Hostile Takeover

"So be it," Chiun said, turning on his heel and leaving the room. He called over his shoulder, "Come, Remo."

"Wait! What about Danvers?" Looncraft demanded.

Remo paused at the door. "Stick him next to the fire for a while. His muscles should soften up in no time."

"But-"

The outer door closed and P. M. Looncraft walked over to his arthritic nightmare of a butler.

"Danvers," Looncraft said shortly. "I expect a full explanation of this dereliction of duty from you."

Danvers only buzzed.

Outside, Remo held the car door open for Chiun, who settled into the passenger side like blue smoke rolling into a cave.

"What do you think, Chiun?" Remo asked as he climbed behind the wheel.

"I think that man is not to be trusted."

"He's got what he wants."

"Such men as he never get what they want. Their appetites are too large."

"Takes one to know one," Remo said, pulling away from the palatial estate. "If you don't mind, I'm going to drop you off at the hotel."

"And where are you going?" Chiun squeaked.

"I got a date. With Faith."

"I am not certain I approve of my employees fraternizing."

"Who are you, Simon Legree?" Remo asked. "She used to work for Looncraft. I'm just going to get the inside story. In case we have more problems with him."

"Very well," Chiun sniffed. "Just remember-no fraternizing. "

"Scout's honor," Remo said.

Remo Williams felt good as he entered the lobby of Faith Davenport's upper Manhattan apartment house. He had showered, shaved, and changed into a fresh T-shirt and chinos.

As far as he knew, he didn't smell at all like a bear, but the pickled expression that came over the blue-blazered lobby guard's face as he approached the reception desk made him wonder.

"Remo Stallone to see Faith Davenport," Remo said with a straight face.

"Is she expecting you?"

"None other," Remo fired back confidently.

"One moment." The guard went to a typewriter and rattled the keys. Pulling the sheet from the roller, he inserted it into a copier-type device and pressed a button that said "Send."

"Computer?" Remo asked, curious.

"Fax machine."

"Isn't that a phone next to it?" Remo asked, pointing to a desk phone.

"You are very observant," the guard said coolly.

"I happen to be corporate secretary to Nostrum, Ink," Remo told him smugly.

The guard looked at Remo over his glasses wordlessly. His expression was a supercilious: Oh, really?

As they waited for a reply, Remo asked, "Why not just pick up the phone and announce me?"

"We do not intrude upon our guests in this building," the guard sniffed.

The fax machine hummed and a new sheet of paper rolled out. The guard read it and looked up, disappointment writ large on his face.

"You may go up," he said. "It's the twenty-first floor. Apartment C. That's Twenty-one-C," he added smugly.

"Thanks," Remo said, glad to get away from the distasteful look on the guard's face.

On the twenty-first floor he buzzed twice. Faith Davenport opened the door, a smile on her face and a gleam in her blue eyes.

Almost at once her face fell, matching almost line for line the downstairs guard's expression.

"Oh," she said in a disappointed tone.

Remo blinked. "Something wrong?"

"I thought you were taking me out."

"I am. My car's downstairs."

Faith's gaze raked his fresh T-shirt. "Which did you have in mind-McDonald's, or were you going to splurge and take me to Charley O's?"

Remo forced a smile. "We'll go wherever you want."

"I'm used to eating in places that require proper dress. And ties."

"I don't wear ties," Remo said, feeling his mood sink.

"Or shirts either," Faith said, stepping back with studied reluctance so Remo could enter.

Remo was surprised at the elegance of Faith's apartment and said so as the door closed behind him.

"How do you afford all this on a secretary's salary?"

" I play the market. I'm hoping to go back to school. Can I fix you a drink? Some Zinfandel or Grenache?"

"Actually, I don't drink," Remo admitted.

Faith used tongs to clink ice into two glasses, and looked over at him.

"You don't drink or wear business clothes," she wondered, "so what are you doing working for Nostrum, Ink?"

"What's with you?" Remo asked, suddenly annoyed. "I was dressed like this when you first met me."

"When I first met you, I didn't know you were an employee. And it is Saturday. We sometimes dress down on Saturdays. Evian water okay?"

"Sure," Remo said, suddenly feeling like he'd shown up at a formal affair in Halloween costume.

Faith came over and handed him a drink. She sat down and took a sip of Scotch. When her mouth came up, it reeked of alcohol fumes. Remo's eyes left her no-longer-quite-delectable lips and shifted to her eyes. They were veiled.

Faith took another sip. "Maybe we could order out."

"If you want," Remo said, thinking that he had hoped to end up back at this apartment, and not going out turned that possibility into a certainty.

" I know this wonderful Italian place," she said, putting down her drink. "Their pesto is superb." She twisted around and picked up the phone. She dialed as she put a pencil to a piece of paper and began checking off boxes.

"Want me to order for you?" she asked. "Everything's good."

"Actually, I have a lot of food allergies," Remo said quickly. "I'm on a strict rice-and-fish diet. Sometimes rice and duck."

"I never heard of an Italian restaurant that served duck," Faith said, frowning, her pencil poised. " I guess we'll have to go with fish."

"Fine with me," Remo said, noticing the chilliness creep into her voice.

Faith inserted a slip of paper into a fax and pressed "Send. "

" I don't know what I did before the fax," she said as the machine hummed.

"I usually made do with the telephone, primitive as it is."

"But with phones you have to actually talk to people. This is so much more efficient."

"It is quieter," Remo admitted.

Faith retrieved her drink. "Well, what shall we talk about while we're waiting?"

"Tell me about Looncraft," Remo suggested. "You worked there once."

Faith made a face. "Don't remind me. It was a cold place. I had to get out or I was going to go crazy."

"I hear Looncraft is called the King of Wall Street."

"Make that Prince," Faith said, making quote marks with her fingers. Remo hated it when people did that. "The chief is already being touted as the new King of the Street. "

"No kidding?" Remo said, ignoring his mineral water. "Where'd you hear that?"

"It's all over the street. Everyone is talking about him. Before that, everyone was wondering why Looncraft sold off his Global holdings."

"He did?"

" 'Did' is the word," Faith said, making quote marks again. "I hear that during the early hours of the meltdown he liquidated his position. Hours later, he bought it all back, and more, at a higher price than he'd first sold it."

" I don't know the market, but that doesn't sound logical to me."

"It's not. Even if Looncraft had suddenly gone contrarian."

"What's that?" Remo said, relieved that her fingers didn't dance with the unfamiliar word.

"A contrarian is an investor who swims against the tide. When everyone is selling, he buys. And vice versa."

"Sounds fishy."

"Enough of Looncraft. Tell me more about the chief. I find him fascinating."

"What about me?" he said, flashing his best boyish grin.

"Oh, you're nice too," Faith said dismissively. "But men in authority have always fascinated me."

"Is that so? Well, Chiun is eighty years old, grew up in a fishing village in Korea that smells like a thousand-year-old dead clam, and has a major crush on Cheeta Ching."

"He does?" Faith's voice dropped like a stone.

"Absolutely," Remo went on, warming to the subject. "He hates white people. Especially women."

"Oh," Faith said, taking an extra long sip from her drink. Then, deep in thought, she drained it and went back to the wet bar.

She returned with the tumbler filled almost to sloshing over. Her eyebrows knit into one slim unhappy eyebrow.

Son of a gun, Remo thought. She has a crush on Chiun.

The food came while Remo was attempting to revive the conversation.

Faith let the deliveryman in, paid him by credit card, and set the Styrofoam package on the dining-nook table. Her face was pouty as she set plates.

"Help yourself," she called to Remo as she gathered together silverware.

Remo opened the package, and his sad expression turned to revulsion.

"I think they made a mistake," he said. "Unless you ordered squid over rice."

"It's supposed to be octopus. And it's yours."

"Yeah," Remo said, looking again, "the eyes do kinda look octopussy."

"You did say fish," Faith reminded him as she sat down.

"I said fish, not octopus. Octopus is something else."

"Octopus is very chic this season."

"Fine," Remo said, pushing his plate away. "Give mine to the sheiks. I don't eat octopus."

"Must be terrible to be allergic to food," Faith said unconcernedly. " I don't know what I'd do without good food and drink-and excellent sex."

Remo looked up from the mess on his plate, his face hopeful. But Faith was looking out the window at the Manhattan skyline, not at him.

He decided to take a shot at salvaging the night. "Excellent sex is my specialty," he said through his best smile.

"Mmm? What's that?" Faith asked, her eyes refocusing as they swept back toward him.

"I said excellent sex is my specialty."

"Is that so?" Mild interest came to her face. "What kind of visualizations do you use?"

"None," Remo said, surprised at the question.

" I think of money," Faith said dreamily. "Actually, power really makes me horny-but how do you visualize power? I mean, it's an abstract, right?"

"Not to me," Remo said in a sincere voice. "To me, power is very, very concrete."

"What do you mean?" Real interest showed in Faith Davenport's expression this time.

"I could show you, say, after you're finished eating," Remo suggested.

"Show me now," Faith insisted. "If it gets cold, I can nuke it in the microwave."

Remo shrugged and got up. "Give me your wrist," he said, putting out his hand.

Faith lifted her hand. Remo took it in one of his own. With the other, he found her wrist pulse with the tip of his forefinger.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going to show you the power of my forefinger."

And Remo began tapping. Faith frowned in perplexity. But as the tapping finger found a rhythm, her features smoothed. Her eyes got dreamier, and she licked her lips at the corners. Her mouth grew redder and delectable once more.

"What . . . what are you doing?" she asked nervously. But she didn't attempt to pull her wrist away.

"When I'm done," Remo promised her, "you'll never look at a forefinger without getting incredibly aroused."

"Honestly?"

"After I'm done, a forefinger will represent power. You can visualize it and get instant results."

"I love instant results," Faith said, beginning to squirm in her seat. Her breathing picked up. Her eyes squinched shut. She moaned. It was a tortured but pleased moan. It told Remo that she was ready for him.

He stopped tapping.

"No! Don't stop!" she cried. "Not now."

Grinning, Remo resumed his tapping. And Faith resumed her tormented squirming. Her eyes closed completely now. Her free hand clutched the table edge.

In the years since Remo had learned Sinanju-learned it fully-he had found that the techniques through which he could master the physical universe could also tap into female sexuality. Unfortunately, the full power of Sinanju was too much for most women. Remo had to hold back. Right now, he was just giving Faith a taste. When he was through, she would, as Remo had promised, never be able to look at a male forefinger without becoming violently aroused. What he didn't tell her was that it would be his own finger that would never fail to arouse her.

Then it happened. Faith Davenport began to shiver uncontrollably.

"Oh," she cried. "No!" she cried. "Oh, no," she added. "No No No. Yes Yes Yes!" And when her shivering subsided, her smile was dreamily goofy.

She began to slide off the chair and under the table. Remo pulled her back by her flutter-pulsed wrist.

"How was that?" he asked, grinning.

Faith Davenport didn't reply. She didn't hear the question. She had orgasmed into blissful unconsciousness, a frequent but not always inevitable side effect of Remo's technique.

"Damn!" Remo said bitterly. "I thought I had that passing-out stuff under control."

Sighing, Remo lifted her up in his arms and carried her into an immaculate white bedroom. He set her on the shiny brass bed and wondered what she would say if she woke up with him lying patiently beside her.

Then he got a sudden whiff of Scotch on her breath and had to suppress the gag reflex.

Remo decided the effort wouldn't be worth it.

He left the apartment, his face dejected. He could bring a woman to orgasm simply by touching her wrists. But keeping her conscious after foreplay was something he had yet to learn.

Down in the lobby, the guard smirked. "That was quick."

"Quicker than you think," Remo returned darkly, and stepped out into the cold night. As he stood on a street corner trying to remember where he had parked his car, a matronly woman in a floor-length mink coat offered him a dollar from her purse.

"Here, you poor homeless thing," she said. "It must be terrible to be without decent clothes on a cold night like this."

Remo stuffed the dollar back into the surprised woman's purse. "Keep it, lady," he snarled. "I happen to be a Wall Street tycoon. And I've got a fur that makes yours look sick. "

The matron walked off in a huff.

Chapter 14

Harold W. Smith arrived at his Folcroft office at six o'clock on the Sunday evening following Dark Friday. He laid his well-worn briefcase beside the desk and, settling into his cracked leather chair, pressed a concealed stud under the desk edge. Up from the left corner of the desktop a nondescript computer terminal rose like a glass-orbed Cyclops.

Smith logged on. He scanned domestic-news digests that were automatically culled from satellite newsfeeds and processed for him by the huge CURE mainframes concealed behind a false wall in the Folcroft basement. The country was awash in speculation about the coming trading day. Already the Israeli stock market-the only one in the world that operated on Sunday-was trading. It was down ten percentage points-significant, but not telling.

In another hour or so, at eight o'clock, the Tokyo, Singapore, and Hong Kong stock markets would open. They would give the first warning of a replay of the Friday financial air pocket and a foretaste-if it was to be-of another Black Monday.

Smith paged through the digests carefully. Already there was a flurry of rumors about planned mergers and acquisitions, now that stock prices had dropped so sharply. There would be a lot of bargain hunting available to investors brave enough to take the chance. And excellent opportunities for the few surviving corporate raiders who could muster financing.

He looked for any news concerning the elusive Crown Acquisitions, Limited. There was nothing. Whoever they were, they eschewed publicity.

Smith was deep in thought when the phone rang in the outer reception area. Smith dismissed it as a wrong number, but it kept ringing. He picked up his desk phone and answered, sharp-voiced.

A businesslike woman's voice said, "Mr. Winthrop, of Winthrop and Weymouth, to speak with Mr. Smith."

"It is Dr. Smith," Smith said, "and please inform Mr. Winthrop that he should confine his calls to business hours. Good-bye." Smith hung up.

As the news reports scrolled past his eyes, throwing specks of green light onto his rimless eyeglasses, Smith shuffled through his papers for a memo from his secretary regarding Winthrop. He had been so engrossed in CURE matters that he had not glanced at his messages.

Finally he found it. One eye on the computer, he looked it over. The memo was brief: "Mr. Winthrop, of Winthrop and Weymouth, called." No message. It was personal.

Smith couldn't imagine what Winthrop wanted, so he put it out of his mind.

Finally trading began in Asia. The market started down in heavy trading. Then it rose ten points in twenty minutes. Smith's bloodless face suffused with relief-then there came a precipitous twenty-five-point drop.

From there, it was a roller coaster-with Dr. Harold W. Smith following every rise and dip as if his life depended upon it.

It did not, but the future well-being of his country did depend on what was happening in the Far Eastern markets.

In the darkness of his office, a phrase occurred to Harold W. Smith-a line of poetry from his schooldays, which in the heat of the moment were twisted in a rare display of creativity on the part of the unimaginative bureaucrat.

"And ignorant armies trade by night," Smith muttered.

Smith was still at his desk at six A.M. when his secretary came in. The Far Eastern markets had long since closed. The trading had shifted to Europe. It was volatile, there was no doubt about it. Even the blue-chips were softening. The global market was taking a beating, but it was holding together. But anything could happen when the tidal wave of uncertainty hit Wall Street.

During a lull in the trading, Smith went to a closet and took out a gray three-piece suit identical to the one he had worn through the night. He changed in his private rest room, shocked by the emaciated appearance of his limbs as he stood in his underwear before a full length mirror. It still surprised him that he had gotten so old so quickly. The responsibilities he bore on his shoulders as head of CURE were staggering. He had been at them for nearly three decades now. He wondered how much longer he could stay at his post-and what would happen when at last his health failed, as it nearly had only a few months before.

Smith brushed the dark thought from his mind as he shaved with the old-fashioned straight razor that his father had presented to him on his sixteenth birthday. It seemed like a thousand years ago. As he scraped the stubble from his chin, he was reminded again by his reflection how much he was his father's son. The face that stared back at him from the mirror was almost his father's own. Not as full, but the eyes were the same, as was the spare yet crisp white hair.

It was like looking at a family ghost. A ghost whose familiar eyes followed his every move and whose facial expressions mimicked his own. Sometimes Smith hated the taunting familiarity of the face in the mirror. Other times it took him back to childhood, like a long-misplaced photograph.

Smith wiped his face clean of Barbasol and put on a fresh white shirt. He knotted his striped Dartmouth tie expertly in a quick half-Windsor, only because it was faster than the much-preferred full Windsor.

Then, putting on his vest and coat, he returned to his desk, refreshed and ready for the Big Board's opening bell.

The moment he sat down, his knees began to shake. He was prepared to remain at his lonely post long after the closing bell, when the cycle would begin all over again in Tokyo, with no respite until Saturday, a full six days away.

It was going to be a long six days, Harold Smith realized. God had created the earth in six days. He wondered it if would take even that long for modern civilization to unravel.

And then it was ten o'clock. Smith engaged the Quotron window, his heart high and anxious in his throat.

The Master of Sinanju entered the trading room of Nostrum, Ink with a satisfied expression on his wrinkled countenance. All was well with the world once more, now that he had evaded the hostile takeover of Nostrum.

But the very instant he entered the room, his tiny nose wrinkled at a foul but familiar smell. It was fear-the raw mingling of leaking sweat and openmouthed breathing.

"What is wrong, my loyal minions?" he asked in shock.

A trader looked up with the hurt expression of a seal that had been hit by a paddle.

"We're bombed here!" he cried, his voice sick.

"Bombed!" Chiun demanded. "Where? I see no damage."

Remo stuck his head out of Chiun's office.

"It's just an expression," he said.

Another trader clutched his phone and moaned. "It's a massacre!" he wailed.

"Where?" Chiun asked, coming to his side. The trader cradled the receiver between his chin and shoulder. "It's all up and down the street. The blood is flowing."

"This is terrible," Chiun squeaked. "Is America at war?"

"It's just an expression, Chiun," Remo called again.

Chiun looked back to Remo. "What are you saying, Remo? My loyal minions would never lie to me. You heard them. People are being bombed. There is blood flowing in the street. It is a calamity. Such things are never good for business."

"This is business," Remo said wearily. "The market is crashing. This is how these people talk."

"Is this true?" Chiun demanded.

"The Dow's dropped seventy points in the last half-hour," the trader said in anguish. "It's a rout."

"Never surrender!" Chiun cried. "No matter who the foe, Nostrum will prevail. I promise you that." "Will you come in here, Chiun?" Remo called sharply.

The Master of Sinanju called out, "Take heart. I am with you now," and floated into his office.

"The market's melting down," Remo told him tightly. "And forget that double-talk. It's just business jargon."

"But it is war talk."

"That's how these people see business," Remo explained. "As war. They call it competition. And listen, this is serious. Nostrum stock is dropping too. Everything's dropping. "

"I have no fear," Chiun retorted, "for I have gold."

"Gold is dropping too."

Chiun started. "What is this? Gold is dropping?" He looked around frantically. "Where is Faith? I must have her by my side. She will advise me what to do."

Remo tripped the floor intercom with a toe. He hastily shoved both hands in his pockets when Faith stepped into the room moments later. Her blue eyes sought Remo's half-hidden wrists and expressed heartrending disappointment.

"Gold is dropping," Chiun squeaked. "What do I do?"

"Buy," she said quickly. "Now is the time to pick up bargains."

"But these stocks are becoming more worthless by the hour. "

"That's this hour. In another hour they could double in price. I would go long."

"Go along with whom?" Chiun asked.

"Not 'along,' " Faith said. "Go long on the stocks. Hold on to your positions in anticipation of long-term growth. And buy more."

"With what?"

"Gold. Gold is dropping. If gold keeps dropping, it'll be worth less than most blue-chip stocks.

Chiun turned to Remo. "Is she mad? Sell gold for paper?"

"Faith's been playing the market for years," he pointed out. "You should see her apartment. I have."

Chiun stuck his head out the office door. "Buy! Buy everything!" he cried. "Nostrum, Ink is paying gold for stock. Let the word go out. Strictly cash-and-carry."

With a wild shout of "Let's go for it!" the traders got on their phones and began trading.

Within ten minutes the messengers began arriving, followed by armored-car drivers and even feverish individual brokers. They crowded the Nostrum trading room and corridors, fighting one another to hand over folded stock certificates in return for gold ingots. They hurried off; carrying them in sacks and stuffed into suit pockets.

