Look Into My Eyes

"Why," Vassily had once asked a field marshal who had come to the parapsychology village for treatment of a headache, "are we not weak when we make a peace overture? These things have puzzled me."

"Because when we make a peace overture, we want the other side to disarm. That will make us stronger."

"Why do we want to be stronger?"

"If we are not stronger they will destroy us."

"And if we are stronger?"

"We will destroy them," said the field marshal happily. "And then where will we get all those wonderful Western goods if we destroy them?"

"I'm not in charge of politics," said the field marshal.

"Would you really want to cook your bread in a Russian toaster?"

"Don't bother me with politics."

"Have you ever had Russian Scotch?"

"You're being subversive," said the field marshal.

It had really been just another incident to prove to him what he already knew. What the Russians understood was absolute force. Kill, and they would talk fairly and decently with you. Show you could not kill, and they wouldn't even answer your mail.

Vassily Rabinowitz understood that if he could get a missile shot off at some place in Russia, he would be able to embrace his newfound American comrades as allies even before the nuclear dust settled. Only after he showed everyone he was a major danger did he have the slightest chance of being left alone.

Communist Russia had always been like this. It was they, not the West, who had signed the nonaggression treaty with Nazi Germany. It was they, not the West, who had collided with the Nazis to take Poland. It was they, not the West, who had waited happily for the Nazis to destroy Europe, giving them whatever raw materials they might need, including materials to build gas ovens.

In the end, of course, the Nazis invaded Russia, and then the propaganda machines went to work. It became Russia and the West against fascism, and then at the end of the war, when the West disbanded its armies, Russia kept its forces at full level and put up the Iron Curtain.

And if the West had not rearmed, there would have been a red flag flying over Washington.

To know anything about history was to know this about Russia. Vassily Rabinowitz, whether he liked it or not, would have to go into the army business.

He had gotten over his revulsion at his crimes in New York. The initial shame had turned to pride. If he could kill gang leaders, he could easily kill Russians. And probably outsmart them to boot, although one fact the West always seemed to ignore was that the Russians were very shrewd.

It would be quite a test. Unfortunately, as he finished his pastry on the street corner, he understood he didn't even have one missile yet. And his problem, he realized, was that he was starting at the bottom.

The lights went out, and the shooting started. They could see only gun flashes, and they shot at the flashes. But as they shot, their own guns gave off flashes, and they were hit. The room filled with the groans of dying, cursing men, and when the lights went on, the blood had made the floor slippery, so slippery that Anna Chutesov sent in a man to see if everyone of them was dead.

He came back with blood all over his shirt. He had slipped three times.

"Blood is more slippery than oil," he said.

"Are they dead?" she asked.

"No. Not all. Some are dying."

"That's fine," she said to the soldier. Men, she thought. I knew they would react like that.

But she did not say this to the young lieutenant who had gone into the room for her. Even now soldiers were running up stairways and down hallways with guns, looking for the source of the firing.

Men, thought Anna Chutesov. They are so stupid. Why are they running? What will they figure out faster by running? Most of them don't even know where the gunfire was coming from. But they run. They run because another man told them it was a good way to get someplace faster. Actually, walking had gotten Anna Chutesov farther in Soviet Russia than any man her age.

She was twenty-six years old, and despite her youth she had more influence in more places than anyone from the Berlin wall to Vladivostok.

And she did not get it because of her great beauty. She was blond. Soft honey-colored hair caressed her magnificent high cheekbones and her smile flashed with such perfect whiteness that some men gasped.

Of course, men would always gasp at beauty without ever figuring out how it got there. The real beauty of Anna Chutesov was in her presence. It was cool, friendly, and only hinted of sexuality.

Anna knew that average men became absolutely useless when in heat. A man in heat was like a telephone pole on wheels, virtually uncontrollable and completely dysfunctional.

She walked calmly through the running men, and by the time she reached command headquarters, fifteen stories down into the earth, sheltered from any possible American attack, she had been asked no less than ten times what had happened on the first floor among the special mission commanders.

Each time she answered that she did not know, and each time she thought how stupid the question was. No one gave out information freely in this command headquarters designed for the last struggle against capitalism in case of an American invasion.

It was a wonderful headquarters and the result of typical male thinking. It was here they could direct the remnants of Russian forces if America should be successful in penetrating Russian borders.

What no one bothered to ask was why America would penetrate Russian borders. There was only one reason: if there was a war in which America had to fight for its life.

One would be perfectly safe if everyone respected the status quo. But America looked on every rebellion in every stinkwater backward third-world country as a threat, and Russia, thinking it was weakening America, supported every one of those backward third-world garbage pits called countries.

America knew those countries weren't worth the sewage they couldn't get rid of, and so did Russia. But the men kept on building weapons and scaring themselves. And so, like the room upstairs where men trying to survive had gotten themselves killed or wounded, the leaders of Anna's country built silly defense networks like this one that went fifteen stories underground.

Whether there would still be something around to command after an atomic war was doubtful. But they had to play their games.

At the bottom floor, she entered a room with a long white table that reflected a harsh fluorescent light in the ceiling. The walls were concrete. They could have been fine porcelain. Fifteen stories down into bedrock, they weren't going to need any greater support.,

"Anna, we heard there was a horrible disaster on the first level. Someone got in and shot up a room full of special-missions commanders."

"No," said Anna Chutesov. "The only people who got in were in already."

"What happened? You always knew everything," said the heavy man with gold-braided epaulets bi.; enough for toy planes to use as aircraft carriers.

"No, I only seem to know everything," said Anna. The implication for anyone using a brain was that she appeared to know everything because no one around her ever seemed to know anything.

She received smiles of approval from the men she had just insulted. There was one other woman in this higher command. She was the one with the heavy mustache. Anna knew that person was a woman because she wore the colors of the female army corps. They played up her massive biceps very well.

"What happened?"

"What happened was that you are going to have to send me after Vassily Rabinowitz. There is no one else. The others have all just killed or wounded themselves."

"That's awful. Do you know General Matesev himself was killed trying to get Rabinowitz back to the country?"

"Yes," said Anna. "I believe we also lost the special force, and any chance of using similar techniques to penetrate America. I know it all, gentlemen. I know that Vassily Rabinowitz was wrapped like a bundle with tape and carried back to Matesev, where some other force rescued him."

"We're doomed. If they have him, we are doomed."

"We are doomed to the extent that he believes he is surrounded by a malicious world. I have gone through his dossier. All this man wanted for the years he was in the parapsychology village was to be left alone. Do you know what our response was? We sent in round-the-clock teams to find out why he wanted to be left alone. So he left. Now he is in America, and we don't know what on earth he is doing. If he is frightened, as he may well be, he could be planning to set off a missile right now. This very moment a nuclear warhead could be coming at our country. And do you know why? So he would not have to feel defenseless. And against whom? The people who would send a Matesev to bring him back. Shoot, kill, capture, and run. Lunacy."

"It was a good decision," said a KGB general. This did not tell Anna about how good the decision was, but that it had come from the KGB.

"A good decision, comrade, except the results were bad, yes?"

"Yes," said the KGB representative.

"Well, that's possible," said Anna. "We all can't be expected to know how everything will turn out. Except I will take that onerous burden. I will guarantee the results of my taking over. I take full and absolute responsibility."

"How can you guarantee the results?" asked the KGB representative. He did not trust her. He did not trust any women in important roles. A woman could be put in a post, paraded in a post, but a man had to be behind her. "Because I will do it."

"If the likes of General Matesev could not succeed, how can someone like you guarantee you will succeed?"

"The same way I could guarantee that I would get this mission after the special commanders killed themselves." Anna smiled.

"But you asked for this meeting yesterday. They only killed themselves just now."

"About ten minutes ago, five minutes after I told each of them someone was planning to kill them, I turned out the lights and threw in a firecracker. They acted the way I knew they would."

"You killed them! Do you think we will send you out on the mission after you connived to deprive us of our best special-missions commanders?"

"Yes. Of course. Deprived of every other avenue of action, in the end, my dear comrades, you will make a rational decision," said Anna Chutesov. "And in the end, that decision has to be to use me. You have no one else readily available."

A general from the armies in the East rose, pounding the table.

"That is ruthless, deceitful, and despicable. Do you expect us to send you on one of the most crucial missions in the history of the Soviet Union after you have done something like that?"

"Absolutely. I use the incident of upstairs as my main credential. Until this moment, gentlemen, I have not shown that I could kill. There is a room awash in blood on the first level that will attest that I can do this very well."

Most of the men shook their heads. But an older comrade, one who had been through the revolution of 1917 and through the years of Joseph Stalin himself, nodded slowly.

"She's right. Beyond a shadow of a doubt our beautiful Anna Chutesov has proved she is not only the best person for this task, but possibly the only one. Good for you, Anna," he said.

"But what if she decides to use Rabinowitz for her own ends?" said the other woman in the room, the one with the biggest biceps.

"Do you really think I would be so stupid as to try to control something that could convince me I was talking to my mother or father whenever it wished? Are you mad, or just acting that way because you are a woman in a room surrounded by men?" asked Anna.

"I am every bit as good as the men," said the woman.

"Yes," said Anna without sarcasm. "You certainly function at that level. Now, is there anyone here who remotely thinks I would wish to keep something like a Vassily Rabinowitz alive?"

There as no answer.

"My first job is to stop him before he gets his hands on the nuclear trigger or an army. This I may not be able to do. But you should be aware of what he can do, because a missile fired at our country may well not be the beginning of an atomic war. It could be some silly thing a frightened man would do, hoping to prove to us he is not as weak as he feels. Do you understand?"

"You mean to say we are to take an atomic explosion and do nothing?" asked the commander of Russia's western missile station.

"No. I want you to end the entire world in a nuclear holocaust to teach a lesson to an already frightened man. Good day, gentlemen. I don't have time for any more of this."

"What can we do to help you, Anna?" asked the oldest man.

"If you believe in praying, pray Vassily Rabinowitz does not get hold of an army. I have read his psychological profile. I would say that defecating in one's pants at this moment would be an appropriate response to the situation."

Vassily Rabinowitz liked the tanks. He liked the way they could line up and fire at a ridge and the ridge would explode as the shells hit. He liked the way the ground trembled as the tanks rolled by in review. He liked the way infantry had to scatter when the tanks rolled into their positions. He liked tanks.

He also liked the howitzers.

"Almost like a real war, sir," said the colonel.

Vassily tried to brush the dust of Fort Pickens, Arkansas, off his suit. It was no use. Dust, when rubbed off, tended to grind itself in, and there was more than enough dust in Fort Pickens for all the suits ever woven in all the mills of mankind.

"It's very nice," yelled Vassily above the whak-boom of the howitzers. "Very nice."

"Better than Nam, sir; we can see what we're shooting at. "

"Yes, a mountain ridge makes a good enemy. Have you ever thought about fighting the Russians?"

"Sir, I think about it every day. Isn't a day goes by I don't think about it. They're the ones we should be fighting."

"Let's say tomorrow morning?"

"All we need is a little warm-up," said the colonel.

"What's this warm-up business?" asked Vassily. "You're getting paid to be ready. You have a big budget, Colonel. What is this warm-up business?"

"You're never ready for a big war unless you have a little one first. Better than maneuvers. Gets the kinks out. "

"I always thought you had to be ready for war to have peace, not make war in order to make war," said Vassily.

"Both," said the colonel. He wore a field helmet and had a pistol strapped to his side. "If you weren't my commanding officer in Nam I wouldn't even be talking to you about these things."

"I just want to show the Russians we have an army willing to fight. I don't want to have a major war with them. I have no desire to kill them."

"Can't have a war without killing, sir."

"A few battles. That's all I want. Maybe only one battle."

"Wouldn't we all want that, sir. But you can't have your battle without a war coming with it."

"I was afraid of that," said Vassily. "By the way, don't you think those tanks should be firing while moving instead of standing still? I mean, if you needed guns to be still, then you could use howitzers."

"Our mode of training doesn't call for that, sir," said the colonel.

"Do it," said Vassily.

"But, sir-"

"Do it," said Vassily. Something inside him told him that if these men were to get ready even for a preparatory war they had better be prepared right, because the worst thing that could happen was to fight and lose a small war. Then he could never impress the Russians. America had to win its next war.

Vassily wrote down in his notebook: "One regiment, with armor."

He needed more. He needed divisions. And he needed divisions that could fight. He would not have been here himself checking things out, making sure the guns fired and the soldiers were there to fire them, but for his second encounter with the American military establishment.

Having failed with the firing of one missile, which he could use as a warning to the Russians to leave him alone, he had decided to go to the top. And this, as everyone knew, was the Pentagon, a five-sided building of immense proportions. Here the general staffs of America plotted production of war goods, battle strategies, and the maintenance of the most sophisticated and complex wartime equipment in the world.

It was also the place Vassily had soon wanted to flee, knowing he had better get his own tanks and guns and men to use them or he would never be able to defend himself against the Russians. The people at the Pentagon certainly weren't.

Vassily had easily gotten through every pass clearance system by simply looking in the eyes of every guard and protecting himself as someone with a pass and a lot of stars on his shoulders.

He found himself an important-looking man with real stars on his shoulders and immediately became that man's closest scientific adviser.

"I'm looking for someone who can get an army together. Nothing special. An army that if it had to, could win a battle or so. To be brief, I'm looking for someone who knows how to fight a war."

The man thought about that a moment. "Could you be more specific?"

"Soldiers. Guns. Tanks. Planes. Fighting a war."

"Whew, that's a tough one," said the man with stars. "I would say your best bet would be the Military Concepts Formulation Bureau. I think they're the ones who might be able to help you. I'm sort of lost when it comes to guns and soldiers and things. I've been at a desk in the Pentagon for the last ten years."

"You look like a military man. What can you do?"

"I'm very military. I'm a cost analyst overview establisher. I cost-rate concepts."

Vassily's face showed enough confusion for the general to answer on his own.

"I'm the one who estimates if we can afford a situation. Cost in lives, weapons, national productivity, et cetera. You must remember. You helped me. We were up at MIT when we came to the conclusion that America couldn't afford to survive. We should stop paying so much to exist anymore because it was just too damned costly. You helped me get my first star. We shattered the concept of survival. Absolutely mathematically reduced it to absurdity."

Military Concepts was a small office with computer terminals at five desks. No one under the rank of full colonel worked in this office. It provided the crucial thinking for how and when and under what circumstances America would fight its wars.

Vassily thought this had to be the one place where he could get all his information.

He left it an hour later understanding less than fifteen of the English words, despite having gone to the best Russian schools for English, despite having gotten along very well in America with his English, even becoming skilled enough in the language to be named a "cunning criminal mastermind" by the New York newspapers, perhaps the finest connoisseurs of the underworld.

In the concepts room, Vassily heard such words as "finalize," "syllogize," "conceptualize refractions," "coordination of synergistics," "coordination response modes," and "insurgent manifestation devices."

In all his time there, he never heard the word "kill." Or "attack." Or "retreat," or any of the words he recognized as war words.

He even had these officers believing he was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at one point. That proved to be absolutely useless because one of the officers said:

"We don't have to tell you these things. You know them. And most of all, sir, you understand that the last place you would ever come looking for anyone to know how to fight a war is here in the Pentagon."

Vassily tried two more offices and then just asked for directions to where the tanks and guns were kept. He knew he was going to have to do it himself.

But what he didn't know, and what was evident to most of the higher officers at Camp Pickens, Arkansas, was that this man they all knew intimately as different people was showing a surprising ability to move tanks and men around the fields in maneuvers.

"Reminds me of General Patton," said one officer, who had been a second lieutenant in World War II and had signed up in time to join Patton's Third Army.

"Yeah, Old Blood 'n' Guts," said another.

"Seems to want to get into a war, just like old Patton. Hell, good to have someone like that back in the Army." - Yet this man was even better than General Patton in one crucial way. Old Blood 'n' Guts could inspire most American soldiers to fight. This one could make even the cooks want to kill.

Chapter 9

It was a thing of such splendor it deserved an immediate place in the histories of the House of Sinanju. Harold W. Smith, exhausted and worried perhaps more now than at any time in the history of the organization, was stunned to see Chiun leave the living room of the Vistana Views condo as soon as the price was settled, not even waiting to hear what the assignment would be.

"Unpack the histories," cried Chiun, pointing to the lime-green steamer trunk.

Remo did not look away from the window of the bedroom, which also faced the fountain. He had been looking at water for the last twenty minutes, thinking that maybe in a while he would look at the sky. That was what he was going to do for the day.

"Unpack the histories. This day is momentous in the histories of the House of Sinanju. And you, my son, are a part of it."

"Trunk's on the bed," said Remo.

"Come, you must affix your name too. This is not mine alone. I would not dare encompass such glory all by myself. If it had not been for you and your brilliant understanding that when your job is done, it is done, then I never would have achieved these heights. I am sure you will look on me as the Great Chiun. The followers of the Great Wang so did."

Seeing Remo continue to stare at the water, Chiun opened the trunk himself. He whisked out a scroll and a bottle of dark black ink, made from the shellfish found in the West Korea Bay. The scroll was special parchment used by a dynasty of China so old even the Ming and Tang had no record of it.

It was parchment of specially treated yak skin that could endure moisture, cold, and heat over centuries. He placed five,delicate stars in the middle of the document.

"Remember the last time you saw five stars in a history of Sinanju, Remo?" said Chiun.

"Yeah. The big Great Wang. Rah, rah," said Remo. Maybe he would get tired of looking at the sky by nightfall. Then he could always stare at his hands for a few days. His body felt like lead, with sluggish blood that made its way through his body strictly on memory. The rest of him not only didn't seem to be working well, but didn't seem to want to.

"You have seen two stars many times, and sometimes three. And twice you saw a Master willing to place four stars. But only the Great Wang himself placed five stars. And why?"

"For the basis of breathing techniques," said Remo.

"It is our law of gravity, and the universe. Five stars. Come, you must be here to take part in this glory."

"The reason you want me there, little father, is so that I won't take away your five stars when you're dead. You want to sell me on your deserving five stars, so future generations can call you the Great Chiun. I know that. So let me tell you now. Your five stars are safe, because I don't think I am ever going to read those histories. Or teach a new Master. So put down a hundred stars. It doesn't matter. It never did. I know that now."

"Are you looking at the sky yet?" asked Chiun.

"Water. Looking at water," said Remo. "Maybe tomorrow I'll look at sky. Maybe the next day. I still have my fingernails to tour."

"Body feels terrible, doesn't it?" chuckled Chiun. "As the Lesser Gi said, a man cannot see himself, especially when he is in the process of greatness. One never does. I myself suffered doubts, thoughts that I might be egotistical, self-centered, childish. How ludicrous, yes?"

Remo saw the darkness in the water, and toyed with the edge of the possible idea of wondering what Chiun would decide to give himself five stars for. Only three other Masters had given themselves such accolades. Two of them were reduced to four and three stars respectively, by later Masters of Sinanju. The force blow, which at the time was thought to be a basic element of Sinanju, was discovered later only to be an essential variant of the basic breathing technique of the Great Wang. And so a star was removed, even though this blow established something that appeared even to the Masters of Sinanju to be unique.

