Misfortune Teller

There were eight other boxes just like it stacked neatly beside the first. They had yet to be opened.

"Do not open these," the PBRS director commanded. "I will hold the two of you responsible if they are damaged in any way. Take them to the lab, as well."

As the director marched from the room, the security agent holding the tightly wrapped package only nodded. To open his mouth would be to release a mouthful of vomit onto the upturned face of the head in his hands.

ONCE THE SHRINK-WRAP had been cut away and the frozen-in-death faces had been forced back into some semblance of normalcy, their nation of origin became more evident.

The faces were certainly Korean. But were they from the North or the South? Perhaps they were not even from divided Korea at all. They could merely be foreign nationals of Korean ancestry.

Fortunately, the forensic experts did not have to rely solely on the heads. Aiding the laboratory investigation was the fact that a small case had been packed inside each box. The first was discovered in the original container amid a pile of white foam packing.

Fingers. Packed like fresh Cuban cigars.

They were lined up between plastic dividers. Two rows of five, one atop the other.

Fingerprints taken from the detached digits were matched against official government records. When suspected matches were found, file photographs were compared to the severed heads.

The identities were soon confirmed. The nine heads with their attendant fingers had belonged to agents from the North Korean delegation to the United Nations.

Further proof came while the lab was completing its work. A phone call from the UN consulate in New York reported that several PBRS agents had gone missing.

The head of the People's Bureau of Revolutionary Struggle learned of the telephone call while he was still reading the lab's findings. It was all the proof he needed to request an urgent audience with the Leader for Life of Korea, Kim Jong Il.

The Supreme Commander of North Korea was in his basement office in the presidential palace when the head of his secret intelligence force was ushered in.

Framed posters of successful American films were crammed together around all four walls. Wherever faces appeared on the long subway prints, the graphics had been altered to give the actors Asian features. The head of PBRS walked briskly past a blood-red poster on which a Korean Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock looked out disdainfully across the vast office.

Premier Kim Jong Il sat in a blue director's chair in front of a special wide-screen projection TV in the corner of the enormous office. Fuzzy images raced around the large screen.

"Can you believe this?" the premier demanded once the security agent had traversed the office. His face was a scowl.

"You have heard?" the intelligence director asked, surprise in his sharp voice.

"Heard? What kind of stupid question is that? Of course I've heard. I just can't believe it."

Though the situation was grave, the PBRS director allowed a small amount of relief. There were times-more of them than he cared to think of when the North Korean premier was less than interested in state business.

The director did not worry at the moment that there was an obvious leak in his own department. He would deal with that later. All that mattered now was that the premier knew of the problem and understood its gravity.

"This is terrible," Kim Jong Il wailed.

"Yes, it is," agreed the director.

"The worst thing that ever happened," the Korean Leader for Life moaned.

"I am heartened by your appreciation of the situation."

"I could have done twice the box office of this," Kim Jong Il lamented.

The security chief paused. "Excuse me, O Premier?"

"The box office," Kim Jong Il said. "They pulled in 230 mil, domestic. For what? A bunch of flying cows and a few lousy wind-machine effects. Moo, blow. Moo, blow. Crap, crap, crap. And the story? Pee-yew. I could come up with a better outline sitting on the can."

For a moment, the security director thought that the premier had finally succumbed to madness; however, all at once he noticed the action on the screen behind Kim Jong Il. The premier had been in the middle of watching a two-year-old American movie when the PBRS director came in. The heir to the throne of Kim Il Sung had a passion for movies that no one in his country understood.

"I see," the security director said slowly.

"I mean, stink-o-rama," Kim Jong Il insisted. "They've got a sequel coming out to this piece of crap, don't they? I wouldn't use the print to wipe my ass."

"There is a problem," the security chief said.

"Don't tell me-tell editing," the Leader for Life of Korea said, waving his hand in a dismissive gesture. He stuck a fat fist into a large cardboard tub propped between his knees. Buttered popcorn spilled to the floor as he shoveled some of the puffy white snack into his mouth.

"Not with the film, my premier," the security chief said evenly.

"Don't bet the ranch on that, Charlie," replied the North Korean leader, his mocking laugh muffled.

"It is with the Americans."

Kim Jong Il paused in midchew. "What about them?" he asked, damp popcorn spilling from his mouth.

"Some of our agents in the field have been eliminated."

"Eliminated? What do you mean, eliminated? That's dead, right?"

"That is correct, Premier."

Kim Jong Il shrugged. "And?" he asked.

"The bodies were brutalized, Premier. The heads and fingers were removed and sent to us. Most likely for identification purposes."

"Chopped off?" the premier asked.

"Yes, my leader."

Kim Jong Il considered for a moment, chewing languidly at his popcorn. "Cool," he said eventually.

"Premier?"

"I mean, cool as a visual. Great scene for a movie. A head in a bag. I can see the camera panning slowly up on it. What's in it? the audience wonders. Tension building. Eerie music." He framed his hands into a makeshift camera lens as he stole up to an imaginary sack.

"Forgive me, Premier, but I believe that this is something far more serious than a scene in a film. Agents have died. Real agents."

Sitting before the security man, Kim Jong Il dropped his hands. "Don't get huffy with me, buddy," he warned. "I know what you're talking about. I was just trying to visualize."

"Of course, my leader," the security man said, bowing.

"So what's the deal? Are the Americans pissed at us for some reason again?"

"I do not know, Premier," said the security director. "Their President could not be weaker. He has allowed our nuclear program to continue unchecked. Perhaps there are elements in his government concerned with our having atomic capability. This could be their doing."

"A warning, you mean," Kim Jong Il said.

"It is possible."

The premier considered. "You're sure these are our boys, not some sort of Manchurian Candidate impostors?"

"There is no doubt."

Kim Jong Il exhaled loudly. He placed his nearly empty popcorn container on the floor. "How about the injuries to the necks?" he asked.

"Premier?"

"You said the heads were cut off. Cut off how? Like a knife, like a sword, like magic-how?"

The security man seemed puzzled by the last method the premier mentioned. How could a head be removed by magic?

"A blunt object was used," he said. "There was more tearing than slicing. Our forensic experts say that toward the end, the heads were ripped free."

Kim Jong It shook his head. "It's not who I think it is," he said firmly. "If it was one of them, they'd have made it look cleaner than a bowl of Boraxo."

"I do not understand," the security chief said.

"Be thankful you don't," the premier said pitifully. "It's cost me about a billion bucks in jet fuel to keep them happy over the past couple of months." He considered. "But this isn't their style. If they weren't happy with the way I handled their cargo, I'd be dead before I even knew it."

