Last War Dance

"You can't trust a man," she said. "A sexist, mind less pig. I'm not your object, you know. I'm a human being, with human feelings."

"You could have fooled me," Remo said.

"Are you going to rape me?"

"No."

"You must. You have to rape me."

"Why must I?" asked Remo.

"Because I need it."

"Is that all I am to you? A sex object?"

"That's irrelevant. Rape me."

"No," said Remo.

"Filthy pig," she hissed. "I will never again waste my body on a man not worthy of the gift."

Remo heard her rustling around in the grass. Then he heard her voice. "Come on. Wake up. I need it again. Wake up there, you."

Remo felt like rooting the unconscious Jerry Lupin on. At least sex might keep her quiet—something that seemed beyond the reach of any other technique.

The roar from the church was deafening.

"We shall overcome some day…

Umgawagawa. Umgawagawa."

Remo hopped up the stairs and walked in through the open door.

The interior of the church looked like a Bowery corner on a Sunday morning. Some people slept sitting up; others slept lying down on the floor and on the pews. The altar trays and cloths had been swiped off onto the floor, and the altar was being used as a bar. It was stacked full of every imaginable type of liquor, and Dennis Petty was presiding as bartender while also leading the singing.

He saw Remo and waved. "Hey, sing with us," he called.

"We shall not be moved," he roared, waving a full tumbler of whiskey over his head, his words echoed by a dozen people, who were still able to move their lips for something other than swallowing.

"By the shores of Gitchee Goomee," yelled Remo.

"We shall overcome… some… day," roared Petty.

"By the old Moulmein Pagoda," yelled Remo.

"Those ain't the words," said Petty.

"Where'd you get the booze?" asked Remo in disgust.

Petty tapped his forehead with his right index finger. "We got friend, wise ass. Not just you with your Twinkies."

"Name one friend you've got," challenged Remo.

"Perkin Marlowe, that's who," said Petty.

"He sent you this booze?"

"Right. A whole truckful."

"Is he coming?" asked Remo. "I hope he's coming here. I just hope he's coming here. I want to see him. I hope he's coming."

"Who cares if he's coming?" yelled Petty. "We got the booze. And there's more coming tomorrow. We shall overcome… this day… and the next day… and the next day. And as long as the booze holds out."

This time there were only four or five voices accompanying his. Everyone else had collapsed. Remo looked around at the interior of the church. So much for well-laid plans. It would take a moving company to haul this load of human garbage up to the Apowa village on time.

He thought again of just dragging along Petty and Lynn Cosgrove. But Brandt wouldn't settle for them.

The decision was simple. Remo was going to have to find that .155 millimeter cannon.

Van Riker slept as Remo made his way through the night to the Apowa Village, but the general was not alone. Another figure was in Van Riker's room. A hulk of a man, sitting in a chair next to Van Riker's bed, smoking cigarette after cigarette, the butts pinched near the filter by all five fingers of his right hand. His left hand cradled a pistol on his lap. The man studied Van Riker's tanned face in the dim light of the night-light near the bathroom.

Van Riker's sleep had been troubled. He had been upset when Remo had told him that Valashnikov had arrived at Wounded Elk. But when Van Riker had gone to Chiun's room, neither Chiun or Valashnikov had been there.

The general had waited for hours, struggling to decide whether he should call Washington. But whom could he call? What could he say? No one in Washington knew of the Cassandra, and few had even heard of General Van Riker. Call the FBI? They would start a dossier on Van Riker as a crank. The CIA? They would make a careful note to discuss it at next month's briefing, five days after some clerk leaked it to Jack Anderson.

Finally Van Riker returned to his own room and fell asleep, but his sleep was restless, haunted by visions of a wave of Russian missiles launched at America on a preemptive first strike of war. And a half-dozen of those missiles were aimed at Wounded Elk, to destroy America's best single hope of keeping the world from war. Once Valashnikov was sure of the location of the Cassandra, it would be easy for the Russians. Valashnikov wouldn't even have to plant a homing device near the monument. All the Russians would need would be a geography book.

Van Riker's eyes flicked in sleep, moving back and forth as he saw the Montana hills exploding with nuclear color and America's great cities being leveled by Russian missiles.

And then he was awake. In his mind he had seen a red fireball of destruction rising over Baltimore. Now as he opened his eyes, he saw a faint red glow in his room. For a moment he was frightened, but then he realized that the red ball was only the head of a lit cigarette. Someone was sitting by his bed.

"Valashnikov?"

"Yes, General," come the heavily accented voice. "It is pleasure after all these years."

"How long has it been?"

"Ten years," said Valashnikov, stabbing his cigarette out in an ashtray. "Ten years wasted because the idiotic NKVD could not tell difference in translation between tan and Negro. Well, no matter… I am here now, and so are you. Is all that matters."

