

Ever since Nikolai Garbegtrov had been trundled through the high gates of the Russian embassy in New Briton, his Green Earth followers had been gathering outside. They set up tents, lit candles, carried signs, sang protest songs.

The mob was growing, and it was getting ugly. They were demanding the release of the former premier.

The Russians had planned to spirit their traitorous former leader back home to a prison cell and a lengthy sentence. But this was a new era. And with cameras lined up beyond the gates, the entire world was watching.

They couldn't let the world see them dragging the screeching Garbegtrov from the building, couldn't risk a riot breaking out. In the end the Russians caved to the pressure of the protesters.

When Nikolai Garbegtrov stepped out the front gate in the company of two Green Earth elders, a cheer rose up.

The former Russian leader was wearing a white cap with the green Green Earth emblem on the front.

The men with him wore identical caps. So did many in the crowd. The caps were made from 100% recycled material. Garbegtrov loved recycling. Garbegtrov loved Mother Earth.

The ex-premier raised his hands in victory. "Hello, friends!" Garbegtrov yelled to the crowd. The crowd yelled back. There was love in Garbegtrov's eyes. There was love right back at him in the eyes of the protesters, his people. Everyone loved everyone.

Garbegtrov was about to speak of his confinement. To tell those gathered about the hardships and horrors he had endured during his day of captivity. Hours during which he had been warm and fed, unlike the people who had suffered years in freezing hunger in gulags while he had presided, fat and uncaring, over old Soviet Russia.

He was going to say many things, but something strange suddenly happened.

Garbegtrov saw something small and slow flying toward him from the direction of the street. So slow was it that he could clearly see that it was a small pebble.

It was an odd thing to see a pebble fly. Odder still when it seemed to abruptly pick up speed and bank upward.

The instant the pebble disappeared, the former Soviet premier felt the warm sun on his head. But that wasn't right. Sunlight had not touched his scalp in many months. It could only be doing so now if...

With sudden shock, he felt for his hat. His hand touched skin. He turned, horrified, to the crowd.

They had seen it. So had the cameras. From Europe to America, all around the world, everyone saw the tattoo emblazoned across his bald head. U.S.A. #1.

From the crowd there came a collective gasp of disbelief. It turned into a full-throated roar of rage. The America-haters of the Green Earth movement were not alone. Garbegtrov's former supporters in the media who shared their opinions screamed outrage.

Placards and cameras fell. Microphones and candles were trampled underfoot. As one, the crowd charged.

Garbegtrov tried running for the gates, but the Russians had locked them behind him.

The former dictator of the Soviet Union fell whimpering to his pudgy knees, shielding the hateful slogan across his scalp even as the enraged crowd fell upon him.

NO ONE NOTICED the thin man with the thick wrists who stood across the street bouncing pebbles in his hand.

As the crowd tore former Soviet Premier Nikolai Garbegtrov to shreds, Remo Williams let the stones slip from his hand, one by one. When he walked away he was whistling.

Chapter 34

Two days later Remo was sitting on the kitchen counter of the Connecticut duplex he and Chiun shared. There was a dictionary on the counter next to him. It was open to the Em. Remo was on the phone with Smith.

"The situation is under control," the CURE director was saying. "The authorities are investigating the matter. The good news is that all world leaders have departed Mayana safely."

"Whoopie-ding," Remo said. "After seeing those guys in action up close, I think most of the world would send us a thank-you bouquet if we'd let them get turned inside out. So does all this mean we have to go to war with Nishitsu again?"

"It does not look that way," Smith replied. "While the Nishitsu Corporation did have men in Mayana, according to the information I have uncovered, they were there as saboteurs. They wanted to protect the technology that was, after all, developed by them before it was stolen by the Russians."

"Chiun will be disappointed. I think he was psyching himself up for the annual Japanese head harvest."

"About the Vaporizer. The device is being dismantled. Teams have been dispatched to the old Jamestown site to search for any more bodies among the trash."

"I still want to know how they got their hands on the Nishitsu technology," Remo said.

"Blame Alexei Aliyev," Smith replied.

Remo frowned. "Who?"

"He is a Russian who was kept at the site in the guise of a janitor. Dr. Sears took instructions from Aliyev. He was shot sometime during the confusion. You did not know?"

"No," Remo said.

"Perhaps he offended Jack James in some way. In any event Aliyev worked on the vibration-suit project years ago. When the project was canceled, he was out of a job. He offered his technical know-how to the highest bidder, which wound up being the Mayanan government. He adapted the old technology to the Vaporizer. As I explained to you before, it is basically the same way the krahseevah could travel through phone lines, albeit on a much grander scale."