"No one could get to you," the security chief said, chest puffing out in pride.

Kim Jong Il only laughed.

"So what do you think?" the Premier asked a moment later. He was wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. "Are the Americans playing some kind of game with us, or what?"

"I honestly do not know, premier. However, I would recommend retribution for these killings. We cannot allow any government to imagine weakness on our part."

"Leave our spies to spy in peace, is that what you're saying?" the premier asked. He did not wait for an answer. "Look, do what you think you have to to get ready for a counterattack. But don't -I repeat-do not set anything in motion until you okay it with me. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Great Leader." The security chief turned to go.

Frowning, Kim Jong Il leaned back in his Hollywood director's chair. "Oh, wait a second," he called after the head of the People's Bureau of Revolutionary Struggle.

The PBRS head turned, thinking something important had been forgotten.

Kim Jong Il was holding his cardboard popcorn container.

"Be a pal and get somebody to pop me up another batch," he said. He waggled the box of unpopped kernels.

Chapter 17

The banks of buzzing switchboards had been set up in what had once been the grand ballroom of the East Hampton, New York, estate of the Reverend Man Hyung Sun.

Cubicles with portable partitions concealed row upon row of telephone psychics. Remo had to admit, it was quite an operation.

He had returned here with Chiun after the mass wedding ceremony two days earlier. While the Master of Sinanju was in conference with the Reverend Sun, Remo had been forced to tour the grounds alone. He had grown bored with the gaggle of devoted Loonies working the grounds, and so had wandered into this large room.

Walking through the lines of switchboard operators, Remo paused near one in particular. She was a huge woman in a paisley muumuu. Beads and shark teeth had been tamed and coaxed onto several long cords around her thick neck. Giant looping gold earrings with extra dangling crystals hung from meaty earlobes.

Every light on her switchboard blinked crazily. For each light, a hopeless, foolish caller waited for remunerated guidance from a total stranger. As Remo watched, the woman plugged into one of the jacks beneath a blinking green light.

"Sun Source Psychic Network," the woman announced. "I am Dame Lady Mystique, your personal conduit to Reverend Sun." She chewed gum as she listened to the problem of the caller at the other end of the line. "Yeah," the woman said, flipping absently through a catalog that rested before her switchboard, "I got a real strong feeling about that, honey. Two, seven, eight, fourteen, twenty-one and twenty-nine. You get all that? Okay, play those and good fortune will come your way someday soon." She hung up on the caller, flipping instantly to another line. "Sun Source Psychic Network," she repeated to her newest customer.

Disgusted, Remo left Dame Lady Mystique to bilk her latest rube.

As he walked past many of the other paid soothsayers-all engaged in chattering conversations about love, fortune and career-Remo came to one solid conclusion. The success of these psychic lines was a direct descendant of the televangelists of years gone by.

It made sense. As organized religion had become more concerned about worldly rather than spiritual matters, the fundamentalist TV evangelists had swept in to offer spiritual guidance to feckless spirits. Once those charlatans had been discredited in the scandals of the 1980s, something else was needed to fill the pseudospiritual void. Psychic infomercials and hotlines were the obvious successors.

People called up and, after spending a great deal of costly time on hold, spoke briefly with someone who gave them nothing but feeble hope for a better future. And from what Remo could tell of the psychics' end of the conversations, the callers seemed satisfied.

He wasn't certain why, but watching the crazy psychics talking to their foolish callers gave Remo a strange hollow sensation in the pit of his stomach. All at once, he decided that he had had enough of this place.

Scowling, Remo headed briskly for the big doors of the former ballroom.

At the door, Remo almost ran into a pink-and-white-robed Loonie who was coming in from the sumptuous main foyer. It was Roseflower, the same Sunnie who had led Remo and Chiun into Yankee Stadium two days earlier.

"Oh, hello," the cult member said, surprised for a moment to see someone who was neither a Sunnie nor a psychic in the great mansion of the Reverend Sun. "Are you enjoying your stay with us?"

"No," Remo replied tersely. He was about to go around the Sunnie when he paused. "I thought Sun was the one who claimed he was the fortuneteller?" he asked, turning.

Roseflower nodded. "Reverend Sun is a seer," he agreed.

"Then what's with all these other fakes?" Remo said. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. Beneath the arching skylights and crystal chandeliers, telephone psychics continued to dispense wisdom for a dollar the first minute, fourfifty each additional minute.

"They are Seer Sun's helpers," Roseflower explained.

"You mean like street-corner Santas helping out around the holidays," Remo said sarcastically.

"That is not far from the truth," Roseflower admitted with a nod. "There is such a great demand for guidance that no one actually expects to get through to the Reverend Sun. He dispenses his psychic energy to these chosen few."

"Your chosen few could fill the Meadowlands."

"There are many who desire to know their future. Our supply of psychics must meet that demand."

"I've never heard a con job put in such capitalistic terms before," Remo said blandly.

"The truth is not a con, Mr. Williams," Roseflower said placidly.

Remo was taken aback. He could count the number of people who knew his real name on one hand and still have fingers left over. Remo had been framed for murder years before and sentenced to die in an electric chair that did not work. For all intents and purposes, Remo Williams had died on that day. Since then, though he kept his first name, his surname had been an endless series of aliases. He was surprised to hear his real name spoken by a grinning Sunnie cult member.

"Chiun told you my name," Remo said levelly, recovering from his initial confusion.

"No," Roseflower insisted, beaming. "It was told to me by His Super Oneness, the Reverend Sun."

"Crapola," Remo said. "He doesn't know anything his accountant doesn't tell him."

"Not true. He can see the future," Roseflower insisted.

"That old fraud couldn't see the past with a crystal ball, a Ouija board, a bucket of tea leaves and a mile-high stack of past-dated issues of that newspaper of his," Remo said, annoyance registering in his voice.

"Believe as you wish." Roseflower shrugged.

"Good. I believe he's a flimflam artist," Remo said.

"That is your prerogative," said the Sunnie. "But know that you and the old one are destined for much more with the Sun Source. You have formed a grand karmic link with His Greatness."

"Yeah? Well I'm about to break that link," Remo muttered.

Sidestepping Roseflower, Remo strode purposefully toward the huge curving staircase in the mansion's main foyer.

THE GLASS-ENCLOSED balcony looked out over the rolling rear lawns of the East Hampton estate.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor, the Master of Sinanju basked in the warmth of late-morning sunlight flowing in through the many panes before him. Rectangles of bright yellow stretched out into the bedroom behind him.