"I won't tell you anything," said Van Riker.

"You don't have to," said Valashnikov. "The fact you are here tells me all I need to know. If you are here, Cassandra is here. Mother Russia needs no other knowledge."

Van Riker sat up slowly in bed. Outside the window the blackness of night was growing lighter. Dawn would come soon.

"That's doesn't seem likely," he told Valashnikov. "If it were that simple, why did you come here?"

"Forgive me, General," Valashnikov said. "For a human reason—to gloat. You have cursed my life for ten years. You and that infernal device of yours. But now I have won. I came so you could know the feelings I have carried in me for ten years. The feelings of loser." He laughed. "I suppose it seems foolish to you, but I wanted you to know what you did to me."

"Are you going to kill me?" asked Van Riker.

Valashnikov laughed again, a hard, brittle laugh. "Kill you? Kill you? After all these years? No, General, I am going to let you… how do you Americans say it?… to stew in the juice?

"I'll move Cassandra and set it up elsewhere."

"It will take you months. You know and I know that months will be too late. It will be seen. You were able once to build it in secret because we not know it existed. No more do you have that luxury."

"I'll…" Van Riker said and then stopped because he could think of no other threat, nothing that might frighten Valashnikov.

Valashnikov stood up. "Good, General. At least you have not tried to lie to me again. You may go back to sleep now. You should sleep with the bliss of knowing you have doomed your nation."

He put his gun in his jacket pocket. "Sleep tight." he said. "Hahahahaha." As he left the room through the front door, the long peal of laughter hung in the air behind him.

Van Riker sat there in bed, thinking. Then he got up, turned on the light, and went to the telephone.

There was one person who could help. One person he could call.

Dr. Harold W. Smith, at the Folcroft Sanitarium.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The sun was minutes short of rising when Remo got to the Apowa village high on the hill overlooking the mob of reporters, marshals, and bogus Indians out on the Montana prairie.

Remo paused on the edge of the mesa and looked down. Below him, beside the road that led to the Apowa village, stood the church housing the Revolutionary Indian Party and the bronze and marble monument housing the Cassandra.

Remo turned and trotted toward the Apowa town.

It was pushing five thirty now, he knew, and he didn't have much time left to stop that .155 millimeter cannon from blowing up the monument and detonating the Cassandra.

For a moment he allowed himself to consider what would happen if the Cassandra went off. He would die. So would Chiun. That thought shook him a little, since the idea of Chiun's dying seemed unbelievable, as unbelievable as the idea repealing the law of gravity or stopping some other force of nature.

But Cassandra's power was beyond them to resist. Death. A strange thing. And Remo decided he didn't like it. He wondered if that was the way all the people he had killed had felt. The next time he killed somebody, he would have to ask him what he was thinking about. That is, if there was a next time.

Brandt had thought he was smart, hiding the cannon. But Remo had thought the problem through, and the solution had come to him in a burst of inspiration. Why not hide the cannon out in the open? Where else but in the park? The park, with its collection of machine guns and artillery and the kids playing harmlessly around them. The park with its beautiful high-ground view of the church and the monument and the highway. All he had to do was go to the park and find a working .155 millimeter cannon.

That was all he had to do.

But it was too much. Remo went through the park carefully, checking each and every weapon. None of them was the potentially dangerous cannon. There were submachine guns that didn't fire. Bazookas that wouldn't fire. Mortars that couldn't fire. Cannons that had never fired. But there was no working cannon that could level the church, destroy the monument, and detonate the Cassandra.

Only twelve minutes left, and Remo was lost. He didn't even know where Brandt lived so he could get to his house in time to bleed the information on the cannon's location from him. He was without ideas and without prospects.

The village around him was slowly starting to come alive. People were moving quietly along the streets.

Remo watched them. America on its way to work. God-fearing, hard-working America.

He watched God-fearing, hard-working America idly for a moment from his perch on the park bench, Then he thought of something. Who went to work at five thirty A.M.? And these were all young men. Braves. And they all seemed to be going in the same direction.

It was no hope at all, but it was his only hope. Remo fell in with the small groups moving past the park, up toward the north. He walked fast, occasionally passing one of the groups but still able to follow the one just ahead.

Then he realized where they were going. The Big A supermarket!

Remo arrived there just a few minutes before six. Even though it was two hours before opening time, the interior of the store was already brightly lighted. Inside Remo could see Brandt. He was talking to a group of twenty young men, and more young men were arriving each minute, entering through the unlocked, pressure-operated front doors.

As the doors opened and closed, Remo could hear fragments of what Brandt was saying: "… supposed to be here… have to get rid of them ourselves… did you work out coordinates?"