"I'll say. You should have seen the size of that dump, Smitty. They'll be cleaning it for years."

"Perhaps," Smith said. "Or perhaps they will just leave it as is and close down the area. An abandoned garbage dump would be a fitting monument to Jack James."

"I still can't get over that one," Remo said. "I'm amazed he got as far as he did."

"It is not so surprising," Smith said. "While insane, James was always a charismatic individual. That quality would not have been altered by plastic surgery. The world thought he was dead so no one would think to look for him among the living. And he emerged back in the public eye enough years after his false death that memory had faded."

"I guess," Remo said. "The harder thing for me to figure out is why the Russians let that Aloha guy get away."

"Actually that has been a serious problem ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Many former government scientists have decided to offer their services to the highest bidder. This is a real threat to the world as far as biological, chemical and nuclear weapons are concerned. Unfortunately Aliyev is just one of many."

"As usual you're a regular Little Mary Sunshine, Smitty. If there isn't anything else, let's end on that happy note."

Remo hung up the phone.

Hopping down from the counter, he snatched up the dictionary. Book in hand, he went out into the living room.

Chiun sat in front of the big-screen TV. The old Korean was watching the news.

"I looked that thing up," Remo announced.

Chiun didn't turn. "What are you braying about now?"

"That thing you said you want to be called. Reigning Master Emeritus. I looked it up." He read from the dictionary. "Emeritus. It means 'holding after retirement an honorary title corresponding to that held last during active service.'" Snapping the book shut, he glanced at his teacher, a look of triumphant expectation on his face.

"You move your lips when you read," Chiun said blandly.

"Honorary shmonorary, this means you're still Reigning Master, doesn't it?" Remo accused. "Even while I'm the Master of Sinanju you're the Master of Sinanju, too. And not a Master or retired Master or former Master, but the Master."

"I suppose it could be interpreted that way," said the Master of Sinanju.

"But I'm still Reigning Master, right? Or have the last three decades just been about jerking me around?"

Chiun waved an impatient hand. "Yes, you are Reigning Master. So say the histories, so you are. Free to make mistakes and embarrass me in the eyes of my ancestors in whatever stupid or depraved ways your heart desires."

"Great. I just want to know one thing," Remo said. "Will I still be able to pick whoever I want as my pupil?"

"That is your prerogative as Master."

"And you won't get on my case if you think I've picked wrong or if I don't train him exactly like you would or if I don't toe every little line like your idealized version of the perfect little Master of Sinanju?"

The old Korean gave him a baleful look. "And where exactly, Remo, did you find it written that I must scoop out my brain and cut out my tongue so that I do not notice and cannot comment on the egregious mistakes and humiliations you will inevitably commit in your vulgarized American version of Sinanju Reigning Masterhood?"

"Wishful thinking I guess," Remo said.

On the television a reporter for one of the major networks was standing at the edge of a smoking crater that seemed to go on forever behind her.

"The death toll here stands at eight so far, with a loss of property estimated at forty-seven million dollars," the reporter said in pinched, nasal tones.

At first Remo thought a bomb had gone off. He learned that a gas main had exploded. The explosion had been caused by a sinkhole that had opened up and swallowed most of a California neighborhood. The hole had created a mudslide that had wiped out another neighborhood in a canyon below. Four dozen houses were lost, three times as many people were homeless and many fire trucks and rescue vehicles had been crushed, swallowed up or washed away.

Remo learned that all the destruction and carnage had been the result of a weeklong attempt to save three kittens caught down a storm drain. The cats had apparently been pulled up to safety using nylon fishing line and a twenty-five-cent Easter basket earlier that evening.

The story of the attempted murder in Mayana of every world leader was bumped to a fifteen-second blurb at the end of the newscast after weather, sports and entertainment news. After that, images of wet kitties being toweled off were played under the closing credits.

Remo considered the events of the past few months and days. He didn't realize his silence had drawn attention until a squeaky singsong broke his private thoughts.

"Now what are you grinning at?" the Master of Sinanju asked.

Remo looked down into the wrinkled face of his teacher. When he saw Chiun, his smile of contentment stretched wider.

He couldn't help it. The world was good, everything was right and Remo Williams was happy. "Dorothy was right, Little Father," Remo said, his smile threatening to spill off his beaming face. "There's no place like home."