Swarms of Sunnies worked in the brisk winter air on the back lawn. Some raked at the brown grass. Others trimmed shoots from topiary shrubs, fashioned into animal shapes. Farther away, still more were operating a mechanical device used to aerate the soil.

Chiun watched them all, yet did not really see them.

The old Korean was deep in thought.

He had had several meetings with the Reverend Sun in the past forty-eight hours. Each one left him more puzzled.

Like Chiun, Sun had been born in Korea but had spent many years in America. He confided to the Master of Sinanju that he shared Chiun's longing to return to the land of his birth. In these things, they were alike. But the similarities soon ended.

Sun's religion was somewhat Christian-at least in its proclamations. At first, Chiun had been horrified to learn this. Sun had explained that he was a Presbyterian minister who had fallen away from the organized church.

The Master of Sinanju had no idea how he would explain this to Remo. The product of a nuncontrolled orphanage, the boy had terrible Christian leanings already. His defense of the carpenter and his sect was shameful. He reveled in so-called worthy traits such as honesty and generosity. His pro-Christian leanings were even evident in his defense of Charlemagne. In short, Remo was a great disappointment when it came to his papal-centric worldview. It would only make matters worse when he found out that the Reverend Sun held views somewhat similar to his own.

Chiun's relief was great, therefore, when he learned that Sun had largely renounced his earlier beliefs upon founding the Grand Unification Church. In fact, the new religion had little in common with the Protestant Christian church or its pontiff-tangled roots. But it would still be a tricky matter to get around with Remo.

Chiun was sitting on his balcony, half watching the Sunnie workmen and trying to find a way to properly sugarcoat Sun's early Christianity when he heard the familiar confident glide of Remo's feet on the hallway carpet.

Chiun had not come up with a solution to his vexing problem. His only hope was that it would not come up.

A moment later, a knock came on the door.

"Enter," Chiun called.

The big door pushed open. "Geez Louise, it stinks in here," Remo complained the moment he stepped into the room. As he walked across the bedroom, his features were crumpled in lines of disgust.

"Do not look at me," Chiun said dully.

Remo sank down on the balcony floor next to the Master of Sinanju. "It's that after-shave of Sun's," Remo griped. "The whole upstairs reeks. I take it by the stench in here he's been to see you?"

Chiun nodded. He continued to look out at the robed men scattered around the lawn.

"Did he thank you for saving his fanny yet?"

"Every breath the Holy One draws is thanks enough," the Master of Sinanju replied.

"He didn't thank me, either," Remo said dryly. "Which is just as well, if you ask me. I couldn't get within ten feet of him with all that foo-foo juice he splashes on."

"Do not be impertinent with Reverend Sun," Chiun warned ominously. "His oracular wisdom is vast. Great are the things he presages."

"Yeah, I bet he sees a big fat Swiss bank account in his future," Remo muttered contemptuously.

"Cannot a holy man be concerned with keeping a roof over his head and food in his belly?" Chiun asked.

"Have you looked around this joint? It's more than just a roof-it's a frigging palace. And as far as food goes, Reverend Sun doesn't look like he's missing too many meals."

"Ours is not to question the Seer."

"Baloney," Remo said. "And what's the story with this 'reverend' crap? Isn't that a Christian term?"

Chiun's eyes opened wider. "It is a Latin term," he said evasively. "Adopted by clergy who debase its true meaning. Tell me," Chiun added, steering the subject away from Christianity, "do you not wish to know why we are here?"

"We're not. At least I'm not much longer."

"That is up to you," Chiun sniffed. "But you must surely be curious to know what inspired me to seek out Sun."

"You didn't talk on the trip down to New York." Remo shrugged. "I assumed you still didn't want to talk about it."

"I did not," Chiun admitted. "However, you have forced it out of me." The Master of Sinanju leaned forward. When he spoke, he pitched his voice in a conspiratorial whisper. "It is pyon hada," he intoned.

Chiun leaned back, smiling broadly.

"Sun said that on TV and at the rally," Remo said, nodding. "I don't know those words."

"You would not," Chiun admitted. "It has no meaning to the lesser races. Whites and blacks, as well as many Asians, are unaware of it. You are aware, Remo, of the true story of creation?"

"You mean from Genesis? Adam and Eve and the Garden?"

Chiun waved a disgusted hand. "Do not annoy me with fairy stories," he complained. "I speak of the story of the true Creator." He settled into an instructive pose. "Before the beginning of time, the one who made man formed a likeness of himself from mud and baked it in his celestial oven. Of course, being Creator, he had much on his mind. When he returned, he found that he had left his creation to bake too long. 'Woe to me,' he lamented. 'I have charred this work of my genius.' This, Remo, is how the blacks came to be."

Remo had heard this story before. In his earliest days of training, Chiun used to recount many of his favorite racist stories. Mostly to instruct Remo on how inferior he was to Chiun. However, he could not remember the Master of Sinanju ever relating this story with such passion.

"Wait a minute," Remo broke in. "Didn't you tell me a while back that this was crap? What about Tangun?"

"Tangun established the first Chosun dynasty of Korea," Chiun said impatiently. "He was not the first man. Listen." He continued with his story. "The Creator determined not to repeat his initial error. Into the oven he placed a second image of himself. But in his desire not to create another disaster, he made an even worse mistake than before. This creation he undercooked. 'How horrible this day is!' he cried. 'For in my haste I have created a white man!'

"Only in his third attempt did the Creator finally accomplish what he had set out to do," Chiun went on. "He baked his next creation to perfection, and when it was cooked to the proper shade, out of his oven sprang a yellow man. Afterward he refined this to Koreans and further refined this to people from Sinanju. The process did not achieve perfection until he refined the people of Sinanju into the perfection of a single entity-the Master of Sinanju. My ancestor." Chiun smiled proudly.

Remo nodded. "I haven't heard you tell that one in a long time," he said.

"It is wrong to burden the inferior races with the tale of their defective origin," Chiun said seriously. "I have learned this in America, and this is why I have been silent on this subject for to these many years."

Remo-who thought Chiun had been anything but silent on the matter of race-shook his head. "I don't understand," he said. "What does this have to do with Sun?"

"Pyon ha-da," Chiun insisted. "It is the end of your long wait. I am so happy for you!" Unable to contain his joy, he threw his arms around his pupil.

Remo was not prepared for such a physical expression of happiness from the Master of Sinanju. He endured the hug, leaning uncomfortably away once Chiun released him.

"So what is pyon ha-da?" Remo asked uneasily.

"It is the time foretold in which he who made all finally corrects the errors of his creation."