The group which had now swelled to forty men, followed Brandt to one side of the store. As Remo watched, they fell onto the enormous display of toilet tissue, carrying the rolls away, first four-roll packages, then boxes, and then cartons, finally baring, under the protective mound of paper, the cannon. Remo understood why Brandt had gotten so upset when the women shoppers had hovered around the display. Sometime after the RIP had occupied the church, he had moved the cannon into the store from wherever its hiding place had been.

What a dumb place to store a cannon. So dumb, Remo almost hadn't found it.

Now all he had to do was stop it from being fired, hopefully without hurting anybody. The Apowa were, after all his kind of people, and Remo's sympathies lay with putting a shell into the church.

Brandt now was supervising as the Indians wheeled the cannon out of a small chicken-wire shed. The cannon was a big one. The top of its muzzle reached higher than a man's head.

Figuring that there had to be a side door to wheel it out through, Remo trotted around the low cinder-block building and found the wide delivery doors at the back. He found something else, too—the main power lines for the building. Remo looked for a fuse box on the outside wall but could not find one. The twin power lines came from utility poles to a spot about twelve feet up on the wall. They were connected there to heavy porcelain insulated mountings and then went through holes in the masonry wall into the building.

Remo leaped up and grabbed one of the insulators with his left hand. This would be tricky. He didn't understand electricity, so he took pains to figure it out carefully. If he just sliced one of the electric wires while he was touching the wall or the ground, he would be grounded and the jolt of electricity would pass through and probably kill him. Suppose he had worn his sneakers? Stupid, that wouldn't matter, he decided. But he wished he had them. Anyway, he had to cut the wire without being grounded.

Remo dropped back to the blacktop of the loading area. He stood under the twin wires, then crouched and leaped straight up.

At the top of his leap, he windmilled his right hand around his body and over his head. The hand hit the heavy insulated cable and sliced through it, separating the wire into two parts.

Remo, still off the ground, felt nothing but a faint tingle on the side of his hand. He landed lightly and danced out of the way of the severed section of cable, that writhed about the ground like an electric snake, sparking and spitting out its evil juice.

Remo poised himself, then leaped again and slammed his hand through the second wire. It too split and hit the ground with a splashing surge of electricity.

As soon as he landed, Remo was moving away from the spitting wires. He heard shouts from the supermarket.

"What the hell's going on?"

"Somebody go look at that fuse box."

He had to work fast now. He went back around the front of the store just as a faint hint of pink was beginning to lighten the eastern sky. The automatic doors in front of the market no longer worked, and Remo had to force them open. Then he was inside, in the darkness, moving among the Indians, who had stopped wheeling the cannon and were waiting for the lights to come back on.

He moved in close and felt the cold polished steel of the barrel over his head. He tested the metal with his fingers and gave it exploratory taps with the sides of his hands. There were always weak spots in a machine, and a cannon was a machine. Chiun said there was always a spot where vibrations would bring it apart. He worked faster now, hitting the heels of his hands against the metal. And then he found it—a place that did not vibrate under his hands with the same dull hum as the other spots on the barrel.

Remo wrapped his hand around that spot on the barrel. Then from below, he began to swing his hands up and over his head, smashing hand against steel. It was rhythm—the pounding, left hand after right hand, left hand after right hand, in precise time, almost like a metronome. It filled the supermarket with dull bongs.

"Who's making that racket?" somebody nearby yelled.

"Cannon inspector," Remo answered.

Somebody else chuckled.

Then suddenly Remo, satisfied the metal now was vibrating in time with the thuds of his hands, changed the rhythm into a staccato series of smashes. The barrel of the cannon seemed to groan in pain. Remo stopped and slowly began to move toward the front door.

From the back of the store he heard a voice. Brandt's. "Damned wires come loose from the building somehow. I've some lights here. Everybody get one."

Men surged toward Brandt and took the battery-operated lights he held in his arms. Then they walked back toward the cannon, lights on and swinging in front of them, and illuminated the huge weapon.

"What the hell?" said someone.

"I'll be a son of a bitch," said Brandt.

The cannon stood there as it had before, but now its barrel, instead of pointing ceilingward in phallic pride, drooped impotently toward the floor of the store, like a shriveled stalk of celery.

Remo was already outside, trotting toward the road, to get back to his other main problem—Valashnikov.

But he was not fast enough. The enraged Brandt had gone to the window to look outside, and in the early morning light, he saw Remo trotting away.

"Damn it," he said. "Dirty, double-dealing, double-crosser." He slammed his right fist into his left palm. "If you think we're done, funny name, you've got another thing coming."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

General Van Riker had been successful. This, Valashnikov realized when the telephone rang in his room at the motel. On the phone was the Russian ambassador's chief aide for cultural affairs—which meant the top Red spy in America.