As Remo and Faith struggled to keep order, Faith brushed up against Remo. Her tongue tickled his right earlobe.

"Last night was wonderful," she whispered breathily.

"I'm glad it was for someone," Remo complained, shoving a frantic stockbroker so hard his horn-rimmed glasses broke in two.

The phone rang and P. M. Looncraft's secretary informed him that it was the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange.

Looncraft took the call. The market was down another dozen points in the last nineteen seconds. At this rate, the bargains would be enormous, just as he had hoped.

"Yes?" he said.

"We've suspended trading twice today."

"The circuit breakers are working admirably."

"Except every time trading resumes, so does the panic," the chairman said grimly. "I'm polling all NYSE board members. We should consider suspending trading for the remainder of the day. Give the institutions time to regroup."

" I think that would be premature," Looncraft said, smiling tightly to himself. If the chairman was panicked, then it would be a rout. His avid eyes slid to his Telerate screen.

P. M. Looncraft blinked. The market shot up two points. Then ten. Then twenty. It was like a thermometer on an August day in Panama.

"Wait a minute," the chairman said, cupping his hand over the phone.

When his voice returned, it was jubilant. "The market's regrouping. There's a buying frenzy going on."

"Capital," P. M. Looncraft said in a shaky voice. His cheeks squeezed tight. His mouth became a puckered pink rip in his long face.

"Apparently Nostrum, Ink is offering gold for blue-chip stocks," the chairman said excitedly. "Others are upticking."

"Why is that?" Looncraft asked, making no attempt to keep the peevishness from his tone.

"Haven't you heard? Everyone is saying Nostrum is run by a wizard. They're calling him the King of Wall Street."

"What?" Looncraft shouted. "But I am the King of Wall Street. Forbes says so."

"Don't shout at me, P. M. That's the rumor on the street. Everyone knows that this Chiun person is a financial genius. Right now, where he goes, others follow. It's a herd reaction. And thank God for that. He may have saved the market."

"Excuse me," Looncraft said huffily. "I have trading of my own to attend to."

"Good luck."

"Luck is not a factor." Looncraft stabbed his intercom.

"Send Johnson in," he barked, forgetting not to mention the man by name.

When Ronald Johnson entered, nervously fingering his gold tie, Looncraft looked up at him with a face like a stormcloud.

"I am prepared to go forward with my offer for Nostrum, Ink," he said angrily. "Set it up."

"Yes, sir. And what about the Global acquisition?"

"It goes forward. Full-bore. I will handle the details myself. "

In his office at Folcroft Sanitarium, an ashen-faced Harold W. Smith watched the Quotron numbers rise. He brought up a news digest and learned that the market was responding to the confidence shown by the mysterious financial wizard of Nostrum, Ink. Smith blinked. "Inc." was misspelled. He had never seen his computer misspell a word before. But that imponderable was lost in the torrent of buy orders reflected on the electronic ticker tape.

It was 10:45. In London, the Financial Times Stock Exchange was winding down on a modest up note. It was the same in other European markets as they neared the end of their trading day.

Harold Smith removed his glasses. He knew the psychology of the market. There was no guarantee it would hold at these high prices, but a climb of 265 points in an hour was an encouraging sign.

If it continued, perhaps the crisis had passed.

At four o'clock, the closing bell sounded and Wall Street, up a stunning six hundred points, breathed a collective sigh of relief.

"Rich!" Chiun cried, standing among the exhausted heap of floor traders who lay sprawled in their deskless cubicles. "We are all rich beyond our wildest dreams."

"On paper," Remo put in.

Chiun's outspread arms froze. His uptilted head snapped around. He fixed Remo with his steel eyes.

"What do you mean, on paper?" he demanded.

"You're rich only if you sell your stock."

"Then sell!" Chiun cried. "Sell everything!"

"Can't do that," Remo said firmly, shaking his head. "The market's closed." Faith was by his side, her arms wrapped around his bare forearms. She was trying to tug one of his hands out of his pocket, but Remo refused to budge.

Chiun turned on Faith. "What is this?"

"He's right, Chief," Faith said, giving up Remo's hand for the moment. "You have to sell the stock to realize its value. But that would be a mistake. Hold on to it. The price will go up more. The market is bullish."

"Bullish," Chiun mused. "I have heard of this bullishness. Sometimes called B.S."

"That's not the kind of bullish Faith means," Remo said. "And she's right. If the market keeps climbing, the stock value could double or triple."

"Ah. Then I should sell, correct?"

"No," Faith said. "Go long. Hold on to it as long as you can. Never liquidate a solid position with growth potential."

"Then how am I to make my profit if I do not sell?" Chiun asked in a puzzled tone.

"Don't think profit," Faith said, "think value. Think equity. "

"Right at this moment," Chiun said, an edge creeping into his voice, "I am thinking of the gold I have sold."

"It's not your gold, remember?" Remo pointed out. "It's Nostrum's. "

"Why do you think I sold it?" Chiun retorted. "If it were my gold, I would never have sold it."

"Just think of it as money in the bank," Faith said.

Remo uncoupled Faith's reactivated fingers from his wrist. "If the market drops tomorrow," he asked her, "what kind of shape would we be in?"

"Depends. Almost all of our assets are tied up in stock now. We could be wiped out."

"Wiped out?" Chiun squeaked. "By whom?"

"More business talk," Remo said hastily. "It means 'broke.' "

Chiun's eyes slowly widened. "Broke. As in 'impoverished'?"

"As in 'destitute,' " Remo said, nodding.

"Almost impossible," Faith said firmly. "The market is on an upswing."

"Almost?" Chiun squeaked.

"It's a volatile market," Faith admitted. "But this is where the big bucks are. If you want security, you don't invest in stocks."

"What do you invest in?" Chiun wanted to know.

Faith frowned. "Any number of things. Money-market accounts, CD's-"

Chiun's phone rang and Remo went into the office to answer it. He stuck his head out and mouthed the name "Smith" silently. Chiun hurried to the office and closed the door on Faith's annoyed face.

"Smith?" Chiun said urgently. "I need your advice."

"That's quite flattering, coming from the man whom the networks are calling the King of Wall Street."

"I?"

" I am calling to congratulate you," Smith continued. "You did an excellent job."

"Why not?" Chiun said proudly. "I am the King of Wall Street. "

"But there is a problem," Smith added cautiously.

"Yes?"

"I have just learned that Looncraft is attempting a series of hostile takeovers. Global is a prime target."

" I am not concerned with that," Chiun retorted.

"Nor am I. One major block of GLB is owned by DeGoone Slickens. He will never sell to Looncraft. And there are still the mysterious Crown people and the Lippincott holdings. Lippincott is Looncraft's banker and has been wary of takeover moves since last year's junkbond shakeout. I can't imagine Looncraft could pull off such a risky deal."

"Why tell me?" Chiun said peevishly.

"Because Looncraft has also tendered an offer on Nostrum, Inc. "

"That deceiver!" Chiun shrieked. He turned to Remo. "Looncraft is attempting to attack Nostrum, my precious Nostrum, again."

"We can handle him," Remo said confidently.

"Where is the suit?" Chiun hissed.

"Safe. "

"Get it."

"I don't think Looncraft's frightened of Bear-Man."

"Then terrify him," Chiun said. Returning to his phone conversation, Chiun asked, "I am told my stock positions are not secure, Smith. I wish to invest in less risky instruments. What do you suggest?"

"CD's are very safe."

"Then I will sell all my stock and invest in CD's," Chiun thundered.

"No, Master of Sinanju," Smith said quickly. "Please make no major moves. All of Wall Street is watching you. If you sell off; others will too. Hold on to your positions."

"But they are risky," Chiun complained. "I could be wiped out at any moment."

"Sell some stock, if you wish," Smith said placatingly. "A little here and there. But for God's sake, do it quietly. Wall Street must not get the idea you are fleeing into cash."

"I am not fleeing into anything," Chiun said indignantly. "But I will do as you say. I will buy CD's. Quietly."

"Thank you, Master Chiun. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must prepare myself. The Asian markets reopen in another few hours. They will tell me if the international situation is stabilizing or not. I will be in touch."

Chapter 15

The busy hum of Folcroft Sanitarium was winding down as Harold W. Smith watched the first reports come in from the Far East exchanges.

Prices remained firm. The volatility of the American market hadn't spilled east. Slowly, tentatively, the tenseness in Smith's unhealthy face slackened.

After an hour, Smith felt confident enough to log of the Reuters overseas ticker feeds. He got to his feet and stretched. Every joint felt starch-stiff: For a moment his vision grayed over. It was something that happened to him more and more these days when he got to his feet too suddenly. The blood rushed from his head, starving his brain of nourishment.

Steadying himself with a hand on his silent terminal, Smith waited for his vision to return. When it did, he turned and looked out the one-way picture window behind his desk. It framed a view of Long Island Sound, now benighted and dancing with silvery moonglade.

It was a view Smith had seen a thousand times, but it never failed to quiet his restive New England soul. It reminded him of his childhood. The wild forests of his Vermont childhood and the rocky New Hamphire mountains of his adolescence.

Harold Smith missed few things of his childhood, but the sense of place was one of them. Rye, New York, was not far removed from Putney, Vermont, but it was not the same. The red leaves of fall were not as scarlet, the golds nowhere near as scintillating. He missed the scent of burning leaves and the sharp bite of frost in the air.

But most of all he missed the stability. In New England, Harold Smith had known from an early age that he would go into law. His ambitions took him from Dartmouth to Harvard Law, and ultimately to a professorship at Yale. It was all he could ever want. But World War II had intervened and Harold Smith had found his sharp mind and steady nerve needed in the European theater of operations, where as a clandestine OSS operative he mastered explosives and fear and, ultimately, victory.

After the war, Yale no longer seemed enough. And as the old OSS gave way to the new CIA, Harold Smith found a place in cold-war counterintelligence. The years had turned him into a bureaucrat, not a warrior. But it was the stability of a desk and an office routine and the absence of sudden death that spoke to Harold Smith. He had gotten his fill of war.

Smith never completely abandoned the dimming hope of one day returning to Yale-until the day in the early 1960's when a young President, in the last months of his tragically brief presidency, offered him the directorship of CURE. Smith had never heard of CURE. In fact, the agency that supposedly didn't exist, really didn't exist when it was offered to Smith. Smith would be CURE. Without his sterling qualities, CURE might not be viable, he was told.

With reluctance, Smith accepted the most awesome responsibility in the world outside of the Oval Office.

Only then did Harold Smith finally put away his dream of returning to Yale. There would be no Yale in his future. There was only his duty.

It was that same sense of duty that had infuriated Harold Smith's patrician father, Nathan. Any other man might have been proud of a son who had so distinguished himself in law and service to his nation.

Not Nathan Smith.

Even after all these years, Harold Smith could still hear his father's cold voice rising in indignation.

"What about the family business, Harold?"

"I have no aptitude for publishing, Father," Smith had said with the simple, unchallengeable logic that dominated his thinking.

"You can learn, boy. The Smiths have been in publishing for over a hundred years."

"My mind is made up," Smith said stiffly. He did not want to remind his father that the family firm of Smith gotten its start publishing dime novels during the Civil War and graduated to cheap fiction magazines at the turn of the century. Nathan Smith never allowed one of his firm's magazines into the house. He didn't object to publishing them, but he felt it beneath the dignity of a true Smith to be caught reading one.

"Take the summer off. Come work for the firm." For the first time, Nathan Smith's voice lifted. It was almost wheedling.

"I am sorry, Father," Harold Smith said, and he meant it. It was the first time Harold had ever stood up to his father, and it was painful beyond endurance. He had received a full scholarship to Dartmouth. The matter was out of crotchety Nathan Smith's hands. To a man used to being obeyed without question, it was an unforgivable slight.

Smith's unwarm relationship with his father cooled completely after that day. He continued to pay the usual respects during family holidays, but as the years passed and his responsibilities increased, it became less and less possible to visit the family compound in New Hampshire.

His mother had passed away first, in her sleep. Harold and Nathan Smith, although over twenty years apart in age, were by then two aging men. At the funeral they spoke barely a word to one another. Harold had tried, but was curtly rebuffed. Nathan Smith's bitter disappointment in his son was expressed in his too-loud complaints to other mourners that Harold's lazy cousins were mismanaging the family firm, preventing Nathan Smith from entering honored retirement.

The next time Harold saw his father, six years later, he was in a wheelchair and his wheezing breath fogged the clear plastic oxygen mask affixed to his mouth. The eyes were unchanged, pale, disappointed, and cold as glacial ice.

Harold hadn't known what to say to his father. He never had. By that time, Smith had assumed his responsibilities as director of CURE.

"Father, I think we should put aside our differences," Smith had suggested in a quiet voice.

Old Nathan Smith looked daggers at his grown son. He spoke three words, the last words he would ever speak to his only son, who had always been dutiful except for that one matter.

"You disappoint me," Nathan Smith had croaked.

And as Harold Smith left his father in the Gilmore County Retirement Home-the same brick building he used to walk by every day on the way to high school-he felt an aching void in the pit of his stomach. By then the family firm was only a publisher of movie fan magazines and crossword-puzzle books, but CURE was the fire wall that stood between American democracy and anarchy.

Smith had fulfilled his resolute sense of duty to a degree his narrow-minded father could never have imagined, and never learned. He died a week later.

But the sense of guilt Harold Smith had felt after their final meeting never went away. It was like a cold pill forever caught in his throat.

As Smith came out of his reverie, the shadowy reflection of his face in the Folcroft picture window shocked him. It was his father's face. Harold Smith's eyes darted to the wheelchair standing alone in the corner like a stainless-steel ghost. It might have been the very chair his father had ended up in. The thought that Smith had, for a few months, been consigned to one just like it chilled him anew.

Returning to his desk, Smith wondered what had made him reflect on his troubled family past. He decided it was just that he was overworked.

He logged onto the Far Eastern stock reports. From Sydney to Singapore, the markets remained stable. Smith wondered if the world's economy was out of the woods yet. He hoped so. He itched to isolate the forces that had triggered a global near-meltdown.

For he wanted to punish them. He wanted to punish them more than he had wanted to punish anyone who had ever come into the CURE operational orbit.

Above all, Harold W. Smith treasured the stability of modern civilization. It was what he had fought to hold together all his adult life, from Yale to CURE.

Chapter 16

Remo Williams tooled his Buick Regal around the area of Wall Street, looking for a parking space. He found one an instant before a Federal Express truck could slide into it.

He reached back into the back seat for a paper-wrapped package. It was under his arm when he left his car and strolled into the lobby of the gleaming Looncraft Tower.

Remo waited patiently for an elevator. The lobby was filled with well-dressed men and women, each carrying a briefcase in one hand, a neatly folded copy of The Wall Street Journal in the other. They looked like they had all been outfitted by the same maiden aunt, who, instead of combing their hair, baked it.

When a car arrived, Remo jumped in ahead of the pack.

"Sorry, private car," he said, pushing a man into the others. He hit the "Close" button.

The elevator shot up. Quickly Remo stripped the paper wrapping off his Bear-Man suit. The car abruptly stopped and the doors started to separate. Remo hastily donned his bear-mask helmet.

"Next car," he told a pair of secretaries, hitting the "Close" button.

"Did you see that?" one squealed. "It's the Wall Street Bear!"

When the door opened again, Remo was completely enveloped in his Bear-Man suit. He stepped out onto the thirty-fourth floor, causing an instant commotion on the Looncraft, Dymstar d trading floor.

"It's back," a man cried. Several security guards ran in Remo's direction. He set himself. He needn't have bothered. They ran past him and escaped into the waiting elevator.

"That's right," Remo rumbled, taking up the cue. "I'm back. And I'm here to tell you that greed is bad. Never mind what you've heard elsewhere."

An eager young trader leapt from his desk and approached Remo with expectant eyes. He was dressed in a striped shirt and red suspenders and was almost identical to the others -except for his bright gold tie.

"Tell me, sir," he asked, "are you really a harbinger of a coming bear market?"

"Think again, pal," Remo told him gravely. "I'm here to prevent a bear market. You listen to Bear-Man, and the bulls will run forever."

A cheer went up from the floor.

"Tell us," the traders cried. "Tell us what we should do. "

"Go long. Long and strong. Save your money. Brush your teeth regularly."

"Teeth?"

"Brushing your teeth leads to good working habits."

"Should we invest in pharmaceutical companies?" Gold Tie asked sincerely. "Do you have inside information?"

"Bear-Man knows all. Just remember, the market is fundamentally sound. It was only a correction."

A trader raised his hand eagerly. "Mr. Bear-Man, do you expect corporate profits to-"

"Sorry. Can't chat now. Got to see your boss."

Remo sauntered up to P. M. Looncraft's office. His secretary recoiled as if from a viper. She ducked behind her desk.

"Mr. Looncraft is not in," she said in a quivering voice. "He's in a meeting. In another building."

"I've heard that one before," Remo said, brushing past her.

He pushed open the door. P. M. Looncraft's office was unoccupied, unless one counted the array of ancestral Looncrafts on the walls.

" I told you so," the secretary's voice said. "Now, will you go away? Please?"

"I'll wait," Remo said, closing the door. He lumbered over to the desk and plunked his hairy butt down. It was hot in the suit, and the smell was heavy in his nostrils, like used cotton. He hoped Looncraft would not be long.

While he waited, Remo drummed his claws on the desk. He noticed the Telerate machine at his elbow. He found the "On" switch and finally hit it with a claw after stabbing at in several times.

Remo got a listing of ten active stocks, some with arrows pointing up, others pointing down. He looked for Nostrum, Ink but remembered that it traded over the counter, on NASDAQ, not NYSE.

When boredom set in, he rummaged through the desk. There were no papers. The desk reminded Remo of Smith's desk. Very Spartan, almost paperless, with everything in its place.

Remo went back to drumming his bear claws on the leather blotter.

When he exhausted the entertainment possibilities of that, he noticed the computer beside his chair. He turned to it, and brushed the "On" switch. The computer blipped into life.

Behind his bear mask, Remo's brown eyes blinked.

The heading read: "MAYFLOWER DESCENDANTS." Below that was a single line: "QUEEN'S ROOK TO KNIGHT THREE."

Remo's eyes narrowed. He started hitting buttons, until he had written "Rook's Queen to King None," give or take a typo.

He looked for a "Send" button, knowing they made things happen.

When he found it, he tapped it with a claw.

The screen blipped. There was a pause. Then the screen went crazy. Lines of amber exclamation points appeared, and replicated themselves until they filled the screen. A concealed amplifier began beeping, annoying Remo. He tried to shut it off by pressing several buttons at random.

Instead of shutting down, a remote printer in a corner of the room rattled to life. The print head began racing and buzzing. Paper started to spew out.

Remo pressed more buttons. The printer kept printing, so he looked for a power plug. When he found it, he yanked hard. The computer and the printer both shut down.

Remo examined the printer and ripped away several sheets of paper. He looked at the top sheet. Deep within his bear mask, he made a puzzled sound.

Rolling it up, Remo went back to the desk and started to scratch a message onto the polished mahogany desktop. The claw barely cut the finish, so Remo shucked off one bear-paw glove and used his natural nail, which had been hardened to glass-cutting precision through diet and exercise.

When he was done, the mahogany desktop bore the words: "LEAVE NOSTRUM ALONE OR I'LL COME BACK OUT OF MY BEAR CAVE AND EAT YOU ALIVE. -BEARMAN."

Remo left the LD floor with a hearty, "Carry on, yuppies. And don't forget to brush your teeth."

He smiled under his bear mask at the chorused, "Yes, sir!" that followed him to the elevator. Chiun wasn't the only one who knew how to motivate workers.

Chapter 17

P. M. Looncraft saw the shocked look on his secretary's face, which rather reminded him of a frightened lighthouse, all the way across the bustling Looncraft, Dymstar d trading floor.

"I'm terribly sorry, Mr. Looncraft," she stammered as he stormed past her and into his office. His normally neat desk was in disarray, the morocco-leather blotter shoved aside. The message carved into the fine wood was like a long crazy wound.

Looncraft whirled, fixing his secretary with a cold, imperious glare.

"How could you let this happen?" he demanded.

