Dark Horse

"Not the way to go. Look, Little Father. The election isn't far off. Smith thinks we should just sit tight and protect Esperanza. "

Chiun turned to face the glass balcony doors. He looked out upon the blazing San Diego night skyline, his bearded chin high.

"My loyalties are torn," he said, bleak-voiced. "I do not know what I should do. I serve Smith, yet Esperanza has promised me the treasurership of California. It is in my interest to eliminate his enemies before they grow too powerful."

"Little Father, you owe me a boon."

Chiun nodded.

"The boon I request is that you be satisfied with protecting Esperanza, not hurting the other candidates."

"You are certain you wish this?" Chiun asked thinly.

"Actually, I'd like to save my boon for a time I might need it more, but I'm on the spot here."

The Master of Sinanju turned, his wrinkled face Then wreathed in a smile. "Then you may step off your spot, for I agree to this."

"Good," said Remo.

"It is better than good," Chiun cackled. "Because it was my intention to do this all along. Heh heh. You have what you wish, and I have your boon. Heh heh."

Remo Williams didn't join in the Master of Sinanju's cackle of mirth. He was thinking ahead to the time when Chiun learned the truth about Cheeta Ching. He was sure to need that boon then.

He had planned to ask Chiun not to kill him.

Chapter 28

It was called the Conference on Multiculturalism.

It was supposed to be called the California Gubernatorial Debate, but the Barry Black camp had insisted on the new name so that Enrique Espiritu Esperanza couldn't claim the multicultural high ground for himself.

"Done," said Harmon Cashman, through a mouthful of chocolate wafer. "This is easier than I thought!" he chortled, after hanging up on the Black campaign.

Rona Ripper's demand was much simpler.

"My candidate insists that this be a standing debate," said her campaign director.

"You got it," Harmon told the man, who had mysteriously taken the place of the former campaign director, Blaise Perrin. The press was still trying to figure out what had happened to him. He'd simply dropped out of sight, along with Cheeta Ching. Not that anyone missed her.

Harmon took the good news to Enrique Esperanza.

"Both camps have agreed," he said. "Black's people are going to jump on the multicultural bandwagon."

"This is fine. Multiculturalism should not belong to one man."

"And Ripper's people say we gotta stand, because Rona's rear end hasn't healed yet."

Esperanza shook his head. "The poor woman."

"Any demands you want to make before we finalize this?"

"Yes, I wish that Miss Ripper stand between Mr. Black and myself."

"Why?"

Enrique Esperanza shrugged. "It is merely whim. They have demands, so I must make one. We do not wish to show weakness at this late stage."

"I'll run it past the others. But I'm sure they'll go along. Hell, the fact that they're willing to debate you means both camps are running scared."

"My polls are good?"

Harmon grinned. "The numbers are running our way, all right."

"Good. I think this is one time the dark horse will run in the money."

And both men laughed, Enrique Esperanza through his broad grin and Harmon Cashman through a mouthful of black-and-white cookie crumbs.

On the day of the Conference on Multiculturalism, an auditorium at Stanford University-the birthplace of Multiculturalism, according to the press releases issued by all three campaigns-was packed with representatives of the press and an audience of business and civic leaders from all over the state.

An unusual precaution was a long sheet of bulletproof Plexiglas that ran the length of the stage. This was to protect the candidates from any would-be assassin.

The press complained about the reflections their camera lights created, but no one demanded it be taken down.

Bulletproof limousines brought the candidates to the debate hall. Rona Ripper arrived first, and was escorted to a waiting room behind the curtain by state troopers.

Barry Black, Junior arrived in a pastry truck. His staff carted him in concealed in a balsa-wood pyramid covered with almondine frosting, on the theory that no one would shoot a giant cake, especially one they didn't know held the candidate.

Enrique Esperanza was the last to arrive. State troopers were not needed. His entourage consisted of innercity gang members, who waved Oreo cookies at the cameras.

Remo and Chiun were forced to enter through a service door.

"This is an insult," Chiun huffed, as they slipped past the state trooper posted at the door as if he were an insensate statue, which by Sinanju standards he was.

"We are reduced to skulking, when we should be in the lemonlight, as befits our exalted station."

"Limelight," Remo hissed. "And if we show up on TV, Smith'll pull us both off the detail."

Chiun sniffed. "There will be sufficient lemonlight when I am Lord Treasurer of California," he allowed.

They worked their way unchallenged to the reception area, where the state troopers and the former gang members were making faces at one another.

"Have a cookie, Jack," one told a stone-faced trooper. "This stuff's proper."

The invitation was declined.

A trooper moved toward them, but Harmon Cashman, spotting Remo and Chiun, said, "There you are!" The trooper backed off.

"Glad to see you back on the winning team," Harmon told Remo.

"Any team we belong to automatically wins," Remo said.

In one corner, Enrique Esperanza was waving away the makeup man, saying, "I need no such artifices. I am Esperanza. "

This was reported to the press and to the other campaigns. They too decided to go on sans makeup.

"Are you sure this is wise, Ricky?" Harmon asked doubtfully.

"I am sure of it."

And so was Harmon Cashman, when the three candidates stepped out from behind the curtain.

"They look awful!" he said gleefully, watching a direct feed on a backstage monitor. "Ricky looks perfect, but the other two look like a bobcat's dragged them in through the back door. The debate's practically won!"

"Don't count your chickens," warned Remo.

But Harmon Cashman wasn't listening. His nose was practically pressed to the video screen as he munched away on a foot-tall stack of Oreo Big Stuf cookies.

"That guy's headed for diabetic shock," Remo said to Chiun, as they went to another monitor to watch.

"You Americans would eat rubber, if it were sweet," Chiun sniffed.

The debate began with a short statement on multiculturalism from each candidate.

Rona Ripper promised that, if elected, she would not only outlaw smoking throughout California, but work diligently to prevent the tobacco companies from exporting their products to less sophisticated third-world markets.

"I will also propose a fifty-percent tax on tobacco products, and repeal the snack tax," she added. "If people can't kick the nicotine monkey on their own, we'll tax it off their backs!"

She was applauded.

Barry Black, Junior pointed out the hitherto-unnoticed fact that most of the actors playing aliens on Star Trek: The Next Generation were people of color. Especially the ones playing Klingons.

"Those of you who watched the original program know that it wasn't like this back in the wonderful sixties," he said with righteous indignation. "I say to you that this is racism, pure and simple. If elected, I will propose emergency legislation to integrate the imaginary Klingon planet once and for all."