Remo was still at a loss. Something intensely weird was going on here. Chiun's being happy, for one. The old Korean generally had an emotional range that ran the gamut from annoyed to full-out rage.

Even more out of character, the Master of Sinanju had also taken up with a bogus cult leader. And why was Chiun's story of the creation resurfacing after all these years?

As the old Korean beamed joyfully at him from his simple reed mat, a thought suddenly struck Remo.

"No," Remo said hollowly.

Chiun's smile broadened. "Yes."

"No way."

"Yes way," said Chiun, nodding.

"You actually think this kook Sun is going to wave some magic wand and turn the whole world population into Koreans?" he exploded.

"Of course not," Chiun said placidly. "Sun is but the prophet of pyon ha-da. He sees the future as it has been designed by the Creator. It is the Creator who will change everyone into Koreans."

"Are you out of your freaking mind!?" Remo demanded, hopping to his feet.

"Do not fight it, Remo," Chiun said, his soothing voice sounding for all the world like a Sunnie cult member. "Be happy that pyon ha-da has come in our lifetimes. No longer will I be forced to come up with creative ways to explain your paleness in the histories of Sinanju."

"I'm not pale, Chiun-I'm white," Remo snapped. "And I'm going to stay that way no matter what kind of bullshit that lunatic Sun feeds you."

"Do as you wish," Chiun said, shrugging gently. "It will come to pass whether you desire it or not."

"Well, if it does it's going to have to come looking for me, because I'm not staying one more second in this loony bin."

With that, he spun on his heel and stomped loudly across the room. The door slammed shut with a viciousness that rattled the big mansion to its very foundation.

After Remo had gone, Chiun breathed deeply, exhaling a thoughtful puff of air.

Remo was quick to anger. He had always been that way. It came from a sense of inferiority. Luckily for both of them, that would all soon change.

Smiling contentedly, the Master of Sinanju turned his attention back to the sprawling lawns below his balcony.

Chapter 18

Ensign Howell McKimsom could hardly remember the intensive brainwashing sessions. What he could remember he would hardly have termed "brainwashing." If he had been permitted to talk about it, he would have more accurately called it "divine enlightenment." But he had been instructed not to talk about it with anyone.

Not with his friends.

Not with his family.

Not even with his shipmates aboard the USS Courage.

It was a shame, for Ensign McKimsom really wanted to share his conversion with his fellow sailors. It was part of the Sunnie indoctrination that made the faithful want to go out and preach to the world the greatness of the Reverend Man Hyung Sun. But Ensign McKimsom had also been instructed in the matter of obedience. He had been told not to talk; therefore, he would not talk. Ensign McKimsom was nothing if not faithful.

He was sitting calmly in the weapons room of his U.S. Navy destroyer as it cruised the waters of the Yellow Sea off Inchon on the western coast of South Korea.

As he went methodically through the prelaunch routine, he thought it was a shame he could not talk to any of his shipmates about the Sunnie faith.

At first he had been skeptical. When members of the pink-robed cult had thrown a bag over his head while he was on shore leave and dragged him into their waiting car several weeks ago, Ensign McKimsom had actually been resistant.

He had grown since then.

There were others of the faith on board. They had been brought into the fold much as he had. But there were only a few. Just enough to carry out the special mission. They had been clearly instructed not to attempt to convert the rest, lest their true mission be revealed.

Ensign Howell McKimsom sighed as he thought of all the potential faithful that would not be reached because of his inability to speak the truth.

Oh, well. It was all Sun's will.

All at once, the preprogrammed flight plan of the missile system he was reviewing changed drastically. In a heartbeat, the intended target moved 131 miles south.

Sitting up, McKimsom double-checked the green text on his monitor. There would be no room for error.

Everything checked out. The inertial guidance system would keep the missile true during its brief trip over water.

Smiling, he began initiating the system.

"Mr. McKimsom, what are you doing?"

The voice was sharp. Directly behind him.

McKimsom turned. He found himself looking up into the angry face of his commanding officer.

Howell McKimsom had been instructed what to do at every phase of the operation and in every possible eventuality. He had been given a specific order on how to deal with this precise situation.

Using his body to conceal his hand, Ensign McKimsom reached into one of the big pockets of his Navy-issue trousers. Removing the automatic he had stuffed inside his pants at the beginning of his watch, McKimsom turned calmly to the CO. Face serene, he quickly placed the warm gun barrel against the man's beefy chin and-before the commander even knew what was happening-he calmly pulled the trigger.

The sudden explosion within the confines of the weapons room was overwhelmed by the roar up on deck.

Even as the CO fell-his brains a gray frappe splattered against the gunmetal gray walls-McKimsom had initiated the launch.

Above, men ran screaming as the fiery burst of flame behind the rising 3200-pound Tomahawk missile scattered like the erupting fires of Hell across the deck.

In the confusion, Ensign Howell McKimsom had fought his way on deck. He was in time to see the tail fins of the slender missile level off above the Yellow Sea. He watched with pride as it soared across the choppy waves.

Screaming, the missile roared inland.

McKimsom did not live to see the ultimate explosion. By then he had turned his handgun on himself, accepting a slug of hot lead in his brain for the Reverend Man Hyung Sun.

WHEN IT SOARED OVERLAND, the Terrain Contour Matching system of the Tomahawk kicked in. The TERCOM guidance system faithfully followed the digitized topographical map input into its computerized brain.

Instead of heading up into North Korea, the missile remained south of the Thirty-eighth Parallel. In a horror scenario that the United States Navy never even thought to imagine, the entire flight of the missile into friendly territory took less than one minute.

There was no time to call a warning.

No time to evacuate.

No time for the victims to even scream.

When the missile fired from the USS Courage exploded on the grounds of Seoul National University forty-two seconds later, the shock waves were felt halfway around the world.

Chapter 19

The bombing in Seoul was only minutes old, and Harold W. Smith was trying to make some kind of sense out of the reports he was receiving.

It was clear what had happened initially. A United States destroyer had fired a Tomahawk cruise missile against the capital of South Korea.

An entire building on the campus of Seoul National University had been utterly destroyed. Fortunately, it was early in the academic day, and the building was not yet filled to capacity. But that was hardly a comfort. There had been fatalities. And the U.S. was responsible.

Preliminary reports put the death toll at nearly two hundred, but Smith knew that there was no real way of gauging the number of students and faculty killed so soon. He was not optimistic. Doubtless, the actual number would rise as rescuers began to dig through the rubble.

As Smith typed away at his keyboard, the muted sound of CURE's White House line buzzed inside his desk. Continuing to type with one hand, he reached down, pulling the cherry-red phone from his desk drawer.