"I didn't know how to stop him, Mr. Looncraft. He was a bear."

"He was no more a bear than I," Looncraft said acidly. "And you are fired, Miss McLean!"

"Yes, Mr. Looncraft," Miss McLean said timidly, backing out of the room. In her heart, she felt a curious elation. Mr. Looncraft had actually called her by name. She had waited years for him to do that. It made being fired almost worthwhile.

Looncraft brushed bear hairs from his executive's chair before taking it. He spent several minutes rearranging his desk, and his thoughts. When both were satisfactorily tidy, he engaged his Telerate machine. Its glowing green three-letter stock symbols and decimal-point quotations helped restore his sense of well-being. A pinch of snuff also helped. Then, turning in his chair, he brought up his personal computer and the Mayflower Descendants bulletin board.

The message on the screen said: "BOOK'S QUEEN TO KING NONE?"

Looncraft frowned. The message made no sense. There was no such chess move.

He typed the same message and added two question marks at the end. He pressed "Send."

The silent reply Looncraft got back had nothing to do with the game of chess. It read: "IDENTIFY."

Looncraft typed his name.

"HAVE YOU BEEN COMPROMISED?" was the response.

Looncraft typed: "UNKNOWN. WILL CHECK."

He called up a readout of all his files. Next to each was the date and exact time of the last update. He saw with a start that made his long face even longer that a key file had been accessed only this morning. Looncraft had not looked at that file in weeks.

He returned to the bulletin board, and typed: "ANSWER AFFIRMATIVE. HOSTILE PARTY IDENTIFIED. PERMISSION TO ACTIVATE CORNWALLIS GUARD AND MAKE REBEL PARTY REDUNDANT."

Looncraft pressed "Send." The answer bipped back instantly, despite thousands of miles of distance: "GRANTED."

Looncraft pecked at the keys with two long fingers, switching to another program.

He wrote: 'ACTIVATE. TARGET: NOSTRUM, INK. ASSEMBLE AT 1700 HOURS GREENWICH MEAN TIME. ERADICATE ALL RESISTANCE AND MAKE CEO REDUNDANT."

Then he pressed "Send" and leaned back, a bitter smile creeping into his grim expression.

All over greater New York and New Jersey, and in parts of lower Connecticut, personal computers and office mainframes repeated the message on silent screens. Men excused themselves from work, from family obligations, and took cars or boarded commuter trains, clutching bundles tied with string under their arms.

They were all headed for Manhattan.

William Bragg of the Connecticut Braggs received his activation orders while at his desk in his New Canaan real estate office.

"Right, then," he said, going to the office safe. He pulled from a double-locked drawer a neatly folded white wool garment and a scarlet coat. In the privacy of his office he carefully changed his clothes. The white breeches fitted as snugly as his wife's panty hose. The matching waistcoat was also a perfect fit. He attached the black horsehair neck stock around his collar before donning a long red coat that almost touched the floor with its viper's-tongue tails. After he finished buttoning the front, he anchored the tails to his back with silver hooks so they wouldn't trail, and pulled on the white shoulder belts. They formed an X over the coat after he attached the regimental buckle stamped with the letters CG. Finally he stepped into his black half-gaiters, enjoying the feel of real footwear for the first time in what he mentally called "a dog's age."

William Bragg pulled loose-fitting trousers over his leggings and, flattening his heavy turnback lapels, drew on a rumpled raincoat, buttoning it to the top so no hint of scarlet peeped out. He carried an oilskin-wrapped package to his waiting car.

On his way to New York City, William Bragg hummed the familiar melody every American schoolboy learned as "America" under his breath. Occasionally he broke out into song. But the words were not the words of the national anthem. Instead of "My Country 'Tis of Thee," he sang "God Save the Queen."

Bragg parked in a lot near Wall Street and carried the oilskin package from the car. He walked briskly to the Nostrum Building, the morning sun glinting off the cloisonne flag button on his lapel. He didn't notice-or perhaps care-that the American flag was upside down.

As he climbed the short broad steps to the Nostrum entrance, a taxi pulled up and a man in a business suit alighted, clutching a paper-wrapped package similar to Bragg's. He, too, wore an American flag on his lapel. It, too, was upside down.

Bragg waited for the man to approach the lobby.

"Bragg," he said, low-voiced. "Commanding."

"Braintree, sir. I hope I'm not late."

"Let us see for ourselves, shall we?"

In the Nostrum lobby, six others stood about, looking at watches, all dressed in business clothes and all clutching packages of various sorts close to their upside-down U.S. flag buttons.

Bragg strode up to the knot of expectant-faced men. They were a tall lot, sound of limb, he saw. Well-bred, and fighters to a man-if William Bragg was any judge of men.

"Colonel William Talbot Bragg here," he said, executing a sharp salute. When his right hand snapped to his forehead, it showed palm-out.

The others returned identical awkward salutes.

"All ready, then?" Bragg asked.

"Right, sir," they whispered.

"Follow me, and step smartly," Bragg said, leading them to the elevators. The next available cage was empty. They stepped aboard, and as it ascended, the men hastily removed their outer clothing to reveal cotton waistcoats and white breeches. The package wrapping tore under busy fingers and dropped to the floor like paper scabs. Those who came in business suits donned red coats with royal-blue regimental facings. White-powdered wigs and black cocked hats went on their heads.

When the overhead indicator flashed that they had reached the eighth floor, they were grimly checking their Sterling machine pistols.

The steel doors rolled apart and Bragg exited first.

"Look smart now, lads," he barked.

The others jumped out and formed a line on either side of him. Their gun muzzles rose. Fingers caressed triggers.

Then, like a sinuous red centipede, the line of men advanced down the corridor to the Nostrum trading room.

The Master of Sinanju heard the sounds of automatic weapons as they penetrated the soundproofed sanctity of his office. He came to his feet as if sprung from a box. Glass shattered. A hole punched in the door, exploding the insulated window behind his aged head.

His hand reached for the doorknob. But the door flew inward. A red-suspendered trader flung himself in.

"What is wrong?" Chiun demanded, trying to see past him.

"It's a massacre!"

"What kind?"

"A real one. They're slaughtering the floor."

The Master of Sinanju flew past the man and took in the awful sight of his trading room as glass partitions shivered and sprayed shards under punishing bursts of automatic-weapons fire.

The firing was coming from a handful of red-costumed gunmen who stood ruler-straight, like a firing squad, inside the door.

"Take that, you traitors!" one shouted. He wore the gold-fringed epaulets of an officer. The stringy fringe shivered in sympathy to his firing.

Huddling traders crawled for safety before the Master of Sinanju's outraged eyes. Faith Davenport squeezed herself into a corner, crying, "I'm not a trader! I'm a secretary! Please don't shoot me."

A palm-size shard of glass flicked toward Chiun. He caught it, redirecting its flight with a casual continuous gesture. The shard ended up in the face of one of the red-coated assailants, bisecting it with mathematical precision.

He dropped his weapon and eased himself onto the rug to die, shivering from polished toe to powdered wig.

"I am Chiun!" the Master of Sinanju cried above the carnage. "Perhaps it is me you seek with your cowardly bullets. "

"That's the one," the officer said, pointing. "Take him, lads. "

The firing stopped, the smoking muzzles focusing on Chiun, who took a single step forward.

Remo Williams finished hiding his bear suit under the passenger seat of his car and got out. He walked toward the Nostrum Building, a mass of computer printouts clutched in his hand.

The lobby was calm when he entered. But when an elevator opened, it spilled terrified Nostrum workers, who fought and clawed at one another to escape the cage.

Remo grabbed one by the suspenders and demanded, "What the hell is going on?"

"We're getting murdered!" he said, tearing free.

Remo dropped the suspenders and called after him, "Maybe it's only a correction."

He shrugged, and took the elevator. He was anxious to show Chiun what he had found at Looncraft's office.

Two floors below the Nostrum office suite, the tang of gunsmoke infiltrated the elevator. Remo dropped to one knee and got ready, in case the doors opened on an ambush.

He was unprepared for being knocked off his feet by a torrent of stampeding Nostrum workers.

"What's going on?" he shouted as the doors closed and the cage sank.

"Massacre!" several voices wailed at once. One of them he recognized. Pushing his way toward it, he took Faith Davenport by the arm.

"What's happened?" Then Remo noticed the blood on his clutching hand. It was coming from Faith's torn sleeve.

"Machine guns," Faith gulped between breaths. "It was horrible. They're killing traders for no reason."

"What about Chiun?" Remo asked urgently as the car opened on the lobby.

"He's fighting them. Oh, poor chief!"

Just then a shattering of glass came from outside the building.

A scarlet figure struck the sidewalk with bone-pulverizing force. For a heartbeat of fear, Remo thought it was Chiun dressed in a scarlet kimono. But then he remembered that Chiun had worn emerald this morning.

Remo rushed out to the sidewalk, stopped, and turned the body over so he could see its face. There was no face to speak of-just a red ruin. It almost matched the long red coat with its regimental facings and large silver buttons.

Then a white-powdered wig plopped on the face, covering it.

"That's one of them," Faith said, cupping her mouth in her hands.

"One of what? He looks like an extra in a historical movie. "

"One of the killers. They kept calling us 'traders' like it was a dirty word."

Remo reacted to the first concussion before the sound of the exploding window glass warned that another costumed killer was on his way down. He hustled Faith back into the lobby. The second body landed beside the first, but Remo didn't wait to see it hit. He flashed inside an elevator, stabbing the eighth-floor button impatiently and saying, "Come on! Come on!"

This time he heard gunfire on the way up. It was sporadic.

Remo charged out of the elevator without regard for his own safety. His eyes were wide, taking in everything. Time seemed to slow down, but he was moving like a flash of light up the corridor, every sense attuned to his surroundings.

Two red-coated gunmen suddenly came in his direction. They were marching backward, shoulder to shoulder, their pistols making short spiteful sounds at whatever they were in retreat from.

Remo skidded to a stop and let them come to him.

"Curse you, ye heathen wog!" one of them spat. He wore gold epaulets on his shoulders.

Remo waited until he was almost on him before he tapped him on the epaulet. The man whirled as if electrified, his lips peeled back to expose snarling teeth.

Remo broke every tooth in his mouth with a quick upward stroke of his hand. The officer dropped his machine pistol and grabbed his throat. He began vomiting teeth. Remo left him to that and shattered the other man's kneecaps with two rapid-fire kicks.

He swept past them and into the trading room.

There the Master of Sinanju had another gunman by the throat. The man was on his knees, so he and Chiun were eye-to-eye. Chiun was leaning into his stranglehold and the man's face was purpling like an animated bruise.

"I got two," Remo called, looking around the room. He saw bodies. More red coats. But several bloody Nostrum employees too.

Chiun looked up from his work. "Do any of them live?"

"Who?"

"The vicious ones."

"Yeah, I didn't waste them."

"Then we do not need this dog," Chiun said, snapping the struggling man's neck with a quick sideways motion. Chiun kicked the twitching corpse away.

Remo went among the wounded, feeling for pulses. He found few. From outside came the whine of approaching sirens.

"That's probably the police," Remo said quickly. " I can't stick around. My face would end up on every newscast from here to Alaska."

"There is time yet," Chiun returned. "We must learn who these savages are."

Remo followed Chiun out to the corridor, where the officer had finished emptying the contents of his stomach onto the rug. He whimpered as he tried to pick his teeth out from a sour puddle of cream-of-asparagus soup.

The other man was moaning as he clutched his shattered knees. Chiun stepped on his throat on his way to the other one. His windpipe collapsed without a sound. So did he.

Remo pulled the red-coated officer to his knees.

"Unless you want your brains to join your lunch," Remo said fiercely, "you're going to tell us who sent you and why. "

"Damn you, you traitor," the man said mushily through bleeding gums.

"I'm not a trader," Remo said. "And what have you got against traders?"

"He not say 'trader,' " Chiun intoned. "He is calling you a traitor." "How can you tell? Without teeth, he sounds like Grandma Moses."

"Because he also shouted 'traitor' when he had his teeth," Chiun added. "Your name, dog."

"Bragg, William. Colonel."

"And who is your master?"

" I am pleased to serve on Her Majesty's Cornwallis Guard, wog."

Chiun slapped the bloody sneer from Bragg's face.

"Call me not a wog, murderer."

Bragg fell silent. His eyes were sullen.

" I asked you to name your master," Chiun repeated sternly.

" I owe my allegiance to the queen," Bragg said sullenly.

Remo looked to Chiun. " I just came from Looncraft's office. He wasn't there. So I left a message. I think this is his answer."

"There is one way to find out," Chiun said, girding his emerald skirts.

He made a pass at Bragg's face with one long-nailed hand, his hazel eyes hard and glittering.

"Know, murderer," he intoned, "that any one of these nails can inflict exquisite pain. But for you, I shall employ them all."

"Do your worst," Bragg spat.

And Chiun's hand clutched the man's face. His nails dug in at brow, cheeks, and jaw. Bragg threw his head back in anguish. His howl actually caused hanging glass in the next room to fall to the floor.

"Speak!" Chiun demanded. "Who sent you?"

"I . . . don't know . . . name," Bragg screeched. "I am a soldier!"

Chiun's nails dug in more deeply. Bragg threshed and fought, but the old Oriental's grasp was unshakable.

"Damn you!" he cried. "Curse your black heathen soul!"

" I don't think he knows," Remo said unfeelingly.

"Then he will suffer," spat Chiun.

But Bragg did not suffer. He suddenly clutched up and his bloodshot eyes began to jerk about in his head. His arms flapped like a wounded bird trying to fly. His kneeling legs went slack.

Then all movement ceased, and the Master of Sinanju realized he was holding up inert flesh.

"Dead?" Remo asked.

Chiun nodded. "His wicked heart could not stand the strain, he has dropped his body."

Chiun released Colonel William Bragg's head. It swayed forward with sickening slowness. Bragg hit the rug with his face. His body curled like a hunched red question mark.

Down the corridor, the humming elevator doors released a cacophony of shouting voices.

"The cops," Remo said. "I gotta go."

" I am going with you," Chiun said.

"No, you gotta keep Nostrum going. Just leave me out of it. I'll be at the hotel. Check with me after this is over."

And Remo drifted back into the trading room. He stepped out through a shattered window and used the molding between windows to get him to the roof. There he walked to the back of the building, where the alley below was empty of official vehicles.

Remo began his spiderlike descent to the ground, his face hard.

Chapter 18

Dr. Harold W. Smith was monitoring the stock market when three things happened simultaneously.

His secretary buzzed him.

The first bulletin telling of the massacres at Nostrum, Ink, flashed on his computer.

And the news of P. M. Looncraft's successful takeover of the Global Communications Conglomerate appeared beside the first bulletin.

For a rare moment, Smith sat paralyzed, uncertain what to deal with first.

His eyes on the screen, he fumbled for his intercom.

"Yes?" he snapped harshly.

"Mr. Winthrop calling. Again."

"I've no time right now. Tell him I'll call him back."

"Yes, sir."

Smith's widening eyes followed the twin bulletins. As an electronic facsimile of the New York Stock Exchange broadtape marched across the top of the screen, two text windows below it scrolled out news digests.

Smith tried to read them both simultaneously. As a consequence, he had the momentary impression that P.M. Looncraft had massacred the stockholders of Global Communications Conglomerate.

Smith squeezed his eyes tightly, striking a key that froze the Looncraft bulletin. He recalled the Nostrum digest from the top, and started over.

According to the bulletin, there had been a massacre on the trading floor of Nostrum, Ink, resulting in casualties. The assailants had all been killed during the attack, which the New York police were blaming on disgruntled investors wiped out by Dark Friday. The CEO of Nostrum was answering questions, but was unable to shed any more light on the attack.

Smith exhaled a sigh of relief. That meant Chiun had not been harmed. There was no mention of Remo. Another relief. No mention meant that Remo was neither dead nor being questioned. That was all Smith needed. He had long ago programmed his computers to flag any news reports of anyone named Remo, regardless of last name. Five minutes per day were spent scanning news reports of newsworthy Remos from coast to coast, but it was worth it.

At the end of the digest, there was a curious addendum. It was a single sentence: "Police could not explain why the assailants were dressed in pre-Revolutionary military uniforms."

Smith blinked. "Pre-Revolutionary?" he muttered to himself. "Which revolution? Russian? Chinese? Filipino?"

That was one of the problems of relying on news digests. Important details were often squeezed out by the automatic digest program.

The report on the Global acquisition was even more astonishing. According to it, P. M. Looncraft had announced an eighty-dollar-per-share buy-out offer for Global Communications Conglomerate. He had obtained financing from the Lippincott Mercantile Bank. And within an hour of the public announcement, arrangements had been made to obtain large blocks of GLB owned by Crown Acquisitions, Limited, and the infamous DeGoone Slickens. The financial world was abuzz, the report concluded, with the speed with which Looncraft had obtained Slickens' holdings, because it gave him the edge he needed to absorb Global.

"This is very odd," Harold Smith told himself.

The intercom buzzed again.

"Yes?" Smith said distractedly.

"It's Mr. Winthrop again. He says it's urgent."

"Urgent? Ask him his business."

Smith recalled the Looncraft bulletin once again and went through it. His secretary's voice interrupted once more.

"He says it's personal and private, but won't say any more."

"Take his number," Smith snapped. "I'll get back to him. "

"Yes, Dr. Smith."

By the time Dr. Smith finished rereading the Looncraft bulletin, he had already forgotten about Winthrop's call.

Hours later, he still had not returned it, as other bulletins came to his attention. P. M. Looncraft had moved quickly to take control of GLB, promising that new programming would begin at once, and would consist of significant blocks of foreign programming designed to broaden America's cultural horizons. Existing news programs would continue as before, Looncraft had assured Global News Network subscribers.

On the Nostrum massacre, the first identifications were coming in on the dead. The assailants who had been positively identified included a Connecticut real-estate broker named William Bragg, a Princeton classics professor named Milton Everett, and other people of middle- and uppermiddle-class backgrounds. They appear unconnected except that they all fitted the typical stock-market-investor profile.

There were no further reports about their odd costuming, and Smith decided it was probably one of the wild details that often find their way into early news accounts, and usually prove erroneous.

Smith put in a call to the President of the United States after five o'clock.

"Mr. President," he began, "I am updating you on the Nostrum operation. As you know, the market has stabilized."

"What's this massacre thing about, Smith?" the President asked in his twangy voice.

"I am unsure. My reports indicate the assailants were disgruntled investors. This often happens in the wake of drastic market upheavals. My operatives are safe and I expect Nostrum to continue to act as a moderating influence on the market."

"Good. As soon as this thing settles down, start selling off its holdings. We can't have all this government money tied up in private enterprise."

"I understand, Mr. President. Expect another update within the next forty-eight hours, regardless of events."

Smith had no sooner hung up the dialless red telephone than his intercom buzzed like an angry hornet.

"Yes, Mrs. Mikulka?" Smith said in a much calmer voice than before.

"The downstairs guard wants you to know that they are on their way up."

"I understand," Smith replied. Remo and Chiun.

"And Mr. Winthrop is on line two. Do you want to take it?"

Smith hesitated. He had meant to deal with that annoying intrusion, but not with Remo and Chiun on their way to see him.

"Give him my apologies. I'll try later."

Smith quickly got out of his chair and pushed it aside. He pulled the wheelchair behind his desk so hastily he cracked his shin. When he sat down, he really needed its support.

Remo and Chiun entered his office, grim-faced.

"I have heard the reports," Smith told them without preamble.

"Barbarians!" Chiun said angrily. "They have always been barbarians!"

"Who have?" Smith asked.

"Let me tell it," Remo said quickly. "Here's the scoop, Smith. I went over to Looncraft's to put a scare into him, but he wasn't in."

"I know. He was putting together a deal to take over GLB. He succeeded."

"The fiend!" Chiun said.

"I left Looncraft a message," Remo continued. "He must have got it, because before I got back to Nostrum, they'd been hit. It had to be Looncraft. Who else has a motive?"

"No, it was not Looncraft, despicable as he is," Chiun said. "His soldiers would have spoken his name rather than die in the agony I visited upon him."

" I still say it was Looncraft. Who else is there?"