The blow was not the result of force but created the force itself. You could move your hand through walls and the force would not be behind it like in some weak, imitative karate punch breaking bricks. Rather the force would pull the hand and shatter the wall. It was basic, but not quite as basic as the breath of life that attuned the Masters to the real forces of the universe.

It was no accident that the first thing a human baby did when cut from the umbilical cord was to breathe. Never did the infant seek food first, or even warmth in times so cold that the temperature would kill it. First was breath, and so too was it last in death.

The breath was the hello and good-bye of life as Sinanju called it, as Chiun had taught him so long ago in those basic lessons when Remo thought there was something worth learning in this world.

"Recorded this day in the Masterhood of Chiun, discoverer of America, teacher of Remo, devoted pupil, for the greater and continuous glory of the House of Sinanju. It was by the hand of Chiun, agreed this day with the mad emperor representing the rich country of America-see Chiun's discovery of a happy people-a negotiation that will be considered basic in the business of Sinanju.

"Faced with a client emperor in desperate need, for whom a perfectly performed service, while adequate in itself, proved inadequate for the emperor's needs, Chiun first established for the Master of Sinanju and his pupil Remo, now a Master but yet to achieve final levels, that they were free to leave. This was most important because from this came the basic and perfect negotiation, performed by Chiun himself.

"Having thus established that Sinanju had performed perfectly and was now leaving, the Emperor Smith, who only at times could be considered mad, but at this time had to be considered as shrewd as any emperor ensuing generations might face, made this offer. He would outbid any rival for the services of Sinanju.

"While this was basically a perfect position, Chiun, in his keen sense of proportions, understood it was only the beginning. For the country was rich, the richest in its time. And Chiun understood there was much more where that came from, for Chiun had already made arrangements with the same emperor to replace the entire treasure of Sinanju. That is, in one Masterhood to earn the total of all other Masterhoods. (For reference to the treasure, look under 'not Chiun's fault.')

"At that point, Chiun established no fixed amount, but rather a percentage above any other offer, so that Chiun would be free to get any other nation, emperor, tyrant, or king to make an offer, which Emperor Smith would be bound to exceed by ten percent. Chiun himself, in this one deed, had established the first limitless fee."

Chiun stopped reading and stepped back from the scroll. "What does Smitty want?" asked Remo.

"I'm not altogether sure. He's still out there. I'll ask him," said Chiun.

"That hypnotist fellow. He wants him, I think."

"Some silliness. We do not call him Mad Harold for nothing," said Chiun.

Chiun looked at the five stars he had dared to give himself and smiled. They would hold, he was sure, if future Masters really understood the greatness of his breakthrough.

He put the scroll back in the lime-green steamer trunk, making sure it was tied perfectly.

Remo did not look back.

"Say hello to him for me," said Chiun.

"Who?" asked Remo.

"The Great Wang. You're going to see him soon," said Chiun. "And it is I, Chiun, who have brought you to this point. "

"What should I say to him?"

"Ask him about whatever bothers you. That is what he is there for."

"Since he's dead, he's got to be an apparition."

"No. Definitely not. Not alive, but definitely not an apparition. You will see the Great Wang's smile, and the gentle curves of his too-full stomach. You will even feel the strength of his eyes, and his presence will be a bounty unto you."

"Close the door on your way out," said Remo.

"Good-bye, my son. When we next meet, you will be at a level you do not even suspect now," said Chiun, feeling the joy again of the time he had met the Great Wang.

But now to business and fulfilling the wishes of Mad Harold. It was a typical white American assignment, full of contradictions and absurdity, with no clear goal in sight.

For this virtually limitless price, Mad Harold did not want the throne of America called the presidency. He did not wish a great personal enemy destroyed, nor did he wish control of any land. As usual, reasonable requests were out.

There was this man from Russia.

"Ah yes, the czars, powerful men whom we respect, but we must warn you, O wise Harold Smith, you have seen their danger only in part. We who have served the czars, and therefore do not speak ill of them, nevertheless respect your resolve to protect what is yours."

"It's not protecting any property rights. This man is dangerous. He has this tremendous ability to hypnotize."

"Ah yes, the mind players. We know them. They are of little importance usually, but of course this one is of great importance. Most great importance," said Chiun, who knew that an ancient Master who had worked in the Roman Empire was once paid with five of them, Greek slaves who could do mind tricks, as they were called. He was given five of them in lieu of one good field hand to carry his luggage. Chiun remembers the comments about how the Master had been swindled by a Lucius Cornelius Spena, a very rich businessman who wished that a senate seat be suddenly vacated. It was not honorable work, but supposedly it was to pay well. And of course, it didn't. Sinanju never used slaves well and didn't believe in them. Every man, Sinanju preached, should be free to make a fool of himself, therefore leaving more work for assassins.

These things Chiun thought about as Smith went on about the man called Vassily Rabinowitz, an immigrant in a nation of immigrants. Smith would provide the tracking, and Chiun would perform the elimination.

"Most dangerous. Most dangerous. But may I ask, how, if we kill him, can he entertain for you?"

"We don't want him for entertainment. He's dangerous. Perhaps the single most dangerous man who has ever entered this country."

Chiun overlooked the insult because of the tremendous fee Sinanju would be getting. What could one expect from a madman but to think a hypnotist was more dangerous than his House of Sinanju that Smith had paid for? Any sane emperor, if he really thought that, would keep the whole matter quiet lest his lords serve those who bought the services of the other one, the one who here and now Smith declared as most dangerous.

"We will struggle but win, as always," said Chiun, careful to play on the fact of an awesome opponent, but just as careful to remind Mad Harold that when he bought Sinanju, he had bought the best in assassins. In fact, Chiun was thinking of adopting a fine American practice. In every new appliance he saw a note informing the purchaser that he had bought the best of its kind in the world, congratulating him on his wisdom in doing so.

Chiun thought it might be nice to have a scroll prepared for every future tyrant, despot, and king Sinanju served, letting each one know how wise he was in employing the finest assassins in all history. Begin it with:

"Congratulations, you have employed the finest . . ." et cetera.

Chiun nodded again to some more nonsense and then squeezed a small box Mad Harold put in his hand.

"Not now, Chiun. When you have succeeded in eliminating Vassily Rabinowitz, then press that button. I will know he is dead."

"But you know he is dead already, now that your Magnificence, O Wise Harold, had decreed him so."

"Nevertheless, I'd like you to use that. We are paying an extraordinary tribute for this. We don't even know how much yet. And this is the way I want to do it."

"Of course. We always appreciate direction and help in this thing we have only been doing forty-eight hundred years before America was born," said Chiun, allowing himself a little sarcasm. But Smith did not respond.

"Death to the evil hypnotist," said Chiun. As was his strange custom, a scant time later the telephone rang and it was the voice of Harold W. Smith. They had tracked down a probable place for Vassily Rabinowitz, the poor little hypnotist whose life would be forfeited in the most splendid financial arrangement in the history of the House of Sinanju.

"O wise one, how is a person in a probable place? A place is or it is not."

As soon as he said it, Chiun realized he never should have mentioned it in the first place because the answer was ridiculous to the point of the absurd.

Smith's system was tracking incidents most probably done by the poor hypnotist, things that would be reported to the police and to intelligence agencies. Smith had a machine that could scan and analyze these reports, and from these reports Vassiiy Rabinowitz was probably in Fort Pickens, Arkansas.

When Smith was finished prattling, Chiun asked the important question.

"Do you want the head or not? I know you traditionally don't take the head for your palace walls, but we recommend it, especially for an important assassination. It can be done quite tastefully."

"No. Just make sure you do kill him. There was an incident in Russia where tough KGB troops thought they had him and they ended up shooting each other."

"And secret, too, I take it. The usual secrecy."

"Oh yes. Absolutely. Secret. Of course. We don't want anyone to know we exist."

"Yes. Of course. Make a great assassination seem like a head cold. Very subtle, O wise one."

"No. In this case I don't care whether it looks like an accident. I want him dead. I want to be sure he's dead. Use the box. He's already probably into our armed forces. We only missed a nuclear launch in Omaha by a hair's breadth. This man has got to die."

"With the speed of the winds of the Kalahari, O wise one," said Chiun, who made sure he took enough time to be properly dressed. Nothing loud, even though America tended to be loud. A basic pink would be good for the kimono to be used in this assassination, a basic pink, a simple blow, a quick death, and then perhaps wait a week or so before hitting the button on the box. For after all, if the assassination proved so easy, might not Mad Harold think of reneging on that awesome reward? Of course, speed would show the greatness of Sinanju, and Mad Harold paid for the strangest things.

Chiun thought about that and by the time he reached Ford Pickens, Arkansas, Chiun decided to risk informing Mad Harold immediately. Then he would whisk Remo away to a saner emperor, a new Remo, a Remo who had seen the beneficence of the Great Wang and asked the important question only to get the important answer.

At the gate, Chiun was told that people who dressed in pink had to be women, or they could not enter the base. How typical of American whites that they would insist that entrance to a military base require a sex-change operation. No wonder they had lost their last war, and probably would lose the next.

The guard held out his palm to bar Chiun's entrance and then didn't bother Chiun anymore. Most people didn't who needed immediate treatment for multiple fractures of the hand.

Chiun glided into Fort Pickens. He saw the flags, the uniforms, the appearance of activity while people were generally doing nothing. He could come in at night and do unseen work, but killing a lowly hypnotist for a vast fortune was so bizarre to begin with, he wanted to do it in daylight to make sure it was really happening.

Chiun surveyed the camp. Nothing much had really changed since the Romans except this camp was not defended properly. Romans would always have a moat and a wall. Americans made do with fences. Perhaps that was because they had guns nowadays.

He saw dust in the distance, always a sign of cavalry. He stopped an officer to ask if he had heard of a Vassily Rabinowitz around.

"You mean Old Blood 'n' Guts Rabinowitz?" asked the officer.

Horror struck Chiun. Had someone already filled this enormous contract on the hypnotist?

"He is only blood and guts now?" asked Chiun.

"Only? He's the toughest, smartest general since George S. Patton, Jr. We call him Old Blood 'n' Guts."

"Oh, he sheds other people's blood. Ah well, this is good," said Chiun. Not only was Rabinowitz alive, but he blessedly had a better reputation than just a lowly hypnotist, a man who could convince some souls that it was warm when it was cold, cool when it was hot, and that they were barking dogs.

Some people could even be made to not feel pain, although why anyone would want to do that to his body, Chiun never knew.

One could sense, like with any great conqueror, the presence of Rabinowitz far off. Soldiers and officers alike looked strained and angry. It meant they had been worked properly. Great commanders could do that. Good soldiers did not resent it, rather they respected it even though they might complain from time to time.

"Old Blood 'n' Guts is something today. I don't know if he'll scare our enemies, but he sure as hell scares me," Chiun heard one officer comment.

"First time we've ever really done real maneuvers. I'll be grateful for war just to stop this torture."

When Chiun got to a broad plain surrounded by foothills, he could make out clearly by the deference of the men who the commander was. Tanks were firing on moving targets with surprising accuracy. Rebel yells came from men in the armored vehicles. This definitely was an army preparing well for war.

It would be a noble assassination, to go along with the noble price.

Rabinowitz was waving his arm and yelling. He stood on a platform, pointing with a swagger stick. He could yell orders to two people at once.

He had been described as a sad-eyed man, but these eyes flashed with joy. It was a shame that Chiun would have to end his career at this moment, not later, after he had become as famous as Napoleon, Alexander, or Caesar. But a contract was a contract.

"Rabinowitz," cried out Chiun. "Vassily Rabinowitz." The man now called Old Blood 'n' Guts turned around. Chiun saw by the movement even before the voice that this was a recognition of self. People could not help doing it. It was more a proof of identity than the face, or even the Eastern magic of the fingerprint. This was the simple reflex of the person identifying himself.

And Rabinowitz had done it with his eyes. Chiun knew that all the soldiers were looking now at him because of the beauty of his pink robe in this drab setting. Mad Harold had ordered secrecy, not invisibility.

The platform was just over his head. Chiun moved to it with grace, less effort than a leap, more motion than a step, and now he was face-to-face with the most gloriously rewarded assassination in all history.

The center of the skull begged for a single penetration, quick to the point of invisibility. The simple, basic blew with the force of it working inside the cranium, not outside, not even needing to penetrate.

Rabinowitz wore a plain battle helmet and fatigues. A small pistol was strapped to his waist. The light dust in the noon sun made the air almost like clay in the mouth. The boards on the platform creaked ever so slightly, and a few soldiers started to move up to the platform to get between Chiun and Rabinowitz. And then Chiun stopped his blow, stopped his blow short of the high yellow forehead and laughing black eyes and the equally pink kimono. A jolly fat man, no taller than Chiun, but with thicker hands and forearms, and legs one could tell were chunky underneath his trunk, looked at him, laughing.

"What are you doing here? What's your name? How come no one could stop you at the gate? What is that silly pink dress?"

The questions came so quickly that Chiun could barely answer them, but answer he must.

"Great Wang, what are you doing here?"

"Look, I asked you first. If I wanted to answer I would have answered first already. So what's with you and that pink dress?"

Of course the Great Wang was joking, but Chiun would never presume to refuse an answer.

"O great one, it is I, Chiun, I am here on the most wonderfully paid assassination in all history. A mere hypnotist named Rabinowitz, and the price I got-"

"Who wants to kill Rabinowitz?"

"The Mad Emperor Harold. He is nothing, but I did not expect to see you again, great one, in my lifetime. It is Remo's turn. "

"Why would anyone want to kill a nice person like Vassily Rabinowitz?" asked the Great Wang. Soldiers who had been advancing on Chiun made it up to the platform. In order to be absolutely perfect before the Great Wang himself, Chiun used the simplest of breathing combined with the basic force stroke, taking off heads as a form of honor. Nothing special, single movements through the spinal column, leaving the heads for the dust. He could have popped them up, caught them, and done a presentation, but that was flamboyance for customers.

The soldiers, seeing jackhammers smash off heads, went for their weapons or for cover. No one watched the horror without doing something, except for Old Blood 'n' Guts and the strange killer in the pink dress.

The old Oriental was talking weird. One of the soldiers thought of getting up on the platform with them, but the prospect of a severed head made him think twice. Far off, tanks stopped their firing.

Men crowded around the wood platform to see what the man in pink would do to Old Blood 'n' Guts. Someone chased a head, trying to match it to a body. Not knowing what to do with it, he put it down on the ground and covered it with his own helmet. Graves Registration should take care of that, thought the soldier.

"Mad Harold has the strangest assignments, Great Wang. But why do I see you twice in this lifetime? Is it that I, perhaps, am the greatest Master after you?"

"Shut up already with the greatness, hazarei. Is this Mad Harold a communist sympathizer?"

"I betook myself too much greatness, didn't I? For that I am sorry. Mad Harold is a client."

"What do you sell'?" asked the Great Wang.

"What you did, magnificent one. The services of the greatest house of assassins of all time."

"And you want to kill this nice fellow Rabinowitz?"

"You know him, Great Wang?"

"Know him? Man's a peach. Life should be defended at all costs. He's our main client."

"That's what you came to tell me?" asked Chiun.

"And that you shouldn't let anyone bother me, either. Either one will do. Hang around."

"What joy, to be in your presence again, great one."

"A little bit to the left. You're blocking my view of my army. We're planning big things. Big. Ever have a war? I think they're fun. Used to hate them. Wondered why they had such bad publicity. Damned well couldn't be from the generals who ran them."

Was this the Great Wang? Chiun looked again. No assassin approved of war where thousands of amateurs worked or where the professionals got paid. But there was the high forehead. There was the jolly smile. There was the somewhat full body, and of course, there was the unmistakable kimono of Sinanju.

Chiun bowed at the Great Wang and stepped aside. With contempt he broke the box with the button Mad Harold has asked him to press when the assassination was done.

To understand Sinanju was to understand that if the Great Wang seemed odd, it was the student who was odd. For the Great Wang had gone to the center of the universe, and anything that was not of that center was off balance. So had spoken the many Masters since the passing of the "joyful one," as the Great Wang was known.

It was not Chiun, but it was Sinanju. Remo knew that. He had been looking at the sky, feeling himself become all the darkness the sun was not, feeling the water in the little fountain of Vistana Views, feeling all that was alive in him succumb to the lethargy of what might be the last sleep, when he heard the movement.

It was a step, but not a step. Most people walked on the balls or the heels of their feet. Sinanju walked on the whole foot. It was a rustling of a glide, so quiet one had to hear it with one's mind.

But it was there.

"I have been waiting a long time to meet someone from outside the village," came the voice. It was Korean, the northwest dialect, like Chiun's, but it lacked the shrillness. It had a laugh to it.

Remo did not answer.

"You're white. I always knew a white could do it. Good for you, Remo. Good for you, Remo Williams. Good for you."

It felt strange to hear that dialect say something so positive. Remo did not turn around. It was not that he was afraid it might be a mirage. He was afraid it might not be. He was at the lowest point he could remember. He felt worn and useless, and incapable of anything. More important, he didn't want to do anything.

"Are you feeling sorry for yourself? Have you become like Chiun?"

Remo did not like anyone talking about Chiun like that. He had often thought that of Chiun, and worse. But he did not like to hear anyone else say it.

"If you have something against Chiun, why don't you tell him?" said Remo.

"I have. I told him he was childish and self-centered. I told him sometimes he was ludicrous with his pretensions about who we are."

"You may be in my mind. I've achieved realities through my mind. I'm not even going to look at you," said Remo. There was laughter behind him. He ignored it.

"Of course I am only in your mind. So is the world. So is the universe, a mind inside a mind inside a mind, Remo. Ah, you are most certainly Chiun's pupil. He loves you, you know. He had a son who died, who did not survive training. "

Remo turned around. A short, somewhat fat man with a high forehead and a perfect smile sat on the bed, with his hands resting on his knees. He looked as though all the world was a joke.

"The Great Wang," said Remo.

This the figure dismissed. "Your Brother Wang, Master Remo. You are become a Master."

"So?" said Recno.

"Better than kissing a litchi nut. Why are you moderns so serious? You and Chiun. Both of you. You think you're saving the world. Chiun thinks he is saving the House of Sinanju, and between you both, neither of you has stopped one second to smell a flower or watch a sunset. What are you on earth for? To speed the population to its graves?"

"You weren't an assassin?"

"Of course, but not like you two. Are you getting paid by the head? What is the matter with both of you? Chiun kills at the slightest disappointment, you kill as though you personally can bring justice to the world, and both of you need a good night out. When was the last time you loved a woman?"

"A while ago. It didn't work out. It never does. I didn't know Chiun lost a son."

"Yes, he failed to be aware of his son's shortcomings, and in attempting a high climb the boy died. He doesn't want to lose you. He doesn't admit it, but he loves you, more than his son."

"He always rags me about being white."

"Chiun is a snob. The best thing he ever did was bring a white into the family. Remo, you're home. America is not your home anymore. It is your roots. But your home is Sinanju. And you are sad now because for the first time you are really leaving your home."