This too was applauded.

Then Enrique Espiritu Esperanza took his turn. He was in his habitual white suit, which made him look like a pious adult celebrating his First Communion.

"I represent hope," he said. "Hope for all people. I am a brown man. A brown man running for a white office. All over the world, offices such as I aspire to are held by white men. Even in the countries to the south of us. You need only look at them. The President of Mexico, leader of a nation of brown men. Yet he is quite white. A blanco. In Paraguay, in Chile, it is the same. Why is it that only white men can hold office? I look to a new day, a day in which a brown man can lead a white people. A brown man who stands for white people, as well as brown. I am that man."

The crowd, some five hundred people, took in his words, their eyes rapt, their mouths busy. They had been given minipacks of Oreo cookies as they walked in the door.

"I am that man," Enrique Espiritu Esperanza repeated.

Seated at his monitor, Harmon Cashman had begun to weep bitter tears.

"He blew it! The stupid spick blew it! Now it's a racial campaign!"

And then the crowd began to chant.

"Esperanza! Esperanza! Esperanza!"

Harmon Cashman could not believe it. His candidate was up there committing political suicide, and the crowd was cheering him on, white, black, brown, and yellow alike.

Somehow, some way, they saw his message of hope as relating to them all, regardless of skin color.

"This is incredible," he muttered.

In homes, in bars, in offices all over the state, the reaction was not as unanimous.

In Thousand Oaks, A1 Bruss, a retired schoolteacher, decided he'd had enough. He was tired of the homeless and the illegals, who urinated in the formerly pristine streets and choked the streets as they wandered in search of jobs that often didn't exist even for legal citizens.

In the middle of the debate, he called his real-estate broker and said, "I've had enough. Put this place in your listing. I'm moving to Seattle."

In Santa Ana, in the heart of conservative Orange County, real-estate office phones rang off the hook. It was the same in San Francisco, San Diego, Sacramento, and elsewhere.

Unions, business groups, and activists, who had supported Esperanza before this, suddenly saw the future of California in stark terms. A future that did not include them. And they also saw the alternatives to Enrique Espiritu Esperanza as hopeless fringe candidates. They decided to put their energies into relocation, not voting:

Those who remained for the rest of the debate heard Rona Ripper and Barry Black, Junior give evasive, timid responses to questions about the future of California.

Each time he responded, Enrique Esperanza gave a forthright reply.

"The California past is Aztec," he said. "The California future is Aztec, and Filipino and Japanese. And of course, whites will be welcome to stay. We will find a place for them."

He was applauded after every statement. The cheering was reproduced all over California. A sea change that had been building for decades had taken human form.

America was on the threshold of having a Third World state within its borders.

At the end, the three candidates came forward and stood side-by-side in multicultural solidarity, taking in the thunderous applause that each thought in his heart of hearts was meant for him or her, but which in fact was still reverberating from Enrique Esperanza's last statement.

The audience came to their feet.

And it was during this cannonade of a standing ovation that it happened.

Every camera recorded it.

Positioned between the two male candidates, Rona Ripper suddenly jumped in place. She stiffened, her eyes going hot. And without any other warning, she turned and slapped an unprepared Barry Black, Junior in the face, screaming, "How dare you pinch me there, you flake!"

A great gasp broke the applause. Stunned silence followed. Barry Black, Junior turned a flustered crimson and seemed not to know what to do with his hands.

With his mouth he said, "I support your right to do that, even though I disagree with the doing of it." Then he added, "Ouch!"

Backstage, Remo said, "Did you see that? He goosed her. In front of the camera."

Harmon Cashman snorted. "Everybody knows Black is a complete flake."

"It wasn't Black. It was Esperanza," Remo said flatly.

"Remo!" Chiun flared. "Do not speak nonsense."

"I saw it," Remo insisted. "Black never moved. But Esperanza's shoulder bunched up just before Rona jumped. He reached across from behind and goosed her on the opposite cheek, so she'd think Black did it."

"Ricky wouldn't do that," Harmon insisted. He paused, adding, "But if he did, it was a masterstroke. And probably just won him the election. Black looks like a dip, and Rona Ripper just showed that she's a temperamental bitch. Ricky's in like Flynn!"

The overnight polls the very next day showed Esperanza nearly twenty points ahead of the other campaigns.

"But we're showing softness in the usual white voter blocs," Harmon Cashman confided to his candidate over a working lunch that very afternoon.

"I am not worried about the blancos. They are the past. I am the future."

"If this keeps up, they'll be deserting in droves by election day."

"It is their right. It is a free country."

The white people, in fact, didn't run from Enrique Espiritu Esperanza. They ran from California. Houses went up for sale. White voter registration fell off. Support for the Ripper and Black campaigns already had fallen sharply among white middle-class voters. Their campaign staffs were in ruins, owing to the repeated political arsons and assassination attempts.

The only alternative candidate, the interim governor, had dropped out for lack of funding.

And all over California, the homeless and illegal aliens and other disenfranchised potential voters saw the future in the dark-horse candidate named Esperanza.

And they saw hope.

Harmon Cashman saw more than hope. He saw certainty. Three days later, holed up in a Hollywood hotel, basking in the afterglow of a star-studded fund-raiser, he shouted it to the ornate chandelier.

"We're gonna win! We're gonna win! We're gonna win!"

"I believe this too," Esperanza said calmly. "This is why I am not going to campaign any further."

Harmon stopped dancing. "What?"

Esperanza shrugged. "There is no need. My opponents are reduced to making accusations and counteraccusations against one another. I, they cannot criticize. I am the multicultural candidate and they have come out in favor of multiculturalism. What is there to criticize? Oreo cookies and hope?"

"Pretty slick. Say, Ricky. You didn't really goose Rona up there, did you?"

"In politics, as in war, a little rear-guard action at the optimum moment can alter one's destiny," Esperanza said.

"For a guy who was growing grapes until a month ago," Harmon said admiringly, "you sure know the ropes of this business."

"I am Esperanza. I know a great many things. For instance, I know that we are now a shoo-in."

"That's what I've been saying."

"Once in the governor's chair, I will control the largest economy in this hemisphere, one greater than most other nations'. And its people will be my people. People of color. They will trust me. They will do anything I ask."

"Anything?"

Esperanza nodded. "Even, if I suggest it, secede from the union."

Harmon Cashman blinked. "Secede?"

"Who is to stop me?"

"Well, the Federal government, for one thing."