"Comrade Valashnikov, you are to leave immediately," he said without preamble.

"Leave? But why?"

"Why? Why? Is there a change in the policy that you ask me why?"

"But I've found what I came to find. It's here. It's here. After ten years I've found it," said Valashnikov.

"Yes. You may have. You may also have caused an international incident. You may endanger détente, and without détente, without friendship, without mutual understanding, how can we ever make the surprise attack? Valashnikov, you are a fool, and you are to leave immediately."

Valashnikov breathed deeply. He was just too close to success to lose gracefully. "Would you mind telling me what I am supposed to have done?"

"Gladly," said the chief aide for cultural affairs. "First, your assault on that little girl, that little Indian child—has exposed you to criminal charges and our nation to embarrassment."

"But…"

"Do not 'but' me. If you were just a pervert, that would be bad enough. But you are a fool. To think that you have offered Russian arms to the Indians at Wounded Elk! You have tampered with an internal American problem. You have involved us in an affairs we should not be involved in."

"But, I never…"

"Do not deny it, Valashnikov. I have heard it myself, with my own ears, just moments ago. You are just lucky the mayor of Wounded Elk is a reasonable man. Mayor Van Riker will not press charges."

"Van Riker? He's a…"

"He is an elected official, Valashnikov. An elected official. And would an American mayor lie? You will leave immediately. You will return to Vladivostok and wait there until you hear from us."

The phone clicked sharply in Valashnikov's ear.

Imbeciles! Stupid, foolish imbeciles! They had been duped by Van Riker. Somehow he had gotten information on Valashnikov, and he had used that information to give the ring of truth to the rest of the story he had told the Russian Embassy. And the embassy had believed it.

Stupid. Well, they could be as stupid as they wished, but Valashnikov would not help them in their stupidity. For ten years he had been right and he had been punished for his beliefs and for KGB stupidity. And now that he was on the verge of success, of redemption, he would not be cheated out of it by a spy in Washington who believed a ridiculous, incredible story.

In Moscow they must learn that Valashnikov had been right. There was nothing else left in life for him. His life had been struggles and losses, but he had to balance the books this time. He had to prove he was right.

Leave now? Go back to Vladivostok and his clerk's job? No! Even if he had wished to, he knew he would never have reached Vladivostok. Anyone believed to be fool enough to tamper with American politics would be exiled—or shot.

Valashnikov put his pistol into a dresser drawer, donned his jacket, and walked out of his room. He would find a way to show Russia he was right.

When Remo came back along the road from the Apowa village, he was not stopped by the federal marshals, who all seemed to be congregated around the large tent that was being used as press headquarters.

Remo strolled over in that direction and saw that the TV lights were on, cameras were humming, and the pen-and-pencil reporters were hastily scribbling notes. The center of all the attention was a face Remo recognized immediately. It had graced the covers of news magazines. It had been magnified forty times and seen on motion picture screens around the world. It was Perkin Marlowe. The actor wore blue jeans and a T-shirt, and his thinning, longish light brown hair was caught in a small pony tail.

"Genocidal America," he said softly, his lips hardly moving.

"What'd he say?" one of the reporters yelled. "What'd he say?"

"Homicidal America," said another reporter.

"Thanks," said the first, happy he hadn't missed anything.

Perkin Marlowe went on, answering questions in a voice so dull and diffused that it was difficult to understand. But the thrust was that America was an evil country and Americans were evil, dull, stupid people who did not have the good sense to support this obviously worthwhile cause of the honest, free, nature-loving red man.

That the same evil, dull, stupid American people had made Perkin Marlowe rich by attending his films he did not deem worthy of mention, and if any of the reporters thought of it, they did not mention it either, lest they seem to their peers to be establishment stooges.

"I am on my way to the RIP encampment," Marlowe said. "There I will make my stand alongside my Indian brothers though we may fall under the onslaught of the government troops."

"What troops?" called out Remo before slipping to a different spot in the crowd.

Marlowe looked confused. "Everybody knows there are troops hidden all around here."

"That's right," squeaked Jerry Candler. "I had it in the Globe. Be quiet there in back."

Marlowe continued, "Yes, we may fall under the onslaught, but we will fight bravely."

"Forget the fight," Remo called. "Did you remember to bring more booze?" The last truckload's all gone."

Again he moved before anyone could spot him. Marlowe looked around, trying to find the speaker. Finally he said, "Gentlemen, I think that's all. If I never see any of you again, keep up the good work. Fight the good fight."

He turned quickly and as Candler led the audience in applause, walked rapidly from the press tent and across the grass prairie toward the church.