"Am I coming to a new level?" asked Remo.

"You have been there a while," said the Great Wang. "That is what hurts. From this moment on you begin to die."

"Why is that?" asked Remo.

"Because that is what happens to one who has reached his peak," said the Great Wang. And Remo knew it was true.

Chapter 10

At five hundred yards Gusev Balbek could put a bullet through a person's eye during a windstorm. At a thousand yards he could bisect a chest. At fifteen hundred yards he could guarantee hitting a running man and stopping him.

That was with a sniper rifle. With a pistol he could shoot the beaks off low-flying birds. He would do these things for two hours every morning, partly to keep in practice, partly to keep the smiling commissars happy.

They would come, sometimes in the company of generals, and they would say most politely:

"Don't let us disturb you. We just wish to watch." And then Gusev would put on the special performance. The honored guests would sit on a wooden stand made to look like a replica of an American inauguration platform. A dummy in a formal suit was made to move its arms by means of a small motor.

Gusev Balbek would walk fifteen hundred yards away, slowly, to impress upon them all how great a distance it was. Fifteen hundred yards was outside the cordon of protection of a head of state. All high officials knew that. Anything beyond a thousand yards just merited a cursory inspection to make sure no large band of men or a howitzer was lurking out there. A single person was not something security men would worry about at that distance. Everyone knew that.

And then just for drama, in the stands that represented an American inauguration, the American presidential song, "Hail to the Chief," would play. And speakers would blare the noise of crowds applauding.

Then from the motorized dummy would come the recorded words of the inaugural speech. When this first was used, Gusev would fire on the lines "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." The later speeches lacked that sort of dramatic high point. In fact, none of them were very good at all.

At the proper moment, Gusev, barely a speck in the distance, would fire. He always hit the dummy. Military men were always the most impressed.

Then Gusev would come in to a thousand yards, and while the spectators' eyes could barely make him out, Gusev would put a bullet right into the heart of the dummy, or a second, replacement dummy if the first was badly damaged.

And then at five hundred yards, where security men were unafraid of simple handguns, Gusev provided the piece de resistance.

A photograph of the current President of the United States was taped to the head of the statue, and faster than they could follow, Gusev would whip out a handgun and shoot out the photograph's eyes, two quick shots. Then the exact scale photograph of the head would be passed around to the important visitors: They would look at the eyes and nod. Some smiled. Others said:

"If we have to. If we have to."

There were other demonstrations. Shots gotten off in a crowded room, a press conference, and the ultimate display. Firing three bullets in succession at the same spot on a sheet of bullet-proof glass, so that the first weakened the glass, the second penetrated, and the third went singing through the hole-all into a car moving 12.8 miles an hour, the speed of a presidential limousine touring an American city.

Gusev knew he was good, but he never entertained airs of being anything special. He came from a remote Tatar village in Kazakhstan, where everyone was an extraordinary shot. Throughout Russia there were enclaves of very special people who never dealt with the outside world and consequently inbred their weaknesses and strengths. Almost all Tatars were crack shots, as good with guns now as they had been with bows and arrows in the days of Tamerlane.

Gusev was just a little bit better than the rest of the townsmen. To the Russians in Moscow, he was magnificent. And he noticed that during a time of crisis with America he would be called on more often to show what he could do. He would hear the important people say things like, "If worse comes to worst, we can always use Gusev."

But the shooting was only one small part of his training, just two hours a day. The other ten hours of training went into speaking and living as an American, quite a feat for a young Tatar who had since birth spoken only a dialect peculiar to the Mongolian archers of the Russian steppe from n.o. 1200 to 1400.

At first he learned words for food, but after twenty-five years of speaking English every day and being corrected every day, working at it ten hours a day, Gusev Balbek could pass on the telephone for an American, and from almost any part of the country to boot.

Unfortunately, four-foot-eight-inch-tall men with slanted eyes and skin that looked as though it had been stretched taut over tent poles for a dozen Mongolian winters tended to have difficulty passing themselves off as Alabama sharecroppers or Boston policemen.

Learning from the Americans the fine art of excusing deficiencies, the Russians merely used the famous American trick of labeling.

"Yes, we acknowledge certain visual complications," said the commander of the program.

"Everyone in America is going to notice this man."

"America is multiracial. There should be no problem."

"But once he shoots the President, how will he escape? Everyone will remember a four-foot-eight-inch man with skin like yak hide. They'll catch him. He'll kill many, but then they'll catch him and they'll know he's Russian. We want to be able to assassinate the American President; we don't want to pay for it. Otherwise we'd start a war right away. "

"We'll save him for situations so crucial that we are willing to be caught. We'll save him for crisis management. A crisis-management tool."

And thus Gusev Balbek was kept practicing for twenty-five years, a tool that probably would never be used. Until the morning he was shown a picture of a very round-eyed, sad-looking man.

"This is Vassily Rabinewitz. Kill him."

"But he's not the President," said Gusev.

"No. He's more dangerous."

"But I thought I was going to kill a president. I have been waiting twenty-five years to kill an American president, practicing two hours a day on marksmanship and ten on American language and customs, and now when I finally am told to do what I have prepared more than a score of years to do, my target is named Rabinowitz. Vassily Rabinowitz. Is he some dissident?"

"He's your target. Don't think because you have been learning to live like an American you are an American. You're a Russian."

"When one starts to think for oneself it is hard to stop, comrade," said Gusev, who in every American election performed a practice vote, making decisions just like Americans.

"When one is Gusev Balbek from a Tatar town in Kazakhstan, one shoots Vassily Rabinowitz from fifteen hundred yards. At that distance you won't have to look into his eyes."

Anna Chutesov was furious. She almost swept the contents of the ambassador's desk into the ambassador's face. Who had made this decision? What moron had made this decision?

"We had worked out that you would take everything we know to the proper Americans and together we would work toward eliminating the danger of this man. How could you decide on your own to kill him? I was in charge."

"It was decided we couldn't let America get hold of him. We have to kill him."

"What would they do with him? Why on earth would the Americans want him? What did he ever do for us except cure the headaches and sexual problems of the Politburo?"

Anna's face flamed. She knew how this dolt had gotten the ambassadorship. He was the only ranking member of the Foreign Bureau who could remember names, or wanted to. He was the one who could wake up in the morning not having drunk himself to sleep the night before.

When the Foreign Bureau found someone who didn't drink himself to sleep every night, that man had a job for life. Ambassador Nomowitz had been in the job a quarter of a century and was now dean of all ambassadors in Washington.

"Comrade Chutesov, I understand you have the highest authority here in America. But the highest levels ordered Rabinowitz assassinated before America got him."

"But don't they understand no one has him? That's the problem. He has them. No government can control him. He controls them. How can you control a man who makes you believe he is the most important person in your life? How? How is this done?"

"We have an extraordinary marksman. I was privileged to see him once. He is now near Fort Pickens, Arkansas, where we have located Rabinowitz. And we have made brilliant arrangements for smuggling him into position. I must say it is our proudest moment."

"Enjoy it until it blows up in your face. At best it won't work. That is at best."

"I won't even ask why," said Nomowitz to the beautiful, angry woman. He had heard she hated men, but that was from a notorious womanizer. Any woman who would not sleep with that man the very hour they first met was considered a man hater. But he could see why any man would wish to sleep with this beautiful woman. "But I will ask if you really do hate men, as they say."

"What would you think of a gender that doesn't care if the world blows up tomorrow but does wonder who I spread my legs for?"

"You do hate men."

"I just despise idiots."

"Oh, then you don't hate men," said Nomowitz, and didn't know why Anna Chutesov left his office laughing softly. She left word with the secretary for the ambassador to phone her when his solution failed.

Any fool would have figured out what was dangerous about operating alone in this situation. For if the sniper should kill Rabinowitz, who did the ambassador think the Americans would believe was dead? A Russian Jewish immigrant? No, Russia would be held responsible for killing the most important person in the lives of hundreds of Americans, whoever that most important person was.

What a wonderful way to start a purposeless war. The only way both countries had a real chance to stop this was to put their cards on the table, realize this man's powers were a danger to them both, and then, eliminating the chance of a war, eliminate Rabinowitz. If they really understood what was going on, they might be able to enlist Rabinowitz in a cause for good. However, that was too risky for the intelligence levels of two governments overwhelmingly staffed by men.

All Anna Chutesov could possibly hope for was that her side of the idiot equation was not using an assassin who could be traced back to Russia.

Gusev Balbek arrived at Fort Pickens on a stretcher. Horizontal, no one could tell this soldier was four-foot-eight and therefore below the minimum height for service. "Legs were shot off in Nam," he said. He said it with a Western twang. Having been wounded and not wanting to talk about it sounded so much better in Western American. If he were a New York American, he would have to talk about it as the central fact of the universe, his and everyone else's.

If he were a California American he would have to show how he boogied on his stumps because he was too drugged out to know they were gone, and if he were from Boston he would have to go around contending the world was filled with giant freaks.

A Westerner could just keep his mouth shut after a few terse words.

He was amazed at how thoroughly his Russia had penetrated America. Customs agents whisked his phony passport through. He got special service on planes. He was used to American luxury. He had practiced living with it ten hours a day for the last twenty-five years. So when the sort of meal any Russian would give his eyeteeth for came to him in his first-class cabin, he sent it back because it was not hot enough.

In such a way did a four-foot-eight-inch sharpshooter with skin like a yak-skin tent make his way into Fort Pickens, Arkansas, where, on a high hill overlooking a maneuver area beneath him, his own private weapons were waiting for him.

They had assured him they would be here. They had come to America separately. Even with the great penetration of America by Russian forces they had wanted to make sure he would not be stopped with weapons. Because in America, more and more states were enacting gun laws, and who knew what one zealous policeman might try?

It had made Gusev Balbek nervous not to have his blessed guns with him, but in the heat of the Arkansas day when he saw the familiar gleaming blue barrels and the worn shoulder stocks of the balanced and delicately precise friends that had enabled him to practice on targets farther away than most men could even see, he felt a sense of relief. After all these years, he was here, and he was going to do the job of his life.

"Rabinowitz comes to that platform every day to lecture the troops," said the sergeant who had been waiting with the guns. "He has an Oriental in a pink robe follow him around. If the Oriental gets in your line of fire, take him out first, and then Rabinowitz. Good luck."

"I don't need to take out anyone but my target," said Gusev.

"This Oriental guy is weird. Wears a sissy robe but can outdo anyone in the division at anything."

"Not now he can't," said Gusev, getting off the stretcher and preparing his old friends for the day's work.

When the sun was at its highest, Balbek could see a Jeep speed through the units of tanks toward the raised platform fifteen hundred yards away, down below the little hill where Balbek had loaded his guns.

He saw a robe flutter in the wind, but it was not pink but, rather golden. Beside the robed one was the sad face of the first man he would kill.

At this distance those eyes could not see Balbek, but Balbek, because of the extraordinary sight of all Tatar villagers, could see Rabinowitz. No one ever saw as far or as well as a Tatar from Kazakhstan. In fact, the eye charts from the Ministry of Health were considered a joke.

As the villagers told each other, "That extra foot or two of height all went into our wonderful eyes."

Balbek saw Rabinowitz wave to his troops. He heard the troops yell back. He did not know what was being said below him, but he did recognize a harangue and he saw the anger build up in the face of the troops. He could tell a general whipping up his men for a fight.

The gun barrel felt cool in Balbek's hand. The sights had been filed off long ago. They only helped people who couldn't aim. And they were always off. He had yet to meet a Tatar who couldn't pick up a gun and tell just by the feel how far the sights were off.

What one aimed was the path of the bullet. Not the sights. One used all the perceptions, not just eyesight, to aim. One sensed the wind on one's flesh, the dampness or dryness of the air, the way dust moved near the target. Taking all of these things into consideration, one allowed the course of the bullet to establish itself as one fired.

On the platform, Chiun saw the most curious thing. The Great Wang totally ignored a very obvious sniper in the surrounding hills. Why was he doing this?

He ignored the man as he aimed and fired, and he even ignored the bullet as it sped on its way toward his head. This Chiun could not understand. He would have mentioned it, but voices took too long to travel at these times. And then he realized the Great Wang must be testing him. But with such a simple test?

Of course, it was clear. The Great Wang wanted to see variations on strokes, perhaps a lotus deflection of one bullet, and a windstorm of the next, and the wide-handed fat raisin of the next.

Up on the hill, Gusev Baibek fired eight shots right at the head and heart of Vassily Rabinowitz, and eight shots went off target every time they got near. Soldiers were lying wounded around the platform, some ten feet away, some a hundred feet away, but no one on the platform was scathed as the sun-bright kimono danced in the afternoon heat, reflecting the sun like its most glorious star.

Balbek released the trigger and steadied his rifle. He fired again, and again the golden kimono blazed in the sun, and again someone away from the platform fell down.

"Great Wang," said Chiun on the platform, "how many deflections do you want?"

"Who's shooting at the soldiers?" asked Rabinowitz, who to Chiun looked and sounded like his revered Great Wang.

"The sniper, of course," said Chiun.

"Well, finish him already," said Rabinowitz, and by that Chiun knew the Great Wang had approved of Chiun's variations of strokes deflecting objects.

As the division was still digging in, Chiun made his way up the far hill, where he saw an obvious Tatar villager behind the rifle and asked him:

"What are you doing here?"

It was the first time in twenty-five years that Gusev had heard his native Raco Stidovian.

"I am here to kill Vassily Rabinowitz," said the stunned Balbek, also in the language he had not spoken since youth.

"You've developed a terrible accent," said the man in the golden kimono.

"How do you know Raco Stidovian?" asked Balbek.

"I am a Master of Sinanju. We work everywhere. How did a nice Tatar archer like you get involved with guns in America?"

"The Russians took me at an early age and forced me to do horrible things for them. They threatened my poor sick mother: They threatened to rape my sister and murder our entire village if I did not do their evil deeds for them," said Balbek.

"Good reasons to take up the gun," said Chiun. "A fine reason for you. Unfortunately, my fine Tatar, it is not really any sort of reason for me not to kill you," said Chiun. "Doesn't even warrant a second stanza."

The gun fired again from an arm's length away, and this shot was blocked even more easily than those fired from fifteen hundred yards. Gusev Balbek went into his last sleep before he could blink. He could not see that the killing blow was a swan's overlay variant of the basic thrust. When Chiun looked back toward the platform, he saw his Great Wang did not see it either. He was nowhere around. On the platform was Wang's friend Vassily Rabinowitz, good guy.

He was yelling:

"We have to get them before they get us. We can't put off the war any longer."

In the end, as a last resort, and only as a last resort, Ambassador Nomowitz gave in to reason. As instructed by Anna Chutesov, he arranged for a time and a place where Russia would bare its soul to the American defense establishment. He saw Anna open a large briefcase with page upon page of top-secret documents. He saw her give them to an American second lieutenant to pass out to American colonels and generals and admirals.

He heard secrets told openly. He heard her detail the purpose of the parapsychology village, even its defenses. And then he heard what he was sure had to be treason.

She told them about Matesev and Balbek. "Those are state secrets," whispered Nomowitz.

"You think they don't know about it'?" said Anna coolly.

And then to the American officers in the little conference room built like an operating theater with rows and rows of seats set one above the other, she said:

"Under the foolish assumption that we should have him and you should not, we attempted to get him back for ourselves. I am sure you all see how ridiculous that is, when you consider that the man can make anyone believe anything."

"Damned right, Russky, he's ours now. Thanks for telling us he's at Fort Pickens posing as a brigadier general. Hell, we'll make him a four-star general."

The American officers applauded loudly. When the applause died down, Anna asked: "And do what with him?"

"Keep him in case we need him against you."

"For what?"

"To blind your minds as you would have blinded ours."

"Have you ever been to a general staff conference of Russian officers?" asked Anna.

"We know what you do," said the general.

"Then you would realize there is not much there to blind. Essentially we are dealing with someone who cannot be controlled, and ordinarily that would be no problem. The man would go through his life getting pretty much what he wanted. Unfortunately, we made a mistake and tried to harness him. Which we couldn't do."

"Just because you couldn't, doesn't mean we can't," said the American general.

Anna smiled. "I guess I am the fool. I didn't see that you should be no different from us. Well, let me tell you I can get a hundred and fifty more just as good as Vassily Rabinowitz, and I won't. He's not a weapon. He's a direction, and it won't be your direction, at least I hope it won't. This man, because of crimes we committed against him, has been terrified into making an army. And frankly, he's going to make a damned good one."

"No problem for us," said the American. "Problem for you. "

"Really, do you want a war with us because one man has nightmares about what we did to him?"

"No comment," said the American general, and the others applauded.

Anna Chutesov shrugged.

"Well, I hoped you would be smarter. Nevertheless, I wish you luck in getting control of him. And if you ever figure out what you're going to use him for, please let me know."

Back at the Russian embassy, Nomowitz was furious. "You gave away Russian secrets to their officers."

"That is not the mistake I made," she said. "The mistake I made was telling them where they can find him. Now they will go down there to Fort Pickens and everyone who goes down will join his army. He's only getting stronger. "

"A sworn enemy gets stronger and you don't worry."

"Of course not. I know what to do. I know his profile. He will win his war, we will be duly impressed, and then we will give him what he wants."

"What's that?"

"We'll leave him alone and let him play with the American army as he would have played with ours. I told them the truth."

Of course, she hadn't. She just didn't want any more interference from back home, as she now worked on how she might be able to destroy Rabinowitz. For she was sure once this man had a taste of war, he would never want to give it up. She had read his profile back in Russia. Which made her even angrier that anyone would have been so stupid as to take him from his sleepy village of Dulsk to the parasychology clinic in the first place. She wished she could meet one man who used his mind. Apparently, in the last few days Rabinowitz had become assassin-proof. And that was just what she was afraid might happen if they sent their best people against him. But in this case, knowing who they had, and knowing what they didn't have, she was sure it was someone else who had tried to kill the hypnotist. If she knew who, she just might be able to give him something to help. But who in America was there? And who also understood what had to be done?

Harold W. Smith knew the moment Chiun's box had been destroyed. The worst had happened. And when he tried one slim hope of a chance of begging Remo into the mission, he got the strangest response from Remo.

Remo couldn't care less. He was talking to someone dead for forty-two hundred years.

Smith went home and from an upstairs closet removed his old army .45. He had not personally killed anyone since the Second World War. He knew he could not kill Chiun, but he also understood that Chiun thought him a sort of fool, and Chiun had never known Smith to lie.

He just might be able to lie this one time, first to Chiun, then to Rabinowitz, and then with one bullet do what the greatest assassins in the world had failed to do. He set the computers to self-destruct if he did not return.

The incredibly sensitive information in CURE computers could not be allowed to survive him. The organization had done its work over the decades, and now, rather than harm the country he loved, he would make sure his work would disappear with him.

Before he left he made one last phone call to the President. "Sir, as you know, the Russians were after this man. Precisely because of that, we enlisted, as you know, our special people to stop the Russians. Second, now we have a danger in this one extremely talented man. He is incredibly dangerous. He has taken over at least a division as far as I know, and maybe more. I think he is going to start a war. I don't know why, but we have lost one man already, and the other is inoperative at this time. I am going myself. If I fail, you will not have the organization to serve this country anymore, but then again, no one will get hold of our vast store of information either. It will be secure."