Esperanza smiled beneficently. "Not if I have the President under my thumb."

Harmon's face acquired a stung look. "How would you get him under your thumb?"

"By informing him that I have knowledge of his employment of a professional assassin, the greatest assassin in human history, on his payroll."

Harmon Cashman blinked. "The little Korean?"

"No. Our little Korean."

"You really mean it? You want to make California a separate country?"

"If the people will have it. And I believe they will."

Harmon Cashman went bone-white. He felt a chill coursing up and down his spine. Woodenly, he stood up. "Excuse me, Ricky. If we're going to be in Sacramento soon, there's something I gotta do."

Enrique Esperanza looked up. "And what is this?"

"Work on my tan," said Harmon Cashman, leaving the room on leaden feet.

Chapter 29

The next morning, Harmon Cashman awoke to find that an envelope had been slipped under his hotel-room door. He opened it and read the hand-written note.

Harmon: I have returned to my home in the Napa Valley, to rest. I suggest that you do the same. For we shall need all our strength after the election.

Ricky

P.S. Help yourself to cookies.

Harmon found a package, neatly wrapped, standing out in the hallway. It looked big. Whistling his disappointment away, he carried the box back into the room.

The box was a literal smorgasbord of chocolate-and-white creme-filled treasures. There were mini-Oreos, regular packs, the Double Stuf kind with extra filling, and Harmon's current favorite, Big Stuf.

Putting a pot of coffee on the hot plate, he settled down to breakfast.

By noon, Harmon Cashman was feeling pretty good. So good, he ignored the knock on his door.

"Harmon. You in there?"

"Go 'way."

"It's Remo. Chiun and I are looking for Esperanza."

"He's gone to Napa Valley. Doesn't want to be disturbed. Doesn't need us. The election's in the bag."

"You sound drunk," Remo said suspiciously.

"I feel great," Harmon shot back.

After a minute they went away, and Harmon returned to building a cone of white creme filling on the breakfast nook table. He wondered if he should save some to sweeten his coffee. Regular sugar just didn't have the kick it used to.

After some thought, he decided to add a splash of coffee to the pile of creme filling. Coffee had lost its luster, too.

By three o'clock Harmon was feeling so confident of his prospects, he decided to share it with a certain someone. He put in a long distance call to Washington, D.C.

The President of the United States, after some thought, decided to take the call from his old campaign aide.

"Harmon, my boy! How're you doing?"

"Great, jus' great," Harmon Cashman said slurringly.

"Are you all right?"

"I am great. Jus' great. And after next week I'm gonna be greater. Gonna be on top of the world."

"Happy to hear it," said the President. "After that little chief of staff flap, we kinda fell off one another's Christmas card list. I was afraid you had hard feelings."

"Well, I do. And I'm gonna pay you back. As soon as we're in office."

"Harmon, do you know what you're saying, fella?"

"I'm saying I know your dirty lil' secret."

There was silence on the line to Washington.

Harmon began shouting, "I know about the lil' Korean! Well, he's our Korean now! That's right, Mr. Commander-in-Chief! The greatest assassin that ever was doesn't work for you anymore! He works for us!"

The President's voice became chilly. "Us?"

"Enrique Espiritu Esperanza, alias Ricky the Spic."

The President cleared his throat. In a tight voice he said, "I'm afraid I don't know what you are talking about. I'm sorry to hear that you're in such an agitated state, Harmon. I must go. Staff meeting. You understand. Good-bye."

"It's adios, now!" Harmon Cashman shouted into the dead line. "Better work on your tan, White Bread! Multicultural Fever is just starting in California, but it's gonna roll east real soon! Real soon!"

After Harmon Cashman had slammed down the phone, he stood up. He was full of coffee and Oreos. He felt it necessary to release some biological ballast.

Harmon never made it to the bathroom. His overburdened stomach rebelled, and he vomited an unholy blackish bile all over his shoes, his clothes, and the floor.

And most importantly, all over his last box of cookies.

"No problem," Harmon said groggily, after he had emptied his stomach and rinsed out his mouth. "I'll just go buy some more."

There was a Japanese convenience store on the next block.

"What do you mean you sold out!" Harmon said, aghast, upon finding the cookie shelves bare of Oreos.

"Sold out. People buy. Much demand."

Harmon hurried to the next store. They were also sold out. It was unbelievable. There wasn't a solitary box of Oreos to be found in all of Hollywood.

"What's this damn country coming to?" he said, as he walked, sweaty-faced, back to the hotel. His hands shook. Cold, clammy perspiration trickled down the gully of his back. It was a very warm day.

As he crossed Melrose to the hotel, a red convertible came screeching around a corner.

Harmon barely noticed it. Not even when an Uzi was poked out of the backseat and began spraying bullets in his direction.

A stitching of lead caught him in the legs. Harmon Cashman went down. He screamed.

"God! Doesn't anyone have any Oreos?" he cried, as the convertible screamed away and a frightened crowd gathered around him.

Remo and Chiun found the surgeon who had removed four bullets from Harmon Cashman's legs on the twelfth floor of Cedars Sinai.

"He'll live," the surgeon told them. "But he'll need long-term rehabilitation."

"Will he walk again?" Remo asked.

"Of course. That is not what I meant. That man is suffering from a serious cocaine addiction."

Behind the doctor, through the closed door of Harmon Cashman's hospital room, a shrill voice cried, "Take this slop away! I want my Oreos!"

"As you can hear," the surgeon said quietly, "he is suffering from a cocaine-induced psychosis. Regression to childhood. It happens."

As they left the hospital Chiun said, "The cowardly attacks have resumed. Our place is with our patron."

"No argument there," said Remo.

Outside, Chiun paused. He looked up and down the street expectantly. Then, his face wrinkling in disappointment, he continued toward their waiting car.

"Looking for someone?" Remo asked, as he held open the car door for the Master of Sinanju.

"Yes. Cheeta. She is always the first to arrive when there is news. I wonder why she has not?"

"Search me."

Chiun gathered his bright skirts about him and slipped in. "It is too early for her to be burdened with your child," he said thoughtfully.

"Way, way too early," Remo agreed, slamming the door.

Chapter 30

Harold W. Smith looked at the clock. It was after six in the evening. The day had been quiet. It was almost time to go home. The setting sun was painting Long Island Sound-visible through the picture window at his back-a gorgeous vermilion, a color the newspaper attributed to the eruption of a Philippines volcano.

Smith pressed the concealed stud that returned the CURE terminal to its desktop reservoir.