"There are the British," Chiun spat. "Rome should have slain them all when they ruled that miserable island."

"The British?" Smith said in a dubious voice.

"They wore British army uniforms."

"The new reports said nothing about that," Smith blurted. "Were they Royal Army? Or SAS?"

"Not modern military uniforms," Remo explained. "Revolutionary uniforms. You know, the kind the British wore when they fought Washington, when they were called lobsterbacks."

"That makes absolutely no sense," Smith said. "Those uniforms are two centuries out of date."

"Don't ask me to explain it, but there it is," Remo added. "I saw them with my own eyes."

"The police theorize that they were crazed investors bankrupted by the market meltdown," Smith said.

"Makes perfect sense to me," Remo said. "One kept shouting at us, calling us 'traders.' "

"No, 'traitors,' " Chiun snapped. "I heard them clearly. They accused my minions of being traitors."

Smith's frown furrowed like cloth. "Traitors? To what?"

"They didn't say," Chiun admitted.

"Maybe they were on some kind of patriotic kick."

"I have a report that the police found discarded clothing in the Nostrum lobby," Smith said slowly. "The jackets all had U.S.-flag pins on the lapels."

"They were British," Chiun insisted.

"They had American accents," Remo said. "Will you get off this kick of yours?"

"This is not a kick. My workers have been killed, my business is in ruins, and those responsible will have to account to me."

"Please, please, both of you," Smith said, lifting placating hands. "Let us stay on the subject."

"Fine," Remo said, throwing a flapping length of computer printout onto Smith's desk, "Check this out. I got it off Looncraft's computer."

Smith took up the sheets. He carefully pulled away the perforated carrier strips and dropped them in a wastebasket before looking at them, causing Remo to roll his eyes in impatience.

Smith lifted the continuous form to his eyes. It was filled with a double-column list of names and numbers. One column was headed "LOYALISTS." The other said "CONSCRIPTS."

Smith scanned the list. The names meant nothing to him. The numbers might have been social-security numbers. Then he realized that could not be. They were one digit too long. They might be long-distance phone numbers, he realized.

Smith looked up and adjusted his glasses. "These names mean nothing to me," he admitted.

"Keep looking. Your name is on the list."

Startled, Smith returned to the list. He found his name on the third sheet, under "CONSCRIPTS": Harold W. Smith.

"Not me," Smith said. "The world is full of Harold Smiths."

"But not Harold W. Smiths."

"It does not say Dr. Harold W. Smith," Smith said reasonably. "And there is no reason I would be on a Looncraft, Dymstar d client list. I do not invest in the stock market."

"Well, there's more," Remo said. "The computer I got that off had a chess move displayed on the screen."

"Yes?" Smith said doubtfully.

"That Reuters guy." Remo snapped his fingers impatiently. "What's his name?"

"Plum, O brilliant one," Chiun sniffed.

"Right, him. When I cornered Plum in his office, he was on the phone. He said 'Knight to Queen's Bishop Three' before he hung up. Said he played phone chess-if there is such a thing."

"And Looncraft plays computer chess?" Smith asked.

"That's right. Get it? There's a connection."

Smith shook his head. "Coincidence. Many people play chess by long distance. Playing through the mail, for example, is quite common."

Remo's face fell. "I'm telling you, there's more to this. And it connects Looncraft with the Reuters guys."

"Do not listen to him," Chiun said firmly. "When was the last time Remo was correct in anything?"

Remo opened his mouth to retort. He blinked. Nothing came to mind, so he shut it unhappily. He fell onto the couch and folded his arms under his glowering face.

Smith addressed the Master of Sinanju.

"Master Chiun," he said. "The stock-market situation is stabilizing. With the killings at Nostrum, I suggest you begin selling off your stock holdings carefully over the next several weeks. If there is no more volatility, then we will close down Nostrum."

"I will not close down Nostrum until my employees have been avenged," Chiun said harshly.

"If the police reports are correct-"

"And they are not!" Chiun snapped.

"-then the massacre was an unfortunate aftermath of the market meltdown," Smith finished stubbornly.

"If you will not listen to reason," Chiun said huffily, "then I will prove it to you." Chiun turned. "Come, Remo."

Remo paused by the door on his way out.

"If you take another look at that list," he said evenly, "you'll see that the President of the United States is on the list, too."

Smith looked. He found the President's name under

"CONSCRIPTS. "

"What of it?" he asked Remo blankly.

"And the Vice-President's name."

Smith looked again. He found the Vice-President listed under "LOYALISTS."

"Looncraft, Dymstar d is very prestigious," Smith said calmly. "It does not surprise me to find their names on a list of the firm's clients. I see other prominent names here. Businessmen. Educators. Here is a senator from Illinois. And a Maine congressman."

"Well, it means something," Remo said.

"Yes," Smith returned coolly. "It means they are LD "

"Fine," Remo said. "Be that way. Just remember what I told you."

"I will," Harold W. Smith promised.

Remo slammed the door after him. It sounded like an anvil falling.

Chapter 19

"It's Looncraft. It was Looncraft all along."

"And I say it is the British."

"That's crapola. Whoever's causing this, they almost dragged down the British economy along with our own."

Remo folded his arms angrily and looked out the circular porthole at the clouds sliding below the Nostrum corporate jet's silvery wing.

The Master of Sinanju sat on a mat in the middle of the cabin, disdaining the leather chairs. One yellow hand rested on a plastic-wrapped package beside him.

"You yourself once said that Looncraft was British," he pointed out.

Remo frowned. "No, I said he sounded British."

"Ah-hah!" Chiun cried triumphantly.

"That didn't come out right," Remo admitted. "He talked British. He used British expressions. But so does Smith from time to time. I don't know. It's probably New England talk."

"I have sojourned in America nearly two decades," Chiun said quietly. "Yet I am still Korean, not American. No one would dispute that."

"Least of all me," Remo said, looking toward Chiun. "What's in the plastic bag, anyway?"

"That is not your concern," Chiun sniffed, pushing the package behind him.

"I wondered what you were doing in that record store, back in Rye. I never figured you for a music fan. Are you back in love with Barbra Streisand?"

"Cheeta Ching is my one true love."

"Well, you acted pretty mysterious, having me wait outside while you shopped."

"I did not shop," Chiun spat. "Americans shop. I purchase. Do not try to make of me an American. I am not. I am Korean."

"No argument. You are definitely Korean."

"The British were bad enough in their day, but Americans are the lowest."

"Where do you get that crap?" Remo wanted to know.

"When the British had an empire, they tried to force their will on the rest of the world. Spreading their poison."

"I think the opium trade is a thing of the past, Little Father," Remo pointed out. "Lyndon LaRouche to the contrary notwithstanding."

"That was the least of their poisons. I am referring to their ruinous philosophy."

"Give me a clue. Grade school was a long time ago."

"Liberty." Chiun spat the word as if it seared his tongue.

"And what is so bad about liberty?"

"It weakens the social structure and leads to the anarchy of choice."

"Some people like choice."

"The worst thing about British liberty was that it was limited to the British," Chiun said bitterly. "They ruined India-not that the Indians had not already begun the task. They enslaved China with their opium-not that the Chinese weren't addled to begin with. They looted Egypt of their most magnificent treasures-what little the Egyptians had bothered to preserve. They called this wholesale theft their white man's burden. The only thing burdensome about it was the carrying away of their pelf-which they usually forced natives to do for them."

"Do I have to listen to you rant? So you don't like the British. It doesn't make them the bad guys."

"But their worst crime is that they created the Americans, who have replaced the British as the supposed masters of the world. Liberty. I spit upon it." Chiun expectorated on the rug, forcing Remo to turn away.

"It's your corporate jet," he said wearily. He wondered how much longer this would go on.

"That is all right," Chiun replied. " I have lackeys to clean it up. White lackeys. Heh heh heh. White lackeys."

Chiun cackled to himself for a moment, then went on.

"Do not think that I consider the British completely without redeeming qualities. Once they were an acceptable client. Henry the Eighth. Now, there was a monarch. Rude of speech and forever belching from every orifice, true. But he knew how to rule. No, the royal family have become so much popular entertainment, accepting unearned money from the royal treasury like an American ghetto family on welfare. This is one reason why the House of Sinanju has had so little work with the House of Windsor."

Remo threw up his hands. "Another country heard from," he said. "Why don't we simply pack it in for the rest of the flight? Is there a TV in this thing?"

"Somewhere," Chiun said, waving one long-nailed hand vaguely.

Remo went in search of a television. He opened up a row of maplewood cupboards, finding drinking glasses in one, bottles of purified water in another. The third opened on a small TV screen. Remo hit the "On" button and changed channels impatiently.

"Why do you bother?" Chiun said querulously. "There is never anything good on anymore. Not since your daytime dramas began wallowing in sex."

"Wait, here's the Global News Network," Remo said. "Let's see how they report the news of their own takeover." Remo settled back in his seat to watch.

The Global News Network call sign showed for a moment and an impeccable voice sounding very much like Alaistair Cooke said, "Next, a retrospective on British-American relations entitled The Mother Country."

"Auugh!" Chiun said, clapping his hands over his seashell ears. "I cannot bear to watch."

"So don't," Remo said, popping the top off a bottle of mineral water and drinking without benefit of a glass.

The narrator's mellow voice launched into a history of early British-American relations, the founding of the early American colonies, and what the narrator referred to in a deepening and doleful voice as "the unfortunate rebellion."

"Does he mean the American Revolution?" Remo wondered aloud.

Chiun's hands pressed against his ears even more tightly. His annoyed eyes closed.

The narrator's voice lifted while describing the eventual forgiveness the crown showed to the wayward American colonies, despite their ungratefulness and the particular provocations that led to the War of 1812, during which the good English refrained from making war on the childlike Americans.

"Am I missing something here?" Remo growled, sitting up. "What happened to burning Washington, D.C., to the ground? And the impressment of Americans into the British navy?"

"I am not listening to this," Chiun said.

"You'd better. Check this out. It's bullshit."

Curious, Chiun uncovered his ears.

"Too late," Remo said. "Now he's talking about the British-American alliance during World War I."

"Paugh," Chiun spat, re-covering his ears. "This is all King John's fault. Had he been a true monarch, he would have run those upstart lords through the heart and buried them with the ashes of their Magna Carta."

"You know, Chiun-"

" I cannot hear you," Chiun said.

"You may have something, after all."

"What?" Chiun said, his hands dropping.

"Global never showed this kind of stuff before. And didn't Smith say that Looncraft was importing foreign broadcasts for the network?"

"Yes. And nothing is more foreign than a British program. "

"Maybe to you, but not to me."

The program ended on a wistful note, lamenting the separation of the poor colonies from Mother England. The narrator sniffed and reached for a handkerchief, which he used to dab at his eyes.

" I can't believe what I'm seeing," Remo said.

A news break followed. It led off with a soundbite from Britain's House of Commons, shown over a still photograph of Parliament's richly appointed chambers. The prime minister was addressing the lower house to a chorus of boos and hoots of derision coming from what the newscaster described as the Labour back bench, mixed with cheers of "Hear, hear!" from the Tories.

"Tories," Remo said. " I thought they died out after 1776. "

"The Black Death still thrives in certain backwaters too," Chiun noted curtly.

Then there was a clip of the chancellor of the exchequer's soothing voice pronouncing the latest economic earthquake as passed.

When the news ended, Remo asked, "What happened to America? Global is supposed to be an American station. Didn't we make any news today?"

The next program was called Canada, Gentle Northern Giant. Remo got up and turned off the set with an angry punch that cracked the screen.

"I think we should call Smith on this," he said firmly.

" I leave that to you, my secretary."

"I'm not that kind of secretary," Remo snapped, grabbing a phone off the cabin wall.

"Then why are you making the call?" Chiun said, smiling broadly.

Dr. Harold W. Smith entered his modest Tudor-style home in Rye, New York, his eyes bleary from a full day before a computer screen. He clutched his ever-present worn briefcase in one hand.

"Maude?" he called.

"In the den, Harold," Mrs. Harold W. Smith's frumpy voice returned. It was clogged with emotion and Smith moved quickly into the den.

There Mrs. Smith was dabbing her eyes with paper tissue. She was seated before the television set in an overstuffed chair. The set was black and white. Harold Smith did not believe that color was worth the extra money. Black and white was just as watchable.

" I just watched the most interesting program," Mrs. Smith sniffled.

Harold Smith watched the news break, which began with the Parliament report and concluded with the chancellor of the exchequer.

"Must be sunspots," he remarked. "This is BBC programming. "

"It's that Global network," Maude Smith told him. "They have the most wonderful new programs."

"Global?" Harold Smith said. His eyes grew intent as Canada, Gentle Northern Giant began with an upper-class British voice-over against a map of Canada, which extended deep into the Ohio Valley.

"Once this gentle giant of a nation stretched from the Arctic Circle down to include present-day Ohio, but rather than enter into conflict with its beloved southern neighbor, the formerly rambunctious colonies, Canada in its infinite wisdom ceded all that valuable land rather than shed blood."

"I didn't know that," Mrs. Smith gasped.

"You didn't know it," Harold Smith snapped, "because it's not true. We fought a war more than a century ago over that border."

"Do you mind if I watch the rest of this before I put on supper?" Mrs. Smith said, as if she hadn't heard.

"I won't be eating supper home tonight," Harold Smith said, turning on his heel.

"Thank you, Harold," Mrs. Smith said absently, her voice lost in the impeccable consonants of the narrator's voice.

On his way back to Folcroft Sanitarium, Smith heard the cellular telephone in his briefcase buzz.

Smith answered it with crisp authority.

It was Remo.

"Smith," Remo said. "I was just watching Global, and you'll never guess what."

"I know what. I saw it too."

"Which program?"

"Canada, Gentle Northern Giant."

"I bailed out when that one came on. This is crazy."

"No, it's propaganda. Looncraft is up to something."

"You think Chiun's wild British plot is our answer?"

"It makes no sense. I see no point to it, but I'm on my way back to Folcroft to dig further."

"Want me to lean on Looncraft?" Remo asked.

"Yes," Smith said, tight-lipped. "Don't forget the suit."

"How could I?" Remo said acidly. "I scratch myself every time I think of it."

Smith hung up the phone and pressed the accelerator. He went right to the edge of the speed limit, which for Harold W. Smith was tantamount to speeding.

Simultaneously, miles away in Manhattan, P. M. Looncraft picked up the telephone in his rapidly darkening office. It was after-hours, but Looncraft had been too busy to leave early. He pointed a remote control at a corner TV set and turned off Canada, Gentle Northern Giant. He had already seen it. In fact, he had supervised its filming, as he had other documentaries that would soon air nationwide over the Global News Network.

"Ah, quality programming," he muttered to himself as he punched out a number. "It's a breath of fresh air."

"Pugh here," a young man's voice said.

"Pugh, this is Looncraft. I have been watching tonight's lineup. Quite good."

"Thank you, Mr. Looncraft. I'm pleased you like it."

"Like it? I love it. This dreary land has been culturally starved far too long, don't you agree?"

"Absolutely," Pugh said nervously. "When are you going to come down to meet with the staff?"

"Not soon, Pugh. Things are hectic right now. I just wanted you to know that you have my full confidence as director of programming."

"Thank you, Mr. Looncraft," Pugh said quickly. "I'm very relieved. Some of us had expected you to install your own people."

"If something's not broken, I don't fix it. And I would never replace good Anglo-Saxon stock with some foreign-born person."

Pugh's nervous laughter returned. "As a matter of fact, I am of British extraction. But my family's been in America for over a hundred years."

"It's the blood, man. The blood always tells. Princeton?"

"Yale, actually. "

"Good school. It's not Princeton, but then, what is? Carry on, Pugh."

"I will."

"And, Pugh?"

"Yes?"

"If any of your staff complain about the format change, fire them instantly."

"I won't hesitate, Mr. Looncraft."

Smiling bloodlessly, P. M. Looncraft went to his deskside computer and logged onto the Mayflower Descendants bulletin board.

He pecked out rapid words: "SUCCESS. READY FOR NEXT PHASE."

The reply was almost instantaneous: "PROCEED."

Looncraft logged off and went to his desk Rolodex. He picked through the cards until he came to the home number of the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange.

"P. M. Looncraft here," he said crisply. "Paul, I have just received the most disturbing news. It seems there is a rumor about of a problem with tomorrow's auction of treasury bonds. A scarcity of buyers."

"My God," the chairman sputtered. "That's never happened before!"

"It may mean that the investors who fled the market are worried about the government's solvency. The deficit, the trade imbalance, and things of that sort."

"I'll look into it. But if no one shows, and the word gets out..."

"It would represent the ultimate failure of faith," Looncraft put in solemnly. "The market will crash. And we can't have that."

"Thank you for alerting me, P.M."

"Think nothing of it. Cheerio."

P. M. Looncraft hung up, rubbing his lantern jaw thoughtfully. The chairman would check with his usual sources, who in turn would go to theirs. Soon it would be all over the street. The media would seize upon it like a pit bull. No amount of denial would kill the story once that happened.

Then, like a house of cards, the American economy would begin to totter.

P. M. Looncraft left his office feeling quite chipper, unaware that he had forgotten to remove his powdered wig.

He missed the bear by only six minutes.

Chapter 20

Remo Williams stood in P. M. Looncraft's empty office, redolent of formaldehyde, trying to figure out how to scratch a sudden itch behind his left knee without bending over and popping the seams in his bear suit. He focused his breathing, and the nerves behind his knee went quiescent.

Then he got an itch under his right armpit. That itch, he simply scratched.

The office suite of Looncraft, Dymstar d was completely unoccupied. Remo clawed through Looncraft's Rolodex until he found the man's home phone number.

The butler answered. "I am sorry, but Mr. Looncraft is not in."

"Are you sure about that?" Remo asked.

"I beg your pardon?" the butler said unhappily. "Who is calling?"

"How's your back?" Remo asked coolly.

The butler's tone of voice lost its aplomb. "Oh! It's you. Mr. Looncraft is not in. Really, really not in. Please believe me, sir, when I say that I do not know when to expect him."

"I believe you," Remo said unhappily. He hung up.

Disgusted, Remo left the Looncraft Tower and joined Chiun, who sat quietly in the passenger seat of Remo's Buick. It was parked on a side street.

Remo got behind the wheel. He had to slouch to avoid crushing the ornamental bear's head mounted on his hairy head.

"Looncraft's gone. The whole place is deserted."

"Let us go, then, to his home."

"I got a better idea," Remo said, starting the car. "Let's see Faith."

"That is a better idea?" Chiun asked as Remo pulled away from the curb.

"I called his house. He's not home either."

The blue-blazered security guard at Faith's apartment-house lobby looked up at Remo and Chiun as they entered and assumed a smirking demeanor.

"Back again, I see," he chirped. "And who is this?" He pointed to Chiun. Remo had left his bear suit in the car. He dug into the small of his back with a thumb, pulling out a stiff hair.

"My chaperon," Remo told him.

"Well, I'm afraid you brought him out of the rest home for nothing," the guard said. "Miss Davenport left strict instructions not to be disturbed. She was caught up in that Nostrum massacre, you know."

"She'll see us," Remo said firmly.

"Sorry," the guard said.

Chiun lifted on tiptoe so he could see over the top of the high circular security desk.

"I demand you announce us, hireling, for I am Chiun, chief of Nostrum."

"No can do."

"Sure, you can," Remo said brightly as he vaulted the horseshoe-shaped desk.

The guard reached for a buzzer as Remo joined him. Remo hit the buzzer first. It sprang from its mounting like a jackin-the-box.

"Broke," Remo said. "Now, announce us."

"No, I will not," the guard said shortly.

"Then I'll do it," Remo said. He went to the fax machine, found Faith's name beside a speed-dial button, and pressed it.

"That won't do any good," the guard sneered. "You have to put something in the fax."

"I was coming to that," Remo said, taking the guard by the scruff of his blazer. Remo mashed the protesting guard's face into the fax window and held it there.

"Anytime you feel like pressing the appropriate button," Remo sang out, "feel free."

The guard stabbed the "Send" button.

Remo held him there until the phone rang. He scooped it up.

"This is Miss Davenport in Twenty-one-C. I just received this weird fax. Is anything wrong?"