"Yes, Mr. President," Smith said crisply.

"Smith, what the hell is going on?" the familiar hoarse voice of the President of the United States rasped.

"You are calling, no doubt, in reference to the situation in South Korea."

"It's the damnedest thing, isn't it, Smith," the President said. "Who'd have thought the two Koreas would be such a problem spot?"

"Your nine immediate predecessors might have had some inkling," Smith said dryly.

Smith had a personal dislike for this President that he tried hard to subdue. After all, it was not his duty to second-guess the wisdom of the American people. But the CURE director could not help but long for a return of any one of the seven other presidents he had served.

"They did?" the President asked. "It doesn't surprise me. Those old farts were always worried about everything that didn't matter. So what's the deal?"

Smith started to speak when a female voice broke in behind the President. Whatever she whispered made the President snort with laughter. Smith heard the chief executive cover the mouthpiece as he whispered back.

"Keep it down, will you?" the President asked. "Okay, Smith, what can you tell me?"

"Who is that?" Smith demanded.

"Oh. Who?" asked the President innocently. A woman giggled somewhere in the nearby background.

"Mr. President, need I caution you again on matters of security? Please ask your wife to leave the room."

"Um, she's not here," the President said, voice almost distant. The giggling again, this time muffled in a pillow.

"I will terminate this call if your wife does not excuse herself," Smith said seriously.

"Okay, okay," the President said. "Honey, you better get out of here. There's some heavy Commander it Chief stuff going on." There was a rustling of sheets, and then the sound of a door clicking shut.

Only when the labored breathing of the President of the United States was the only sound in the room did Smith speak once more.

"Mr. President, we have had this conversation before," Smith said, weary of having to explain yet again the importance of keeping CURE secure. "It is unacceptable for the First Lady to be anywhere near the dedicated line when we are discussing sensitive matters."

The President cleared his throat, embarrassed. "She wasn't. The, um, ball and chain's in California," his hoarse voice said sheepishly. "She's got appointments with a couple of lawyers out there."

"Then who-?" Smith paused. "Oh." It was his turn to clear his throat. Smith rapidly changed the subject. "As you must already know, the U.S.S. Courage fired a cruise missile at South Korea approximately twenty minutes ago."

"Yeah, I just found out," the President said. "South Korea? Are they the ones who like us, or not?"

"They like us, Mr. President," Smith said, his lemony voice weary. "At least they did until today. I have heard that already there are organized protestors in the streets of Seoul demanding the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Korean soil and our ships from their territorial waters."

"Aren't they out a little soon?" the President asked.

"My thinking exactly," Smith replied. "It almost seems as if they knew there was an attack coming."

"Is that possible?"

"Sadly, yes. Our armed forces have been infiltrated by foreign spies in the past. Perhaps most significantly to these events, there was the 1996 incident concerning the South Korean who was a naturalized U.S. citizen. He was a U.S. intelligence officer who was caught passing classified information on to the Republic of Korea."

"You think whoever did this was a buddy of his?"

"I will not speculate one way or the other," Smith said. "It is merely one of the possibilities I am investigating. It could well be an isolated incident. As it stands now, we do not yet know how many were involved in the firing of the Tomahawk. There are reports of deaths aboard the Courage."

"Maybe they were attacked by the Koreans," the President speculated. "They might have been defending themselves."

"Hardly," Smith said. "If my information is accurate, the dead aboard the naval vessel committed suicide."

"Wowee," the President said. "You know, that's part of the reason I despise the military so much. All those guns and rockets and everything. I'd be happier if we could take all that war stuff and dump it in the ocean. Of course, the veep would have my flabby ass if I did. Ecology and all,"

"Yes," Smith said, his voice flat. "In any event, there has been another item from the Koreas that has come across my desk this morning. Nine individuals in the North with tenuous ties to the Central Intelligence Agency were murdered this morning. Their decapitated bodies were discovered near the British embassy a few hours before the missile attack."

"Yuck," the President said. "What's that got to do with anything?"

"Perhaps nothing. However, one of my people recently, er, dispatched nine men in New York whom I later learned were North Korean agents. Their bodies were taken by individuals I have yet to trace who were dressed in the uniforms of New York City police officers. Apparently, they were brought somewhere to be mutilated. Their headless and handless corpses were found on a garbage scow in the East River."

"This is gross as all get-out," the President complained. "Just get to the point."

"It is possible that the murders in North Korea are a retaliation for the decapitated bodies found here. The cruisemissile launch following so closely on the heels of both events could signify a link to some larger scheme."

"Like what?" the President asked.

"I am not certain. But it might interest you to know that the same protestors I told you about earlier are calling for reunification talks to begin with the North."

"Is that bad?"

"Dire is the word I would use. A unified Korea would doubtless favor the political system of the North. If reunification goes as some expect, we would have the first significant Communist expansion in two decades. In addition, we would lose an important strategic ally in the region. As you no doubt are aware, as far as our military is concerned, relations with Japan are not particularly strong at present."

"Really?" the President of the United States asked.

Smith sighed. "I intend to send my people in to the Koreas," he said. "The Masters of Sinanju are undisputed experts of the Korean political scene, and have been since time immemorial. Since it is his homeland, Master Chiun is infinitely suited to dealing with the current tensions."

"Whatever you say, Smith," the President said. He sounded distracted. "I told you to stay out," he whispered hoarsely.

Over the phone, Smith heard a door creak shut. He closed his eyes patiently. "I will keep you apprised of any new developments," he said.

While he was hanging up the phone, he heard the same woman's voice as before. It was obvious now that it was not the First Lady. She was singing "Happy Birthday" in a husky whisper. Smith hung up the receiver as the President of the United States guffawed with delight.

Chapter 20

The plain was endless.

There was sky, but it was washed in blood. Like the atmosphere of a planet in the sphere of a red giant sun.

The red Martian landscape stretched out limitlessly in all directions. At some hazy point in the far-distant horizon, the red of the sky swept over the red of the land, creating a muddied seam of blood.

Man Hyung Sun watched the horizon and smiled.

He had visited this place in his mind before. Many times in the past several days. But he had seen it prior to that. In both daydreams and nightmares when he thought he was going mad.

It was not madness. It was real. And unreal.

This thing had been calling to him for months. It knew of destiny. It knew his future. It had even given him some directions on a subconscious level for almost a year prior to this current cycle of events.

Mike Princippi had known of it. He had encountered the thing in America's West. But he had chosen to ignore the sweet, vaporous song. He had forced the images from his mind and had given away the vessel. It had taken Man Hyung Sun much time to search out the former governor in his mind. The thoughts drawing him to this place had not been clear until very recently. Now they seemed so obvious.