Getting up on creaky knees, he prepared to go home. His gray eyes rested on the closed desk drawer. It had been many weeks now. Smith had not been tempted to ingest Maalox, imbibe Alka-Seltzer, or resort to a single aspirin.

Perhaps, he thought, it's time to empty that drawer of its freight of pharmaceuticals.

Smith brought a green metal wastebasket around to the back of the desk and opened the drawer. One by one, he removed and dropped various bottles and cans into the basket. The last to go was a tiny canister of foam antacid he'd never gotten the hang of using.

It clanked into the basket, and Smith kneed the drawer closed.

He was on his way to the wooden clothes tree where his briefcase sat when the red telephone rang.

Smith returned to his desk with all the speed his old bones could muster. He caught the call at the third ring.

"Yes, Mr. President?" he said.

The President's voice was a flat, dry croak. "Smith."

"Is there something the matter?"

"I have just received a call from Harmon Cashman, my former campaign aide," the President said in a strange voice.

"Now handling the Esperanza campaign."

"The man sounded positively high, Smith. He was babbling. I never knew he held such a grudge over losing the Chief of Staff job, but-"

"Yes?" Smith prompted.

"He threatened me, Smith. Actually threatened to expose what he called my 'dirty little secret.' "

Smith, getting a premonition, quickly took to his swivel chair. This was something he wanted to be seated for.

"I am listening, Mr. President," said Harold W. Smith, his voice cracking.

"Smith, he said he controls the greatest assassin in history. He called him 'our little Korean.' "

"My God!" said Smith.

"Could your people have been seduced by-"

Smith cut in sharply, "Impossible, Mr. President!"

"But-"

"Did Cashman mention CURE?"

"Well, no."

"Then organizational security remains uncompromised."

"Still, Cashman knows too much."

"I agree," said Smith.

"And likely Esperanza, too," added the President.

"It is possible," Smith said guardedly.

The President's tone sank to a hushed whisper. "Smith, right now Esperanza looks like he's gonna make it. That might not be a good thing for us. If you catch my drift."

Smith swallowed uncomfortably. His tie suddenly felt too tight, his skull too small to contain his brain.

"I am not convinced of that," he said. "There is nothing we can do at the moment. The election must go ahead as scheduled."

"You think this can be contained?"

"I do," Smith said crisply. "Now if you will excuse me, I must look into this further."

Harold Smith hung up. Going to the blue contact telephone, he attempted to reach Remo. None of the numbers brought results.

Smith, feeling his stomach rumble in complaint, brought his system back online.

Out in California, he discovered, Harmon Cashman lay recovering from surgery. His condition was described as "stable." Details were sketchy, but it appeared that the most recent political attack had been directed at him. Smith frowned. Was someone trying to nullify the election? If so, why?

He settled back in his chair, massaging his tired eyes, as he attempted to put the pieces together.

It was known that the late General Emmanuel Nogeira was almost unquestionably behind these attacks. It was also known that some of the attackers were tools of the Medellin Cartel. Nogeira and the cartel had past history together. Sometimes troubled history, but history nonetheless.

The most likely candidate behind these events is Rona Ripper, Smith reasoned. Black was a notorious but harmless flake. Ripper, however, was out there building concentration camps. There had already been violence, when the one Remo had discovered was destroyed to conceal its discovery.

It kept coming back to Nogeira. Had he been funding the Ripper campaign? What would Nogeira want with a vehement no-smoking candidate?

Then it hit Smith. "Outlaw tobacco! Stimulate cocaine sales!"

It fit. It made perfect sense.

All Harold Smith had to do was prove it before election day.

He began inputting the name "Emmanuel Alejandro Nogeira" into his terminal. Somewhere, he knew, there would be a kernel of datum that would connect the two. He just hoped he could find it in time to send Remo and Chiun in the right direction.

Chapter 31

It was growing dark by the time Remo reached Napa Valley. On either side of the undulating road, tractors were pulling yellow gondolas through the grape vines. Migrant workers paused in the act of dumping crates of champagne grapes into the gondolas to wave greetings. All around them, brown hills enclosed the lushness of the valley in a protective ring.

"You really plan to take this treasurer's job?" Remo asked after a period of protracted silence.

"Lord Treasurer," Chiun said. "And I have not yet decided. I have many things on my mind."

"Well, I hope you don't," Remo said quietly.

Chiun turned, his eyes interested. "Yes?"

"But I'll understand if you do."

"You will, Remo?"

"Of course," Remo added. "I expect you to understand if I ever do anything you don't like."

"What have you done to displease me now?" Chiun snapped.

"Who says I have?"

"A father can tell," Chiun sniffed. "It is about Cheeta, is it not?"

Remo swallowed. There was never going to be a good time to break the news, but it seemed unavoidable now.

Remo opened his mouth as the car rounded a hill and the Esperanza mansion came into view. It was breathtaking, a Spanish-style hacienda perched on a verdant hill.

"We will discuss this later," Chiun said aridly.

"Deal," Remo said, relieved. "I'm going to pull off the road."

"Why?"

"We might as well test Esperanza's security while we're barging in," Remo said, easing the car to a stop.

"An excellent idea," said Chiun. "We will show him once again that he needs no others than us at his side."

They got out of the car and walked along, the heavy smell of grapes in their nostrils. The air was good here.

From the other direction, a car slithered up to the open gate, and through it unchallenged.

"Did you see that?" Remo said. "There's no one at the gate!"

"And I recognized the man who was driving," Chiun said, low-voiced.

"Yeah?"

"He is a member of a rival camp."

"Yeah? Whose?"

"The loud fat woman."

"I knew it!" Remo said, breaking into a floating run. "I knew it!" Chiun followed, his pipe-stem arms pumping.

They entered the grounds, which were lavish. An arbor-shaded circular driveway wound up to the looming mansion.

The car had pulled into the shadow of a guest house in the shadow of the great hacienda, and two men got out. They slipped up to the guest house door.

"Recognize the other one?" Remo asked.

"No," said Chiun.

They reached the house and found a window that was spilling light.

Remo snapped the driver's-side mirror off the car and, hunkering down under the window, used it to spy on the house's interior.

"Saw this in a movie once," Remo said, grinning.

"What do you see?" asked Chiun, standing off to one side.

"The other guy," Remo said. "Hey! I know him! He was a Black campaign aide. I saw him at debate."

Remo and Chiun exchanged dumbfounded glances.

"They're both in it together!" Remo hissed in surprise.