"Good luck, Smith. I know you'll do what's right," said the President.

At Vistana Views, Wang, sitting on a stool out in the kitchen while Remo prepared rice, asked him if the phone call had been from the American employer.

"Yeah. He's going to play cowboy with this hypnotist."

"And you're going to let him go alone?"

"Sure," said Remo. "It's his life. It's his country."

"Think you're pretty tough, don't you, Remo? You and Chiun. You're so much alike. You both have an infinite ability to lie to yourselves."

"I'm not lying, and I'm not like Chiun."

"Oh, but you are. That's your great secret. That's why you fight and that's why you love each other. What is the matter with you two?"

"I thought when I got to see the Great Wang I would get answers to my questions. That's what Chiun promised. Did he lie?"

"No. You're just getting the answers you don't like. You're just like him, you know, but slick enough to cover it, so that most people think you're sane. You're a lunatic, Remo. Name me one thing you like that you give yourself."

"I like to be left alone," said Remo.

"That's the biggest lie you've told me so far," said Wang, bouncing from the seat to the rug.

Wang assumed a simple stance, feet flat, arms at his sides, appearing defenseless.

"All right, Remo is not like Chiun. Let's see what you can do. Let's have it."

"I'm not going to fight you," said Remo.

"You won't hurt me. I've been dead thousands of years."

"For someone who's been dead so long, you certainly made the floor bounce with your body."

"You and Chiun have an obsession with weight. You don't have to be skinny, you know. C'mon, paleface, let's see what you can do."

Remo threw a desultory blow at the stomach, but carefully enough that he was not off balance. The air swished as he brought back his hand.

"Just like Chiun. If it isn't your way, you don't want to play."

Remo wanted to see just how solid the Great Wang was, and he knew that he could at least get a hand on the man. He might not be able to defeat him, but he certainly could touch that flabby belly.

And he did, without Wang making one move to stop him. Remo's arm went right through into the coldest center of the universe and he screamed with pain, as Wang laughingly told him Chiun had tried that too when they had met, when Chiun achieved his highest level.

"Got to say this for you two. You and Chiun have got the cleanest blows of all the Masters of Sinanju. Like father, like son."

Chapter 11

On the morning of May 11 three American columns under the command of a general some believed to be a reincarnation of General George Patton and others believed was their favorite commander, or father, or mother, or anyone close, invaded the newly liberated country of Sornica in Central America.

Sornica was newly liberated because after forty years of living under one-family rule, which was modestly oppressive with an army no larger than a police department, it was now ruled by a People's Council which had built a major army with major weapons, and was totally oppressive.

In the old regime, if one did not like the dictator, one could say it, but do little more. One could make a living, change jobs, marry whom one wanted, and if one didn't like it, one could leave.

The basic difference with the new Sornica was that no one was allowed to not like it. The newspapers which had published negative stories against the old oppressive regime, were now allowed the same freedoms. They could publish negative stories about the old regimes. When they published negative stories about the new People's Democratic Socialist Republic of Sornica, the enraged people shut it down.

The people were General Umberto Omerta, who was of the people, for the people, with the people. Anyone against Omerta was an enemy of the people. Therefore when he sent his newly expanded police force to close down the newspaper and beat up the editors, something that never happened under the old oppressive regime, it was the people responding to the outrage.

The people made sure anyone speaking against the regime changed their minds. They stopped people speaking openly against the regime within the borders. They also stopped people leaving, as was a tradition in liberated countries.

No one dared ask if it were the people doing the arresting, executing, and spying on reactionary elements, traitors, and running dogs of America. No one asked if they, too, were not people. That would have been treason and brought up the ugly answer that if it was the people these reactionaries were against, they had to be something else. And that something else was untermenschen, a system used by Nazi Germany to categorize some people as less than human, a system which used gas ovens to take care of those who were deemed subhuman.

But the reason Sornica was invaded this May morning was not because it murdered its own nonpeople or kept them imprisoned and had its children spy on their parents. It was not because Sornica ran several training camps to help other like-minded folk liberate their neighbors from mildly oppressive regimes.

Sornica had eighteen companies of Russian soldiers and technicians stationed on their soil. And it was these companies that the reincarnation of George Patton, everyone's favorite commander or parent, the man who sometimes walked around cleverly disguised as a Russian immigrant, wanted to destroy.

Rabinowitz understood that if he could demolish the best troops Russia sent abroad, they would respect him. It made no difference if he killed them or treated them as prisoners. What the Russians understood was power. If he could show he was powerful they would leave him alone. It was not by accident that the only treaty the Russian communists ever kept with scrupulous precision was that with Nazi Germany. It only ended when the Nazis invaded them first instead of Great Britain, which the Russians were hoping for.

Hearing the guns fire, feeling the power of his tanks churn through the mud that was called a road in Sornica, Rabinowitz felt a strange sensation. While he desperately minded being killed by people personally putting their hands on him, and despised being chased, gunfire set off a special thrill within him. He dashed to the front of his columns. He cheered on his best commanders. He stood in open fields with shells falling around him to curse those who did not keep up with the rest of the column.

By midday the best Russian armor lay smoldering in the plains and jungles of Sornica. The ever-deadly Russian helicopter gunship, the Hinds, had been lured into attacking what appeared like light armor vehicles and infantry, only to be demolished by the hand-held rocket launchers he had refused to let his troops use on the first gunships in the area. When the Hinds saw no rockets beneath them, Generalissimo Omerta threw in his entire fleet to enjoy the carnage. And at that time, and only at that time, were Rabinowitz' troops allowed to use their rockets, a perfect defense against the gunships. The Hinds were caught strafing en masse and went up like firecrackers above the battlefields of Sornica.

"I fear only one thing, Chiun, and that's to be killed by hand. I never want someone's hands on me again," said Rabinowitz, turning to his bodyguard, who was dressed in the black battle kimono used by the Masters of Sinanju when standing near an emperor who had taken the field.

"But how, Great Wang, could you be killed by anyone's hand?" asked Chiun.

"You never know," Chiun heard the Great Wang say. "But it's your job to see that it doesn't happen."

"But have I not passed every earlier test to reach my highest level'?"

"This is another one."

"What kind?" asked Chiun.

"The most important one," said Vaasily.

"Why?" asked Chiun.

"Because I say so."

"But is it not the function of the Great Wang on his visit to a Master of Sinanju to answer the most important questions the other Master has? Is not your very name the answer to all?"

"Will you get off my back already with this answer mishigas?" Chiun heard the Great Wang say. And Wang would not even answer in Korean, but insisted on using English, a sign of disdain for Chiun, who could not figure out what he had done wrong, but was vowing to change it, whatever it was.

Following an army was not hard. No army ever moved without everyone around it knowing it moved, and Smith arrived in Sornica with credentials he had prepared for himself as a member of the Defense Department. He found the air oppressive and humid. His breathing was labored, and he could not stand for long periods of time. A sergeant got him a glass of water and helped him find what could pass for shade in Sornica: humid mass under a tree that attracted mosquitoes and large flying bugs as yet unidentified by science. Both of them bit, and Smith knew he was back in a war zone again. Except in the last war, he had been a young man who did not have to rest in the middle of the day.

His .45 felt heavier than he ever remembered it, and some of the soldiers who passed by him thought that because he wore it in a shoulder holster, he was some sort of secret agent. Smith didn't want to look this way when he approached Rabinowitz and Chiun. Chiun would not be all that surprised, but the great hypnotist, seeing a possible agent, might react immediately, and Smith's only chance was to surprise Rabinowitz about his intentions. And of course deceive Chiun.

No normal person could even see the Master's hands move, much less stop them.

"Sergeant," Smith asked, "do you think it would be possible to get me some fatigues? I feel awkward carrying this gun like some agent. I'm Defense Department and I don't think I should look like CIA, do you?"

"Yessir. Can do, sir," said the sergeant. He was an old top kick and Smith knew that if anyone in any army could get what he asked for, it was this sort of man. But the sergeant came back before nightfall, shrugging his shoulders, his palms open in helplessness.

"No extra anything, sir. Bottleneck back there."

"You mean to tell me there are no extra uniforms in the supply columns?"

"Not a one, sir. This is a tightly planned operation. Old Blood 'n' Guts has counted every bullet."

"What?" asked Smith. He couldn't believe the good news. Rabinowitz was nearby.

"Old Blood 'n' Guts counted every bullet. He knows just what and when and where. We'd better get moving now, sir, if we want to get up to the front to see him. We've already wasted a lot of time looking for a uniform for you."

"I don't think there's any worry about catching up to Rabinowitz. I'll just wait for him here."

"But he says he won't stop until he takes the capital of Sornica."

"I doubt that's a possibility at this point."

"But, sir, he's outfought everything the commies threw at him, even their gunships. Good Old Blood 'n' Guts has defeated the Hinds gunship."

"Could you possibly pitch some sort of tent for me here to spend the night?" asked Smith. "That is, if you can find one."

"I don't know, sir. Supplies are pretty tightly accounted for. "

"Good," said Smith. "I guess I'll just have to freeze in one of the cold nights of Sornica. Wake me if Rabinowitz should be back by morning, or Old Blood 'n' Guts-whatever you call him."

* * *

Wang was laughing.

"I'm not serious," said Remo. "I joke around a hell of a lot. I think the world is peculiar and I'm not afraid to say so."

"You never stop saying so. You take yourself so seriously, Remo."

"Hah," said Remo. He knew his anger was rising because his breathing told him so. Anger was the worst emotion to have, next to fear. It took away the other senses. "You know, here it is. I wait two decades to meet the Great Wang, thinking I will never achieve it, and now I finally meet you and you bust my chops more than Chiun. Chiun is the one who's serious. He thinks if we don't do this or that, the whole history of Sinanju is going to go up. He's been trying to get me married off to a Korean girl just to make sure the line will continue. Yeah. He's become a friggin' dating service."

"Why are you angry?"

"Because I'm disappointed in you," said Remo. "Frankly, I expected more. And I got less than Chiun."

"The whole world is less than Chiun to you, Remo. You didn't learn his stroke style so perfectly without loving him. Nobody communicates that perfectly without love."

"I respect Chiun, and yeah, I love him. All right. Does that make you happy, you giggling bean pot?" said Remo to the round, smiling face of Wang. "But I don't think he's perfection. We have a term in this civilization called neurotic. I think it would eminently apply to our Master Chiun."

"Would it also apply to someone saving the world, Remo?"

"Not the world. I tried to save my country, if you don't mind. "

"How many is that? Two hundred and twenty million people?"

"About," said Remo. He was getting tired of this condominium, with its modern kitchen and living room and Jacuzzi and televisions in every room, and most of all the fat, happy Wang with a belly as cold as the center of the universe.

All Wang had wanted out of that was to see Remo's stroke. Any Master could tell from one stroke what sort of powers a man had. Remo walked outside, and Wang followed.

"You know, in our day the whole world had two hundred million people. America is your world."

"Not anymore," said Remo. He noticed groundskeepers look at Wang. So they could see him too, Remo realized.

"Then tell me. Who is the more neurotic, a man who tries to save a line of assassins or a man who tries to save a country? Who?"

"Look, you've had your visit. Thank you and good-bye."

"You haven't asked your question yet," said Wang.

"All right, when are you getting out of here?"

"When you ask the right question."

"That could take forever," said Remo.

"You don't have forever. But it could take until your dying day."

"You don't mean that, do you?"

"Do you think I want to hang around you for fifty or a hundred years?" laughed Wang. "Chiun was bad enough, but you are worse. Every time you open your mouth I hear Chiun."

"No. No. Chiun's a racist who despises everyone else who isn't Korean. I am not a racist. The one thing I'm not is a racist."

And Wang tumbled along the sidewalk in gales of laughter, rolling himself like a hoop, entertaining some children playing on the lawns of the Vistana Views condominums. "What's so funny?" asked Remo.

"That's just what Chiun would say. He would say all whites are racist and they're not even the best race."

"I don't say that about Koreans. I know Chiun's skills even though you knock him unfairly in spite of the fact that even you admit he's got the best strokes in the history of Sinanju."

"I said cleanest strokes. And he would think that, too. Cleanest is not best, Remo. I never said you were the best."

"I have nothing I want to ask you," said Remo. "Case closed."

"Every time you wish something were so, you say 'case closed,' and I think it's because if they opened it up again you would find out you're wrong. Case closed?"

Remo suddenly spun and walked directly back to the condo.

"Chiun did the same thing. I said he was like his father. Do you know what he said to me? Told me he couldn't be like his father because his father acted childish and was self-centered and had difficulty admitting he loved someone. Came very hard. Do you think I'm lying to you, Remo?"

"Don't care," said Remo, slamming the door in Wang's face, which did not work, for while it ripped the door off its hinges with the force of the movement, it met Wang's fingertips and settled into the jamb with all the softness of a feather.

"People who don't care always slam doors like that," said Wang.

"I have a question for you. I never knew who my real mother and father were. I was found in an orphanage and raised there by nuns. The organization recruited me because they knew I had no family I would have to run back and see. Who are my real mother and father?"

"What a silly question."

"You know the answer?"

"Of course, but it doesn't even warrant breath. They're not your parents. Your parents are one person now and he is in danger and needs your help."

"Are you lying to me?"

"Only about the danger. He's only somewhat in danger. Everyone is in danger when he doesn't know who he's talking to."

Anna Chutesov heard about the initial successes of the three American columns secondhand from the buzz of gossip in the Washington embassy. The headquarters for Russian intelligence in the hemisphere was in Cuba, but Washington was still considered the main diplomatic foothold, even if militarily the important outposts were Cuba and Sornica.

Anna was trying to explain that even if they lost Sornica, they still had Cuba. And what good would Sornica do them that Cuba couldn't?

"From Sornica we can help liberate Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Mexico."

"What will you do in Mexico? Close off the border to stop people from escaping? America has been trying to do that for ten years now without success. You'll do it for them. But I'll tell you something. They're not smart enough to know that either. You'll have your big war then."

"We don't want the big war. We are not planning on the big war."

"Right, you want to stumble blindly into it like every other man. But don't worry, Rabinowitz is going to save you from all that. And then you will go down and surrender to him, and once you do that, hopefully we will get him relaxed enough to kill him, so that no idiot is going to try to use him again."

When the news that Russia's vaunted Hinds gunship had been made useless in the skies over Sornica, the Russian embassy fell into a morbid silence. Except for one happy voice of a woman singing Russian ballads her mother had taught her.

In a writers' conference in Washington, the Sornica minister of culture, Colonel Padril Ostonso, was called away from a panel discussion because of an emergency. He was excused to the thundering applause of many of the other writers.

"We sit here ashamed of America," said one novelist who had written a book whose heroes had stolen atomic secrets from America. "We are ashamed of our guns, ashamed of our tanks, and most of all, ashamed of the people who use them. What we can do to overcome this shame to all mankind that is happening today, I do not know. All we can do is to offer our brother Colonel Padril Ostonso our prayers, our support, and our applause."

Colonel Ostonso thanked them on behalf of the struggling writers of Sornica. Then he answered the phone. As minister of culture he was in charge of the writers. This meant two maximum-security jails for those who disagreed with the People's Council.

Those writers who supported the people were supported by them, and therefore they had homes. Those who were against the people had to support themselves, and if they managed to do so, the minister of culture wanted to know who was helping them. And since they couldn't support themselves without the government's permission, they were parasites and had to be put in jails.

At this very moment one of the American columns was nearing one of the jails, threatening to release the dangerous poets, novelists, and a photographer who dared take a picture of someone trying to hide from the people's draft, when everyone knew a photographer was supposed to photograph people volunteering, not evading.

"We cannot move them, Colonel," came the voice.

"They're your responsibility. What do you want?"

"Do you have dynamite? Blow them up."

"We don't have dynamite. That's considered a building material and we haven't seen any of that since reconstruction of our homeland."

"Shoot them."

"All the bullets are being used for the front."

"What do you have?"

"They're old wooden buildings and I know my mother has an extra match left over from the bad old days of the dictator."

"Burn them," said Colonel Padril Ostonso.

"That's a bit cruel, sir."

"They're my writers. I'm the minister of culture. I can do anything I want with them. If I say burn them, burn them."

Colonel Ostonso hung up and returned to the conference, where he was greeted by more applause.

One novelist suggested that Colonel Ostonso should not even be on the panel because he was a policeman and not a writer, but that writer was declared a fascist, and the floor given over to Colonel Ostonso, who moved that anyone from the United States government be denied the right to speak. It was greeted by applause, except for the women writers, who thought that there were not enough women on the panel voting for the motion.

Of course there were protests, writers being writers, some pointing out that perhaps a conference on the freedom of writers should deal with the freedom of writers instead of how many writers on the panel were women.

One even was so bold as to suggest that communist countries were more oppressive to writers and that they, too, should be condemned. The final resolution, therefore, condemned the United States of America for oppression of masses of writers, and decried oppression anywhere of writers. Since anywhere might also include communist countries, it was considered a balanced document.

The tanks had not advanced more than a hundred yards in the last hour. Rabinowitz raced to the lead column. "Get outta there, you lazy yellow dog," Rabinowitz yelled to the tank commander. He was only three miles from the capital of Sornica. He wasn't going to be deprived of victory now. The heat of the battle had driven him mad and now he didn't care if he died. Of course this was improbable with the Oriental in the black kimono around him. Chiun seemed to be able to catch flak with grace, even thanking Rabinowitz for the opportunity.

"I appreciate that you trust me with your life, knowing that you yourself refuse to dodge death, giving me the honor of protecting you, Great Wang."

"Just don't get in the way of the gun sights," said Rabinowitz to Chiun as he closed the hatch on the lead tank.

Chiun wondered why the Great Wang would use something as unreliable as a cannon. Perhaps he wanted to see how it worked like a toy.

One did not question the Great Wang.

Rabinowitz jammed his foot on the accelerator and nothing happened. The treads did not roll. The engine did not bark. All he could hear was the squeak of a pedal that needed grease.

"What's wrong with this damned tank?"

"Out of gas, sir. All the lead tanks are out of gas," came a voice from outside the tank. "We had an extra level of fighting and we used it up. A small battle we didn't count on. That's war, sir. A whole bunch of things you don't count on."

"I didn't count on that," screamed Rabinowitz. "We can't go forward without gas. In fact, we can't retreat without it either."

Remembering the tales of emperors past, Chiun asked the Great Wang whom he wished killed for the failure. Rabinowitz, now shrewd enough to know his assault was in trouble, tried to call for resupply, but almost instantly realized this would be impossible.

Before morning, the bulk of the struggling army was within fifteen miles of its furthest advance.

Rabinowitz even heard Russian voices a few times from the once again advancing enemy. He thought momentarily of using his special powers, but then he would have to abandon his army. And he liked his army. He liked his army better than he liked the village bicycle back in Dulsk. He had to share the bicycle.

An old man in a suit resting under a tree was shaken awake.