"This is Remo. I guess the guard pressed the wrong button or something. I'm down in the lobby. Can I come up?"

"Up?" Faith said pleasurably. "You can come up, down, or anywhere you want."

"I'm on my way," Remo said, wondering if he had made a mistake.

Faith met them at the door, wearing only a smile and holding up two bottles of mineral water.

Remo took in the sight of her nakedness without surprise and with both hands stuffed into his chino pockets.

"Thank goodness you're safe," she cooed.

"Chiun and I are safe," Remo corrected, pulling the Master of Sinanju into view by his sleeve.

Faith's eyes went to Chiun. Chiun's hands went over his eyes in mortification. He gasped.

The stars went out of Faith's eyes and she made an eek of a surprise noise like a cartoon mouse. She hopped back behind the door.

"Why don't I handle this alone?" Remo suggested.

"I did not know she was like that," Chiun said, taking his hands from his shocked eyes.

"Must be the stress of high finance."

"I will wait here," Chiun said. "Do it quickly."

"It may take a while to pump her."

"That was not what I meant," Chiun said disgustedly, turning his back.

Remo closed the door behind him. "Hello?" he called.

Faith came out of the bathroom holding a towel around her shapely body.

"Where's the chief?" she asked.

"There are some things that upset him. He decided to wait in the hall."

The smile returned to Faith's face. She dropped the towel, revealing, among other things, possible evidence that she was a natural blond.

"Let's not keep him waiting," she said, reaching for Remo's hand, the better to guide him into the bedroom. Remo kept his hand in his pocket.

"Actually, I came to ask you about Looncraft. I think he was behind the shooting today."

Faith stopped. "Looncraft? Why?"

"We don't know why. But it was something to do with the British. Do you remember anything that would connect Looncraft to the British government or any British agent or interest?"

"I doubt it. He was always humming patriotic songs under his breath. You know, 'My Country', 'Tis of Thee,' 'The Star-Spangled Banner.' Stuff like that."

"Doesn't add up," Remo muttered. "Are you sure about that?"

"I think better when I'm lying down," Faith suggested, arching a provocative eyebrow.

Remo sighed. "Okay, whatever works."

Faith jumped onto the bed so hard she bounced. Remo sat on the edge. He was forced to take his hands out of his pockets. The sight of Remo's fingers sent Faith digging into the drawer of a side table.

"I know that Looncraft had a bug in his ear about people's ancestry," Faith said as she searched. "He asked me once if I had any English forebears."

"Do you?"

"Search me. I guess so. And German and Dutch and maybe a little French. Ah, here it is."

Faith took what Remo at first mistook for an individually wrapped Alka-Seltzer tablet in her mouth and tore the blue foil packet apart with perfect white teeth.

"What's that?" Remo asked.

Faith smiled. She dangled a yellowish rubbery ring under his nose.

Remo made a face. "I hate condoms."

"I believe in practicing safe sex," Faith told him, grabbing Remo by one thick wrist. "Now, put it on. It won't bite you. But I might," she added deliciously.

"First answer a few more questions. Think. Anything British about Looncraft?"

"Well," Faith said slowly, "I do remember one time I brought some reports into his office. He was at his computer. "

"The one on his desk?" Remo asked.

"No. Not the Telerate machine. The other one. He was glaring at something on the screen like he was angry at it. He muttered something about the London relay being down."

"The London relay? Do you remember what was on the screen?"

"Something about a king or queen, or both."

"Could it have been a chess move, like Bishop's King Twelve?"

"That's no chess move."

"Just answer the question."

"Yeah, I think it was a chess move. Satisfied? Can we play now?"

"A deal's a deal," Remo said without joy.

"Oh, goody," Faith cooed, grabbing his wrist again. "Close your eyes and I'll put it on for you."

"Shouldn't I undress first?" Remo wanted to know.

"No. This is my party. We play my way."

Remo closed his eyes. Faith took hold of his wrist. He heard the condom creak at it was unrolled. He frowned. He didn't feel his zipper slide down. But his forefinger felt suddenly tight.

"Open your eyes," Faith called musically.

Remo opened his eyes. He saw Faith sitting there, her eyes closed, her left wrist held out as an offering.

And Remo's right index finger was sheathed in pale yellowish lambskin.

Sighing, Remo began tapping Faith's wrist with it.

"I hate using these things," he groused.

Five boring minutes later, Remo left the apartment, his face at half-mast.

" I got something," he told Chiun.

"No doubt she did too," Chiun sniffed.

"Hey, I kept my pants on. Honest."

"Do not lie to me, Remo," Chiun scolded. "I heard her disgusting cries of ecstasy."

"Have it your way," Remo said. "Looncraft's getting his computer chess moves from London, or near London. Faith remembered him complaining about the London relay, whatever that is."

"Smith should know," Chiun said.

"We can call him from the Nostrum office," Remo suggested.

Harold W. Smith took the call in the near-darkness of the Folcroft office. The glowing green screen illuminated his pinched, unhealthy face.

"Smith? Remo. I got a lead. Those chess moves are coming from London."

Smith listened to Remo's story. "Take the next flight to London. "

"Then what?"

"Contact me when you get there," Smith said in a distant voice. "I have penetrated Looncraft's computer and believe I can break down his passwords."

"Shouldn't be too hard," Remo said airily. "I got a bunch of files to print out just by pounding a mess of keys all at once."

"I will await your call," Smith said, hanging up. He returned to his task and watched as the screen displayed single words in high-speed sequence. The Folcroft mainframe was attempting to feed the Looncraft, Dymstar d system every possible single-word password in the English language. It was just a matter of time.

The computer beeped and locked on the word "CROWN."

Smith tapped the 'Enter' key.

Columns of file names presented themselves to Harold Smith. He chose one at random. It was labeled "MAP." Smith accessed it with a keystroke.

The sight that greeted Harold Smith's eyes at first appeared commonplace. It was a greenish wire-frame map of the continental United States, divided by states.

Smith was about to abandon the file when he realized there was something odd about the state divisions. He tapped a key which magnified the map. He lost most of the West as it expanded, but the Eastern Seaboard showed quite clearly.

"What on earth?" Smith said to himself as he read the state names. At first he thought he was looking at a foreign-language map of America. On closer inspection he realized "Bolton" was the city of Boston. The name was written with the Old English long 's', which resembled an 'f'.

There were other differences. The border with Canada was hundreds of miles lower, cutting deep into Maine and the Great Lakes region. Vermont and New Hampshire were combined under the name New-Hampshire Grants. Massachusetts was bisected vertically. The western half was called Springfield and the eastern portion labeled New Ireland Protectorate. Rhode Island's capital was Providence-Plantations. Further south, there were other changes. Pennsylvania was Cornwallis. Virginia was Victoria. Washington, D.C., had been renamed Wellington. Miami was Kingsport.

"This is insane," Smith muttered, bringing the rest of the map into view again. He put his nose to the screen. Further west, the familiar squarish state lines had been redrawn into arbitrary zones bearing names such as King

John's Land, the Princess Diana Grants, New Wales, and, most bizarrely, the Benedict Arnold Mountains were where the Rocky Mountains should have been. Great Churchill Lake occupied the former site of Great Salt Lake.

California and Washington state did not exist under any name. Instead, British Columbia's southern border had been lowered all the way to Baja California. The entire territory was labeled "Dominion of Canada."

And across the entire length of the map, in Old English lettering, was the legend "UNITED COLONIES (CIRCA 1992)."

In one corner, a tiny notation mocked him: P. M. Looncraft, cart.

"My God!" Smith gasped. "How does that lunatic intend to make this happen?"

Smith abandoned the file and scanned the other file names. He called up the one called "CROWN," intrigued because it was also the password.

Smith got a table of organization for Crown Acquisitions, Limited. P. M. Looncraft was listed as president. There were two other names listed on its board of directors. Douglas Lippincott, whom Smith knew to be Looncrafts business banker, and, astonishingly, DeGoone Slickens.

"They're all in it together," Smith said. Then, in response to his own outburst, he asked the darkness. "But what are they in?"

Smith tried another file, this one called "GUARD."

This time, he got a roster, complete with military rankings, of something called the Cornwallis Guard.

"Cornwallis," Smith muttered. "He was the general who surrendered at Yorktown at the end of the American Revolution. "

Most of the roster names meant nothing to Smith. Except for seven of them. They were the killers from the Nostrum massacre. Smith saw that William Bragg was listed as a colonel.

Frowning, Smith abandoned the file and dug out the printout Remo had given him.

"Loyalists and conscripts," he muttered. He picked up the red telephone.

"What is it, Smith?" the President asked, out of breath. Obviously he had run into the Lincoln Bedroom to answer.

"Mr. President, I have nothing new to report," Smith told him. "But I do have a question."

"Shoot. "

"Are you a client of the investment brokerage of Looncraft, Dymstar d?"

"No. Why?"

"I can't tell you that," Smith said quickly. "Would you know if the Vice-President is one of their clients?"

"No idea. Want me to ask?"

"No," Smith said. "Do not even mention the name to him."

"Can I ask what this is all about?"

"No. "

"Well, is something wrong? You haven't lost the Social Security Trust Fund, have you?"

"No. It remains safe. For now. I must return to my work, Mr. President. I'll update you when I have something solid."

"But, Smith-"

Smith hung up, confident that the President, no matter how agitated, would not call back. He knew the ground rules. CURE was autonomous-a safeguard built in to protect the agency from being abused by a politically ruthless President.

Smith leaned back in his chair. A picture was beginning to form. No wonder Looncraft had acquired Slickens' interest in GLB so readily. They were in cahoots. Infamous business enemies on the surface, they were actually allies. As was Lippincott. Smith shuddered. The Lippincott family went back to the American Revolution, as did Looncraft's family. Slickens was another matter. He was from Texas. He didn't fit the profile.

Smith addressed his computer again. The night was young. He had much to do. But now he had the pieces. It was just a matter of fitting and refitting them until he had a coherent picture.

Chapter 21

"They are a gray people living in a gray land," Chiun was saying. The lights were low in the British Airways cabin. The window shades were lowered against the midAtlantic moonlight. The sound of the 747's engines had settled to a monotonous drone. "Gray and rude." Chiun's voice rose at that last, waking several dozing passengers.

A British Airways hostess came up the isle and bestowed upon Chiun an "I'm-embarrassed-to-bring-this-up, but" smile.

"Excuse me, luv," she said in an undertone, "but would you be a dear and lower your voice? Some of the others are trying to catch a bit of sleep."

"Be gone, daughter of Gaul."

"I'll talk to him," Remo said, smiling back with equal politeness.

"That's a dear. If you'd like more tea, let me know."

After the hostess had left, Chiun complained to Remo.

"Can you imagine the rudeness of that one?" he squeaked. "Interrupting our private conversation."

"You were disturbing the other passengers," Remo whispered back. "And I for one am getting tired of your carping. "

"I do not carp," Chiun said evenly. " I instruct. If we are to root out this foul plot, you must know the kind of people we are dealing with."

"I know what I'm dealing with," Remo said sourly. "I've been to England a couple of times. Without you. And I got along fine."

"How did you survive? The British know nothing of rice. They eat potatoes." Chiun spat the word like an epithet.

" I used to like potatoes when I was a kid," Remo said in a reasonable voice.

"What do children know? The English are the only people who consider the potato a delicacy. That is why their skins are so unhealthy. They eat too many potatoes, which they dig from the dirt."

"I thought it was the cloudy weather that made them pale. "

"A curse from the gods to punish them for excessive potato eating," Chiun sniffed.

Remo rolled his eyes. He noticed an empty seat across the aisle and decided to take it. Left alone, Chiun began to talk in a louder voice.

Remo tried to ignore Chiun's rantings. It was something about the First Great Idiocy of the Barbarians-which Remo knew to be Chiun's code phrase for the First World War-being a squabble between Queen Victoria's grandchildren, who had gotten out of hand and effectively closed down the West as a Sinanju client because all the killing was being done by mere soldiers and farmers, not professionals.

Muttering to himself, Remo returned to his original seat. Chiun resumed speaking in quieter tones so that only Remo had to endure them.

"Name one good thing about the British," Chiun said at one point.

"They drink tea, just like you."

Chiun snorted derisively. "They drink black tea. Not green. Black tea and dirty potatoes."

"I give up."

"Good. "

The 747 landed at Heathrow just as the sun was coming up. Remo had not slept a wink, but because night had lasted only four hours, his brain was tricked into thinking otherwise.

In the busy terminal, Remo exchanged his money for British pounds. He was about to phone Smith, when he heard the name Remo Stallone paged. He realized that was him.

Smith's voice came through the airport courtesy phone.

"Nice timing," Remo told Smith. "We're at Heathrow."

"Obviously," Smith said without sarcasm. "I've confirmed the worst. This entire plot does have British origins. And somehow the Vice-President is part of it."

"No kidding," Remo said.

"Remo, things are happening here. I'm picking up rumors about the instability of the U. S. treasury-bond market. I know they're false, but these rumors are spreading like wildfire. Once this hits the media, it may start something irreversible."

"Not my problem. What have you got for me and Chiun?"

Smith hesitated. "Nothing but a map of the United States as it will be if the plot succeeds. I pulled it off Looncraft's computer. I'm waiting for morning. Until Looncraft contacts his British superior through his office terminal, I have no way to trace these chess-code messages to their source."

"Source . . ." Remo said thoughtfully.

"Beg pardon?"

"You just gave me a first place to go. The Source. It's that British supersecret counterintelligence agency. I've dealt with them before. Let's see what Chiun and I can shake out of them."

"Do it."

Remo hung up and turned to Chiun.

"Smith says we shake up the place. We'll start with the dippy Source."

"Dippy?" Chiun asked as they entered the underground station.

"They're sort of the British version of CURE. Except everyone knows their address. When I'm in town and I need information, I always go there first. They know everything-except how to keep secrets."

Standing on the platform, oblivious of the occasional arched English eyebrow, Remo and Chiun waited for the next train.

"We're going to Trafalgar Square," he told Chiun. "Any idea if we're on the right line?"

Before Chiun could answer, a man in a bowler and wearing a red carnation in his lapel piped up, "Trafalgar Square, Yank? Be delighted to direct you. You have the right line. Take the Cockfosters train to Piccadilly Circus. It's a short hop, skip, and jump from there."

"Thanks, pal," Remo told him.

"Enjoy your stay, Yank. Cheerio."

A gunmetal train rumbled into the station and they boarded, ducking first to avoid bumping their heads on the low doorframe.

"See?" Remo said. "The British are very friendly."

"Perhaps he was Irish," Chiun snapped, looking around at the passengers' faces. There were as many Indians and blacks as English.

As the train rattled from station to station, Remo remarked, "I'll say one thing. Hearing an authentic English accent is a relief after listening to Looncraft and his pseudoBritish crap. At least these people sound the way they should. "

Checking the car's railway map, he remarked, "We just left Gloucester Road Station. It's only five more stops."

"It is pronounced 'Gloster,' " Chiun sniffed. "They only spell it that ridiculous way to confuse the unwary."

Minutes later they emerged at Piccadilly Circus. It was a busy six-way intersection of stores and restaurants.

"Which way?" Remo wondered.

"You are asking me?" Chiun said, annoyed.

A turbaned East Indian happened to pass by and Remo grabbed him by the sleeve.

"Excuse me, pal, but we're looking for Trafalgar Square."

"Trafalgar, gov?" the man asked in a thick cockney accent. "Hit's just down 'Aymarket. You can't miss hit, eh?"

"Yeah, thanks," Remo said in a vague voice. He saw the street sign that read "HAYMARKET." He figured that was what the man meant. Maybe.

"You were saying?" Chiun asked.

"Nothing," Remo said. "This place takes some getting used to."

As they walked through the bright English morning, a red double decker bus trundled by.

Chiun, looking at a billboard on its side, let out a shriek of disbelief.

"The barbarians!" he cried.

Remo followed his shaking finger. The billboard showed a lady's hand dangling a piece of string over a cup rim. It said: "Do the Jiggle Dip Dunk." Remo couldn't imagine what was being advertised, and said so.

"Tea bags!" Chiun spat. "The British never stooped this low before."

"Tea bags?"

"It is barbarism at its worst."

As they walked along, they passed a McDonald's, a Kentucky Fried Chicken, and a British fast-food establishment called Wimpy.

"This is unbelievable," Chiun said shrilly. "They are sinking into . . . into . . ."

"Americanism," Remo suggested.

"Exactly! Americanism. It is beyond understanding. A century ago the world suffered under what they called Pax Britannica. Now it is Shop American that rules."

"I don't see why you're getting so worked up about a people you don't like in the first place," Remo said reasonably. "Besides, I hear they even have Kentucky Fried Chicken in China now."

"The British used to have standards, miserable as they were," Chiun complained. "But this is a new low even for them. "

Chiun didn't stop complaining until they came to Trafalgar Square and its four proud lions guarding Nelson's Column. Remo looked around for the apothecary shop that occupied the ground floor of Source headquarters.

"There it is," Remo said. He led Chiun to a door that connected to the second floor. The door was locked. Remo popped it with the heel of his hand. They walked through cobwebs and up the steps to the musty second floor. It was unlocked. The suite of offices on the other side was empty.

"I don't get it," Remo said wonderingly.

"What is there to get? They moved."

"Hold on," Remo said, heading back down the stairs.

At the apothecary shop Remo put a question to the chemist.

"I'm looking for Guy Phillistone."

"Would you mean Sir Guy?"

"That's the one. Know where he lives?"

"That I do. He has a flat at Number One Buckingham Place."

"How long ago? He might have fixed it by now."

The chemist looked doubtful. "I was referring to his digs. "

"You mean his apartment."

"I imagine that I do."

"That near Buckingham Palace?" Remo asked.

"Righteo. "

"Much obliged."

Remo joined Chiun outside, where a brief morning sprinkle was just beginning.

"Want to take a bus?" Remo suggested.

"No," Chiun retorted. "When one comes to London, one must expect to get wet."

"Suit yourself."

They strolled under the massive Admiralty Arch and down the tree-lined Mall, past the Queen Victoria Monument, which faced Buckingham Palace's huge forecourt.

"It's gotta be around here somewhere," Remo said outside the Buckingham Palace gates. The sidewalk was thick with tourists.

" I will ask that one," Chiun said, slipping between bars that a child could not squeeze through. He strode up to a red-uniformed guard whose tall bearskin hat resembled a black licorice cotton-candy cone.

"Forget it," Remo called after him. "Those guys never talk."

"You, potato eater!" Chiun accused. "Direct us to Buckingham Place."

The guard stood stolidly, looking neither right nor left.

"I told you so," Remo said.

"You are well-trained," Chiun told the man in a quiet voice. Then, his tone darkening, "But I am in a hurry." And he took the guard's rifle from his rigid two-handed grasp.

The guard looked to either side frantically. The nearest guard looked stolidly ahead, pretending to be unaware of his comrade's predicament. The first guard took a crouching step toward the Master of Sinanju. Chiun swatted him on the head with the butt of his own rifle. The hat swallowed his head. The guard reached up with both hands to remove it.

Chiun took that opportunity to trip him. He stepped onto the guard's squirming stomach.

"Buckingham Place!" Chiun repeated. "Where is it?"

"Go left. Off Buckingham Gate!" his muffled voice said.

"Thank you," the Master of Sinanju said, dropping the rifle on the guard's black-furred head. He stepped off his scarlet stomach and joined Remo outside the gate.

As they walked off; Remo said, "That wasn't necessary."

"That man was rude. The economy of the world is hanging in the balance and he is playing soldier."

Number One Buckingham Place was a Georgian brick town house at the end of a row of town houses. Remo knocked on the door and waited politely.

The man who answered was tall and had sandy hair and eyebrows. A meershaum pipe whose bowl was carved to represent Anne Boleyn's decapitated head smoldered before his sharp nose.

He took one look at Remo and dropped his pipe. He couldn't get the door closed fast enough.

Unfortunately for Sir Guy Phillistone, head of Britain's supersecret Source, he couldn't get it closed ahead of Remo's strong arms. Remo pushed his way in, Chiun trailing.

"Remember me?" Remo asked brightly.

"Rather. You are that American lunatic."