The Master of Sinanju frowned. "In political intrigues," he said slowly, "one plus one does not always equal two."

"Let's take them, and they can run the numbers for us," Remo suggested, dropping the mirror.

They slipped around to the front. Remo knocked the door off its hinges with a simultaneous kick to the lower hinge and a hard bat to the upper one. The door ripped free of its deadbolt lock.

"Tremble, amateur assassins!" Chiun shouted. "Your betters have come for your worthless heads!"

Feet scrambled up a flight of steps. Chiun surged in, Remo following.

They came around the bannister in time to see a pair of feet disappearing from view. Upstairs, a door slammed loudly. They went up the stairs, making virtually no sound at all.

"We were followed!" a frightened voice called out.

At the top of the stairs, Remo and Chiun hesitated. Remo's eyes raced along a row of closed doors. One still vibrated infinitesimally, from having been slammed shut.

"That one," Chiun hissed, pointing.

They hit the door running. It popped inward.

Inside, three startled faces looked in their direction.

Two were brown faces. Hispanic. Their eyes were widely luminous, and frightened.

The third face was also Hispanic in complexion.

"You are just in time!" cried the owner of the third face, Enrique Espiritu Esperanza. "These men are attempting to assassinate me!"

"No we're not!" protested the other two, fumbling machine pistols from under their clothing.

It was the last words they were destined to speak.

Remo and Chiun moved in on them. Remo shot between the pair, took Enrique Esperanza by his terrycloth robe and pushed him behind a long, low item of furniture that was awash in bric-a-brac.

Remo turned, saying, "Don't kill-"

The sound of two grinding spinal columns cut off the rest. The two Hispanics fell from the Master of Sinanju's inexorable grip, their heads lolling crazily, their eyes bulging and glassy.

They gurgled once after they collapsed on the rug. That was all.

"Nice going, Little Father," Remo complained. "They could have told us something."

"Their faces told all," Chiun said coldly. "They were conspirators. In league with our political enemies."

Enrique Esperanza stepped up, adjusting his disordered robe on his broad shoulders. "You did well to come here," he said softly, "for you were just in time to save me from certain death."

Chiun bowed. "When you have Sinanju, you need nothing more."

Looking around the room, Remo asked, "What kind of setup is this?"

Chapter 32

Harold W. Smith stared at the computer screen. It was dark now. It was very dark.

Smith had searched his database all night for any connection between Nogeira and Rona Ripper. He had found none. Not one.

It was during this scanning that his computer had beeped an alert. Key buzzwords were routinely input into the system on a regular basis, and the CURE mainframes constantly scanned all databases within their telephonic outreach for new information on those mission-sensitive key words.

Smith pressed a key. In the corner, the screen displayed: TRACEWORD: NOGEIRA.

Smith called up the new data.

It was off an FBI mainframe. The final autopsy report of General Nogeira had been input into the FBI mainframes, making it available to Smith's roving data search. It was flagged TOP SECRET.

Smith scanned the report, first with curiosity, then with growing horror.

The official FBI autopsy on the body pulled from the Florida Everglades had reached an inescapable conclusion. A conclusion that sent Harold Smith scrambling for his green wastebasket and fumbling to his desktop an assortment of aspirins, antacids and other remedies. As he read along, he began unscrewing childproof caps and extracting pills. He didn't bother to identify them before they entered his mouth.

He popped an aspirin as he read that the body had lacked certain distinguishing marks known to have marred the real body of General Nogeira, dictator of Bananama.

One was that the dictator was known to have had five general's stars tattooed to his naked shoulders, so that even in disguise he would be identifiable to his allies.

The Everglades body had only four such stars on each shoulder.

"Tattoos can be chemically removed," Smith said, ingesting a Dramamine.

There were other discrepancies. Body weight, height, and an appendectomy scar that should not have been there.

"Inconsequential," Smith said, popping an antacid.

In the third paragraph, the report noted that fingerprints taken from the skin glove did not match those of Nogeira.

"Easily explained," Smith told himself. "The skin glove was from a drowning victim. Someone not connected with this."

The FBI report concluded in the final paragraph that the body believed to be that of Nogeira was in fact that of another person entirely.

"Premature," Smith scoffed, taking another aspirin.

At the bottom of the report was a notation that the FBI had run the fingerprints through its extensive files and produced no positive match.

Harold Smith logged over to the computerized FBI fingerprint records and brought up a digitized copy of the skin glove prints. They looked like ordinary fingerprints. He initiated a cross-match program that ran those prints through various other files at his disposal.

It took an hour, but in the end Harold Smith had a perfect match.

A second row of fingerprints showed beneath the first. They were labeled. The name of the individual to whom those fingerprints belonged made Smith blink wildly, as if his eyes sought to reject the indisputable facts before them.

The name was that of Enrique Espiritu Esperanza.

"Oh my God," croaked Harold W. Smith, his stomach, head, and eyes one great throbbing network of pain. "I have instructed them to install the most brutal dictator in this hemisphere as governor of California, and I have no way to reach Remo and Chiun."

Chapter 33

In the guest house of the Esperanza vineyard, Remo Williams frowned at the strange piece of furniture behind which he had pushed Esperanza to safety.

"It looks like an altar," Remo said, eyeing the assortment of statuary, portraits, and knickknacks. There was a wooden gourd set in the center of the feather-bedecked altar, and its bowl was dark with a brownish-red crust that could only be blood.

"Yes," said Esperanza. "One of my servants, he is from the Caribbean. An island man. You know, they practice strange beliefs on those islands."

"Looks like Voodoo stuff," Remo remarked.

"Santeria. Not Voodoo, but very much like it."

"This servant of yours," Chiun asked slowly. "Does he know of love potions?"

Esperanza blinked rapidly.

"Love potions?"

"Yes. I have a . . . friend who has need of such a thing." Chiun looked at Remo out of the corner of his eye. Remo looked away. Esperanza looked at them both and smiled with veiled understanding.

"Ah, I see," he said, gesturing. "Come, come. I will talk to him on your behalf. It may be that I can do something for this . . . friend."

As they were leaving the room, Remo said, "Cashman was hit this afternoon."

Esperanza laid a broad brown hand on his white-suited chest and turned, his face aghast. "No! Not Harmon!"

"He's not dead. The doctor says he'll recover."

"Ah, good," said Esperanza.

"Once he kicks his cocaine habit," Remo added.

Esperanza stopped again. "Harmon? Not Harmon."

Remo nodded. "The doctor confirmed it."