The figure was where it had been. Clothed in a haze of yellow fog, it sat upon the endless flat plain. The head and eyes of a man looked up as Sun approached.

"I am weak," the strange, otherworldly figure lamented when Sun crouched down beside it. Puffs of yellow smoke danced around the ethereal shape like thin clouds scudding across a clear sky.

It was the same complaint as always. Sun smiled comfortingly. "You cannot know true weakness," he assured the figure. "For to be truly weak is to be Man. And you are not Man."

The creature thought for a moment. "No," it admitted eventually. "But I am not what I once was. My master has fled to the place of the gods. I am a shadow of his greater self, a fraction of that which he is. Without his energy, I am doomed. Soon I will be condemned to nothingness."

Sun knew that the spirit of this nether region was weak. From what he had gleaned of previous conversations, a battle had taken place at some time in the past. The creature in the smoke had not fared well. Nor had its master, who had abandoned this part of himself to the limitless red plain.

"Your plan goes well," Sun offered consolingly. "The land of my birth is reeling on both sides of the division."

"This I know," said the creature, a great weariness in its voice. It did not get up from the ground. It continued to sit-as eternal as the land and sky around it.

"There will be political upheaval from these events. The United States-the Greece of this era-needs a presence in the South to show strength against the North. That foothold appears to be slipping."

"This, too, is known to me," said the fragile creature. "It is as I have designed it to be. To remedy the situation, they will send my young enemy first."

"What of the old one?" Sun asked.

The strange being shook its head. Puffs of yellow smoke escaped from its neck, falling back into the larger cloud. "The Master will remain behind for now. Only the night tiger of Sinanju will go. I have foreseen it."

Sun knew enough not to dispute the creature's oracular abilities. "It is as you say," he conceded. "Is there something you require of me?"

"Their emperor has attempted to contact the Master. So far the old one has not deigned to speak with him, but his soul is more restless than he admits. His attitude could soon change. Keep him with you so that they do not communicate."

"Can you not see his future, O Prophet?" Sun asked, puzzled.

"I see much," agreed the creature. It exhaled ancient puffs of sickly yellow. "But it is as mud. The clarity is gone. It is ...difficult for me."

"But my future," Sun stressed. "That is clear to you."

"Yes," the being admitted. It seemed drained.

Sun smiled. "I will do as you say. I have another taping today. The old one can accompany me."

Before him, the creature sighed deeply. Its breathing was ragged. "I am not what I once was. Prophesying fatigues me. Leave me now to my waning days."

Although the being shook a substantial hand at Sun, the cult leader lagged. "Um, if you could...?" he asked.

The creature looked up tiredly. Sun still squatted beside it. Its eyes closed, and it nodded in understanding.

Reaching out two humanlike hands, the being pressed its palms against either side of Sun's head.

The explosion of yellow was blinding, brilliant.

The vision came at once.

He was as a king. Riding a cloud from the heavens. The vast domain of Korea stretched out beneath his feet. Beyond it, the world lay waiting.

His future.

The flash of yellow consumed him with a shocking abruptness. Sun shuddered, gasping for breath. He blinked madly, chasing the dancing yellow spots from before his eyes.

As the brightness faded, Sun looked around.

He was back in his closet. Hangers hung from wooden rods beyond the thin film of yellow smoke.

Between his ankles was the strange urn with the Greek carving along its sides. The same urn that had been in the possession of Mike Princippi and given away. The urn he had had his Sunnie followers remove from the Boston Museum of Rare Arts.

The yellow smoke rose in uncertain puffs from the damp powder within the ancient stone vessel. The stink of sulfur clung to every corner of the room.

Sun struggled to regain his breath. He looked down at the powder in the urn.

"Would it be disrespectful to say that that was one hell of a rush?" he enthused as he stood.

He drew the damp towel from around his neck, tossing it on the floor near a humidifier. Sweating, Man Hyung Sun left the small fetid room.

Chapter 21

The drive from New York to Massachusetts did not help to diminish Remo's sour mood.

When he stepped through the front door of the condominium he shared with the Master of Sinanju, he heard the telephone ringing at the rear of the house. Scowling, Remo walked back to the kitchen.

"What do you want?" Remo asked, picking up the receiver.

"Remo? Smith. Thank goodness I was finally able to reach you."

"Been trying long?" Remo asked with sarcastic sweetness.

"Yes," Smith replied, unaware of the sarcasm. "When I could not reach you at home, I traced your call back to Sun's mansion, but you and Chiun had already left. I trust you already know about the situation in Korea."

"You're too trusting," Remo said. "And Chiun didn't leave. He's still with the Reverend Sun."

"Oh? He did not come to the phone."

"Probably busy passing around the collection plate," Remo said. "So what's with Korea?"

Smith explained the situation both north and south of the Thirty-eighth Parallel. As he regurgitated the raw data, he quickly told Remo of the headless Korean bodies discovered that day and their connection to North Korea, which Smith had established through that nation's New York UN mission.

"I need for you and Chiun to fly to South Korea immediately. If there is some kind of sinister force behind this, I want you on the ground ready for quick action. I've arranged military transport for the two of you."

"Better cancel one of those tickets," Remo said.

"Why?"

"Chiun won't be coming."

"I need him," Smith stressed. "It may become necessary to stabilize the situation in North Korea, as well. Chiun has a knack for dealing with government leaders. Particularly in his homeland."

"And I don't?" Remo asked.

Smith's hesitation spoke volumes. "Er, if you are saying that Chiun is at the Sun mansion, perhaps I could try to reach him there again," he said vaguely.

"He's not going anywhere," Remo insisted, his tone betraying his offense. "He's sitting in his room waiting for the human race to jaundice."

"I do not understand."

"Join the club."

"This is a vital situation," Smith urged.

"Chiun's found something that's more vital. Take my word on this one, Smutty-you aren't moving him an inch."

Smith considered for a long moment. "You may go alone," he said finally, clearly unhappy with the situation. "But remember that South Korea is still an ally. Try your best to be diplomatic."

"Blah, blah, blah," Remo said.

"The North is an even trickier situation," Smith pressed on. "They look for any opportunity to drive a wedge between the United States and the South. Try not to give them any ammunition."

"Gee, you want me to make sure I wear clean underwear in case I get in an accident, Mom?" Remo asked.

South continued, undaunted. "It is not yet known if the nine informants killed in the North are a tit-for-tat for the nine you removed here. It is important that we do not act unilaterally until we are certain of our facts."