"That's him, sir."

Harold W. Smith blinked open his eyes. His bones were cold, and it was difficult getting up. He could barely make out Chiun in the darkness.

"Chiun, Chiun, I come in peace. Peace. I am your former emperor."

"Ah, most wise Emperor Harold Smith. There has been an enhancement to the contract I was to perform."

"What is it? I would have thought that if the Great Chiun were to eliminate someone he would be dead by now. "

"Yes, and he would have been. But following the strictest of orders, I absolutely would not press that button if I had not killed him."

"I believe the orders were somewhat different. Chiun. But that doesn't matter, because I've come to make peace with Mr. Rabinowitz. I think he is just fine, and it was a mistake on my part."

Smith opened his jacket, showing the gun. He made it a gesture of openness and honesty. He really wasn't giving anything away. He was aware that Chiun and Remo knew if any man carried a weapon around them. They could tell it from his walk.

"I'd like to give Mr. Rabinowitz our support. I was wrong, Chiun. Totally wrong."

Vassily heard the Oriental speak a language he didn't know, and therefore did not understand that he had just been introduced to the man who had ordered Chiun to kill him.

"My name is Smith. I think you're doing a wonderful job, Mr. Rabinowitz, but I think you have supply problems, and I can help."

"We need everything," yelled Rabinowitz, turning to another colonel to tell him they had to hold now or it would turn into a rout.

"Sure, but we've got to get to the place to order the supplies. You are doing it wrong. You're doing it through the army."

"Where else do you get howitzer shells from?" boomed Rabinowitz, while being shown the disposition of another column that had run out of gas.

"Just over the hill. Come with me. Chiun had better go on ahead to make sure no one has cut the phone link there. "

When Chiun was too far away for even a Master of Sinanju to be instantly between Smith and Rabinowitz, Smith pointed to a tank down the road, as an example of where the gas really was. Vassily turned his head to look, and with the other hand Smith eased the .45 out of his holster. Closing his eyes so he would not lock on his gaze, Smith fired at the head right in front of him. Fortunately the shot was deflected, because he would have killed his own first-grade teacher, Miss Ashford, the woman who was practically his mother when his own mother died.

"I'm sorry, Miss Ashford. I didn't know. We have a problem here with a dangerous man. Get out of the way so I can remove him."

"Harold. He's not dangerous," said Miss Ashford in the warm New England sounds Harold Smith remembered so well. "You've been misinformed," she said.

"No. I haven't. He's dangerous. He's a hypnotist."

"All he wants, Harold, is to be left alone and to get at least two more weeks of heavy ammunition. He's all right with small-arms ammunition but he needs gas like he needs his own balls."

"Miss Ashford, I never heard you use words like that."

"These are hard times, Harold. We all have to work together. And I wish you would help the nice Mr. Rabinowitz."

Smith tried to explain all the things he had done since the Putney Day School, how he worked for CURE now, how he was saving the nation. But he knew in his very soul that he had been wrong, really wrong.

He learned one thing from Miss Ashford, whom he trusted above all people: to serve America best, he would have to help this invasion. Join with Chiun, who knew what was best. Respect his elders. Be God-fearing and honest. Tell no lies, except, of course, if it helped this invasion.

Harold Smith went to work with a joy and an enthusiasm he hadn't felt since high school. He knew he was doing right. He had never been so certain of it in all his life. It was a certainty that was welcome after all the years of toil in the gray years of America's survival.

The first thing he did was make sure the CURE network was not destroyed. He got to a long-distance phone closer to the shore, and put in the proper coded instructions that would save all the incriminating evidence of two decades. And once saved, he now turned it all over to the one person he could trust more than himself. Miss Ashford. But it was not just any Miss Ashford. It was a Miss Ashford in all the best things she represented.

She had the sort of probity Harold Smith had sought to emulate. She had an integrity and honesty he had clasped to his bosom and that still lived within him. So the conscious mind that might have told him Miss Ashford had to be a hundred years old by now did not let him know anything was wrong when he saw her as she was back in Putney, forty years old.

Nothing was wrong. She from whom he had learned and by whose ideals he lived his life was just as alive on the tank-clogged roads of Sornica as she had been sixty years before in Putney, Vermont.

It was who he was that had been unleashed. And so he talked to her, and every time he described access to this part of government or that part of government through the network he had set up, Miss Ashford said:

"Good. Good. That's wonderful."

And thus, step by step, the entire CURE network was handed over to a man in the midst of a battle against his Russian enemies.

"You mean to say you are able to draw on any American government organization's computer files without them knowing it?" asked Miss Ashford.

"Have been for years," said Harold proudly.

"All right, maybe we can do something with that after this war. Right now, get me gas. Gas, My kingdom for gas," said Miss Ashford.

Chapter 12

Wang handed Remo the telephone. "It's for you," he said.

Remo waved the phone away. "I'm leaving," he said.

"You can't leave. You don't know where you're leaving from or going to. You're in your time of transition, the last transition you will ever make. Speak to the man. It is your current contact, Harold Smith."

"Tell him I no longer work for him. I've done the last meaningless hit of my life."

"Ah, you think every assassination has a purpose, Remo? There you go again. Savior of the world. Chiun saves the House of Sinanju and you save the world. What a pair of dullards you two are."

Remo took the phone that seemed to leap from Wang's pudgy hand into the sweep of Remo's arm, so that while Remo was trying to snatch something, he couldn't help but look as though he was really in a sort of cooperative dance with Wang, who was still smiling.

"I told you I'm through, Smitty," said Remo.

"And you quit for good reason, Remo," said Smith. Remo could hear artillery fire in the background. Smith sounded happy. That was strange. He never sounded happy.

"Look, Remo. For all these years we have been fighting what seems to be a case of creeping national rot. We've gotten bigger and better, and the country gets weaker and worse. But I have found something down here, something very special. The sort of spirit that made America great."

"Then enjoy it," said Remo, and hung up.

"That's the way you treat a client'?" asked Wang, shaking his head in amusement.

"I'm not going to lie to him like Chiun. Chiun tells him all sorts of nonsense, and then does what he wants. That's how we differ. I tell him flat out. Good-bye. When I say good-bye it doesn't sound like three hundred verses of praise for the pope."

Remo nodded on that one. He was right.

"So serious," said Wang. "How you both treat clients amazes me. So serious. Chiun odorizes the atmosphere, and you, Remo, grimly announce the absolute truth. The two of you are so alike."

"If truth and lying are alike, then you can call anything the same. I got you there, Wang. Unless you're like Chiun and can't admit when you've been defeated. Maybe that's part of the Sinanju heritage. I don't know. Your ball game. Case closed. "

"Then if it's closed, I can't tell you that someone who thinks a client is so important as to tell the absolute truth to him all the time is the same as someone who thinks a client is so important as to be lied to all the time. I guess they both don't think the client is important, eh?"

"Twist the truth any way you want, fat man," said Remo. "I'm gone."

"No you're not. You're right here," said Wang. "What you want to run from is the truth. And you'll run forever and never get away."

"Do we live forever?" asked Remo. "How long does a Master of Sinanju live? I mean, I'm twenty years older than when I began, and I look a year or two younger. I don't know how old Chiun is, but he moves perfectly."

"Ah, Remo, do you really want to say that last part? Do you really think Chiun moves perfectly? Have you not been listening to what I said about the Masters?"

"You said Chiun and I had the cleanest strokes in the history of Sinanju. And what the hell do you mean, we treat clients with too much importance?"

"I can mention only one country that exists today that existed in my day, and that's Egypt. And believe me, it's not the same country. I can mention no dynasty that existed in my day that exists now. No border that men died and killed for is today what it was then. They all go, Remo. Your America will go. Everything goes."

"Except Sinanju. That's what Chiun said."

"No, I think he said the techniques. And why has that remained the same? Because people are the same. The Sinanju techniques have not only stayed the same, they have gotten better."

The phone rang again.

"Remo, just hear me out," said Smith. "Please, I'm asking for whatever the last two decades has meant to you. "

"Shoot," said Remo.

Wang laughed. "How grim," he said. "Chiun would be effusing his head off. But you tell the truth. So important. So different, you two."

Rema covered the receiver with his hand.

"Let me get this over with before you start the needles again," said Remo.

"So personal. You and Chiun. Everything is personal."

"Yeah, Smitty," said Remo into the receiver.

"You probably have heard of the war going on in Sornica here in Central America," said Smith.

"No," said Remo. He signaled for Wang to throw him one of the wonderful fresh Florida oranges. Wang's fat hand dropped on a pile set in a pink bowl. He nicked the top one with his thumb and then sent it spinning to Remo. The force of the spin tore the white underbelly of the orange skin away from the meat in a single strand as though a careful cook had removed it. The peel landed on the rugged floor, and the orange dropped into Remo's hand.

"How did you do that?" asked Remo.

"Chiun didn't teach you?"

"No. He doesn't know."

"We must have lost it in the Middle Ages. Works better with the old hard oranges. Less skin. Tighter meat. With the old oranges of Paku you could land both the peel and the orange just where you wanted. No picking up off the rug," said Wang.

"Never heard of Paku."

"See'?" said Wang. "Biggest trading center of its age. Only good thing it ever did was produce the tight small orange that could be spun out of its skin better. Go back to your client with that in mind."

Remo uncovered the receiver again. "Yeah, Smitty."

"Is someone there?"

"Yeah."

"We still have to maintain secrecy, if nothing else. Remo, today there is a battle going on that will decide the future of mankind. We are struggling here in Sornica against an evil that must be eradicated. And for the first time in years, I see a light at the end of the tunnel. I see a real chance to save America once and for all."

"Paku," said Remo.

"What's Paku?" asked Smith.

"Another center of the universe," said Remo.

"I don't understand. But look. Chiun is here, and he'll tell you for himself how important this is."

Remo waited, whistling.

"You're hurt and angry, aren't you?" asked Wang.

"Get off my back," said Remo.

Chiun's squeaky voice rattled the telephone.

"Remo. Wonderful news. Wonderful news. We have found the right emperor to serve, and guess who serves him also?"

"I can't imagine you happy, little father," said Remo. "What's going on?"

"See?" said Wang. "Both of you walk around all the time in a state of unhappiness. Identical."

"I'm happy, asshole," said Remo. Wang laughed at the curse.

"Remo, even the Great Wang is here serving Vassily Rabinowitz, a wonderful guy. And do you know what? Mad Harold was wise after all. We're all here, Remo."

Instead of covering the speaker, Remo created a vibration in the plastic. The hand never could cloud a voice to someone who had been trained to hear.

"Can there be two Great Wangs, one in one place and one in the other?"

Wang saw what Remo was doing and understood the problem.

"No."

"How do I know I have the right one?"

"Are you happy?"

"Not really," said Remo.

"Then that's who you are. Is Chiun happy?"

"Yes."

"How many times do you remember him happy?"

"Well, you know, he can get happy at times. Not too long. He likes bitching better, but I've seen him happy."

"You know you have the right one."

"So, does he?"

"Ask him, ask him about any problems. Chiun is always collecting injustices. He talks about them and you pretend they don't exist. You're a wonderful pair."

Remo stopped masquerading the sound vibrations on the receiver.

"Things are pretty good down there, huh?" he asked.

"Perfect. We have finally found the right emperor. And Smith understands too. I tell you, Remo, everything about everyone down here is perfect."

"Thanks, Chiun. I'll be right down," said Remo, getting the coordinates in Sornica where Chiun, Smith, and Rabinowitz expected to be at the end of the next day's advance.

"Wherever you are, I'll find you," said Remo. And he hung up.

"Chiun's in trouble," said Remo. "I don't know if I can save him. That hypnotist has got Smith. I remember Smitty couldn't be hypnotized. Did you know that? He was telling me once. He tried to get hypnotized to relax, and it wouldn't work. He had no imagination. He'd look at a Rorschach ink blot and see an ink blot. True."

"What's a Rorschach ink blot?" asked Wang.

"It's something new. People who are supposed to heal the mind make up random cards with ink blots, and the person is supposed to say what it looks like to him. It really says what's going on in the person's mind. If he sees violence he has violence on the mind. Happiness, he has happiness on the mind."

"Oh, the Tow Dung. It's done with mud on a white plate. Same thing. How can you rescue Chiun now if the man who has him can turn your mind against yourself?"

"I don't know," said Remo. "I'd like that to be my question you've got to answer. How can I save Chiun? How can I save Smith? I'm helpless."

"People are helpless in order to get others to help them. You're not helpless. But I must admit this sounds like the greatest challenge ever to the House of Sinanju. What are you going to do, Remo?"

"I don't know."

"Are you frightened?"

"A little. I hate to think of Chiun with his mind scrambled."

"And what if he thinks you are some enemy who is to be killed? What will you do when you have to fight him to the death? Have you thought of that?"

"Hey, I'm supposed to ask the questions. You're supposed to give me the answers."

"Fine. Here is an answer. Since you cannot figure out a way to rescue Chiun and this client for whom you have developed an attachment even though you claim to hate him, find someone else who can reason. Someone who can think brilliantly."

"I don't need help."

"You just said you were helpless," said Wang, laughing at how much Remo and Chiun were alike.

"Just give me the answer to the big question and get out of here," said Remo.

"Ask me the question," chuckled Wang.

"Never mind the question. Give me the damned answer, and stop playing games. Give me the answer," said Remo.

"Yes," said Wang, and Remo found himself staring at the blueness of the sky over Vistana Views, and he knew the Great Wang was gone. He had come in the last transition of Remo Williams, and he was supposed to answer the one great question Remo had.

And truly Wang had. The answer was yes.

But Remo still didn't know what the question was. Remo did not pack to leave America for good, but walked out of the condo into the Florida sunshine, headed for Sornica and the war that was supposed to be going on there.

Anna Chutesov felt elation at the defeat of the Russian forces stationed in Sornica, then despair as Rabinowitz' columns retreated, then elation again as they seemed to be getting all the gas and ammunition they needed.

"Good, now let's get someone down there to surrender to Vassily Rabinowitz before he fouls up this campaign."

"But we don't want to lose Sornica to the Americans. They're reinforcing."

"Have you noticed how they're reinforcing? Have you ever seen supplies move that well and quickly with the Americans?" asked Anna. "Have you been actually reading the reports instead of looking at colored lines on maps that tell you nothing except where some people surmise other people were at the time the ink was wet?"

"The Americans are getting behind this war on a grand scale. We must support our Sornican brothers," said Ambassador Nomowitz.

Wearily Anna Chutesov brought the ambassador to a large map of the world. What so depressed her was that she was sure the Russian high command was thinking just like Nomowitz. And why shouldn't they? They all had the same testosterone levels. Wasn't a woman in there? She knew now that she herself had to go down to Sornica. There was no alternative. But on the flimsy hope that this might be one of the occasions that the male mind could see light, she drew a line from America to Sornica and had Nomowitz count the inches. Men were good at counting inches, possibly because that's how they judged themselves in so many ways.

Then she drew a line from Russia's munitions factories in the dead center of all the Soviet republics, farthest away from any invasion.

The line went from the middle of Russia to Murmansk and then began a water route. With every inch she drew she described which hostile nations they had to pass-Norway, Holland, France, England-and finally out into the Atlantic, where the greatest navy the world had ever seen now patrolled, the navy of the United States.

The line kept going. It finally arrived at Sornica. And Nomowitz had to move the ruler many times to count the inches.

"Every bullet, every shell, every missile we want to have there, has to travel that far. If we reinforce we will have to supply those men with bullets, and gas and tanks and guns, and toilet paper and food, and cigarettes and hats, and clothes and boots and shoelaces, along all those inches. Every man we put there will be a burden on our economy. The bigger it gets, who do you think is more likely to win? Look at the short hop the Americans have to take."

"When the going gets tough, the tough get going," said Nomowitz.

"You're a real man," said Anna Chutesov.

"Thank you," said Ambassador Nomowitz.

She said no more but headed right out of the Russian embassy toward a plane for Sornica. She would have to figure out a plan there. Her Russia was going to be of no help. And she had heard that stupid phrase used by American football coaches who had a pathological interest in the outcome of a football game which, fortunately, no one's life depended on.

But in real life, if the going gets tough, a person should stop and figure out why. Then he should calculate whether he should pay the price. In other words, think what one is doing, rather than blindly use the last ounce of one's strength.

It was not reassuring that these were the minds that controlled nuclear weapons on both sides.

Should Vassily Rabinowitz fail at this, Anna was sure he would stop at nothing to get control of America's nuclear arsenal. The Russian intelligence reports had indicated a very Rabinowitz-type situation had occurred near a base in Omaha. There he had failed, apparently because he had not reached the high command. But what would prevent him in a panic from reaching America's President?

Then there might be more than just hostile words out of America. Then there might be some force behind their threats. And Russians, being real men, would respond in kind.

Anna lit up a cigarette in the smoking section of the airplane bound for Sornica. As the sulfur flamed intensely at the end of the match, she thought, the world will go like that. No one is going to be a coward.

The flight was filled with American journalists on their way to the war. Only one reporter hadn't decided who was in the right and who was in the wrong. The others didn't have much respect for him. They said he had the mentality of a police reporter.

This was a new breed of journalist who added his interpretations to stories. To show he wasn't prejudiced, he was almost uniformly prejudiced against his country. This group was already determined not to believe anything an American officer told them.

Actually that was a good career move. If the stories were politically correct they won great press awards given out by other journalists who also thought with political correctness. And with enough politically correct stories they would get prestigious columns with bylines and no longer have to hide their prejudices.

It was no accident that an entirely fabricated news story had recently won the top award. Anna's only surprise was that the newspaper actually admitted falsehood and returned the prize. That was different. The story was, of course, politically correct, reestablishing what a hard lot blacks had in America and how little whites cared.

The real problem that none of them seemed to know was that intelligence agencies were just as bad as the supposed free news organizations. The male mind could view nothing without prejudice. In America women were fighting to be just like men, and sadly, they were succeeding.

The plane stopped in Tampa, and a thin man with dark eyes and high cheekbones got on, taking the only seat available, next to Anna. Several other men had attempted to sit down, and Anna, wishing to be left alone, cut their egos in half.

She could still hear mumbling up front about how much she needed a really good act of fornication. What that really meant was that they wanted her to go to bed with them and tell them they had provided such, reestablishing their egos at the level they had enjoyed before they dared to try to sit down next to her.

The man eased his way past her legs to the window seat. He did not buckle up on takeoff.

In a crash that meant he would go flying around. He could fly around into her.

"The sign says buckle up," said Anna. She knew men could read. That was how they passed along their worst misinformation.

"I don't need to be strapped in."

"I suppose you are going to be held in place by your big wonderful male organ?" said Anna.

"No. I have better balance than the plane. But you go ahead," said the man.

"I have. Now you."

"Lady, I've had a lot of trouble today. Let me give you the best advice you have ever had. Leave me alone."

The man turned away from her. Anna gave him one of those smiles she knew could melt men.

"Be a good fellow and buckle up. Won't you? For me." The smile promised a bed with her in it. Men would do anything for that.

"What's the matter with you, lady? You crazy? Didn't you hear me?"