The newsmen followed him, lugging their equipment. The marshals moved along with the crowd, across the field toward the church.

And unseen on the main road, headed from the motel to the monument was Valashnikov.

Remo, who did not see him, went back to the motel. He found Chiun in lotus position on the floor, looking through the large front window.

Chiun quickly rose to his feet. "You have been gone so long. Did you like him? Isn't he nice?"

"How much did he offer you?"

"Well, it wasn't just me," Chiun said. "He would want you, too. And he would pay you something, also."

"How nice," said Remo. "Chiun, I'm surprised at you."

"I tried, Remo. I told him to be sure to pay you a lot; otherwise your feelings would be hurt."

"Not that, Chiun. Trusting the Russians. You know how you don't trust the Chinese? The Russians are worse."

"I have never heard that of them," said Chiun.

"No? Did you talk to him about television?"

Chiun raised an eyebrow. "Television? Why should I talk to him about television? I am not an anchor person. What is an anchor person, anyway?"

"An anchor person is a person who sinks a news show with heavy attempts at humor," said Remo. "What I'm talking about is your daytime dramas. What are you going to watch instead of 'As the Planet Revolves'?"

"Why instead of?" asked Chiun.

"Because Russia doesn't have 'As the Planet Revolves,' " said Remo.

"You lie," said Chiun, his face whitening as the blood drained.

"No, Little Father, it is true. Russia does not have the soaps."

"He told me they did."

"He lied."

"Are you sure? Are you not just being patriotic because you do not want to work for Mother Russia?"

"Ask him again."

"I will."

Chiun led the way out of the room. They marched to Valashnikov's room, and Chiun pounded on the door. When there was no answer, he put his right hand on the doorknob and removed it. Slowly the door swung open. Chiun peered inside.

"He is not here."

"Good thing for him," said Remo, looking at the doorknob still in Chiun's hand.

"We will find him. There are only two places to be. Around here, you are either in your room or out of your room. That's all."

As they walked down the concrete ribbon in front of the rooms, General Van Riker stepped from his room, a satisfied smile on his face.

"Have you seen him?" asked Chiun.

"Seen whom?"

"The rascal Russian with the foolish name," said Chiun.

"Valashnikov," said Remo.

"No," said Van Riker. "He may be on his way back to Russia by now."

"We will see," said Chiun and turned, leading the way from the motel toward the monument.

The press was disappointed. Perkin Marlowe had simply vanished into the Episcopal church, and Dennis Petty had denied the reporters admittance.

"When we want you, we'll rattle your chain," he said.

"But we're covering the story for the whole world," protested Jonathan Bouchek.

"Shove the whole world," said Petty, slamming the church door in their faces.

The reporters just looked at each other.

"He must have terrible pressures on him," said Jerry Candler.

"Yes," agreed another reporter. "Still, he didn't have to be rude."

"Noooo," said Candler, "but he's been dealing with the government for so long, I guess it's hard to act any other way."

There were nods of agreement, and the press, having convinced itself that Petty's arrogance was somehow Washington's fault, turned and strolled away from the church toward the monument.

Valashnikov was already there. So this was it. The Cassandra. The evil machine that had cost him his career, his future, his happiness. What else could it cost him?

He looked at the bronze plaque over the center of the raised marble slab. It was ingenious, he thought. Van Riker had designed it well.

Slowly Valashnikov walked around the monument. In the bushes toward the back he spotted a shiny object. He dropped to his knees and brought out a piece of metal, the part Van Riker had removed to disarm the missile,

Valashnikov held it in his hands, looking at it carefully, his body already absorbing its deadly radiation. But he was happy that he recognized it as the bridging unit needed to fire the Cassandra.

Without it, he realized, Cassandra could not work. It could not move. If hit, it might explode, but it would explode in America, not in Russia. America was vulnerable, after all. He must get the message back to Moscow. He must let them know!

Up ahead he saw the press approaching. He waved to them. He did not see the group approaching from behind—Remo, Chiun, and Van Riker.

"There he is. There is the devil," said Chiun. "You are not lying to me, Remo?" he asked.

"No, Little Father. Would I lie?"

"Hmmmmm."

Valashnikov lifted his hulk up onto the monument. He held the missing part of the Cassandra over his head, waving it at the reporters.

"Over here!" he yelled. "Over here!"

The reporters stopped and stared at the strange fat man dancing on the monument. He kept waving to them with the missile part.

"Come quick!" he called. "Evidence of American warmongering."

"We'd better hurry," said Candler. "He may have something."

"Start shooting," said Jonathan Bouchek to his cameraman, and as the reporters moved toward Valashnikov, cameras began to whir and tape recorders to hum.