"Yammer, yammer, yammer," Remo sighed. "Stop worrying, Smitty. Just get me on the right plane, and everything will work out for the best. Trust me. I can be very diplomatic."

Another deafeningly loud pause.

"Are you absolutely certain Chiun is not available?" Smith asked, his voice strained.

THE MASTER OF SINANJU heard the heavy footfalls in the hallway outside his room. They certainly did not belong to Remo. His pupil's confident glide had moved in the opposite direction hours before. He was too stubborn to return.

No, these were footsteps Chiun had come to recognize clearly in his short stay at the East Hampton estate.

"Enter, Most Holy One!" Chiun called even before his visitor had a chance to knock.

Man Hyung Sun stuck his head around the doorway.

Chiun smelled the after-shave lotion even before he had opened the door. Remo was right about that, at least. The stink about the Reverend Sun was strong. Almost overpowering.

"Am I disturbing you?" Sun asked.

"A visit from a holy man can never be a disturbance," the Master of Sinanju replied from his lotus position on the glass-enclosed balcony.

He had turned his back to the lawn.. The setting sun had fallen from the bleak winter sky. It was being swallowed up by the distant black trees.

As Sun came across the room, Chiun did something that he rarely did. Even for Smith, whom he called Emperor and for whom he rarely displayed anything short of obsequiousness.

Chiun rose from the floor.

When Sun stepped onto the balcony, the two men exchanged polite bows. Not deferential. But certainly respectful.

As Sun found a seat on one of the Western chairs on the balcony, Chiun sank back to the floor.

"Your son is no longer here," Sun said.

Chiun shook his head sadly. The puffs of hair over his ears shook with deep sorrow. "Lamentably, no," he said. "He does not believe in pyon ha-da. The boy is young still, with skin of improper hue. My fear was always that by flittering around in a shell of ivory, he would not know the true beauty of the world."

Sun nodded. "It must be awful for you to squander your wisdom on a white," he agreed.

Chiun bristled slightly. "Remo is a fine pupil," he explained. "His mongrel lineage is not his fault. Indeed, I have confirmed that which I always suspected. There is some Korean blood within him. Dissipated over the years, of course. But in his heart, he has always been Korean."

"I meant no offense, Master of Sinanju," Sun apologized, bowing his head as he did so.

Chiun nodded in return. "Pyon ha-da will change all," Chiun said, his happiness returning. "No longer will my son with a Korean soul be painted the shade of sickness and death. My joy for him is without measure." The parchment skin at his eyes squeezed to vellum knots of delight. "Tell me, O Seer Sun, when is the blessed moment to take place?"

"Soon," Sun said absently. "Quite soon. Tell me, does your son intend to return?"

"Remo?" Chiun asked. "I do not know. He leaves, he comes back. Who can keep track of children these days? Can you not see, O Seer?"

Sun smiled. "I see much, but not all," he admitted. He stood from his chair. "I have a commercial to tape in New Jersey today. I would be pleased if you would accompany me."

"It would be my privilege."

Smiling, the Master of Sinanju rose from the balcony floor once more.

As Chiun walked beside Sun to the door, he was careful to stay as far as was politely possible from the range of the cult leader's wretched perfume. Unbeknownst to him, the powerful sulfur stench of the ancient Greek urn clung just beneath the thick fragrance.

Had Chiun recognized the sulfur smell, he would have slain Sun on the spot and flown to Remo's side. But he did not. Instead, he stepped placidly and guilelessly from the room in the company of the man who had been chosen by the ancient spirit of the urn to slay both Masters of Sinanju.

The big door shut with echoing finality.

HE KNEW WHEN THEY BROUGHT him through the police cordon at the Berlin embassy that his life was over.

After the high-speed chase with police and the subsequent crash at the North Korean mission, the Communist government needed a scapegoat. Rim Kun Soe had been chosen to fulfill that role.

He had sullenly accepted the blame for the chase that had resulted in several injuries-some severe. Face a tight mask, he had voiced regret over the death of the Burg police officer whose bloody, battered body had been returned to German authorities.

There had been two people in the cab, the police had argued. Where was the other man?

A dummy, was the explanation. They were a new thing from America for single travelers intending to lend the impression of more than one person. In his love of all things Western, Rim Kun Soe had purchased one of these. They had even produced one of the dummies for authorities.

It was another insult heaped atop the pile.

Rim Kun Soe hated the West and everything that remotely resembled the bourgeois American culture. He would have just as soon been dragged from his car and beaten to death on one of the lawless streets of America itself as buy one of their artificial people for protection.

But he had accepted the added indignity like the good Public Security Ministry officer he was.

Fortunately for him, he was not turned over to German authorities. This was not due to any loyalty on the part of the North Korean government.

It was merely feared by those in the ministry that his recollection of events would not match the reality of the American who had really been driving the truck.

He was in Germany as a diplomat and therefore enjoyed the protection of extraterritoriality. He was exempt from the laws of his host state, so the police could do nothing to Rim Kun Soe as he was hustled through the line of officers and reporters onto the first plane home.

Back in North Korea, he had been reprimanded by the ministry he served. Somehow they had decided that he was responsible for the debacle concerning the American and the aged Master of Sinanju. Even though he had been following the orders of his superior, even though Kim Jong Il himself had turned over use of his jet to the two smugglers, Rim Kun Soe had borne the brunt of the punishment.

He had not yet been relieved of duty, but that was certainly coming. There might even be a show trial. Prison, perhaps. Maybe worse.

Until that time, he had been given minor security work at the airport in Pyongyang. According to whispers of those in the know, there had been several mysterious packages delivered on a mail flight from the South two days before, and as a result security had been tightened greatly.

Shipments that had been flown into the country were not leaving as they should. Slow under ordinary circumstances, the movement from the airport was practically nonexistent. Earlier that morning, the security officer had realized just how slowly things were moving from the airport when he spied some familiar crates in a back room. They were no longer his problem, he decided. Let someone else take the blame.

In the vast storeroom off the main concourse, there was a bottleneck of government luggage and mail-government officials being the only ones with access to travel and some, albeit censored, communication with the outside world.

After several hours at work in the back rooms of the airport, Rim Kun Soe had been turned over to a detail that was inspecting the suitcases. It was the greatest indignity he had endured in his entire career. Searching through the dirty undergarments of stupid diplomats.

The security officer was not exercising much care as he fumbled through the cheap suitcase of a support staffer from the North Korean mission to Hanoi.

While he worked, Soe was forced to endure the endless prattling of a pair of very junior officers with the People's Bureau of Revolutionary Struggle. They appeared to be obsessed with food.

"Were you able to eat today?" one asked as he swept an electronic device over a pair of trousers.