"I am trying to help us both," she said. She gave him the wanting eyes.

"Lady, I'm not going to put on a belt just because you're faking sexual interest. Go play with the reporters in the front of the plane. I have problems and you can't help me. "

"What makes you think I'm faking?"

"I dunno. I know. Like I know balance. Good-bye. Case closed," said the man.

He did not look at her again, but over the Gulf of Mexico some turbulence threw the plane around and even knocked a flight attendant off her feet. Even those buckled into their seats screamed as they were tossed around. Anna gripped her seat with whitened knuckles, and she caught a glimpse of the man to her right.

He was not moving. There was no strain. No being thrown back and forth, held only by a strand of cloth called a seat belt. He was simply seated as he had been since the plane took off.

When the turbulence subsided, she looked closer. His chest was not moving. The man was not breathing. Was he dead? She poked his shoulder.

"Yeah?" he said.

"Oh," she said. "You're alive."

"Been that way since birth," said Remo. "I'm sorry. You weren't breathing."

" 'Course not. I don't need your nicotine sloshing around in my lungs."

"But we've been in the air a half-hour."

"Hard part is keeping the skin from breathing."

"So my smoke bothers you?"

"Any smoke, lady. Not just your smoke."

"Yes, yes. That's what I meant," she said. "Of course I meant that."

"Don't smoke and I'll breathe," said Remo.

"How do you do that?"

"You got twenty years, I'll teach you. In the meanwhile leave me alone. I've got problems."

"I'm good at problems. I'm very good at problems," said Anna. Who was this man? And if he had special powers, might they not be used against Rabinowitz? She wondered these things even as she realized her sexual wiles would not work.

"Yeah, well, figure this one out. Take the most perfect machine and mess it up because it doesn't know who is who anymore, and then try to save it when it might kill you."

"You going to the war?"

"Sort of."

"Is this messed-up mind hypnotized, by any chance?"

"I didn't say it was a person," said Remo.

"Machines don't forget who is who. People who are hypnotized do. That can be very dangerous."

"I don't know who you are," said Remo.

"I am Anna Chutesov, and I am probably the highestranking Russian official you are ever going to meet. I am on the other side that doesn't have to be the other side. I know your country has not even ordered this war. I know you are facing the most dangerous man who ever lived. I think you need me."

" 'Anna' would have been enough," said Remo, and went back to the window. But he could not shut this cold, beautiful woman out of his mind.

What he couldn't shut out was her remorseless logic.

"Let me guess. We realized Vassily could be dangerous and therefore we panicked and tried to capture him with a special force. General Boris Matesev."

"Never heard of him," said Remo, who had killed Matesev when saving Vassily Rabinowitz, an act he now regretted enormously. How could he have known how dangerous Vassily was?

"Perhaps," said Anna. "But you see, Russia, knowing how dangerous Vassily was, tried to get him back. If you know someone is dangerous, logic dictates 'leave him alone.' If everyone had left poor Vassily alone, he would have bothered no one. But we panicked. We attacked him. That's what men do when they are afraid of something. If they're not running from it, they're killing it. Or trying to. They will do anything but think."

Remo turned from the window.

"Yeah, how would they handle Vassily now? He's not the same man he was when I rescued him."

"Exactly. Now you're thinking."

"I'm thinking I don't know what the hell to do. That is what I'm thinking," said Remo.

"Excellent. You know you don't know. That's the first step in knowing. The reason you feel bad and depressed is that you are under some absurd impression that, without the facts, you should know right now."

"You're on the other side," said Remo.

"Of what?" asked Anna.

"Whoever is fighting each other nowadays. Won't matter a thousand years from now."

"You think brilliantly. What's your name?"

"My name's Remo. And no one ever said to me I was smart before. And I never claimed to be. I just try to do what's right. That's all. Case closed."

"You're right. That is stupid, if you think you can close a case just by saying it. I have got the same interests as you. Let me take a guess. Are you part of that group that stopped Matesev and that ridiculous attempt at the sniper assassination?"

"Wouldn't you like to know," said Remo.

"Yes, that's why I'm asking. Why do you think I'm asking? You really are a man. A man's man," said Anna, shaking her head. "I thought you had some intelligence."

"I did Matesev. Chiun probably did the sniper. He's working for Rabinowitz now. So is Smith."

"And so is your whole organization. Never before have we seen supplies move so smoothly in your military."

"They have everything, then."

"Not quite. They don't have you, and they don't have me. But we have got to make sure they don't."

"I can't kill without closing in."

"We can think first. We can go down there and see just what's going on, and understanding that we don't know now means that we do know we have to figure out something else."

"But I don't know what it is."

"Neither do I. But the difference is, Remo, all my life I didn't know what things were until I figured them out. We'll be all right," said Anna.

"You're kinda cute," said Remo.

"No. I'm gorgeous. You're cute," said Anna. And Remo remembered what the Great Wang had told him about finding a mind that could think things through. Was this an accident? Or was this Wang in some disguise? It didn't look like a disguise. Remo touched the back of her hand, seeking out the nerves that could arouse a woman. Slowly he began, and slowly he saw her eyes light with sexual fire. It wasn't Wang.

"Is that it?" asked Anna.

"I was just finding out who you are."

"Are you going to leave me like this?"

"Do you want to make love?" asked Remo.

"Not necessarily," said Anna. "I just want an orgasm. Finish what you start, or don't start."

When Remo was done, Anna gave him a big smile. "That was wonderful," she said.

"I'm pretty good," said Remo. "You should see what I can do working the rest of the body besides the wrist."

"I was talking about having an orgasm without having to take off my clothes or get intimate with a man," she said.

"Oh," said Remo. He sort of liked taking off his clothes. It did help the mood. He also liked taking off a woman's clothes at the appropriate time.

"I suppose," he said, "we're going to have a sexually active, noninvolved relationship."

"Only if you keep your hands on my wrist," she said. "Where did you ever figure out that the wrist had an erogenous zone?"

"The whole body is an erogenous zone if you know how to use it," said Remo.

"Could you teach me that trick on the wrist?"

"You have to know balance and things."

"Do you ever need women?"

"I don't need women. I like women. Say, what are we going to look for down in Sornica? Once you lock eyes with this guy you're done. And I'm sure Smith knew that, too."

"Good point. Then we know now Vassily can seize your mind even if you are not looking at him. We'll have to plan on working on his hypnotism. The point is that we may figure out how to succumb while still being able to operate. That may be a solution," said Anna.

By the time the plane landed they were the only ones on the press plane who were not sure what they were going to find.

Chapter 13

The defenses around one small area were incredible. The Sornicans had dug themselves a network of concrete trenching and underground tunnels. Vast, flat, open fields-deadly target ranges for the defenders-surrounded these hills.

The most modern weapons in the Eastern-bloc arsenal sprouted from more hidden bunkers per foot than any site outside Russia.

Every patrol ran into this, and Rabinowitz had shrewdly bypassed it in the opening days, in order to get at the main Sornican force. Besides, all interceptions of communications from those hills revealed Russians talking.

He wanted to save them for last. But now was last. The Sornican army, supplied by Russia, trained by Russia, filled with recruits from the land drafted under protest, now had returned to its villages in peace. Only its highranking officers with their American goods wanted to continue the fight. They had never lived so well before this supposed people's revolution, and in their Gucci loafers and eyeglasses they were telling their favorite columnists about American oppression, aggression, racism, and poisonous minds.

No one could deny America had sent three columns of troops into the heartland of Sornica.

"Why does America hate us? We feed the poor. We lift the shackles of oppression. So they must destroy us. America is the enemy of all mankind," said the chairman of the Revolutionary Council, Umberto Omerta.

An aide ran into his mountain villa with the grim news about the revolutionary struggle.

The People's Democratic Revolutionary Council of Sornica was down to its last case of Dom Perignon. The beluga caviar was still in good supply, but all of Comrade Omerta's designer eyeglasses, fifteen thousand dollars' worth kept securely in his five estates, were gone. His suicidal revolutionary commandos had not been able to save them because they were defending their compact-disc players and Zenith stereos. They had lost no men, but they were executing those Sornican peasants who were refusing to die for the revolution-or to guide Western reporters to sites of American atrocities.

Any body would do. The more mangled the better. The nice thing about these modern reporters was that most of them were interpretive journalists.

Some few would ask how this body or that body got to the side of the road, and where the proof was of who killed it. Then the revolutionary suicide commandos would accuse the reporter of being an American agent, a fascist, or a Jew. The latter was especially useful in front of Arab groups, but generally anti-Semitism, after a half-century of disuse by the left, was now considered not only acceptable, but a sign of being progressive. Once this was the province of only the radical right, but it now suited the revolution perfectly, especially since the monster-maniac-fascist-Zionist heading the American invasion was named Rabinowitz.

President Omerta used the name extensively. He knew it would be instantly identifiable. He knew the columnists he was talking to would also use it extensively.

"Only a Rabinowitz would seek to suck the blood of poor peasants trying to be free," said President Omerta. "They're all no good. Bloodsuckers. Why would anyone want to attack a peaceful, freedom-loving people, other than to suck the blood through their evil fangs sharpened on Passover wine."

In previous years, statements like these would have been considered racist, but now the columnists couldn't wait to get down the words "courageous opinions, strong convictions."

Omerta signaled that the last bottles of Dom Perignon were to be opened. This was an emergency. This was a fight to the death.

And then someone yelled.

"The Americans have got the hill fortress surrounded."

"Excuse me," said Omerta. "I must attend to the struggle immediately."

He ran to the man who had just screamed out the bad news. He cornered him in a closet. He wrung his neck so hard, his own designer glasses almost fell off, and this during wartime, when President Omerta had no idea when he would be able to get back to America or Europe to do more shopping.

"Listen, stupid. The next time you mention the hill fortress in front of Americans I will have you shot. Have they taken it yet?"

"No. But they have it surrounded."

"What are the Russians doing?"

"Fighting to the death, sir."

"Good. Now Russia must reinforce. They can never let the hill fortress be taken. We're saved. We may have a world war."

"What if we lose it?"

"If it goes on long enough, we can't lose. We have friends in America. Go in there and feed them the party line. And don't get it wrong. Remember, this stuff is going to be taught in the classrooms in America."

President Omerta dashed out of his mountain villa, screaming for a command car.

"You want to get to the Russian ambassador?" asked the driver. He knew about the hill fortress being surrounded.

"No. I want to get away from the Russian ambassador. We were supposed to defend that with our lives."

"And we didn't?"

"If you had a choice of Louis Vuitton luggage or five hundred smelly Russians with equipment, which would you take?" said General Omerta.

Rabinowitz looked at the map. Chiun stood behind him. Everyone was covered by the hot dust of Sornica, caked onto their faces by the sweat of battle.

Everyone except Chiun. Somehow he managed to bathe twice a day, keep his steamer trunks with him, and maintain a happy appearance.

Several times Rabinowitz had heard him say:

"This is too much like a war. We must stop wars, with all these amateurs doing the killing."

"They're not amateurs. It's a great army. When the Americans get down to fighting, no one can beat them. No one."

"Still an army. After all, how good could hundreds of thousands of people be, Great Wang? Let us face it. These are soldiers."

"Right. I'm doing something with them. Leave me alone."

Now the situation on the map looked grim. The massive amounts of weapons, the way they were used showing virtually limitless ammunition, made the cost of taking the hill too great.

"We could keep it surrounded, and starve them out," said one colonel who felt he was talking to an old instructor from West Point. He had always thought this man he had learned to love with more respect than any other, had been denied battlefield command. But he was glad to see he was a general now.

"The problem is," said his old instructor, "that may be just what they prepared for."

"I don't follow, sir," said the colonel.

"Look. If they are firing their ammunition with abandon, and they're not raw troops as we know they're not, then they have an almost limitless supply of ammunition. Therefore, we've got to assume they have the same in food and water, at least for a half-year. But that's not what worries me." Rabinowitz felt the men crowd around him.

He was in this thing now. Thousands of people depended on him for their lives; any move he made affected them. And therefore any problems they had were his problems. For a moment he realized that in his quest to be left alone, he now had eighty thousand people who could not leave him alone because their lives depended on him. And they were the ones on his side. Then there was the enemy. Which understandably wanted to kill him. And of course the Oriental who kept him alive.

And Harold W. Smith of America's secret organization, who could get him supplies while no one in America could stop him. Of course, Smith in his brilliant calculating mind had figured out that in the question of supply transfers, it was only marginally more helpful to have the American bureaucracy on your side than against you.

"Something special is hidden in that hill. There has been nothing else defended like it in the entire country," said Rabinowitz. He could not worry about being left alone. He was in a war. But why was he in this war?

He didn't have time to answer that. He had a military problem. Something was up there that could possibly be incredibly dangerous. How would they attack it without suffering enormous losses, losses so staggering they could make the whole campaign a failure?

He could address the attacking troops, work on their minds, making them believe they could not be hit by bullets. The few survivors might take the hill. So he could get them to do it if he wanted. That was not the problem.

He turned to his officers. Every suggestion that came back had to do with waiting for long-range bombers that would take at least a day to employ if Smith could get them employed. He had been having trouble with the air force because they had special command frequencies not available to the rest of the military. This was to prevent an accidental nuclear war, he said.

He turned to Smith.

"I know of only two men who could get through that crossfire alive. And one of them is working for us now," said Smith.

"One man. There's a division in those bunkers. I know it. One man can't do it all. I don't care how wonderful he is," said Rabinowitz.

"For every weakness, O Great Wang, there is a strength. For every strength there is a weakness," said the peculiar Oriental with the incredibly fast hands.

The firing continued from the hill at an ear-numbing rate.

And then Rabinowitz understood what the weakness had to be.

"The ammunition. Of course. It's the ammunition. If they can fire like that, they must have an incredible storage facility for ammunition. We get one in there with a delayed explosive timer, and set off the whole thing. Attack just at the moment of explosion. The timing has to be great, but it can work."

"Who can get through that field of fire alone?" asked a colonel.

And then Chiun got a strange order from the Great Wang.

"Look, schlep yourself over to those bunkers in the hills, and lay this delayed explosive. Use your tricks and stuff. Don't worry about me. I'll be safe."

"I would never worry about you, Great Wang. You are Sinanju. To worry about you would be to insult you. But to sneak explosives into place is not the work of Sinanju. Who do we wish to kill? What great man is there?"

"What who? Just do it. C'mon. The whole attack is delayed. Something's in there and we have to get it," said Rabinowitz.

"An explosive. An explosive will kill just anyone. A soldier would use an explosive. He would use it like a gun. He doesn't care who he kills. He does not have the aesthetic sense of an assassin. Would you ask me to be a common soldier, Great Wang?"

"Not only am I asking, but I'll tell you something else. You'll love it. It is a new taste sensation to blow up people instead of taking off their heads with your bare hands. God forbid you should offend your aesthetics. Okay? Do it."

And so Chiun, who had never defiled the teachings of Sinanju, was shown explosives to kill whoever happened to be near them when they went off. And sadder still was the fact that he believed now that he was enjoying this.

He did not need darkness to move unseen upon those in the fortified hills. He needed only their fear and the tiredness of their eyes, and the deflection of the heat rays. For in the midday, the human eye contracted and in so doing lost an almost imperceptible portion of its field of vision. And in these portions did Chiun move that day with the explosives in his hands.

"I can't believe they're not firing at him," said one colonel.

"They can't see him," said Harold W. Smith, peering at the open field with binoculars. He was getting computer terminals rigged for the front because that was where Rabinowitz usually was, Miss Ashford's best friend and the salvation of America.

"He's visible to us," said the colonel.

"Right, because we're looking at him from this angle. But in the hills they have the wrong angle."

"Man would make a tremendous ranger," said the colonel.

"He'd never do that sort of work," said Smith.

"Well, what does he call that?"

"A new taste sensation, I think. Don't know," said Smith. "Got to get back to the terminals. Your people could use more reserve ammunition down here."

Like even the ancient forts, there was an entrance to the fortress, and this entrance was the most heavily defended.

And just like Sinanju had always gotten into ancient forts Chiun avoided the door but worked his way into the earth. Dissolving the fresh concrete and iron-rod reinforcements with one hand, he carried the explosive device in the other hand. Entering the tunnel, he saw a surprised Russian soldier, and even though he was no one important, Chiun sent him instantly to the fastest possible death.

First the soldier had seen the wall of the bunker dissolve. Then an Oriental in a black kimono came through it. Then the soldier was out of pain forever.

In classical Russian, Chiun asked the whereabouts of the ammunition stores, and at first those he met did not wish to reveal this information, especially to a non-Russian with a time bomb. But after just a moment's reasoning, when the pain became tolerable, they were able to express themselves better.

Chiun set the timer, placed the device well into a rack of artillery shells, worked his way through the first outside wall he came to, and left the hills safely because at this angle some of the defenders could see him.

Why, he wondered, did the Great Wang want him to do a soldierly duty, and why, more important, didn't he mind more? These were serious questions, and even the massive explosion of the hill behind him did not distract him from them. Was something wrong? Why had he enjoyed that dastardly deed, of killing people he did not even know or respect? And what about Mad Smith? Why did he think he was now wise? The man was white from the day he was born.

Chiun did not care about the excitement of the attack. Amateurs attacking amateurs. Not a decent, clean stroke among them. American troops poured into the Russian defenses, and a lead column stopped and called for the general himself. Rabinowitz.

They had found what the Russians had defended so thoroughly. They had found why the Russians had not let the Sornicans man these positions.

In deep, reinforced silos, so well secured even the explosions did not damage them, were intermediate-range nuclear missiles, so deadly accurate they could zero in on the desk in the Oval Office at the White House.

Russia had violated the latest arms treaty by sneaking missiles right into these Sornican hills. They could have launched a first strike from a direction in which America had not prepared to defend.

The news was wired to Washington immediately, and just as immediately, the great debate on the wrongness of invading Sornica now disappeared. It was apparent these three columns had saved the nation.

And the missiles were there, right in the ground where even a television reporter couldn't miss them. Only the columnists held out.

"Doesn't matter," said one woman who had managed to blame Arab terrorism on the President. "Do what we did in Kampuchea where the Khmer Rouge were forcing children to murder other children. If you think this is bad, Cambodia was worse. It was like the Nazi holocaust. Millions rounded up, worked to death, slaughtered. Entire cities emptied of people."

"I remember, I welcomed the Khmer Rouge," said the columnist for the New York newspaper.

"Blame the Americans," said the columnist for the Washington newspaper.

"How can we do that? These are Russian missiles aimed at our population centers."

"When the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge came out, I blamed America because America had been bombing Cambodia. Therefore, American bombs made those people mad."

"But lots of people have been bombed without ending up slaughtering each other. Look at the British in World War II. They were bombed much worse than the Cambodians. It didn't make them savage animals."

"Don't bring in facts. Just say it. We'll be fine. When I'm really cooking I say I'm facing harsh truths. Goes over beautifully in Boston with all those colleges there. The harsher the truth, the better."

"So the harsh truth is, we're responsible for these missiles, and they are there because we are invading."