"That's not polite. And here I've been telling my friend how nice you British are."

"How did you find me? What do you want of me?"

"In answer to number one, I asked at the apothecary shop. "

"Drat!" said Sir Guy Phillistone.

"That's not the word I would have used," Remo said. "But to answer number two, I want everything you know about the plot to wreck the world's stock exchanges."

"What plot is that?"

"Wrong answer," Remo said, taking Sir Guy Phillistone who knew exactly what Remo Williams could do with those terrible thick-wristed hands of his-by the throat.

"What is the correct answer?" Sir Guy choked out. "Tell me and I shall tell you."

Remo turned to Chiun. "Did that make any sense to you?"

"No. But he is telling the truth."

"Look, Guy. It's a British plot. I know it, even if you don't. Someone in your government is trying to create economic panic. Whom should we be looking for?"

Sir Guy hesitated. Remo squeezed.

"The queen!" Sir Guy bleated. "The prime minister! Perhaps the foreign secretary! The chancellor of the exchequer has always struck me as a right berk. Anyone but myself. I know nothing of this. I really do not."

"I believe you, Sir Guy," Remo said. "Be a good chap and don't warn anyone."

"I was just on my way to the pub around the corner. I feel the urge for a pint of stout."

"Don't let us keep you," Remo said.

Sir Guy left hurriedly, not stopping to pick up his cracked pipe. He left the door open for Remo's convenience.

"Trusting sort," Remo said, picking up the phone and asking for the overseas operator.

When he heard Smith's cracked voice, he explained that every lead had evaporated.

"Sir Guy suggested we shake up the local government," Remo concluded. "What do you think?"

"Do it," Smith said. "Things are heating up here. The treasury-bond rumors have reached the Far Eastern markets. The dollar is going south."

"We're on it." He hung up.

To Chiun, Remo said. "We've got his blessing. We can do this faster if we split up."

"You may treat with the House of Windsor," Chuin said, "I will have none of them."

"Parliament's yours."

"We will meet afterward beneath that ugly clock."

"Big Ben?"

"That is what they call its bell," Chiun sniffed. " I do not care to know what they call the clock."

They walked together as far as Birdcage Walk, which Chiun took. Remo continued on and mingled with the knots of tourists outside the palace gates.

He considered going over the wall, when suddenly the gates were thrown open. Remo turned to see a tiny coach pulled by two white horses rounding the circle dominated by the Victoria Monument and realized he had found the perfect way in.

John Brackenberry huddled in his bright red coat as the light rain pattered the top of his high black stovepipe hat, his coach whip rigid in his right hand.

He was proud to drive the wooden-wheeled clarence which carried state papers from Whitehall to Buckingham Palace, where they would be affixed with the royal assent. Driving a clarence, which seldom carried passengers, and never a member of the royal family, was not as prestigious as driving a state coach, but it was honorable work, and suited his traditional sensibilities.

As the clarence passed through the gates, Brackenberry never heard the coach door open. The springs never shifted despite the 155-pound weight that settled into the velvet cushions, brushing aside the box containing state documents fresh from Whitehall.

Thus, when John Brackenberry dismounted to open the coach, the last thing he expected was to find a passenger within.

"I say," he demanded, "who the bloody hell are you?"

"Don't mind me," the man said in a crude American accent.

"Tourists are not allowed in the royal clarence," he sputtered. He was nearly apoplectic. Nothing like that had ever happened before. He had heard of Yank tourists urinating in the parks and neglecting to pay their bus fare, but this was the limit.

"I'm just here to see Mrs. Windsor," the man said, stepping out. "Know where I can find her?"

" I do not know whom you could mean."

"The queen."

Brackenberry drew himself up in indignation. "One does not address the queen as Mrs. Windsor, my good fellow."

" I love the way you people are so polite even when you're upset. Restores my faith in humanity. I thought Windsor was her last name."

"It is not! That is, it is Windsor, but Her Highness is not permitted to use it."

"Heavy hangs the head, huh? Look, this is fascinating, but just point me to the royal chambers and I'll take it from there."

That was too much even for John Brackenberry. "Guards!" he shouted.

"Damn!" Remo said. "I hoped you were going to be British about this."

" I am being British about this, you sluggard!"

A trio of Household Guards appeared as if out of nowhere. One of them happened to be the one Chiun had roughed up earlier. Remo gave him a little wave. The man stopped dead in his tracks, then beat a hasty retreat.

The other two were only too happy to escort Remo into Buckingham Palace after he relieved them of their rifles and dismembered the unloaded weapons before their eyes. For good measure, he took one of their high hats and, rolling it between his hands at high speed, set it afire by friction. He replaced it on the guard's head.

"The queen is not in," the guard with the flaming hat said.

"Prove it," Remo countered.

"Happy to."

Remo was escorted through the palace. The Household Guards even showed him the queen's private chambers and offered him the souvenir of his choice. Remo politely declined. Instead, he asked after the queen's current whereabouts.

There was some dissension on that score. One guard thought the queen was sojourning at Windsor Castle, the other thought she was somewhere in Wales. Perhaps on holiday at Portmeirion.

Outside the palace, the guards escorted Remo to the big gate and opened it for him. They wished him well as he sauntered up Birdcage Walk, his eyes on Big Ben.

The Master of Sinanju regarded the garishly carven Houses of Parliament from the foot of Westminster Bridge, on the north side of the Thames River. His hands, behind his back, were tucked into his kimono sleeves, and he was heedless of the light rain, which evaporated almost as soon as it touched his aged head.

He examined the moat below street level, covered by immaculate greensward. His nose wrinkled at the high green fence whose top almost paralleled the sidewalk. It might possibly be electrified, but that did not matter. He could achieve it with one leap, and the grass in two. He wondered who would be so foolish as not to fill the serviceable moat with water.

Chiun strolled up Westminster Bridge to gain a view of the southern face of Parliament. He spied a patio filled with awninged tables-no doubt for the pleasure of the lords of Parliament. But those tables were empty now.

Chiun paused on the bridge. He looked down. The water was unspeakably discolored. Its smell offended his sensitive nostrils. But for that he would have gone all the way to the end of the bridge and, from its other bank, raced across the water to that most vulnerable point of attack.

It was a sound plan, except the Master of Sinanju would never have been able to get the stench from his sandals, no matter how lightly he raced across the thick waters.

Chiun returned the way he came. There would be a way. There always was.

On Millbank, he paced before the grimy facade of Parliament, cleaned for half of its length by sandblasting. It only made the sootier section all the more ugly.

He crossed Millbank to get a better view. Standing in the smallish Old Palace Yard behind Westminster Abbey, Chiun considered that no fortress was ever built that did not have a secret escape tunnel, which to the professional assassin could serve as an entrance. He went in search of one.

Chiun found what he sought tucked away at one end of the yard-a concrete ramp that led to an underground parking garage.

Smiling to himself, Chiun realized he had found the entrance he required. He floated down the concrete ramp, past the guard box and yellow-and-black-striped dropgate.

The guard in the box noticed him coming down, happened to look away, and when he looked back, there was no sign of the approaching Asian.

The underground garage covered several acres, and was lit by overhead fluorescent lights. The Master of Sinanju floated through it in the general direction of Parliament until he found what he wanted.

It was an elevator, marked by steel doors and guarded by two stone-faced bobbies. They would not be a problem, Chiun knew. Bobbies never carried firearms.

In the lower house, the Prime Minister of England listened to the inane prattle of the Labour representative with a polite expression on her strong motherly face, knowing that if she gave him enough rope, he would say something astonishingly stupid.

"And I submit, Mr. Speaker, that it is Madam Prime Minister's wretched policies that have contributed to the state of near-chaos that the City is currently in."

That did it. The woman known, loved, and feared throughout the British Isles as the Iron Lady leapt to her feet. Her voice reverberated through the ancient halls of Parliament.

" I beg your pardon," she said coldly, "but the honorable gentleman's remarks are further proof, if any is needed, of Labour's utter and callous irresponsibility. The City is suffering from the identical ailment that inflicts the markets from Hong Kong to New York. It has nothing to do with England, never mind the Tory government. Perhaps the gentleman should excuse himself now and read the last weeks' papers. Starting with his own Guardian."

The chambers broke into howling laughter. From Labour and a few Tory back-benchers came dark mutterings. The prime minister sat down, having scored a major point.

She was satisfied. But in her heart, she would have liked nothing better than to have caned the Labour representative.

Labour stood up to rebut, but his first words froze in his mouth. From somewhere in the great halls of Parliament came a ruckus.

"What the devil is that?" the prime minister said. "See to it, one of you."

Bobbies hurried in the direction of the commotion. They came running back just as rapidly. One whispered in the speaker's ear.

The speaker stood up. "Madam Prime Minister," he announced, "I must ask that you and the gentlemen present vacate Parliament."

"Leave?" the prime minister shouted. "But we are in session."

"Parliament is also under attack."

Labour was out the door like a flood of lemmings. Several Tories formed a protective cordon around the prime minister.

"Do not fear, Madam Prime Minister," one said bravely. "They will have to strike us all down to get to you."

"Let us hope it does not come to that," the prime minister said worriedly. "Has anyone any idea what is the problem?"

Before anyone could answer, the problem burst into the richly carved chambers, hurling bobbies before it like an emerald tornado.

The problem was a small man of Asiatic extraction, who deftly evaded the down-swinging clubs in the bobbies' hands. Guns were held high in their hands.

"Do not shoot!" the prime minister called out. "This is Parliament. "

"How many of them?" a Tory asked, craning to see beyond his fellows.

"Just the one," he was told.

The Tories exchanged glances.

"What does he want?" the prime minister called from the knot of protective men.

The Asian answered.

" I am Chiun, Reigning Master of Sinanju!" His voice, coming from such a frail figure, was awesome in its volume.

"Never heard of you," the prime minister called back, intending to humor the man.

"What! Never heard of the House of Sinanju? Barbarians! We were the greatest assassins known to history while your ancestors were fending off the Danes."

"Did he say assassin?" the prime minister asked. "That he did," a stuffy voice said. "You men. Shoot! Shoot the bugger down!"

The guns came down. And for the first time since the days of Guy Fawkes, violence was threatened against the Houses of Parliament. And as before, it was about to be perpetrated by Englishmen.

The prime minister stared as three bobbies dropped their Webley revolvers to sight on the old Oriental's bald head. She was too strong, despite her grandmotherly features, to look away from violence.

Three revolvers thundered at once. Everyone in the room blinked. And in that blink, something inexplicable happened.

Everyone from the prime minister on down expected to witness the eruption of the aged Oriental's head as three bullets tore it asunder like a pumpkin.

Instead, the shots buried themselves in a richly carven wall.

The old Oriental was no longer there.

Everyone gasped at once.

"Where could he have gone?" the prime minister demanded.

No one knew. And as they pondered the inexplicable, Chiun, Master of Sinanju, reached the apex of his somersault. He had gone high, the better to confuse his foemen. Parliament's vaulted ceiling allowed a high graceful leap and time to pause at the apogee, while the Englishmen below looked everywhere but where the Master of Sinanju was. The bobbies, convinced he had fled, ran out into the corridor, shouting and waving their pistols. Chiun wondered what the world was coming to, when even bobbies carried pistols, like American cowboys.

"Could it have been a ghost?" someone wondered aloud.

"Boo!" a squeaky voice said. The Tories jumped. For the sound came from within their very midst.

"That was not amusing," the prime minister said sternly.

"It was not meant to be," said the author of the boo, none other than the Master of Sinanju. He was standing beside the prime minister, having landed with no more sound than a pillow falling onto a comforter.

The Tory guard were looking out from their circle. At the sound of Chiun's voice, they looked inward. They saw him. They gasped. And they reacted. The circle broke apart and dashed for the exits.

In a moment that seemed even less that a millisecond, the prime minister found herself alone and exposed in the center of Parliament, facing her apparent assassin.

"I am not afraid of you," she said stiffly, clutching her purse tightly.

The old Asian looked up, his mouth compressed.

"You are either very brave or very foolish," he said.

"Thank you, but I reject the former and firmly deny the latter accusation."

"Spoken like a true Englishman."

"Woman. And thank you."

"It was not intended as a compliment," Chiun said. "I will be brief. Your government is in some way responsible for the vicious attack on the world's economy. It will stop. Today. Or all of the remnants of your pitiful crumbling empire will suffer horrendously."

"My dear man," the prime minister said, fixing the Master of Sinanju with her metallic glare, "would you by any chance belong to the Loyal Opposition?"

"I owe no allegiance to England. I am Korean, working for the American emperor, whose name I am forbidden to speak, for he rules secretly."

The prime minister's mouth froze in the open position. Was this man mad? She rejected asking the question point-blank.

"Do I understand you to say that the Americans sent you to ask me this preposterous question?"

"Unofficially," Chiun said flatly.

"Unofficially or officially, your suggestion is absurd, and you may tell whomever you wish that you have this on the most direct authority. Our own financial district, the City, is suffering under calamitous pressure, as is the rest of the civilized world. Surely you understand that."

"Lying will not deter me from my quest," Chiun warned, his face puckered into a web of dry wrinkles.

"Not believing the truth will not achieve your ends any more quickly," the prime minister countered.

"You are telling the truth," the old Oriental said at last. "I thank you for your faith," the prime minister said stiffly.

"Pah, I do not trust you. But I hear your heartbeat. It tells me you are not lying. I will have to look elsewhere for the answers I seek."

"Nevertheless, that is very good of you."

"I am not merely good," said the person called Chiun. "I am great." He left the empty room as if he were free to stroll out to the street with impunity after turning Parliament topsy-turvy.

The prime minister wondered how far he would get.

Chapter 22

Remo Williams wondered how Chiun was doing as he walked along the park side of Birdcage Walk in the direction of Parliament.

The string of police cars and ambulances that roared by, their discordant sirens in full cry, gave him his first clue.

Remo started to run. He had been walking on the St. James's Park side, and cut across the traffic. A bobby tried to give him a ticket for reckless walking. Remo recklessly walked over him and picked up speed.

Parliament Square, when he came to it, was milling with indignant faces. The ambulances and police cars disgorged bobbies, who converged on Parliament like blue ants.

Remo slowed down and mingled with the crowd.

He found Chiun standing at the foot of Parliament's Clock Tower, his hands modestly tucked into his sleeves, his face registering quizzical interest in the confusion swirling around him.

"Any luck?" Remo whispered.

"The plot does not come from Parliament. And you?"

"The queen's out having tea and crumpets or something."

"I do not think it is her anyway. Modern English queens are good only for collecting their pensions."

"That leaves . . . what, the chancellor of the exchequer?"

"There are also the home secretary, the foreign secretary, and other functionaries." Chiun frowned. "That is the problem when there is no proper emperor," he lamented. "Too many lackeys and no center of power. Would that a strong king still ruled this miserable isle. We would not be leaping about like confused grasshoppers."

"Spare me the if-onlys. Which one should we tackle first?"

"None. Let us walk."

Chiun led Remo across the street and down a flight of steps marked "SUBWAY."

"We taking a train somewhere?" Remo asked. Chiun said nothing. They emerged on the other side, by the River Thames. Remo had seen no sign of the subway system in the long tunnel, and remarked on that.

Chiun shrugged. Wordlessly they strolled down Victoria Embankment, past a pier where sightseeing boats were moored and cockney voices hawked excursions along the river.

"They all used to talk that way," Chiun remarked. "Before they took on airs."

"Do tell." The walk was pleasant, and Remo noted the cast-iron dolphin light standards that studded the concrete embankment every few feet. Strings of light bulbs hung between them like Puritan Christmas ornaments.

They passed under the ornate monstrosity that is Hungerford Bridge, which rattled with trains from nearby Charing Cross Station, following the curve of the Thames.

Police cars rushed by them often, caterwauling rudely.

Remo was content to walk by Chiun's side in silence. No conversation meant no carping. Remo was in a no-carping mood. The wind was blowing from the Victoria Embankment gardens on the other side of the avenue, bringing the smell of wet grass-a distinct improvement over the dank odor coming from the Thames.

After a while Remo ventured a question.

"Why do they pronounce it 'Tems' and not 'Thames'?"

"Because they have forgotten how to pronounce Tame sis,' " Chiun told him, "which is what the Romans called it just as in their laziness they no longer bother with this city's true name, which is Londinium."

"It's their city," Remo said nonchalantly.

"It was the Romans who made it great. The British are merely squatters."

"They squat pretty well," Remo said, looking about with a hint of admiration at the variety of architecture.

Chiun stopped in his tracks suddenly. "No!" he squeaked, leaping ahead.

"What is it?" Remo asked, racing to catch up to him.

The Master of Sinanju came to a halt before a pockmarked granite obelisk covered with Egyptian hieroglyphics set on the embankment.

"The idiots!" Chiun cried. "The base cretins!"

Recognizing the beginning of one of Chiun's tantrums, Remo folded his arms. The Master of Sinanju stamped his sandaled feet. He accosted a British businessman in a mackintosh.

"Do you know nothing?" he raged. "Are you people that ignorant?

"Release me, you yobbo!" the man demanded.

"Pah, you are not worth speaking to," Chiun said, sending the man spinning away with a casual flick of his wrist. "You people are uneducable." His voice rose with righteous indignation as the man rushed off. "Do you hear? Uneducable!"

"So what's the problem?" Remo asked after Chiun had settled down to merely tearing at the puffs of hair over his tiny ears.

"Not you too!" Chiun screeched.

"Okay, okay. Give me a second to figure it out."

Remo approached the monument, which was flanked by two basalt sphinxes, which, like sentinels, faced the obelisk in feline repose. They reminded Remo of the lions at Trafalgar Square.

There were plaques on all four sides of the obelisk, which Remo quickly learned was called Cleopatra's Needle. It was an authentic Egyptian monument, discovered buried in the ruins of Alexandria, Egypt, and shipped to London by boat in 1878. En route, it was lost in a gale, and later salvaged. One plaque explained that the needle was struck by bomb fragments during the first air raid on London during World War I, resulting in the many pits in the stone. Remo found the story fascinating. He hadn't known London had been bombed during the First World War.

"Okay, I give up," he told Chiun. "What's the problem?"

" I do not know which is the most insulting," Chiun said, his hands on his hips. "That they had the temerity to appropriate this magnificent monument or that they put it up wrong."

Remo looked back. "Don't tell me it's upside down."

"No."

"The sides are facing the wrong way, right?"

Chiun stamped one foot impatiently. "No!"

"I give up," Remo admitted.

"The sphinxes!" Chiun cried shaking a finger at them. "Look at them."

"Yeah . . ." Remo said slowly.

"They are facing inward! Everyone knows that sphinxes face outward, to protect their charge."

"Oh, is that all?"

"All! You would not say that if you knew the Egyptians as I do. They would laugh at this foolishness-those who did not cry at the desecration."

"Well," Remo said casually, "nothing we can do about it now. It's been like that for over a hundred years."

"A hundred years," Chiun grumbled. "A mere instant in time." He regarded the sphinxes at length. One was scarred along its black flank from the same attack that had injured the granite spire.

"I said," Remo repeated, "nothing we can do about it now. "

Chiun considered. Then he said, "You are right, Remo. There is nothing we can do about it now."

Chiun started off again, Remo at his side.

"For a minute there," Remo said in a relieved voice, "I thought you were going to have me turn the sphinxes around."

"We have no time."

"Good. "

"Perhaps on the way back," Chiun added.

"Not on your life." And because he wanted to change the subject as quickly as possible, Remo added, "Where are we headed, if it's not too much to ask?"

"The Tower of Londinium."

Remo made a face. "I've been there. And I have no desire to repeat the experience-and shouldn't we be doing something more constructive than taking in the tourist sights?"

"Bear with me."

Remo winced. "Speaking of which, that's another good thing about London."

Chiun cocked his head inquisitively. "Yes?"

"They don't get the National Enquirer here. And I don't have to wear the bear suit."

Chiun frowned. "I wonder how Faith is doing?"

"Search me. Why?"

"I put her in charge of Bear-Man marketing."

"You what?" Remo burst out.

"I would not be surprised if by now every person in America is wearing a Bear-Man hat or T-shirt."

"Just as long as my name isn't connected to any of this."