"How strange. You know, I have never known him to speak of drugs."

"Yeah, all you ever saw him do was wolf down Oreo cookies by the fistful."

"I understand those addicted ones often experience strange pangs and hungers," said Esperanza sadly.

They resumed walking down the stairs.

"What is that smell?" Chiun asked, sniffing the air doubtfully.

Remo answered. "Smells like Oreos."

"I keep a goodly supply here," explained Esperanza. "Once the election is over, I will donate the remainder to charity."

"Yeah," Remo said sourly. "A lot of starving people want nothing better than to sit down to a heaping bowl full of chocolate cookies."

"Remo!" Chiun admonished. "Watch your tone. This man is our patron."

"Sorry," Remo said, frowning. Something was bothering him. Something that danced along the edges of his memory. He couldn't think what it was.

Down in the parlor, Enrique Esperanza said, "My servant is away. Why do you not take this fine house for the duration of your stay with me?"

"Suits me," said Remo.

"A protector should always be at his patron's side," said Chiun flatly.

Esperanza considered. "I know: You may come with me, and your friend may remain here."

"It is proper," said Chiun.

"Okay," said Remo.

At that, the face of Enrique Espiritu Esperanza broke into a broad smile. It was a benevolent, almost angelic smile. His large teeth glowed like luminous pearls.

And then it hit Remo. Suddenly. The man had smiled just moments before, but quietly. Still, the way his mouth muscles had quirked tripped a dormant memory.

Now, with the radiance of that hauntingly familiar smile washing over him, Remo knew where he had seen it before. In the Florida Everglades. On an entirely different face. Not the smooth brown face of Enrique Espiritu Esperanza, but the ugly, reptilian, acne-cratered face of General Emmanuel Alejandro Nogeira.

As this was just sinking in, Esperanza and Chiun turned to go.

"Chiun, wait," Remo called.

The Master of Sinanju paused. "What is it?"

"I gotta speak to you." Remo eyed Esperanza. "Alone."

Chiun touched his wispy beard thoughtfully. "I have no secrets from my patron. Speak freely, Remo."

"Never mind," Remo said unhappily. "It can wait."

Chiun frowned. Esperanza's face was placid.

"Then let us go," he said.

They left. At the open door, Remo watched them start up to the big hacienda-style mansion.

Esperanza was saying, "I am certain we can concoct for your friend a suitable potion. I will call my servant. He will not mind a small interruption of his vacation."

"My friend will only need a weak dosage," Chiun put in. "His attractive powers are quite strong, it is just that the woman in question is very stubborn of will."

"Damn," Remo said after they'd disappeared into the house. "This can't be happening. I gotta call Smith."

He went in search of a phone. There was one on the kitchen wall. But when he picked it up, the line was dead.

Remo went through the house. He found no other phones. The smell of Oreo cookies was strong. It seemed to be coming, not from within the house, but through an open kitchen window.

Remo stepped out into the night. Yes, the smell was stronger out here. It was a hot smell. It overwhelmed the grape scent that made the air so heavy. The smell was cloying but unmistakable.

Moving stealthily, Remo followed it.

It was coming from some kind of long, low outbuilding on the opposite slope of the hill. A thin pipe of a smoke stack gave off the fresh hot smell.

There were no windows, so Remo simply went in the door.

A blast of hot air hit him in the face. It was thick with different smells-cooking chocolate, and other, more chemical odors.

No one noticed him enter, so Remo closed the door behind him and went to a pile of machinery. He crouched down, so he could see what was going on.

The place looked like a sweat shop. Hispanic workers toiled in the heat. One end was devoted to a number of brick ovens and other food-processing equipment.

Black chocolate wafers came rolling out of the open ovens, hot and malleable. They were stamped on one side by hand and flipped over like silver-dollar pancakes.

Remo saw what the stamping did to the wafers, and wondered why anyone would be counterfeiting Oreo cookies.

Nearby, giant vats bubbled with white matter. Over these, glassine packets were broken and their powdery contents shaken in.

Remo's nostrils detected their scent. The stuff looked like sugar, but it didn't smell like sugar.

"Coke," Remo said under his breath.

The white stuff was ladled off onto rows of black wafers set on long tables, making small, steaming mounds. Busy hands slapped identical wafers on top, and the finished cookies were set aside to cool before being packaged.

In one corner, there were boxes and boxes of Oreo cookies. Someone was opening them, tossing out the cookies, and replacing them with the counterfeit versions.

It's starting to make sense now, Remo decided. Cashman's addiction. The fervor with which the crowds cheer Esperanza's speeches as they munch on their give-aways. Everything.

Remo moved to the opposite end of the building. A different operation was under way there. Grim workers were doctoring long punch cards. They were adding extra punch holes.

Remo recognized them as voting cards. He wasn't sure how it worked, but he knew that every card was being fixed so that it registered a vote for Enrique Espiritu Esperanza when the voting lever was pulled.

He decided he had seen enough. Remo was on his way to the door when he spotted a cellular telephone lying on a work bench.

Unfortunately, the bench was almost completely surrounded by workers.

Remo decided it was worth any price to get that phone, so he simply straightened up and walked boldly toward it.

A sweaty-faced man shouted at him in Spanish.

Casually, Remo said, "No problem. Ricky sent me."

"Que?"

"Enrique," Remo repeated. "Carry on."

A varied collection of pistols and automatic weapons came out from under places of concealment as Remo laid a hand on the cellular telephone.

Remo smiled. No one smiled back. With his thumb, he activated the telephone and held down the one key.

In a moment, Harold Smith's tight voice was saying, "Remo! Thank God you called."

The voice spooked someone, because Smith's voice was suddenly drowned by a short burst of gunfire.

Remo twisted out of the way. He needn't have bothered. The bullets peppered the ceiling, making a hollow drumming sound.

Holding on to the phone, Remo faded back through the door, not bothering to open it. He simply bulled through.

On his way out, he batted the door back. It took its own frame back with it and slammed into three pursuing men.

Remo raced toward the mansion, the phone up to his face. He was shouting into the receiver.

"Smitty. You copy?"

"Remo, I hear shooting," came the anxious voice of Harold W. Smith. He burped.

"I'm at Esperanza's vineyard. Guess what? Esperanza isn't Esperanza. He's-"

"General Emmanuel Nogeira," said Smith bitterly.

"Huh? How'd you know that?"

"Fingerprints off the Everglade's body. They belonged to the true Esperanza."