"That's facing the truth," said the Washington columnist who had faced the harshest of truths in Iran before the Ayatollah Khomeini, Cambodia before the Khmer Rouge. and Vietnam before people were willing to risk their lives by the thousands in flimsy boats to escape their liberation. In Washington, two things became blatantly apparent. One, America had been fortunate to detect the missiles, and two, no one could quite figure out the command structure that had ordered it, other than that it had something to do with that strange situation in Fort Pickens, Arkansas.

Alone, the President reached out for Harold Smith, the last, best, desperate hope of America. He had been looking into that thing.

It was good that the missiles were discovered and removed. But who knew what would happen next time? Who knew where this force would be taken? And if it could invade Sornica without authorization, what would stop it from invading Washington? Every man the President had sent down to the field to find out what was happening kept coming back with stories of a great commander. And invariably that great commander was different for each person.

Eerily, this force seemed to have better access to the American government than the President himself. It was the sort of access held by only CURE itself, and Smith, the lone man America trusted with this.

If anything happened to Smith, these computer networks were to self-destruct. And the President knew this would be in effect because when he dialed that one number that so many presidents had come to rely on, it would, for the first time in two decades, give a simple little response so many numbers got, that the number was out of service.

It would work automatically like so many disconnects did, as CURE had worked so successfully by relying on people doing things automatically without thinking of why or how they did them. And it would be over.

Or there would be Harold Smith on the line, putting this "salvation network," as the President had come to think of it, into action tracking down the new force.

The President dialed and he got the one response he never thought he would get. A busy signal.

CURE was on line and working, but he couldn't get through to it.

Remo and Anna Chutesov saw the explosion in the distance. They had arrived at the Sornica airport while it was still under control of the Sornican forces.

"The first thing we have to do is find out where Rabinowitz is so that we can stay away from him. Then if you see the most important person in your life, turn away and run. I will do the same. Because then it will mean we have seen Rabinowitz. "

"I got another problem."

"What's that?"

"The most important person in my life really is here. He was my teacher and the only real father I ever knew."

"That's a problem, because what we want to do, must do, is find out more about Rabinowitz, and the people who can tell us are your friends from that secret organization you belong to."

"I can't believe I told a Russian about that," said Remo.

"You didn't have any choice. You can't rescue them without me and I can't help you without knowing who they are. So you made a correct decision."

"I dunno," said Remo.

"We know now that Rabinowitz is more dangerous than ever on one hand because of his access to those special sources of information and on the other because a Master of Sinanju serves him. You did the only thing that could possibly help save them. And why?"

"The last answer I got on a major question was yes. All right, yes. My answer to why is yes."

"I don't understand you, Remo, and since my specialty is not pathological mental disorders, I will not attempt to try. The reason you have helped us is that we must have as much information, especially precise information on Rabinowitz, as possible. Why?"

"No," said Remo.

Anna Chutesov had sighed. In breathing she filled out her blouse delightfully, nothing overbearing in her figure, just pure sexiness in a blouse now made more sexy by her perspiration in the Sornica sun.

"We must know everything about Vassily Rabinowitz because the first time we come within eyesight of him we are going to have to know precisely how to kill him."

"That's what I said, yes," said Remo.

Anna had been impressed by the way Remo smoothly guided them through the lines. He knew where people were before she saw them. He knew their moves without thinking. A few times he explained that people with weapons had to move certain ways, it was in their nature. They were small things, but a house of assassins working through millennia picked them up along with other techniques and compiled them, each new Master building on what the other knew. Sinanju was the name of the town from which the assassins came, although Remo was Caucasian. Chiun, his trainer, knew the same sexual techniques as Remo.

"He must have taught you everything but how to breathe."

"Breathing's the most important thing he taught me," Remo said. By the time they heard the major explosion far off, Anna Chutesov knew Remo loved this Chiun, and he kept repeating that they were very different. Although some people who liked to bust chops thought otherwise, according to Remo.

"What other people?"

"You wouldn't understand. But he was the one who gave me the answer 'yes.' "

"What was it 'yes' to?"

"The most important question I could ask."

"Which was?"

"I don't know. I didn't ask it. I couldn't figure out the question. So I got an answer without a question."

"Is Sinanju like Zen Buddhism?" asked Anna.

"No," said Remo. "It's Sinanju."

He guided her to lie down in a soft, leafy bank. In a short while a patrol came by, Indian faces in Soviet uniforms.

A young girl with a Kalishnikov stared directly at Anna but kept walking. She was no more than fifteen feet away. "Why didn't she see us?"

"People don't see things they're not looking for. Patrols look for movement. They don't see. They're looking for mines under their feet. Snipers somewhere. People don't see what they're not prepared to see."

"And what do you see?"

"What's there."

"Is it hard?"

"I don't know of anyone outside of Sinanju who sees what's there. Some think we're some kind of super thing, but that's not so," said Remo. "It's just that nobody else uses their bodies properly. Or minds, to be more precise. Most of the body, like the brain, is unused."

It was startling, but true. Anna Chutesov knew that less than eight percent of the human brain was ever used. These people from Sinanju apparently used much, much more.

This Sinanju, not Rabinowitz, was a weapon she could use. Safer than a nuclear warhead, and absolutely precise. If they got out of this alive, she was going to get this man for Russia. And if he happened to stay around for her, well, she could live with that too, she thought, as a most contented smile crossed her face.

Then came the explosion and the rush of American troops. Remo commandeered a jeep and driver. It was amazing how he could touch one nerve and make a person do what he wanted. Including Anna, Anna thought with another broad grin.

"Remo, I want to really get you with your clothes off." she said.

"I got work," said Remo.

"What you need, Remo, is a good mind-bending screw." she said.

And from the side of the road came a wail like a siren. But no siren ever made that noise. An angry-faced Oriental in a black robe was staring at Remo and Anna, pointing at their jeep. Remo made the driver stop.

"Slut. Don't you dare talk like that to Remo. Remo. what are you doing with that white girl? Come, we must pay our respects to the Great Wang."

"I think that's Chiun," said Remo. "Do you see an Oriental?"

"With a wisp of a beard?"

"Yes," said Remo.

"Yes, I see him," said Anna.

"That's Chiun. Don't talk dirty in front of him. He doesn't like it."

"Killing is noble, sex is wrong?"

"You got it," said Remo.

"Who is she? How can I bring you to the Great Wang when you have a disgrace of a white girl with you?" Chiun asked.

"I'm white," said Remo.

"Great Wang doesn't have to know that. He could think a grandparent was Korean."

"He knows. He knows I'm white. He liked the idea."

"Liar," said Chiun.

"Who's the Great Wang?" asked Anna.

"Who is this slut with the mouth of a sailor?" asked Chiun.

"Great Wang is the one who answered the question without waiting for the question," said Remo.

"Is he from Sinanju?" asked Anna.

"The most," said Remo.

"Answer her before me. Has that wanton so crazed your mind with lust that you do not answer me before her?"

"Her name is Anna Chutesov. She is here to help."

"Have you had relations?" asked Chiun.

"I don't think so," said Anna. "Tell me about this Great Wang you so admire. Is he the one who gives you orders now?"

"The Great Wang does not have to give orders. A Master of Sinanju follows his wishes before the orders are given. "

Anna saw the strange floating movement of Chiun and it reminded her of something. That was how Remo moved through the jungles.

"Does the Great Wang move like you and Remo?" asked Anna, and suddenly Chiun was no longer speaking English but conversing in Korean.

Remo answered in the same language. "What is he saying?" asked Anna.

"He's saying why did you ask that question in particular?"

"So he knows something is wrong. He is aware of that."

"Little father," said Remo. "How much is wrong?"

"Nothing is wrong," said Chiun. "Everything is better than it has ever been. Even Emperor Smith thinks so." That name, too, sounded familiar to Anna Chutesov. But she was about to see something coming down the road that would tell her the problem was no longer in Sornica, but in Russia itself. And she had to get Remo out of here, otherwise there might not be much of a world to save, even for a Master of Sinanju.

Chapter 14

Anna saw it coming down the road.

"Oh, no," said Anna. "Those idiots."

Large trucks trundled slowly along the dirt and pitted Sornica's Route 1. On their beds were fat tubes like giant sewer pipes. In the front were cones. In back were afterburners. On the side were big red stars with Russian lettering, and even American television couldn't miss it.

They were medium-range Russian nuclear missiles, far more accurate this close to America. Far more deadly. And there was absolutely no military reason for it.

The advantage was negligible because with the number of nuclear warheads in stock, no one needed accuracy. Did they think someone would fire three nuclear missiles, wipe out three cities, and then sit down to talk?

But worse, far worse, the Americans would make a great display of this. The Russian generals would be humiliated by such a great loss; after all, this was not just a client state that had fallen, but Russian soldiers. Then, just like after the Cuban missile crisis, they would launch a new round of face-saving experiments. The last one had bankrupted the weak Russian economy, and the next might well mean war. There was no more money for a new generation of weapons. That was why Russia was pushing so hard lately for a freeze. Which was also why America was pushing for new weapons.

Of course there was no advantage. But men thought so.

In this case there was less advantage than in urinating up a wall to see who could go higher. That was a useless boys' contest. This one was suicide.

"She's a Russian agent of sorts," said Remo. "Looks like we got your missiles."

"You have. They have. We have," said Anna, throwing up her hands. "Men. What are you going to do with them? They have no more purpose in your hands than they did in ours. Where is Rabinowitz?"

"Your heart wishes him no good. You may not come near," said Chiun.

And to Remo, in Korean he said:

"Rabinowitz is a friend of the Great Wang. If this slut gets close to Rabinowitz, kill her."

"Sure, sure, little father. Will do."

"You didn't say it like you meant it."

"Tell me more about Wang. Could you point him out to me?"

"Haven't you seen him yourself?"

"I did. He gave me the answer."

"So you know now," said Chiun, his eyes sparkling, his face crinkling into a smile.

"Yeah. I know the answer is yes."

"That was my answer, too," said Chiun. "The first time I saw him before Fort Pickens, and when I saw him again."

"What was your question?"

"It is very personal. I don't wish to say," said Chiun. "What was yours?"

"Nothing much," said Remo.

Anna, hearing the two babble in Korean, asked what they were talking about.

"Nothing," they both said in unison.

"We should find this wonderful Mr. Rabinowitz," said Anna. "But look, Mr. Chiun. You obviously feel I am a sort of danger to him."

"How can you be a danger? Both I and the Great Wang protect him."

"Then let's find him. And I will make you this promise. We won't come within five hundred yards of him. We just want to ask a few questions. And perhaps you can take those questions to him, and bring back the answers."

"I'm not a messenger," said Chiun. "Remo can ask the questions of him."

"No," said Anna. "Definitely not. Tell Mr. Rabinowitz we have a message for him from his mother in Dulsk. Tell him I bring peace from the Soviet Union. Tell him he has won, and that we respect his strength and his power, and now we wish to sign a treaty with him personally. To assure him of his safety. Russia will assure him of his safety."

"I assure him of his safety. Who are you to assure him of his safety? You can't keep your hands off innocent young men."

Remo looked around. He hadn't seen Anna touch anyone else. She had her hand on his arm. Chiun stared at it with hostility. Remo knew that, for Chiun, this was too much affection for a woman to show in public.

A simple bow from ten feet away was considered proper by Chiun. Touching was obscene. America had once been described in his histories as a land so degenerate that people kissed strangers to say hello. Italy was beyond the pale. Saudi Arabia was all right, except they were a little lax in enforcement.

They only cut off hands. Why cut off hands, reasoned Chiun, when it was the mind, not the hand, that committed the crime? Chiun had hands and never once had they committed a crime on their own. Nor, did he think, did anyone else's.

And so Chiun not only saw this blond woman with the beautiful, high cheekbones and devastating smile touching Remo, but Remo allowing it. Standing there, allowing, as though nothing was wrong. Degenerate whiteness coming through again, and just before he was to meet the Great Wang again.

"You are not going to walk like that toward the Great Wang," said Chiun.

"Tell me," said Remo, keeping Anna's hand just where it had been placed, "did you ever learn, little father, how to be in two places at once?"

Chiun did not answer, but stared at the hands. Finally he said:

"You're keeping that obscene slut's touch on you just to bother me."

Anna removed her hand.

"Let's hope he doesn't get pregnant by this," she said, with a sharp smile.

"I never learned to be in two places at once. One place at a time is enough," said Chiun. "More than enough. In fact, essentially wonderful."

"I wonder why the Great Wang wouldn't have taught us that trick, because while he was with you, he was with me also. "

"You didn't see the Great Wang, then," said Chiun. "How disappointing."

"He has a belly like the cold center of the universe, like all that is not of this earth. Perhaps you might want to test this Great Wang."

"He's not 'this' Great Wang. He's the Great Wang," said Chiun.

"Right," said Remo. But he knew Chiun was bothered. Chiun agreed to take them near Wang's friend Rabinowitz if the white slut could control herself.

"You're such a man, Chiun," said Anna. "You're the quintessential man, Chiun."

"Thank you," said Chiun.

"I thought you'd respond like that," said Anna.

Near the headquarters, several Russian prisoners were being herded into trucks. They looked frightened, and Anna assured them they would not be shot. She was angry that any fool would send them in here so close to America for no purpose whatsoever.

Well, she could make them have a purpose. She could quiet down this man. She might just be able to stop him from going further.

It was a tremendous defeat to Russia that he had won. "Remo, I've changed my mind," said Anna.

"Just like a woman," said Chiun. "Changing your mind. Watch out for this one, Remo. She's no good."

"And would it be just like a man not to change even if new facts came in?" asked Anna. She gave him one of her smiles again. He was the sort of man who would be tolerant of amusement, she felt.

"A proper man would know all the facts beforehand," said Chiun. "Where did you fall into this thing, Remo?"

"We met on a plane. She's all right."

"I am going to speak to Rabinowitz. I am going to assure him he is safe, and he can believe it now. If I come back in any strange way, try to get me out of it. If you can't, please kill me quickly," she said.

"Just like that?" asked Chiun. "You want an assassination, for nothing? Free? Remo, don't you see what she's doing now? She's getting away with being murdered."

"If he gets you, what am I going to do?" asked Remo.

"Try to figure out what hasn't been tried yet and try it. But one thing you can't do is go directly in. Stay back and think. I don't know what the hell they're going to do back in Moscow. This is too much of a defeat. I only wanted a little one to make Rabinowitz comfortable."

"Good luck," said Remo, and gave her a light kiss on the lips.

"You're doing that because it bothers me," said Chiun.

"I'm doing that because she's beautiful and courageous."

"I'm supposed to believe that?" said Chiun.

"I don't know what you believe. I never know what you believe. "

"For two decades I have given the best of my life to you, and you remember nothing. I have given you my thinking, and this thinking you now throw away to indulge in public obscenities."

Anna laughed.

"You two sound so much alike," she said.

Off on a hill, Rabinowitz was meeting with his commanders. Anna headed toward the hill as Remo and Chiun stayed back watching her. Chiun wanted to know what the experience was like with the Great Wang, Remo's first experience.

"The second is not nearly as good, I can tell you, Remo."

"He said you and I have the cleanest strokes in the history of Sinanju."

"He said that?"

"Yeah. I think I told you before. He said we have the best strokes. Identical, he said. Said he could be looking at you when he saw me deliver a blow."

"I teach well," said Chiun.

"Not everyone can learn," said Remo. He did not mention Wang had told him that Chiun had a son who had died.

"The teacher is first."

"To pour water into a glass, one needs the glass, even though the water is first. Otherwise it splashes in uselessness," said Remo.

"Where did you learn to talk like that?"

"Who do you think I've been palling around with for the last twenty years?"

"I don't like it."

"Neither did I."

"You sound like a fortune cookie," said Chiun. He folded his hands within his black kimono, and Remo stuffed his hands in his pockets.

"Wang said something so silly I don't know if I should repeat it," said Remo.

"Wang never says anything silly," said Chiun.

"He said we were really just alike under it all. That our differences were illusions."

"The Great Wang never said anything silly. Until now."

"Absurd," said Remo.

"I am ashamed that you were the first one he showed his great flaw to."

"What great flaw?"

"He cannot judge people as well as we thought," said Chiun.

"He certainly does know when someone is ready to be a great Master," said Remo. "I mean, he appears."

"He can judge quality, true. I may be the only Master to be at the great level whose student was also at that level. Two for me. That is a record."

"But not enough to be called the Great Chiun. That must be done by succeeding generations in the histories."

"You still have to learn about negotiations. I hope in your passage you have learned to appreciate that."

"He called us dullards. Said we're too serious. Me about America. You about the House of Sinanju."

"Wang was fat," said Chiun.

"I thought so too," said Remo.

"Lacked control of his eating," said Chiun.

"I thought we had no fat on our bodies," said Remo.

"We don't," said Chiun.

"He does," said Remo.

"We're not alike at all," said Chiun.

"Not at all," said Remo, and both of them could not remember a time when they had agreed on something so thoroughly, which was another proof they were not alike. And for a second time they agreed thoroughly.

Anna Chutesov saw him on the high hill. She wished Remo were with her, because he had a way of moving through defenses that was astounding. She thought she might be stopped, but ironically at a headquarters position itself there was more confusion than at some outpost where people might fire.

Rabinowitz had staff aides, of course, and when she said what she wanted, she made a crucial mistake, one that anyone who ever tried to deal with an institution or corporation would have known was an error.

One she should have known. But she had no choice. She had to speak to the aide.

And as in all organizations, the aide was more difficult to deal with than the leader.

"I have come to surrender to Mr. Rabinowitz and offer him anything he wants," said Anna.

"Who are you?"

"I represent Russia in this situation."

"Then how come you're not with the prisoners?" said the aide.

"Because I never surrendered. I am here to speak with Mr. Rabinowitz," she said, hoping he saw Rabinowitz as Rabinowitz and not some love-authority figure from his past.

"You haven't surrendered to anyone yet, right?" said the aide, a young captain.

"That's right."

"Then you're my prisoner," he said.

As Anna passed Remo in a truck crowded with Russian missile technicians, she waved. Remo was on board with hardly a leap, separating her from the men and helping her off the truck.

"I'll have to take you up there myself," he said.

"No. I don't want you near him. You're the world's last chance, Remo. I'll go with Chiun."

"He doesn't like you."

"Spoken like a man. What on earth makes you think that with a possible world disaster, I would care whether he likes me or not? All I want him to do is go with me. You can get him to do that, can't you? And just maybe I'll be able to see something neither of us have. Right now we have to get Vassily defused from his anxiety."

Chiun agreed to take Anna Chutesov to see the Great Wang's friend Vassily Rabinowitz, provided she kept her hands to herself, made no lascivious moves, and gave up any designs on Remo.

"Done. Absolutely. The easiest promise I ever made," said Anna.

"Don't trust her. She's Russian," said Chiun.

"I'll be all right. You two go ahead," said Remo. He remembered his days long ago from Vietnam when he was a marine and he thought fighting was done with a rifle against people you didn't know. How different it was, he thought, watching the columns of American soldiers slogging along the roads.