Chiun looked up. "Do I take it to mean you waive all rights to Bear-Man royalties?"

"Now and forever," Remo said solemnly. Chiun beamed.

"And no personal appearances either," Remo added.

Chiun's face fell. "We will discuss this another time," he sniffed.

Victoria Embankment came to a stop at Blackfriars Bridge, so they crossed the busy street, wending their way to the Tower of London. Remo recognized it from afar, thanks to the nearby castlelike blue Tower Bridge, which reminded him of a Coney Island ride.

They came to the Tower of London, which is not a single tower but a grouping of crumbling battlements enclosed by the ancient walls of a keep originally built on the Thames by William the Conqueror. Chiun led Remo around its age-discolored stone walls to the long line that whipsawed from the streets down to a walkway beside a dry moat containing a tennis court.

Chiun stopped at the end of the line.

"You've gotta be kidding," Remo said. "You're actually going to wait in line with the peasants?"

"Shh," Chiun admonished. "We do not want to attract undue attention."

"A little late now. Half the constabulary must be memorizing our descriptions right now."

"All the more reason to blend in with the other tourists."

"Suit yourself," Remo said, leaning against the fence. The line moved slowly. It took twenty minutes to reach the walkway below. By the time they got to the ticket offices, in a stone courtyard patrolled by outlandishly garbed Yeoman Warders-popularly known as Beefeaters-Remo was thoroughly bored and had said so several times, without drawing a response from the Master of Sinanju.

They walked through the Tower green. The Tower ravens were, if anything, bigger and more menacing than Remo had remembered. They seemed as large as vultures.

Chiun led Remo on a quick tour of the various towers, taking delight in pointing out the Bloody Tower and the cruelties it concealed. At one point he stopped beside a Roman wall that had been worn down to the ground like old teeth, and proclaimed, "This is the true Londinium!"

By the Waterloo Barracks, Chiun pulled him into the Torture Chamber exhibit, which displayed medieval devices like thumbscrews, the rack, and the iron maiden.

"Grisly stuff," Remo said, examining a recreation of the gibbet an iron birdcage in which the bodies of executed criminals were suspended at crossroads as a warning to potential lawbreakers. "I had no idea the English were once so barbaric."

"It was only after they became powerful enough to vent their baser passions against other peoples that they ceased to inflict cruelties on their own," Chiun told him.

"Tell that to the Irish," Remo grunted.

As they left the hole-in-the wall exhibit room, Remo remarked, "You know, I was always taught that the English were the fountainhead of civilization and democracy."

"Whoever taught you obviously never heard of the Greeks or the Romans," Chiun retorted. "Or the Persians, for that matter. "

"Where are we going now?" Remo wanted to know.

Chiun drifted up to the end of a line of tourists next to a low building.

"Here," Chiun said.

"Not another line."

"This is the last line we will stand in, I promise you."

The line folded in on itself several times between low uprights. Overhead signs warned in several languages that taking pictures of the Crown jewels was expressly prohibited.

"Why are we bothering with the Crown Jewels?" Remo wanted to know as the line moved along with sluggish irregularity.

"Because the English value them," Chiun said flatly.

Remo folded his arms. It seemed to take forever, but eventually they came to the entrance.

"Step lively," a Yeoman Warder called out in a boisterous voice. "Step right in. Keep it moving, now."

"Great," Remo said, noticing several rolls of confiscated film suspended in tiny plastic net bags. "Now they want us to rush."

"What happened to your admiration of the fine British people?" Chiun inquired pointedly.

"I left it back with the thumbscrews," Remo snapped. "And it's been a long day, so don't rag me, okay?"

They followed the line as it moved between museumstyle display cases. Remo absorbed the displays of royal gilt salt cellars and historical costumes without interest.

Finally they descended a flight of steps into a cool basement area and into a literal vault. The open door was a massive thing of stainless steel. It looked exactly like a bank-vault door.

The Crown jewels were arranged in a huge circular display. A curved, railed walkway ran around its circumference, and below it an area where one could step up to the glass case fronts as long as one did not hold up the line.

"Keep moving," the guards said. These were ordinary blue-uniformed bobbies. "Don't dawdle, now."

"I don't feel like I'm getting my money's worth," Remo grumbled as they were jostled along by other tourists.

"Do not worry," Chiun whispered ominously. "You will."

"I don't like the way you said that," Remo whispered back.

Chiun stopped before the case that held the jewel-encrusted Royal Sceptre. A plate informed Remo that the large faceted jewel held in a heart-shaped mounting was the world's largest diamond, known as the Star of Africa.

"Distract the guard," Chiun said quietly.

"What?" Remo said.

"Do as I bid," Chiun hissed. "And do not ask questions."

Remo glanced around, fixing the three guards, each equally spaced around the circular walkway, in his mind. He wandered back so he was near two of them, with the third in his field of vision.

He decided the best way to capture their interest was to strip off his T-shirt.

He was right. No sooner had he exposed his bare chest than outraged expressions appeared on the bobbies' faces.

"Here, now," one called to him. "You can't disrobe in the presence of the Crown Jewels." He bore down on Remo like a blue tornado.

"Relax," Remo said unconcernedly. "I'm hot. And it's stuffy down here."

"It is delightfully cool, and I am afraid I shall have to escort you from these premises."

Remo smiled broadly. "It's going to take two of you," he taunted.

"Right," the bobby said, signaling to his nearer colleague.

Actually, it took three constables. The first two took Remo by the biceps. Remo let them do that much. But that was all. They pushed. Remo did not budge. They stepped around and tried pulling. Remo folded his arms, and no matter what limbs the bobbies took hold of, Remo stayed in place, as if he had taken root.

The third bobby strode up at that point, his hands on his hips like a flustered schoolmaster.

"Here, now," he said. "Take hold of him properly, chaps. "

"The bounder won't budge, sir."

After some low-voiced conversation, they decided to lift Remo bodily. One took him around the waist and the others grabbed his forearms.

"Right we go now, lads," the head bobby said. The sound of three men grunting in exertion came at once. Remo stayed in place.

"His feet appear to be stuck," one ventured, wiping his brow of sweat.

"Perhaps he has glued himself to the floor," one offered.

"No, I haven't," Remo said politely, lifting first one foot, then the other as proof.

The bobbies grabbed at his ankles and tried to repeat the maneuver. But Remo's feet stayed where they were.

By now a crowd had gathered, more interested in the hapless bobbies and the half-naked Yank than in the Crown jewels.

Remo looked around. There was no sign of Chiun. He took that as a sign that it was time to wrap this up.

"Tell you what," Remo suggested. "How about I just put on my shirt and walk out under my own steam?"

The bobbies consulted among themselves.

"So long as you do it now," the head bobby said with face-saving authority.

Obligingly Remo donned his T-shirt and started for the half-open vault door.

A high squeaky voice brought him whirling around.

"Remo! Catch!"

Instinctively Remo's hands came up. The Royal Sceptre plopped into them. Remo looked at it uncomprehendingly.

"Do not just stand there, run!" Chiun called.

Remo hesitated. He looked to the bobbies, their attention shifting back and forth between Chiun and himself, as if uncertain whom they were more angry with. One bobby ran toward Chiun. The other two came after Remo.

Remo jumped into the corridor, clearing the vault door. He gave the massive door a tap with one toe. The vault rolled shut. Remo grabbed at the control wheels and tried dogging them. There were too many of them, so he gave it up. The size of the vault was enough to hold the bobbies back, he figured.

Rushing up the stairs, Remo looked for an exit. He spotted a sign that said "Way Out."

"Close enough," Remo muttered, ducking through it.

Out in the cobbled walk, Remo wrapped his T-shirt around the Royal Sceptre. He attracted disapproving stares from about three-quarters of the passersby. It was an instant litmus test of who was British and who was not.

Remo hugged the inner walls until he came to a break near the so-called Bloody Tower. He slipped through it, finding himself on the cobbled walk in front of the Traitor's Gate. He ducked down into the cool overhang of St. Thomas' Tower, where tourists were not allowed. The wooden gate was in three sections-an arched top and a double lower section. To Remo's surprise, the lower gates opened outward at a touch. Traitor's Gate gave way. And Remo went out.

He found himself on a stone wharf overlooking the Thames.

The unsavory color of the river was enough to discourage Remo from swimming, so he ran, hugging the tower walls.

He stopped when he came upon a sign that said

"SUBWAY."

"Great," Remo said, ducking down the steps. He ran along the foot tunnel and up a set of steps at the opposite end.

Remo's I-did-it expression evaporated when he found himself on the other side of a busy street, standing beside another sign that said "SUBWAY."

"Must have missed it," he muttered, running back down the stone steps.

But the only other set of steps he found was the first one. Remo paused uncertainly. A young man came along and Remo accosted him.

"Excuse me, pal, but I'm looking for the subway."

"In that case," the man said, "I fancy you should be jolly well pleased. For you are standing in it."

"I am? Where are the trains?"

"Trains?" The Londoner's eyes went to Remo's upraised hand. His T-shirt had slid from the Royal Sceptre, exposing an ornamental golden cross.

"I say, that rather resembles the-"

"It's okay," Remo said. " I have permission to carry it. I'm in training for the next Olympics. I'm entered in the scepter toss."

"Never heard of the ripping thing."

"Just point me to the trains."

"You mean the underground."

"In America it's called the subway."

"And in England it is the underground. Pop back the way I came and look for the sign. You can't miss it."

"Thanks," Remo said, sprinting away.

"Luck with the Olympics, Yank," the Englishman called after him.

Remo found the Tower Hill underground station on the other side of the street, recognizing it from afar by the red-and-white sign that looked like a No Smoking sign with the red slash tipped to the horizontal.

Remo caught the first train, having no idea where it was going, and for the moment, caring not at all. He took the train as far as Barking, getting off for no other reason than that Remo almost burst out laughing at the name.

He looked around for a pay phone. He found one near an old church.

It was a red wood-and-glass kiosk.

Remo started feeding coins into the slot, having no idea if it was enough. He got an overseas operator and gave her Smith's code phone number.

" I can scarcely believe that there is such a number as 111-111-1111," the operator said reprovingly.

"Look," Remo said, "it's a special number. Okay?"

"There is no such American area code as 111. Without a correct area code, I cannot put through the call."

"It's a special number," Remo repeated. "Just do it."

"There's no need for rudeness, luv," the operator said. "I will attempt to ring."

"Thank you," Remo said. He got the sound of a ringing phone, then Smith's voice saying hello.

Then the line disconnected.

"Dammit!" Remo said, putting in more coins. He got the same operator again. He recognized her voice.

"I got disconnected," he complained.

"You failed to insert the proper payment."

"So you disconnect me!"

"That is how the system operates," the operator said. "It is automated. We will require twenty pence inserted at thirty-second intervals."

"Okay, okay, I'm putting in coins. Is that enough?"

"I will attempt the call again. Was the number 111-111-1111?"

"Yeah," Remo said in exasperation. "Just lean on the one button until you hear the line ring. That's how I do it. "

When Smith's voice came on again, Remo said breathlessly, "Remo here. Gotta talk fast. These screwy British phones shut you off when they get hungry."

"Just keep feeding coins," Smith said.

Remo put in more coins as he talked. " I lost Chiun."

"He just called. He told me everything. You have the . . . er . . . item?"

"In my hot little hands," Remo said.

"Chiun believes he can blackmail the British government into talking. I have my doubts about that, but it is all we have. Chiun is on his way to the Morton Court Hotel, near the Earl's Court tube station. I suggest you join him there. We'll see what develops. It's all we can do until Looncraft's computer comes on-line. Please hurry, Remo. The Far Eastern markets are restive."

"On my way, Smith." There was a click on the line. "Smith? Smith?" The line was dead.

Remo hung up and went down the underground stairs. A wall map showing the vast maze of the London underground system baffled him.

"This is worse than New York," he muttered.

Finally he found Earl's Court. It was on the same line. Remo boarded a Richmond train, holding the Royal Sceptre tightly in his T-shirt.

He got a number of stares from staid Britishers, which he pointedly ignored.

Earl's Court was a huge sand-colored fortress of a station. Remo rode the escalator to a busy street, which was lined with food shops and ethnic restaurants. The neighborhood smelled of curry.

The Morton Court Hotel was a modest establishment on a residential side street which seemed to be given over to small hotels. There was one on every block. Sometimes two.

The reception desk was manned by a thirtyish Indian woman with a coffee complexion and a sugar smile.

Remo turned on the charm.

"Friend of mine is registered here," he said. "Chiun. Where can I find him?"

The woman smiled back. "Take the lift," she said in a crisp Oxford accent that made her sound like a puppet controlled by an invisible British ventriloquist. "Around the corner. Third floor. Room twenty-eight. He's expecting you."

"Thanks," Remo said.

Remo took a rickety elevator to the third floor. He knocked on the door.

"Who is it?" Chiun demanded querulously.

"Me. Remo."

"It is open."

Remo entered. "You should have locked the door," he pointed out, closing it after him.

"It is broken. Everything in this room is broken."

"Except the TV, I see," Remo said.

Chiun sat on the bare floor, his neck craned back to watch the TV, which sat on a high shelf in the corner of the room beside a tall walnut wardrobe.

The room was long and narrow. The two side-by-side beds dominating the room almost touched. A small writing desk half-blocked the bathroom door.

"Where's the rest of the room?" Remo wanted to know, tossing the Royal Sceptre onto one bed.

"Ask Smith."

"Smith recommended this place, I take it," Remo said, throwing himself onto the bed beside the Sceptre.

"Hush, Remo," Chiun admonished, his eyes transfixed by the TV screen.

"What are you watching? It sounds like a beer commercial."

"Do not be ridiculous. And I am beginning to change my mind about the British."

"So am I."

"Like the Americans, they do produce one thing that is good. And it is their British daytime dramas."

"This is a soap opera?" Remo cocked an ear. "Sounds more Australian than English."

Chiun shrugged. "What is the difference?"

"You tell me. Anything on the news about our little escapade?"

"I do not know. I have been watching this program."

"How are we going to know if we're getting results?"

"We will know. Now, be quiet. I am enjoying this."

"You are? I thought you got tired of American soap operas years ago."

"These are different. They do not corrupt the stories with sex."

"Wonderful," Remo said, leaning back. "Wake me up when it's over."

"It is over now," Chiun said, standing.

Remo looked around for the remote control. But all he found were a broken radio and a digital clock that displayed military time.

Giving up, he got up to change the channel by hand. He flipped by a high-school quiz show, a documentary entitled The History of Bamboo, and an Untouchables rerun.

"If this is typical British TV fare," Remo said, "I'm not very impressed by it. Half of it's American reruns and the rest is like our public TV."

Chiun said nothing. He was examining the Royal Sceptre.

"You think they'll actually expose themselves just to get that thing back?" Remo asked, settling back onto the bed.

"Perhaps. In any event, I expect to hear from them soon. "

"How's that?"

"I left a ransom note with the guard at Whitehall."

Remo shot up again. "What!"

"They should be arriving soon."

"Who exactly are 'they'?" Remo asked worriedly.

"I do not know. Perhaps boobies. Possibly soldiers."

Remo sat bolt upright. "Coming here?"

"Oh, do not worry, Remo. They do not know the room number. Just the hotel name."

Remo rushed to the door, saying, "I'd better lock it."

"The lock is broken," Chiun said casually.

"Damn. That's right. So we just sit here is that it?"

"You have a better plan?"

"I don't have any plan at all."

"Then sit quietly. I wish to meditate."

Remo returned to the bed. "I don't know why I let you get me into these situations."

"It is because you trust me implicitly."

"Really? I always thought it was because I'm gullible."

Chiun beamed. "That too."

Chapter 23

In the predawn darkness of his Folcroft office, Dr. Harold W. Smith felt his gorge begin to rise.

The glowing terminal was nauseatingly green. But its unpleasant color was not what made his stomach bubble and roil like a chemical experiment gone awry.

With one hand Smith reached into his right-hand desk drawer. He fumbled his fingers around the necks of several bottles.

With nervous hands he opened one and popped two pills into his mouth, dry. He coughed them down, his eyes never wavering from the screen. They tasted bitter going down. Aspirin. Smith had wanted Alka-Seltzer. He found the other bottle by feel and shook out a tablet, with the consequence that a dozen tablets rattled over the desktop and onto the floor.

Smith brought one to his mouth and began chewing it like a candy wafer. It was only six steps to his water dispenser, but Smith refused to leave his seat.

As he chewed the tablet to bits, swallowing the bland chemical grit, Smith began to admit to himself that he might have committed a tactical error.

He should have sent Remo and Chiun after P. M. Looncraft.

Smith's reasoning was that Looncraft was an agent of the British government-or possibly one of its ministries or departments. A rogue operation, perhaps. As Smith saw it, getting to the top was more important than getting Looncraft.

A mistake. Events were moving more swiftly than Smith had suspected.

The Global News Network was carrying stories of the softness in the treasury-bond market. P. M. Looncraft's own reporters were quoting his cautious but leading statement that Looncraft had heard of the rumors, but could not say any more except that if true, it was a troubling development, not only for Wall Street but also for the U. S. economy.

It was the dead of night in Rye, New York. But in Tokyo, Singapore, and Hong Kong, trading was heavy. Key stocks were being dumped across the board as investor uncertainty over the future of the American economy fueled a skittishness that had not completely abated since Dark Friday. What had begun as a nervous profit-taking exercise was fast becoming a panic sell-off.

The dollar was down against the yen. Even Nostrum-currently the darling of investors-was taking a beating. And if Nostrum fell, like Global Communications before it, it would take the rest of the market with it.

As the latest Reuters stock quotations marched across the top of Harold Smith's screen, he pounded the desk with an angry fist.

"I should have sent them after Looncraft," he said again, his voice bitter.

Now it was too late. Looncraft was fueling the panic. It was deliberate. There could be no doubt about it. His acquisition of Global Communications had been the key to it all. It had kicked off the first panic, weakening the market. But it had obviously been a goal unto itself. First, as a propaganda organ, and now, like the use of plants in Reuters, a way of fanning the flames further.

As the Far East traded at a frantic pace, Smith desperately worked to figure out where this was going, all thoughts of attempting a computer trace of Looneraft's superior gone from his mind. Looncraft, Dymstar d was hours from opening, its computer inoperative.

Smith went back to the files he'd siphoned from it and tried to make the pieces come together into a plausible scheme.

Somehow, some way, Looncraft's superiors intended to gain control of the United States and remake it into a bizarre extrapolation of what it might have become had there never been an American Revolution.

But how? Smith wondered. The Cornwallis Guard numbered fewer than three thousand men nationwide. The Scientologists had more manpower than that. It obviously had been set up as a death squad or enforcement arm, but its numbers were pitifully small for an occupying army.

There were U. S. military officers in the Loyalist group, including three generals. But three generals weren't enough to take over all four branches of the military.

Smith had to assume the Vice-President was part of the plot. There could be no doubt what was meant by the term "loyalists."

But who were these conscripts? The President was one of them. Was it possible that somehow the Vice-President, working through the President, was going to hand over the country?

Smith shook his head even as the thought occurred. No, that could not be. The checks and balances built into the American democratic system made that impossible. There were not enough members of Congress on either list. Congress would revolt, and the military would stand by the Constitution. Of that, Smith had no doubt.

No, it was not a coup. Or at least a coup was not going to trigger the master plan.

Smith went to the Crown file. There was no record of Crown Acquisitions, Limited, ever having acquired any U.S. firm. Technically Crown was a separate entity from Looncraft, Dymstar d. Looncraft's apparent control of it had less to do with LD h this plot.

Perhaps Crown was the key to it all.

But what were they planning to acquire?

Tokyo was down another hundred points, Smith saw as he turned the problem over in his mind.

"I should have had Remo and Chiun take out Looncraft," he said ruefully. "Anything to slow this down."

It had not been easy to accept Looncraft as part of the plot, Smith reflected. His family had come from the same social set and good Yankee roots as had Smith's. It was a personal blind spot, he saw now. He had seen Looncraft as being of such wealth, position, and breeding that crime on this scale should have been beneath him.

A mistake. It was all a tremendous miscalculation.

The red telephone interrupted Smith's self-recriminations.

"Smith?" The voice was sleepy.