Valashnikov looked at his hands and saw the flesh reddening. No matter. He would do his job for Mother Russia. He danced up and down on the monument, waving to the press. "Hurry! Quick!" he shouted.

"What's he doing?" Remo asked.

Van Riker was looking. "Damnit," he said, "he's got the missile part. He knows Cassandra's disarmed."

"So what?" asked Remo.

"So, Russia will know, too. Any technician who sees that part in Valashnikov's hands will know that missile won't fly. The doomsday defense is done. America's vulnerable."

Chiun ignored the conversation. Resolutely he marched to the marble base of the monument. Up above his head Valashnikov was still jumping up and down and yelling.

"Hey, you!" called Chiun.

Valashnikov looked down.

"Tell me the truth. Do you have 'As the Planet Revolves' on your television?"

"No," said Valashnikov.

"You lied to me."

"It was necessary for the good of the state."

"It's not nice to fool the master of Sinanju."

Meanwhile Remo had moved around in front of the monument and was holding off the press, which had approached to within thirty feet of the marble slab.

"Sorry, fellas, you can't come any closer."

"Why not?"

"Radioactivity," Remo said.

"I knew it, I knew it!" exclaimed Candler. "The government's planning to use nuclear weapons on the Indian liberators."

"Right," said Remo. "And after that we're going to firebomb jaywalkers."

The cameras kept grinding at Valashnikov as he roared, "I am Russian spy. This is missile to blow up world. It works no longer. It broken. This part make it work no more."

He waved the part over his head like a lasso, then jumped to the ground, dropping the shiny metal onto the dirt. He looked down at his hands. The flesh was blistering, burning before his eyes, the fluid under it boiling.

He looked up at General Van Riker, who was staring sadly at him. "I have won, General," Valashnikov said triumphantly.

Van Riker did not answer.

"They will see film in Russia and know that Cassandra no longer works."

He wheeled as Chiun grabbed his shoulder.

"Why did you lie to me?" Chiun demanded.

"I had to. I am sorry, old man. But not too sorry. I have won. I have won." His face beamed with happiness. "Russia knows where Cassandra is. I have won."

"We will see," hissed Chiun.

He darted under the tarpaulin that still lay in front of the marble monument. The canvas began to rise and fall as Chiun moved under it. It looked as if children were playing under a blanket.

"We want to talk to that Russian spy," said Bouchek to Remo.

"You can't," said Remo, being careful to keep his face twisted in a grimace that made him unrecognizable. "He's an escaped lunatic. He might be dangerous."

"What is all this radioactivity crap?" asked another reporter.

"Top secret. I can't tell you," said Remo.

Behind him he heard the slap of hands, sharp clicking sounds that he realized came from Chiun's fingernails.

He glanced over his shoulder occasionally and finally saw Chiun came back out from under the tarpaulin. Chiun pulled the heavy canvas away from the black marble slab, which seemed undamaged except for a small, thin crack in a section along the top.

Van Riker was talking to Valashnikov. "You have won, you know."

"Thank you, General," said the Russian. His heart was racing now, and the fire in his hands was building to incredible agony. "How long do I live?"

"You held that activator for how long?"

"Ten minutes."

Van Riker just shook his head. "Sorry."

"I must be sure my victory is complete." Valashnikov turned toward the newsmen, but between him and them was Chiun.

"If you want a complete victory, I have one for you," said Chiun.

"Yes?"

"You want to prove to Russia that this is the Cassandra?"

"Yes."

"All right," said Chiun. "Up there you will see a crack in the marble at the top of the monument. Go push on it."

The cameras whirred as Valashnikov, staggering from the poison of radioactivity flooding his body and his brain, moved forward to the marble monument. His mind seemed to bubble with thoughts of its own. He fought to keep control of the ideas and images that whirled behind his eyes.

"I Russian spy," he bawled. "This American capitalist missile."

He reached the spot Chiun had pointed out. He stumbled, and fell against it. A section of the marble block moved away, revealing a new section of the marble beneath it.

Valashnikov saw it as he fell. "No, no," he whimpered. "No, no." And then he was still. The cameras whirred and newsmen crowded around his lifeless body, which lay in front of a marble legend that read:

CASSANDRA 2.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The reporters looked at each other.

"What's Cassandra 2?" Jonathan Bouchek asked Remo.

"A secret missile designed to blow up the entire world," Candler answered for him.

Bouchek turned to him. "Do you know that for a fact?"

"What else could it be?" said Candler. "What else…"

He stopped as they heard the first noise. It sounded like a faint wind blowing from the east, and then it increased in intensity and pitch, as if it were growing stronger, coming nearer. It was behind them and they turned.

And then they saw the source of the noise.