Now he understood that to kill another properly you really had to know him, know his moves, his essence, what he was. It was the knowing that made Sinanju different.

Would that mean that Vassily Rabinowitz might be the one man he and Chiun could never kill because he was the one man they could not know?

It was a good question. He would have to ask Anna that when she returned.

Anna thought walking up the hill toward the headquarters with the old Oriental was like walking with Remo, except the older man expressed his hostility, which in a way wasn't all that hostile. It was more like intense peeve. Both he and Remo had extraordinary powers and demanded that the world conform to their realities. For the most part they could effect bits of that, but the world was too big even for those like Chiun.

She had crucial questions about Rabinowitz. And the answers were interesting.

Chiun had been planning to kill Vassily until a legend of Sinanju stepped in to tell him Vassily was a good man. "What were you thinking at the time just before your legend stepped into your path?"

"I wasn't thinking anything. I was working."

"Killing?" asked Anna.

"If you must be so crude. But then why should I expect anything but crudity from another Remo pickup? He's had hundreds of women, you know. You won't be any different. So don't even try."

"You have my promise," said Anna.

"Do you know what the historical worth of a Russian promise is?" asked Chiun. "Your revolution didn't change anything. Czar Ivan, of course, was the wonderful exception. But otherwise, I would never work in Russia without payment in advance. None of us did. And you have only yourselves to blame. We could have saved you from the Mongols, but you wanted credit. Never again."

"I take it past czars did not pay their bills."

"Ivan the Good did. There was always work and he paid promptly."

"Some people call him Ivan the Terrible."

"Russians are always good at propaganda."

"This Great Wang could not appear to both you and Remo at the same time, could he?"

"I don't discuss work with women."

"Think of me as a Russian."

"Worse yet."

"Think of me as the woman who will not touch your precious Remo again."

"Wang does many things, but not appearing in two different places simultaneously. He doesn't do that."

"And you know Remo saw Wang because he has made this transition you spoke of."

"Yes," said Chiun.

"Then do you ever wonder that this might not be the Great Wang you talk to?"

"My wonderings are my own."

"If you threw a blow at Wang, of course you would kill him."

"No. He has been dead for centuries."

"So then it would not matter."

"Correct. One can throw a blow at the Great Wang. Our strokes, mine and the one that I taught Remo, are the cleanest, if you didn't know. In all history."

"That's wonderful," said Anna. "Could I see you throw one of them at the Great Wang?"

"No. You wouldn't see it."

"Could I see the results?"

"Can you see this?" said Chiun, and Anna only saw a rustle of the dark kimono.

"I didn't see your hand move."

"Too fast. You'd never see it."

"I have a sister more beautiful than me. And she lipkisses in public. I wouldn't tell her about how cute Remo is if you'd show me you did that."

"I don't make deals with harlots, especially concerning the family heritage."

"But you are worried about the Wang you see, aren't you?" said Anna. And Chiun fell silent.

And so by the time she reached Vassily Rabinowitz she understood that his powers were even more than convincing someone they saw someone else. Rabinowitz had been able to reach a core of thinking that would transcend a person's normal logic. She also knew that the moment Rabinowitz even suspected danger, her mind would not be her own. Even worse, she would not know something was wrong; she would not be able to understand that anything but something wonderful was happening.

The happy faces of the American officers coming out of the meeting with Rabinowitz did not make Anna feel any better. Rabinowitz might be broadcasting his powers now toward anyone who came to him.

This had not been the case at the parapsychology village. She had checked this out carefully. Cleaning people, and those around Vassily who were not in authority and not a threat, were never affected by him.

According to his dossier, occasionally he would perform tricks for them.

If they didn't like the weather he would change it, and they would return to their homes soaked to the skin, claiming the day was sunny.

He made things disappear easily, because all a person had to believe was that they were gone to stop seeing them. But other than these random tricks he did not practice his powers on those who were not a danger.

"Old Blood 'n' Guts will see you now," said a sergeant.

"Sometimes they call the Great Wang that. It is an American term of endearment," said Chiun.

Anna's mouth felt dry. She smoothed out her skirt. She told herself that she was going to feel good things for Vassily. She was not going to let off any vibrations of hostility. She would show servility from the beginning.

"All right," she said. "I'm ready."

Several colonels left, laughing. They gave Anna lascivious looks. She lowered her eyes.

Be subservient she told herself again. Think subservient. "You can come in now. But make it fast," said another guard. He nodded to Chiun.

Chiun led the way.

Inside, Rabinowitz sat on a lounge chair. A gaunt lemon-faced man worked a computer keyboard. He did it with such skill and speed, Anna was surprised he was not younger. More important, he seemed to be able to access things with a smooth precision most computer operators lacked. They always seemed to be trying things that had to be tried again. This man just did things. Anna glanced at the computer terminal and saw the coordinates for the entire southwest railway system. Apparently this man, whoever he was, had jumped the communications for four independent railroads and was now operating them in the service of moving supplies south toward debarkation points, appearing on the screen now as Sornica.

"O great one, here is a woman whose virtue I cannot vouch for," said Chiun.

"I've come to surrender," said Anna.

"Don't have time for that," said Vassily. She still saw him as Vassily. Good. He didn't need her for anything.

"Russia wishes to surrender. You have won. We have an apology for sending General Matesev and the sniper. Russia guarantees the safety of your family. Of your loved ones. Of your return if you wish. Russia is no enemy of yours." This Anna said in Russian so Vassily would understand he was speaking to another Russian.

"Because I beat you, right?"

"Doesn't it make sense?" said Anna, praying he couldn't read minds too. Because she knew while it made sense, those who ran the Russian military did not make sense.

"I don't care. You can't hurt me now. No one can hurt me now," said Rabinowitz. "And you'd get my parents out of Dulsk if I asked and if they wanted, you know why?"

"No," said Anna.

"It doesn't matter now. That's why."

"I don't understand."

"I don't need an army. I've got better than an army, and I beat you."

"Yes, Vassily. You beat us," said Anna. Were all men like this? Did they have to crow about these things? Apparently that was what parades were for.

"You can't touch me now. Tell that to the Politburo."

"I'll be happy to, Vassily."

"You can tell them I don't care about them either. I don't have to beat them anymore."

"That's very good, Vassily."

"I don't have to beat them anymore because I am getting myself a whole country for myself. That's why."

"Good, Vassily."

"And he's getting it for me, Harold. Show me all the males making over two million dollars a year who are under twenty-five years old. I want their names and private lives."

The computer operator punched a few keys, and faces, mostly black ones in basketball uniforms, appeared.

"All right, give me State Department officials who have made embarrassing mistakes in the past that we know about. "

Another list came up, but this time with white faces. "Okay, now give me stockbrokerage houses which haven't lived up to SEC regulations."

The screen turned into a blur of names and faces and did not stop.

"Miss Ashford, this will take all day," said the lemon-faced man.

"All right, that's enough. Now, you go back and you tell your friends I am in the process of getting a country and if they want to cut a deal I have nothing against them. But also tell them I'm Russian too. So I know their word isn't worth anything."

"I understand that."

"All I want is to be left alone. Now send me Remo."

"I've been with him. I'll get him."

"He is the only friend I found in this country. Hell of a guy."

"Yes, Great Wang," said Chiun.

"He has his good points, Miss Ashford," said the man Anna was sure was Smith.

"He's a fine fellow, and I'll get him now," said Anna, turning her eyes toward the door.

"You have a nice ass," said Rabinowitz.

"Thank you," said Anna, very careful to control any hostility in her voice. No man who ever said that understood what he was saying. Nice ass for what? Sitting? Fornicating? It hardly played much role in the act. No, what they meant was that the round softness appealed to them. As though a woman's body was an art object.

Well, her object was to get out of the headquarters right away without looking back.

"I will escort her, Great Wang."

"That's all right, I'll do it myself. Fine. We'll be back in a shake of a lamb's tail," she said.

"Perhaps you'd better go, Chiun. Someone may shoot her because she's Russian."

"I've heard them say the same thing about you, Great Wang, which is not true."

"Yes, I've heard that said of you, too, Miss Ashford," said the man who had to be Smith.

"No problem. I'm gone," said Anna, holding her breath. She was out of the headquarters and in the hot Sornica sun, hoping with all her body and soul that Chiun would not come along. She had to reach Remo first. She had to reach Remo now. Remo had to know. He was the only one who could save civilization, and if Chiun got to him first, he might be no better than the slaves in that headquarters. She forced herself not to run. She also knew that she had to look as though she was in charge of something, otherwise some MP would arrest her and it would be back into the trucks.

She almost twisted an ankle on a loose rock going down the hill. Somewhere off to the left she heard small-arms fire. The Americans were mopping up. Someone said that the Sornican forces were trying to escape with their Gucci eyeglasses, Louis Vuitton luggage, and Bally shoes.

She didn't want to look around, but she knew both Remo and Chiun moved so quickly and silently she would never know they were there until they were there.

A soldier offered to give her a hand. She slapped it away. Where was Remo? She didn't see him. Had he attempted to sneak up on Rabinowitz and try an execution? If he had, he was a fool. This was not the place to kill Rabinowitz. She knew that now from what she saw. And she was not the one to do it. It had to be Remo. But he couldn't do it here.

Suddenly she felt a grip on her arms like a giant vise. It was Remo.

"Where are you going?"

"To find you. Where were you? You didn't go up to Rabinowitz. You didn't risk him, did you?"

"You mean the greatest guy in the world?" said Remo, smiling.

Chapter 15

"Just joking," said Remo.

"You bastard," screamed Anna, swinging at Remo's head. It looked like she hit, but she hadn't. She had only touched his face with her blow. "How could you scare me like that? How could you do something so insensitive and stupid and useless?"

Remo thought her anger was even funnier.

"You're such a man. You're such a real man," screamed Anna. "What a stupid, stupid joke."

"I thought it was good, too," said Remo.

"Do you know that if you are lost, everyone is lost? Do you know what's going on? Do you know what I found out?"

"How should I know? You haven't told me yet," said Remo. He looked up toward the command post. He saw Chiun leave, and by his very first step, Remo understood there was trouble now worse than anything Anna Chutesov might have uncovered.

"Rabinowitz is in the process of taking over your country. He's not frightened anymore. The world has become a game to him. He might start some war somewhere now just for the fun of it, and there's nothing we can do here. We're helpless."

"We might be more than helpless," said Remo. "We might be dead. We've got to get out of here."

Anna glanced up to where Remo was looking. Chiun, his friend, had just left the headquarters. He was walking slowly.

"He's coming after us."

Anna looked closer. Chiun seemed to be strolling. "How can you tell?"

"Look at his walk," said Remo.

"I can't tell any difference."

"You're not supposed to," said Remo. "He's ready to kill. And it may be me."

"Why?"

"Dunno. Maybe Rabinowitz figured out why we're here. Maybe he's after you, not me."

"We can't do any good here anyhow. Let's run." Remo saw the eyes of Chiun. Did the little father know? Was this some other mind that was coming to do battle? Did Chiun perhaps think Remo was just some other target? There was no anger in the face. Remo had been taught that anger robbed one of power. Anger was usually a result of weakness, not strength. And it caused such damage to the nervous system. To relax was the efficient way to use the powers of the human body.

"There is a way to finish off Rabinowitz," said Anna. "But it's not here. It's in Russia."

"Why didn't you think of it there?" asked Remo.

"Because I didn't have time and I didn't think I'd need it. I had to get here right away. I thought I could defuse Rabinowitz. I thought maybe we could even destroy him if we had to. I see now, we can't. I saw it in that command post."

"What are we going to find in Russia?"

"The secret to his powers. I am sure they are in Dulsk. I found something that men always miss."

"There are no women in Russia? They didn't miss?" asked Remo. He took her arm and guided her out into the road.

The staff car with officers and a driver didn't stop until the driver was pulled out of the window as the car passed Remo's grip. The car stopped. One of the officers declared Remo under military arrest, and another officer helped that officer regain his feet after Remo and Anna were off in the car.

Remo did not look forward but kept his eye on the rearview mirror.

"We can outrun him, right?" asked Anna.

Remo laughed.

"Is that another joke?" she asked.

"No. No, we can't outrun him in this car on these roads."

"Then why are we driving?"

"It's hell trying to bring you through a jungle."

"I thought you enjoyed it. You were touching me tenderly. "

"I was holding you up and moving you forward and I was touching you that way so you wouldn't break," said Remo.

The man in the black kimono reached the road, and there he placed two feet wide apart and then, so all the world could see, slowly like two sedate windmills, brought his long fingernails out from his sleeves and in a wide arc swung them above his head and then down sedately into a folded-arms position.

"Damn," said Remo, and Anna saw his face pale and his lips tighten.

"What's wrong?" she said.

"I hope he doesn't think it's me here."

"Why?"

"Chiun just gave me the Master's Challenge to the Death if I ever come back."

"But you've got to come back. We're not going to Russia not to come back. We're going to Dulsk to get hold of the mechanism that will destroy Vassily and his powers once and for all."

"I'm not going to kill Chiun to do it. If I could."

"You have to. It's for the world."

"That is my world back there, telling me he'll kill me if he ever sees me again," said Remo.

"Maybe we can break Vassily's hold on him," said Anna.

"You don't think so," said Remo.

"How do you know?"

"You didn't say it like you meant it. Well, let's get on with it."

Getting into Russia was not nearly as difficult as getting out. Nobody ever tried to break in, least of all from its surrounding countries. Anna insisted they not go through formal channels on the entrance even though she had the highest clearance. They reached Dulsk in a day.

"It would have taken us a week, if the Russian government authorized speedy entrance," she said. "I don't know why your intellectuals find communism so attractive. Couldn't they imagine everything run by your post office?"

The road leading to Dulsk was like a strip of asphalt through Kansas, a rutted strip of asphalt. Anna kept looking at the road and then at the map and then saying, "Good, I thought so."

"You mean it's a big deal to find someplace here?"

"No, no. I came from a village not unlike Dulsk. And yet, I think it was very much unlike Dulsk. I am hoping it was unlike Dulsk."

She looked up ahead.

"How far can you see, Remo?"

"Farther than you."

"What do you see ahead on the road?"

"Road," said Remo.

"What kind of road?"

"Like the one we're on. Asphalt."

"Wonderful. I thought so. I thought so."

"What's wonderful?"

"The answer to Vassily Rabinowitz' powers. They just may not be so exceptional. I want to warn you now, threaten no one in the village, and absolutely do not let anyone know I am an official of the Russian government. We will say we are friends of Vassily Rabinowitz, who has sent us. That is the only reason we are entering Dulsk. Do you understand?"

"Not a word," said Remo. What could a road have to do with an answer to extraordinary hypnotic powers?

On the side of the road, Remo stopped at what looked like a farm stand. He didn't know they had them in Russia. Several tractors sat in the fields, with men sleeping on them. In one small dark patch of earth several people labored with perspiration dripping off them.

"Those are private lots. The tractors are part of the collective. We send them new tractors every year because the old ones rust."

"Don't they oil them?"

"Sometimes, but basically they just drive them out into the middle of the field to look as though they are busy, and if a government official comes along they start them up again. Many of those tractors have never been in first or second gear since they drove them there."

"It looked automated," said Remo.

"It is. Some genius of a man came up with a report that automation does not improve farming. He should have said that it does not improve farming in Russia."

At the roadside stand, Anna bought some potatoes and bread and a piece of meat wrapped in an old used slab of wax paper.

She smelled the meat.

"Almost fresh," she said. "Good meat."

"Why are you buying that?"

"You want to eat dinner, don't you?"

"They don't have restaurants?"

"Certainly they do. Do you want to drive to Moscow?" The roadside stand was actually a converted tiller which someone had found could hold vegetables if all the blades were flattened. It also prevented it from rolling around and made it quite steady.

Remo looked at the meat. He shook his head. He didn't want to eat dinner.

With every asphalted mile of road passing underneath their car, Anna became happier. She even sang Remo some of the songs from her childhood. He could see she loved her country, even though it was populated by fifty percent men. The male population did not bother her. It was the way it ran things that bothered her.

"What is so important about an asphalt road?" Remo asked.

"Ah," said Anna. "You would not see it because you're an American, precisely because you're an American."

"Right. I don't see it. A road is a road."

"In America, Remo. But in Russia, a dirt strip is a road. A muddy length of roughly flattened area without trees is a road. A bumpy asphalt strip here is a major highway."

"So? So there's a major highway to Dulsk," said Remo.

"That is where I have you at a special disadvantage. Do you know what Dulsk produces?"

"Sure, every American studies the economy of Dulsk in grade school," said Remo. The car they were using was a rackety oil-leaking imitation of an American 1949 Nash, a car that had not survived the competition. It was communism's claim that they were more efficient because they didn't produce a hundred different kinds of things when one product would do.

In a way they were right. It did make sense. But the reality was that there were very few cars in Russia and they all stank. As Sinanju always maintained, logic was not the greatest strength of the human mind.

"Even if you lived in Russia, Remo, you would know of no major thing that ever came out of Dulsk. Dulsk is one of our many backward little villages, without electricity, without paved roads, and which tourists are never allowed to visit."

"But we are on a paved road," said Remo.

"Exactly. How did Dulsk manage to get one? More important, on this major road, why was there no major battle fought between us and the Germans in World War II?''

"The front moved back and forth here many times, Remo, but I have yet to read a report of a major battle."

"So?"

"So use your brain, Remo, even if male hormones are flowing through it," said Anna. "Think. Think. What are we here for? Why do we come to Dulsk to find a way to stop Vassily Rabinowitz? Why have I been saying the answer is here?"

"Yes," said Remo.

"What sort of an answer is this 'yes'?"

"It's the one I got."

"It doesn't fit the question."

"I didn't even get a chance at my question," said Remo.

There was no radio in the car, but he was sure there was nothing worth listening to in Russia, anyway. Then again, maybe there was. What else did they have?

"The answer to our problem is that everyone in Dulsk has this ability. I am sure of it now. Everyone is born with it. "

"Great, out of the frying pan into the frying-pan factory," said Remo.

"Not necessarily," said Anna. "They would be just the ones to tell us how to stop their Vassily. That's why we are coming as his friends. Do you see?"

"I see we are going to a village where we are going to see a hundred Chiuns and a hundred of whoever is important to you. That's what I see."

"Hah," said Anna, slapping Remo on the shoulder. "We will see what we will see."

She ran a smooth hand over his leg. "Where is your erogenous zone, Remo?"

"In my mind."

"Can I get to it?"

"No. "

Slowly she unbuttoned her skirt. She couldn't catch his eye. She buttoned it back up.

"Perhaps I should go in first," she said.

"I don't speak Russian," said Remo. "What'll I do if they put you under?"

"You could come in after me."

"Let's go together."

"Why?"

"I want to be there. We win or we lose. I can't do much around here without you," he said. "Then again, I might not want to do much around here without you."

Dulsk itself looked like an awfully poor Midwest town. But Anna explained that for Russia it was unusually rich for a town that offered so little to the state. There was no iron foundry or electronics plant. No major defense establishment. Just a peaceful little village with churches, a synagogue, and a mosque. And there was no KGB office anywhere.