"Yes, Mr. President," Harold Smith said, his throat rumbling from disuse.

"We're getting frantic cables from the British government, accusing us of attacking their most sacred institutions. What do you know about this?"

"Everything," Harold Smith said without hesitation. " I have sent my people over there. Mr. President, I can no longer withhold this from you. I have uncovered a scheme of incredible magnitude, designed to take over our country. It's of British origin, apparently."

Smith paused. If there was any chance that the President was involved in this scheme, he had to know now.

"British! Smith, they are our staunchest allies."

"Currently."

"For as long as I can remember."

You obviously do not remember the War of 1812, when they burned down the White House, as well as the Capitol Building."

"The British did that?" "Surely you know your history."

"It's been a few years, Smith," the President said ruefully.

"If you'd prefer that I withdraw my people from Great Britain, I will agree to that. But I cannot take responsibility for the consequences."

Smith held his breath while he waited for the answer. This was the moment of truth.

"No," the President said firmly. "Do what you think is best. But tell me, what do I say to the prime minister?"

Smith cupped his hand over the red receiver to mask his audible sigh of relief. The President had not been compromised.

"Tell her . . ." Smith hesitated. An idea struck him.

"Ask her to invite P. M. Looncraft of Looncraft, Dymstar d for a state visit. Tell her to give no reason. Just invite him. Get him out of this country. Inform her that Looncraft is suspected of complicity in the market upheavals plaguing the world. By the time he arrives in London, my people might have some answers."

"The British are complaining that someone stole the Royal Sceptre. Would that be your people?"

Smith cleared his throat in discomfort. "Assure them it will be returned unharmed. Now if you will excuse me, Mr. President, I have a great deal to do."

Harold Smith hung up. Suddenly a thought had occurred to him. Looncraft's computers had given up the secret of Crown's board of directors. But who were the stockholders, if any?

Smith thought he knew. He began paging through the Crown file, hoping to learn the answer.

As he pecked at his keyboard, Smith gave thanks that Looncraft had been so confident in the security of his system that his files had not been encrypted. Not that any code the human mind could devise would have long defeated the CURE mainframe. But the Nikkei Dow had lost another twenty-five points, and at his back, the sun lurked beyond the glittering expanse of Long Island Sound. Dawn was coming to America. Dawn and the early editions of The Wall Street journal, carrying news of the new tidal wave of panic about to sweep the globe like an invisible steamroller, were hitting doorsteps and corporate mail slots all over the nation.

The list of stockholders was in a separate file. It matched, exactly, the list of Loyalists.

"Yes," Smith told himself as the waning moon silvered his back. "Crown is the key."

But what was the lock it was intended to open?

Chapter 24

P. M. Looncraft enjoyed the uplifting sensation of the Looncraft Tower elevator against his shoes. It was like a bracing tonic, pushing him to higher and higher plateaus of power.

On the thirty-fourth floor he stepped off; nodded to the doubled security guard, and paused inside the trading floor of Looncraft, Dymstar d.

He spoke a single word: "Sell."

Every trader looked up from his work. The stock exchange was not due to open for an hour, but its computerized Designed Order Turnaround system, or DOT, would accept any sell orders that LD it, holding them for execution at the opening bell.

"Sir?" The dumbfounded bleat came from Ronald Johnson.

"I said sell," Looncraft repeated urgently. "Sell everything!"

And like well-trained soldiers, they took to their phones and made frantic calls.

"Liquidate every position," Looncraft shouted like a general commanding his troops. "Divest fully. I want Looncraft, Dymstar d to be completely liquid by the time the Dow opens. And damn the man who trades in his own portfolio before he has liquidated the firm's!"

With that, Looncraft marched into his office.

The office copy of The Wall Street journal lay open to the front page. Looncraft absorbed it at a glance: "NIKKEI DOW IN MASSIVE SELL-OFF."

"I knew those damned Japanese would be good for something other than cameras someday," Looncraft snorted, doffing his chesterfield coat and taking his chair.

He logged onto the Mayflower Descendants bulletin board and typed out a question:

"PERMISSION TO CONTACT OTHERS DIRECTLY."

"GRANTED," came the reply.

The message had obviously been monitored at other terminals, because before Looncraft could tap a single key, other messages began flashing.

"LIPPINCOTT HERE. WHAT IS THE WORD?"

Looncraft typed: "SELL!"

And all over America, the selling began. Sell orders rushed into the DOT system so rapidly, the computers balked at the volume. Orders backed up. Wall Street had never seen anything like it. It was an hour before opening, and nervous floor specialists at the New York Stock Exchange were going white.

The chairman of the New York Stock Exchange heard the reports coming up from the pit. He went out to the observation balcony. The floor was already littered with paper scraps. But more important, he could feel the rising body heat, smell the sweat. The broadtape ticker was blank. Suddenly the chairman felt a wave of sick anticipation of the numbers that would soon appear on it.

He consulted with the DOT-system computer people, nodded grimly at their projections, and returned to his office, where he began working the phone.

P. M. Looncraft typed merrily. He hummed an old English drinking song, "To Anacreon in Heaven," which Francis Scott Key had pillaged for the familiar "Star-Spangled Banner" melody.

"NOTHING LIKE GOOD OLD ANGLO-SAXON INGENUITY," he typed.

Another line appeared under his:

"THE REBELS WILL NEVER KNOW WHAT HIT THEM."

"WHAT GETS UP MY NOSE IS THAT IT TOOK SO BLOODY LONG," another typed.

Looncraft typed in his reply: "BE GRATEFUL YOU LIVED TO SEE THE GLORIOUS DAY, AND THAT YOU WERE A PART OF THE UNWRITING OF THE BLACKEST PAGE IN BRITISH HISTORY SINCE CROMWELL."

"HOWDY, BOYS! YOU AIN'T STARTING WITHOUT ME?"

Looncraft frowned. It was that infernal Texan, Slickens. The man was an embarrassment, British roots or not. When the new order was in place, Looncraft intended to shunt Slickens into some barely visible position. Perhaps governor-general of Boston, or something equally unsavory. Let him deal with the bloody Irish-Americans.

Looncraft forced himself to be polite. He typed: "HAVE YOU BEGUN DIVESTING?"

"WHAT'S THE BLAMED RUSH? THE PIT DON'T OPEN FOR ANOTHER HOUR."

"YOU WILL NOT GET THE BEST PRICE IF YOU DAWDLE,"

Looncraft typed.

"PRICE, SMICE," DeGoone Slickens typed back. 'WE'RE GONNA END UP OWNING THE WHOLE SHOOTING MATCH BY THE TIME ITS OVER. WHY SWEAT A FEW NICKELS HERE AND THERE?"

It sickened Looncraft's proud British soul to think that a man who came from such a fine family as Slickens could have, in little more than a hundred years, become so degradingly Americanized.

"AS YOU WISH," Looncraft typed. "MUST TODDLE." He left the computer on and turned his attention to the glass office wall, beyond which his traders were shouting into their phones.

Their panic appealed to him. For it presaged the absolute anarchy which would soon reign when the opening gong sounded.

Looncraft got up and stuck his head out the door.

"Are we liquid yet?" he called.

"No, sir, the DOT is backing up. It isn't taking our orders. "

"Then get over to the Exchange!" Looncraft shouted. "Deal directly with the floor specialists. We must be liquid. The entire economy is about to collapse. I hear it on the street, and I hear perfectly!"

Traders stumbling and struggling against one another, the trading floor emptied into the elevators.

The phone on the secretary's desk rang. Looncraft strode toward her as she was telling the caller, "Let me check."

Looncraft's secretary put her hand over the receiver. "It's the chairman of the Exchange."

"I'll take it."

In his office, P. M. Looncraft took up the phone without bothering to sit down. "Yes, Paul?"

"We're on the brink," the chairman said hoarsely. "The DOT's in trouble. My God, if there's that much dumping going on now, you know what will happen when the Exchange opens."

"Perhaps you are panicking prematurely," P. M. Looncraft suggested, his tone soothing. "After all, we came through the recent market upheavals without difficulty. This too may pass."

"My information is that when we open, there will be more sellers than buyers. You know what that means."

Looncraft knew. The knowledge brought a tight smile to his long cadaverous face. It meant that the entire fabric of Wall Street was close to unraveling. No buyers meant the sellers could not unload their stocks-not even at fire-sale prices. No buyers also meant that the consentual understanding that ran the stock market the one that said no matter how much prices fluctuated, stocks would always have some irreducible value-was disintegrating. And when that went, perhaps the monetary basis for currency would begin to unravel. If the Japanese hadn't already driven the dollar down to near-worthlessness.

"We have less than an hour to act," the chairman urged.

"Perhaps we should convene a meeting," P. M. Looncraft said soothingly.

"I'll call the others."

Less than fifteen minutes later, the board of directors of the New York Stock Exchange met around a long mahogany table which resembled an aircraft-carrier deck.

The chairman of the Exchange stood up, his face haggard.

"You all know the situation," he said. "The Far Eastern markets are in an uproar. The DOT is buried. When the gong sounds, I anticipate a fifteen-hundred-point instant drop. It would be more if the DOT was able to accept the load of sell orders that continues to pour into the system. In short, there is no question that we stand on the brink of a cataclysmic crash. Perhaps even a bottoming out of the market's total value."

"What do you propose?" P. M. Looncraft asked smoothly.

" I propose we not open today."

"Not open? Wouldn't that exacerbate the panic?"

"It doesn't matter," the chairman retorted. "It's so bad it simply cannot get any worse. I move the Exchange not open until we sort this out. We can blame it on the computers overloading. Your votes, gentlemen."

" I vote against," said Percival Marylebone Looncraft, turning to the others arrayed around the table.

"Against," voted Douglas Trevor Lippincott.

"Against," voted Henry Cecil Hyde.

"For," voted Aristotle Metaxas.

"Against," said Lowell Cabot.

"Against," said Alf Wenham. "For," said Sol Sugarman.

In the end, the Brahmins had won, as P. M. Looncraft knew they would. Anglo-Saxon blood never betrayed its heritage.

"If that is all," Looncraft said to a stunned chairman, getting to his feet, " I am needed back at the office."

The others filed out of the meeting room, leaving the three dissenters, a Jew, an Italian, and a Greek. They looked at one another with sick, incredulous eyes, never realizing that they had been sandbagged by a two-hundred-year-old conspiracy.

The Dow did not drop fifteen hundred points at the opening bell, as predicted. It dropped seventeen hundred. The DOT system had processed more sell orders than anyone had expected. In fact, it was working marvelously-all things considered.

Trading was halted for an hour, in accordance with NYSE rules regarding two-hundred-point drops. But when it resumed, so did the collapse.

There was panic in the pits. Several traders sold their expensive seats on the Exchange before trading had progressed five minutes. More than one trader sold off his Rolex-worn as a hedge against calamity-to cover option puts.

Men who had made fortunes speculating, not on the value of the firms they invested in, but on the projected prices of stocks, were bankrupted in seconds. Windows all over Wall Street were shattered by chairs, and men jumped to their death rather than face the financial ruin they had brought upon themselves. It was 1929 all over again. Except that now the repercussions were not limited to Wall Street and its satellites-brokerage houses and mutualfund groups around the country. It was a global panic.

In London the Financial Times Stock Exchange was still trading. As word of the Dow's nearly two-thousand-point plunge hit the City, prices dropped faster than some of the bodies striking Manhattan pavements thousands of miles west. The pound sterling lost value against everything except the U. S. dollar.

Dr. Harold W. Smith saw it all happen on his computer screen. The declining broadtape numbers marched by his eyes with sickening speed. Then certain stocks dropped off the tape. That meant they were no longer being traded, having dropped below their yield value. Despite their being worth the return their yearly dividends realized, no one was buying them.

No one, that is, until precisely 11:02, when with the Dow fluctuating between 766 and 967 points, one investor began to buy, and buy heavily.

The numbers fluctuated so slightly, in comparison to the drop, that at first Harold Smith didn't perceive the new factor for what it was.

When he realized there was a buying splurge going on, he logged onto the Looncraft, Dymstar d mainframe, assuming that was where the activity originated.

But Looncraft, Dymstar d computers were simply standing by. They were not buying, they were not selling.

Smith accessed Looncraft's personal computer. It was buzzing with strange cross-talk, but no selling activity.

Smith went around the chain of conspirators. None of them was buying. They were too busy communicating with Looncraft on the Mayflower Descendants' net.

Smith checked with Nostrum. Nostrum was not buying. Of course, with Chiun in London, there was no one there to orchestrate a response to the increased selling pressure.

Frustrated, Smith logged onto the DOT computers at the New York Stock Exchange. He saw the stream of buy orders. They were starting to back up. Every buy order bore the same origin.

"Oh, my God," Harold W. Smith said hoarsely.

It was Crown Acquisitions, Limited. It was buying up everything in sight, obtaining significant interest in major banks, insurances companies, newspapers, radio and television stations, and major industries. Key stocks and bluechips were being gobbled up by its voracious maw.

Crown was buying America's economic and industrial underpinnings.

Only then did Harold W. Smith understand what the whole mad scheme was all about.

It was a hostile takeover-on a scale never before imagined.

Chapter 25

In Oxford, England, Sir Quincy Chiswick sat in the dimness of the far corner table in the Wheatsheaf pub, away from the common herd. The pub buzzed with low voices. Occasionally a student would enter his field of vision to take away tea or a shepherd's pie from the worn wooden kitchen counter.

They never looked his way, even those who were his students. Sir Quincy preferred it that way. It was the reason he wore his raven-black professorial gown in the pub.

It was bad enough that he had to earn his bread teaching the spotted bastards, but to socialize with them was more than a body could bear.

Every year it became more of a chore.

Sir Quincy drained the last of his shandy, tossed a pound coin on the table, and rose to leave.

He overheard several people speaking about the stock market's travails, but paid them no mind.

"Oh, Professor," one of them called out.

Sir Quincy was so flummoxed by the lad's temerity that he forgot himself and turned.

Three young students were hunkered over their ale. One had his hand up, as if in a lecture hall. He looked like a right prat.

"Yes, what is it?" Sir Quincy deigned to say.

"You've doubtless heard of the economic chaos brewing in the States, Professor. Our own markets are coming a cropper. What do you suppose this augurs for the U. K. economy?"

"I have not heard of the economic chaos, as you so quaintly put it," Sir Quincy retorted. "And I pay no attention to the dreary modern world. My field is history. Now, if you will excuse me, unlike yourselves, I must prepare for tomorrow's classes."

And with that, Sir Quincy Chiswick, Regius Professor of History at Oxford's Nuffing College, turned about and fled the Wheatsheaf like a fugitive from an abbey.

He stepped out into the early dusk already blanketing Oxford's multitudinous spires.

His haggard fortyish visage was glum as he trudged along like an ebony-winged crow. He took no comfort from the sight of the witchlike spire of his own Nuffing College on his left.

He walked up High Street, past the Covered Market, and turned up Cornmarket Street. From Magdalen Street he took the Friar's Entry shortcut to Gloucester Street. Its blue lights were sepulchral tonight.

At the end of Gloucester, he crossed Beaumont to come, at last, to St. John's Street and its modest row houses.

Sir Quincy entered number fifty by a blue door in the scabrous white stucco facade, locked the door behind him, and glanced at the row of antique grandfather clocks at the foot of the stairs. The last one was a minute slow. He made a note to have it adjusted as he trooped up the stairs, one hand on the banister, the other lifting his black gown so as not to snag a step.

"Is that you, sir?" a middle-aged woman's voice called from the downstairs flat.

"Yes, Mrs. Burgoyne," he called down. "Has there been any mail today?"

"No, sir. I set tea and scones for you, as always."

"Odd," Sir Quincy muttered. In a normal voice, he said, "Thank you, Mrs. Burgoyne. You are very kind."

"Good night, Professor."

"Good night, Mrs. Burgoyne."

Sir Quincy unlocked the door to his shabbily genteel room. It was high-ceilinged, its eastern wall dominated by two beds, set like bookends, each covered by a yellowing bedspread.

In the center of the room stood a small writing desk burdened by a tea-cozy-covered object, a tarnished pewter tray heaped with scones, and two varieties of jam in serving compotes set beside the lion-patterned tea cozy.

Sir Quincy sat down. From a drawer he took a coilshaped heating element, plugged it into a floor socket, and dropped the reddening element into the china teakettle.

While he waited for the water to come to a boil, Sir Quincy plucked the oversize tea cozy from a tiny computer terminal. He hated to use the bloody device, but the mails to America were dreadful these days. He wondered what J. R. R. Tolkien, who had once occupied this very flat, would have thought of the infernal thing.

The water began bubbling as Sir Quincy turned on the computer. He logged on. The legend "MAYFLOWER DESCENDANTS" appeared at the top of the screen.

The board was busy with scrolling paragraphs. The Loyalists had become a chatty lot since he had given them permission to communicate amongst themselves. It worried Sir Quincy. He was a bit foggy on the security of these computer devices. Perhaps it was safe enough, but he would have thought that his principals would know enough to keep shtum until the matter was concluded.

When Sir Quincy felt the steam coming from the kettle warming his face, he knew that it was ready. As he poured, he watched the ever-changing cross-talk.

DO YOU SUPPOSE BEAR-MAN WILL SHOW HIS FURRY FACE AGAIN?"

"DID YOU ALSO RECEIVE A WARNING TOOTH FROM THE BLIGHTER?"

"I SHOULD SAY SO. BUT I AM READY FOR HIM THIS TIME."

"YOU BOYS HAD BETTER CIRCLE YOUR WAGONS. I TANGLED WITH THE VARMINT. HE DON'T TAKE NO CRAP FROM ANYBODY."

Sir Quincy frowned. What manner of English was that one communicating in? Must be some vulgar American slang. Well, that, too, would soon become a thing of the past.

He used a dull butter knife to separate a fresh hard scone into equal halves. The computer talk was focusing on the crisis in the New York stock market. Sir Quincy looked away, frowning. Economics was not his forte. And at the moment he faced a pressing problem. Mrs. Burgoyne had set out for him both of his favorite jams.

Which did he most fancy-greengage or plum?

Chapter 26

At five P. M. London time, crack British SAS counterterrorist commandos surrounded the Morton Court Hotel in London's busy Earl's Court district. They took up sniper positions on the rooftops of neighboring apartment buildings, behind shrubbery, and in the hotel's modest lobby.

Remo Williams peered over the sill of the third-floor room's single window. It looked down over the leaf-strewn yard of an apartment building.

"We're surrounded," he told Chiun, who sat cross-legged on the floor, the Royal Sceptre on his lap. The Master of Sinanju's shiny bald head was tipped back to see the high-shelved TV set.

"Shh," Chiun said.

"Will you shut that off?" Remo snapped. "These guys are heavily armed. I think they're getting ready to storm the place."

Chiun touched his wispy beard. "They will not invade the hotel without first asking our demands."

"What makes you think they give a flying jump about our demands?"

The phone rang before Chiun could reply.

Remo scooped up the receiver and barked out a rude hello. He listened. Then, turning to Chiun, he said, "They want to know our demands."

"Tell them that as a gesture of good faith, the sphinxes guarding the so-called Cleopatra's Needle will be set correctly."

"You're joking."

"And they will broadcast the fact," Chiun went on firmly, "or the Sceptre will be pulverized down to its smallest ruby and emerald."

Sighing, Remo relayed the message. Then he hung up.

"They said they'll get back to us. They're not going to do it, you know."

"They will, for they know that they are dealing with the House of Sinanju.

"What makes you think they'll care?"

"We performed a minor service for one of their recent queens. "

At Buckingham Palace, Her Britannic Majesty, the Queen of England, received the news with indignation.

"We will do nothing of the sort!" she said furiously.

She quieted down when the queen mother entered the sumptuous throne room, clearing her throat.

"Yes, Mum?" the queen said in a timid voice.

"This letter left at Whitehall bears the insignia of the House of Sinanju. They did a job of work for us during Victoria's reign. The Ripper matter."

"Ah," said the Queen of England, understanding perfectly. No wonder the rotter had never been captured. He had been assassinated.

"We will comply with these demands instantly," the queen mother directed. "Broadcast the work as requested."

"At once, Mum," the Queen of England said meekly.