"They must have kidnapped him and pulled the switch during the Baptism," Remo growled. "And I didn't see it because I was too busy ducking cameras. But can we prove it?"

A bullet track snarled over Remo's head. He cut off to one side and kept zigzagging. Up ahead, lights were going on all over the mansion.

"The real Nogeira has five general's stars tattooed on each shoulder," Smith shouted.

"Tattooed?"

"He took his rank very seriously," said Smith.

"Yeah, well his smile gave him away to me," Remo said.

"His smile?"

"Later," Remo said. "I just stumbled upon an Oreo counterfeiting plant, and they're doctoring voter registration cards."

"Why would they counterfeit Oreos?" Smith shouted over the growing din.

"They're loaded with coke!" Remo shouted back. "Instant voter support. Nogeira was turning California into a land of cokeheads," Remo added.

"My God! It's Bananama all over again."

"Skip the anguish," Remo said quickly. "The bad guys are hot on my heels, and Chiun's up ahead with Nogeira. He doesn't suspect a thing. What do I do?"

"Nogeira must be eliminated. We have no choice."

"But Chiun'll kill me," Remo protested. "He thinks Cheeta Ching is going to give birth to the next heir to the House, and now this."

"Remo, we can deal with Chiun later. You have your orders."

Up ahead a door opened, and from out of the house a contingent of Crips, Bloods, and Los Aranas Espana poured out. They had weapons in their hands and Oreo cookies in their mouths, and their eyes were filled with a crazy light.

"Nobody better shoot!" Remo warned them.

"Our man Esperanza says we gotta!" spat back a familiar voice. Dexter Dogget's.

And behind him, Remo heard the shout, "Viva Esperanza!"

It was his pursuers. Probably Colombians or Bananamanians. Maybe both.

Remo threw himself on the ground as two fans of bullet tracks filled the air over his head from opposite sides. Rounds actually struck one another in midair, making short, ugly sounds and sending hot needles of lead spraying all around.

A few struck Remo's Hispanic pursuers. But only a few.

The pursuing Colombians did better. They chopped down about a third of the gang members in return. This brought further retaliation, and as he lay flat, cradling the cellular phone, Remo realized he had been forgotten. It was eye-for-an-eye time-which suited Remo just fine.

The firefight swelled into a crescendo of blood and bullets.

Moving low, Remo circled the mansion, the sound of firing covering him. He wondered why Chiun hadn't shown.

The Master of Sinanju listened thoughtfully as his patron explained the future.

"You will work for me. Exclusively."

"This is possible," replied Chiun. They stood before the dormant fireplace of the great parlor.

"I will pay you very, very well," continued Esperanza. "You will no longer need to work for the U.S. President."

"I do not work for him."

"Then who?"

"I cannot say."

Esperanza nodded. "I understand. I will expect the same loyalty."

Chiun inclined his head. "Of course."

"There is just one other matter," added Esperanza.

"Yes?"

"The one called Remo. He works for the government. He is CIA?"

"Possibly."

"He will be a hindrance to us. You must sever all ties with him."

Chiun touched his wispy beard in preparation before speaking.

Just then, the night exploded with the sound of automatic weapons fire.

Remo went in the back door. He brought it down with a flying kick and was past it before it quite hit the floor.

"Chiun!" he called. "Where are you?"

From a nearby room the Master of Sinanju's voice came, thin and unwelcoming.

"In here."

Remo veered toward the sound. He came up short, in a spacious parlor decorated in the Spanish style of old California. He pointed in the direction of Enrique Esperanza.

"That guy's a phony," he said hotly. "He's not Esperanza."

"It is true," admitted Enrique Esperanza. "I have taken the place of the real Esperanza, who had the misfortune to share a meal with a swimming reptile." He looked to the Master of Sinanju. "With your history, you must appreciate my cleverness. I had plastic surgery to make my face resemble his."

"Not to mention a dermabrasion," Remo inserted.

Esperanza smiled. "My new face is so much more photogenic, no?"

"No," said Remo flatly.

Esperanza shrugged and went on. "My plan is quite simply foolproof. I have recruited the very illegals I have helped to smuggle into this country in my-how you say?-previous life. The homeless will vote for me, too, because I have registered them under the names of the dead. Those who enjoy my cookies will also vote for me. Those I have frightened with my vision of the future of California will, sadly, not vote for Esperanza. But I think many of them have other plans for their own futures, which do not include California."

"Let's not forget the doctored voter punch-cards," Remo added darkly.

Chiun's wrinkled features acquired a questioning cast.

"Once I have my people put them in place," Esperanza explained, "they will insure that even those who vote against me will be casting a vote for Esperanza. Brilliant, no?"

The hazel eyes of the Master of Sinanju shone in appreciation. "Yes, it is very brilliant."

Remo shouted, "Chiun! What are you saying?"

"Merely the truth. This is a ruler after my own heart. He understands power. And he will achieve it."

"That mean you're sticking by him?" Remo demanded tightly.

"Only a fool would not," replied Chiun. "He is what is called 'a sure thing.' "

"Then call me a fool," growled Remo.

Chiun shrugged. "You are a child yet, Remo. You will learn that the true leaders are those who take power, not accept it from the fickle populaces."

Esperanza smiled broadly. "You are too late," he told Remo. "He is with me. There is no changing that."

"Too bad," Remo said. "Emperor Smith wanted him taken out."

Esperanza looked blank.

"Smith is my emperor no longer," Chiun said coldly. "Our most recent contract has expired. It will not be renewed. Better work has come along."

"He'll be sorry to hear that," Remo said. "Especially when he hears that you let a golden opportunity slip through your fingers."

Chiun cocked his head to one side. "What opportunity?"

"The one that atones for my earlier screw-up, when I let Nogeira get eaten by that alligator."

"What has that to do . . . ?"

"Because that's Nogeira right there," Remo said, pointing.

Chiun turned to the man he knew as Enrique Esperanza. "This is true?"

"Not at all," said a smiling General Emmanuel Nogeira. "I do not know what this man is saying."

"There's one way to prove the truth," Remo said. "The real Nogeira has five general's stars tattooed to each shoulder."

General Nogeira squared his shoulders.

"Nonsense," he said, tightening the cord on his terrycloth robe. "CIA lies."

"Then you would not mind disproving this accusation," Chiun said slowly, his eyes going as narrow and steely as knife blades.

"Seems to me, I recall a clause in that contract that covers unfinished business," Remo said pointedly.