At the crest of the mesa upon which the Apowa village of Wounded Elk was located, one man became visible. Then another. Then another. Then clusters of them. And soon the entire edge of the bluff was filled with men on horseback, shoulder to shoulder. They wore feathers and war paint. They were naked to the waist, and across their backs they had strapped guns and bows. Now they stopped to look down the half-mile toward the church, where the RIP members were drinking peacefully, and then one man in the center, astride a pinto pony, waved his rifle over his head, and with an earth-shattering scream, the Apowa braves came charging down the hillside on their ponies, heading for the church.

Remo smiled to himself. Brandt was not going to be cheated out of his revenge by any old bent cannon.

"It's the Indians attacking," one reporter cried.

"Don't be fooled. It's probably green berets in disguise," said Candler. "Why would Indians attack the RlP forces who are seeking justice for all red men?"

"That's true," said Jonathan Bouchek. "Let's go," he told his cameraman, and they began trotting along the road from the monument to the church. Other reporters broke into a run and followed.

The Apowa warriors, two hundred strong, were now down off the hill and galloping across the open prairie toward the church, their banshee wails filling the prairie.

The noise brought the church to life, too. Inside, the RIP members were celebrating the arrival of Perkin Marlowe with a cocktail party at which the most popular drink was Scotch with Scotch on the side. Dennis Petty heard the sound first.

"Getting so noisy around here, you can't even have a good party," he said, tossing an empty bottle at the corner of the altar, where it fell and cracked again a pile of bottles. Then, drink in hand, he strolled to the front of the church. "Perkin, old kemosabe, make yourself a drink." he said. He opened the front door of the church and looked out. "Holy shit," he whistled.

"What is it?" called Lynn Cosgrove, who sat in a nearby pew taking notes.

"It's Indians," said Petty. "Hey, it's Indians," he yelled to the entire church. "Real Indians."

"Probably planning to rape all us women," said Cosgrove.

"Hey! Shit! They're coming here," Petty yelled. "They're coming here."

"What are they yelling?" asked Marlowe, moving toward Petty.

"They're yelling, 'Kill RIP. Kill RIP.' Shit. Sheeeit! I'm getting out of here."

"They're government lackies," said Cosgrove without turning.

"Right," said Perkin Marlowe.

"Government lackies, my ass. They're Indians. Real Indians. I ain't screwing around with no real Indians," Petty said.

By now all forty RIP members had moved to Petty's side.

"Shit is right," said one of them. "They look mean. I'm getting out of here."

"Let's go," said Petty. "Before one of us gets hurt."

They started down the steps of the church and broke into a run toward the line of federal marshals.

As they ran, Petty ripped off his dirty T-shirt and waved it over his head. "Sanctuary!" he screamed. "We surrender. Sanctuary."

The other RIP members followed his lead, ripping off their shirts, waving them over their heads.

"Help! Protect us! Sanctuary!" Beer bottles and whiskey flasks dropped from their pockets as they ran.

The reporters made the mistake of trying to head them off and were trampled.

"Get out of my way, you nitwit bastards," shouted Petty, slamming a straight arm into Jerry Candler and stepping on Jonathan Bouchek.

Finally convinced and bringing up the rear of the RIP stampede, but gaining ground every minute, was Perkin Marlowe. He was whimpering, "I just wanted to help. I just wanted to help. Don't let me get hurt."

In an instant the RIP members were past the press. Candler lifted himself up on one elbow and looked at the fleeing figures. He turned to Bouchek, who lay on his back in the dust. "Can't blame him for panicking. I mean, after all, he's under terrible pressures, with those disguised soldiers after him, trying to kill him."

Candler looked up and saw a man on a pinto pony standing over him. The man was red-skinned and wore a headdress of feathers. He held a rifle loosely in his right hand.

"Who are you?" the man asked.

Candler scrambled to his feet. "I'm glad you asked. I'm Jerry Candler of the New York Globe and I know what you think your game is, but you're not going to get away with it, terrifying those poor Indians like that."

"You mean all those Indians from Chicago's South Side?" asked Brandt, looking down from his pony.

"The world will hear about this atrocity," said Candler.

"Were you born a fool, or did you study it in school?" asked Brandt. He looked up and saw the RIP members had crossed the line of federal marshals and were surrendering as fast as the marshals could get to them. Then he turned to the rest of his war party. "Come, men. Let's go and clean the garbage out of our church."

They turned their ponies and trotted away. Candler began walking toward the marshals, already composing the lead for his Sunday column: "Vietnam. Attica. San Francisco. And now Wounded Elk joints the long list of American atrocities."

Remo had watched the charge and the near battle from a seat atop the marble monument. He felt satisfied at its outcome and turned to get Chiun's reaction. But Chiun was deep in discussion with Van Riker. "There," Chiun was saying. "There is the weapon you would have invented, had you any brains."

"What do you mean?" asked Van Riker. "You've just let the world know that this is Cassandra."

Chiun shook his head. "This is Cassandra 2. It says so on the plaque I made. That means there is a Cassandra 1, and no enemy will be able to find it, and it will not hurt anyone, either."

Van Riker looked confused. "The Russians?"

"The Russians will be more sure that Cassandra exists because they have seen parts from Cassandra 2. I have made for you the perfect weapon. Harmless but effective. The only kind white men should be allowed to play with."

Van Riker's tanned face opened into a slow smile. "You know, you're right." He looked toward the marble slab, where the dead Valashnikov lay, and shook his head. "I feel sorry for him in a way. All those years he spent finding this missile, and then, when he does, he loses anyway."

"Pfffffui," said Chiun. "Death is too good for him. There is no man lower than a man who lies to an assassin about his wages."

Together, the three men walked back to the motel, where Van Riker immediately got busy. He called Washington, and ordered nuclear crews in to dismantle Cassandra 2. He did it on an open line and talked to every clerk who answered the telephone, just to make sure his orders were not only intercepted but given the widest possible public distribution.

Van Riker smiled. He could talk about Cassandra 2 all he wanted now. He had the perfect weapon—Cassandra 1.

Remo sat in the next room with Chiun. It was still too early for the day's soap operas, so they watched the news. It was filled with shots of Valashnikov and Cassandra 2 and the Apowa attack on the church and the RIP members being routed.

Jonathan Bouchek shoved a camera and a microphone in the face of Lynn Cosgrove. "Burning Star…" he began.

"My name is Cosgrove," she said, "Lynn Cosgrove."

"But I thought your Indian name was…"

"That was a past chapter in my history. The Indian struggles have come and gone. Today there is a new and greater struggle confronting all Americans. The struggle for sexual liberation. I have here the outline of my new book." She waved a notebook at him. "It will point the way to honest healthy sexual relationships among all people. Prudery must die." She reached her free hand up to the neck of her buckskin dress and ripped it open, baring her breasts for cameras. "What's wrong with screwing?" she yelled. "Sex, now and forever."

Behind her, a voice yelled, "Sakajawea. Sakajawea."

It was Dennis Petty.

Lynn Cosgrove wheeled and yelled back, "Fraud bastard. Fake, phoney, chicken shit fraud bastard."

As Bouchek's crew kept filming, Petty grabbed his crotch with his right hand and thrust it forward toward Cosgrove. "That for you."

Watching his live air presentation degenerate into an X-rated display of obscene gestures, Bouchek sank slowly to the ground. Before cutting away, the last shot the camera got was of Bouchek crying, his makeup washing down his cheeks.

The program switched back to the studio for an announcement by the minority-party senator that he would introduce a bill in the Senate to pay twenty-five thousand dollars to each of the surviving members of what he called "the new Wounded Elk massacre."

Remo slapped off the television set "Well, Little Father, the nation lives."

"I can tell," said Chiun. "Insanity still runs amuck."

"Speaking of insanity, I'd better call Smith."

Smith listened quietly to Remo's explanation of the day's events, and since he did not criticize Remo's actions, Remo took that to mean everything had worked out well.

"You have one more thing to do, you remember," said Smith.

"I know," said Remo.

He hung up and walked through the connecting doors into Van Riker's room.

Van Riker was just hanging up his phone. He turned, and when he saw Remo, he smiled, rubbing his hands together.

"Well, everything's in good order," he said. "The Pentagon's going to leak a story about a string of Cassandras hidden around the world. Crews will be here to dismantle this one. All in all, I'd say a pretty good day." He looked at Remo and smiled. "So what do you say we get on with it?"

"On with what?" asked Remo.

"You've come to kill me. I know too much… about you, the Oriental, Smith, and CURE."

"Why didn't you run?" asked Remo.

"Remember those two bodies in the monuments? I had to do that to keep Cassandra a secret. You have to do the same thing. Why run? You'd get me."

"That's right. I would," said Remo.

"Give Smith my best wishes. He's a brilliant man," said Van Riker.

"I will," said Remo and quickly killed the tanned general. He arranged the body on the bed so it would look like Van Riker had died from a heart attack caused by excitement, then went back into his own room.

"Well, Little Father, we should be leaving."

Chiun was at the dresser, writing with a straight pen on a long piece of parchment.

"As soon as I am done with this."

"What is it you're doing?"

"It is a letter to the Mad Emperor Smith. I think I should be paid for the creation of Cassandras 1 and 2. Creating weapons is outside the contract and should be paid for." He turned to Remo. "Especially since I turned down a very attractive offer from Mother Russia."