The man who called himself Enrique Espiritu Esperanza looked from Remo to Chiun, to Remo again. His mouth fell open like a hungry frog's. "I refuse," he said, sweat forming on his smooth forehead. "I am Esperanza. I do not need to prove anything. To anyone. And when my men finish shooting at shadows, they will deal with that pig of a CIA agent," he added, indicating Remo.

"I see," said the Master of Sinanju, turning away. His hands slashed back like the talons of a striking eagle. Nails ripped the terry cloth away, exposing the broad brown shoulders of General Emmanuel Nogeira-and five bluish-green stars on each shoulder, where the artist's needle had inscribed them.

Before anyone could react, in from the front door poured a knot of triumphant Colombians. They burst into the room, holding their weapons at the ready for instruction.

General Nogeira pointed at Remo Williams and said, "Kill that blanco!"

Then the blood erupted from his naked throat, as the right index fingernail of the Master of Sinanju opened it with a seemingly careless slice.

As the once-again-dead dictator of Bananama started to tip forward into a fountain of his own gore, Remo went to work on the Colombians.

They were handicapped by the need not to fill the parlor with flying lead and hit their own leader, so they began backing around for clean shots even as Nogeira's throat split open.

Remo danced in. He kicked high, and sent the jaw of one Colombian crashing up through his own palate. His foot had barely touched the rug on the rebound when the attached ankle twisted, and Remo's other foot went for a handy temple. The kick didn't tear the second Colombian's head off his shoulders. It only dislocated it. But the result was the same. The floor began to collect fallen Colombians.

The Master of Sinanju was more direct. He stepped up to each of his intended victims, batting their impotent weapons away, and punctured them at critical points. A paralyzing stab to a heart muscle here. A jugular-severing slice there.

It took less than two minutes. Nobody got off a single shot. When it was over, Remo and Chiun were the only ones left standing among the dead and dying.

They bowed once to one another formally. Remo bowed a second time. The Master of Sinanju returned it. But when Remo started a third bow, Chiun made a disgusted face and said, "Enough! Only a Japanese would indulge in such an unseemly display of emotion. Do not be a Japanese, Remo."

"Sorry, Little Father. It's just that I thought you had gone over to Esper- I mean, Nogeira's side."

"That," intoned the Master of Sinanju, "is a decision I would have made after the election, not before."

"That's a relief."

"Besides," Chiun added, "if I abandoned you, Remo, who would raise my grandson?"

"Uh, I hope that's not the only reason you made that decision," Remo said uncomfortably.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because there's something you need to know about Cheeta Ching . . . ."

And over the expanse that was the Esperanza vineyard, where men lay dead and dying, a piteous cry of despair rose up to the moon-burdened sky.

Chapter 34

The blackened patch of ash nestled in the Santa Monica foothills was still being hosed down by fire apparatus when Remo pulled up to the fire-barrier sawhorses.

In silence, he got out. The Master of Sinanju, face still, hands concealed in the sleeves of his brocaded kimono, followed a decorous two paces behind.

A fire marshal stopped them.

"Sorry. Off-limits."

Remo flashed his secret service ID, and the fire marshal changed his tune.

"We're looking for a possible body," Remo told him.

"We got them all."

A low moan issued from Chiun's wattled throat.

"Find a female body?" Remo asked.

"No. All males."

"Then you missed one," said Remo, striding into the blackened area.

The smell of fire was like charcoal on the tongue. The sweet stink of roasted human flesh added to his discomfiture. Fire-scarred iron bars lay amid the burnt timbers and light gray ashes, like the bones of some metallic dinosaur.

Remo located the exact spot on the pile of ash that had been his cell, then walked five paces west.

"Right here," said Remo, standing on the spot where Cheeta Ching had been imprisoned.

He took up a bar and began to poke the ashes, which lifted into the warm air like snowflakes from some evil dimension.

Firemen gathered around, silent and curious. "If you're looking for a body," one said, "those ashes you're stirring up may be all that's left."

Lifting a kimono sleeve to his pained face, Chiun turned away.

Remo kept poking until his bar struck something solid. Something that was not dirt and not rock. He got down on his knees and began scooping away ash.

A body was quickly excavated. Remo turned it over.

It was barely recognizable as Cheeta Ching's driver. His face was a seared mass of meat, and his right leg, under the split pants, showed raw bone where the meat and muscle had been torn loose, as if by a wild animal.

"Is it her?" Chiun squeaked, refusing to look directly at the corpse.

"No," said Remo. He continued digging.

Under his feet, the ash abruptly stirred. Feeling the ground move, Remo stepped away. Then the ash showered up, and, like a shark coming to the surface, the ferocious face of Cheeta Ching, face blackened, eyes blazing, mouth red with something redder than lipstick, emerged. Cheeta sat up. Her head swiveled this way and that. Her barracuda eyes settled on Remo's astonished face.

"You!" she shrieked. "What took you so damn long to find me?"

"Cheeta?" Remo said in a dumbfounded voice.

"Cheeta!" Chiun said joyously, coming to her side. "My child! How you must have suffered!"

"Damn right I suffered," huffed Cheeta. "If it weren't for that stupid cameraman, I would have starved to death."

That statement sank in. Everyone, including Chiun, whose eyes went wide with horror, shrank away from the ashy apparition.

"You didn't . . . ?" Remo said.

Cheeta, spanking ashes off her arms, struggled to her feet, saying, "Why not? He was already dead. And he'd been roasted. I had to do something until somebody lifted him off me."

The fire marshal looked stunned. "She ate the guy?" Then, when it had sunk in, he threw up.

"Oh, look at him!" Cheeta blazed. "You'd think all he had to eat for two whole days was white meat."

The Master of Sinanju took his wispy hair in both hands and rent it savagely, crying, "My Cheeta! Forced to eat a lowly white to sustain herself!"

"Don't you dare tell anyone!" Cheeta spat.

"Don't worry," Remo said, backing away. "My lips are sealed."

"Good. This is my story," said Cheeta, looking around. "Where are the cameras? Are there any cameras here? I've got to tell my story! Legendary superanchorwoman's tale of courage and survival. Maybe I can interview myself on Eyeball to Eyeball with Cheeta Ching. "

As Cheeta Ching stormed off, in search of a friendly lens and the alluring red light of air time, Remo said, "I'm sorry, Little Father."

Chiun let go of his hair. He watched Cheeta Ching storm down the mountain trail. "The poor child," he squeaked plaintively. "I must comfort her in her hour of travail." Lifting his skirts, he started off.