"Some," admitted his partner.

"I, as well. It has not been easy."

The other nodded. He wore a sickly expression. As a member of the Public Security Ministry while at home and particularly during his brief stay in Germany, Rim Kun Soe had always been able to eat his fill. However, returning as he had in disgrace, he did not enjoy the privileges he once had. Back home in Pyongyang, he had been dropped into the middle of another one of the interminable food shortages the North Korean government specialized in.

Somehow, the men he now worked with seemed to have been affected by more than the famine.

"I think about it at night," the first said. "How he pulled it from the box and threw it to you. Last night, my meal came up in my sleep. I was awakened by the sound of my wife eating it off the blanket."

The other nodded. "I have told my wife I will turn her and the children out if I find them eating my vomit," he said knowingly. "Strength is the only way to deal with them."

"Mmm," said the other in bland agreement.

The conversation went on like this for much of Rim Kun Soe's day. It was humiliating for one who had had so much in his political career to deal with wretches like these two.

His only relief to the embarrassing tedium came when the hip radio of one of the two men he was with squawked to life.

"Security Officer Hyok," the first man announced into the mouthpiece, his breath reeking of stomach acid.

There followed a steady stream of Korean so frantic as to be unrecognizable from Soe's position across the big room.

The security man blanched when he heard the report over the radio. When the voice was through issuing orders, the man stuffed the radio away, quickly drawing his side arm.

"What is it?" his partner asked.

"We are needed on the tarmac," said the first. "Right away. You," he commanded to Soe. "There is an emergency. Come with us."

Soe was grateful for the break in the tedium. He pulled his automatic free and, with the others, made his way out of the building and into the pale sunlight of Pyongyang Airport.

They reached the tarmac at a run, finding many security personnel already there. As Soe looked around, he realized that this was probably the entire airport detachment.

There were hundreds of men standing around. All were looking skyward. Many jeeps lined the periphery field beside the long runway.

"What is it?" Security Officer Hyok asked when he and the others ran into the crowd.

"A plane," said a ranking officer of the PBRS. "From the South."

"Why has it not been shot down?" Soe demanded.

The ranking officer looked angrily at the brazen security man. "It has requested asylum."

The plane was in sight. A fat dot in the whitewashed sky, it moved remorselessly closer. It was attended by a number of smaller specks. Like flies around a larger animal. North Korean fighter jets.

Soe wheeled to the officer. "Shoot it down anyway," he insisted. "It could be loaded with chemical or biological weapons. Worse, it could carry a nuclear payload. Who knows what technology the fool Americans have given our capitalist cousins? They have been jealous and fearful of the people's nuclear program for years. This could be their reckless attempt to finish us all."

Though the officer looked blandly at Soe, venom roiled beneath the surface of his well-fed face. "Are you not Rim Kun Soe, the disgraced lackey running dog of the capitalist-loving Master of Sinanju?"

Soe stiffened. "I am no one's dog, you ignorant son of a mongrel!" he snapped.

The officer did not hesitate. He sent a balled fist directly into the face of Rim Kun Soe.

As Soe reeled back, nose gushing blood, the man ordered the two agents who had accompanied the dishonored Public Security Ministry representative onto the tarmac to take hold of him. Instantly, Soe felt his arms being pinned behind his back.

Then the officer turned back to the plane.

It was much closer now. As Soe bled onto his uniform, the entire group of gathered agents watched the plane touch down.

It hit with a squeal of smoking rubber. The plane rapidly decelerated. As it slowed to a stop, a wheeled staircase was rolled out beneath the main exit door, which was now open. The engines died.

The Korean military jets that had acted as escort roared back and forth across the airport as the first gunmen raced up the steps and on board the now silent plane.

There were several tense moments when nothing happened.

All at once, a man stepped out onto the upper platform of the staircase. He had his hands atop his head, fingers intertwined.

For a moment, the security personnel assumed that this was one of the men from the South requesting asylum. This mistaken impression lasted only until they realized that it was one of their own security men whom they had sent aboard to secure the plane.

Several others followed. All were in the same pose. None carried the rifles they had brought aboard with them.

"What is this?" the officer demanded when the first man had climbed down the steps. "Where are your weapons?"

"He took them," the soldier admitted.

"Who?"

"The one who did this." The man tugged at his arms. Though it appeared as if he was trying to move them, they did not budge. The fingers remained locked atop his black hair.

"Lower your arms," the officer commanded, disgusted.

"We cannot," said the soldier.

The others were straining behind him. They appeared to be having the same difficulty as the first.

The officer grew angry. He grabbed the lead soldier's arm at the elbow and yanked. It did not budge. Surprised, he pulled harder. The arms remained locked in place. It was as if they were glued to his head.

The officer finally gave up. "How many are aboard?" he demanded, scowling.

"Only one man," said the soldier.

"One?" asked a stunned voice from behind the officer.

The soldiers all looked in the same direction. Rim Kun Soe stood behind the officer. Wet blood streaked down his suddenly fearful, cold face. He appeared to know something that the others did not. His expression was more uneasy than it had been when he suspected the plane might be carrying a nuclear payload.

The officer did not have time to waste on an insubordinate agent like Soe. He turned back to the soldiers.

"The flight crew?"

"Are still in the cockpit, I assume."

"You assume," he spit. The man glanced at Soe one last time. He drew his side arm. "You," he said, spreading his arm to the next batch of soldiers in line. "Come with me."

The officer himself led the next charge into the belly of the mysterious plane. When he came out a few minutes later, his face was almost as red as Rim Kun Soe's. However, it was not blood that turned his skin to scarlet. It was embarrassment.

The man's hands were locked atop his head. His weapon was nowhere to be seen.

He was also not alone.

"Man, I forgot what a desolate lump of ice this country is," Remo Williams complained from his position behind the officer.

On the ground, Soe attempted to back away. The two agents held him fast. "No," he said, his voice small.

As one, hundreds of weapons suddenly trained on the doorway of the 747, in spite of the presence of their commanding officer. Bolts clicked like so many metal crickets as the handguns and rifles were cocked.

"Do not move!" shouted a junior officer.

"Hold your fire!" screamed the officer with Remo. "Hold your fire! He is friendly!"

Remo waved to demonstrate this. "Hiya!" he called to the crowd of soldiers.

This did nothing to convince the men to lower their weapons. However, they did not wish to go against their commanding officer. Three hundred gun barrels tracked the two men down the stairs to the runway.

"If you know what's good for you, you'll get them to lower their weapons," Remo cautioned the officer.

Apparently, Remo had done something more than merely freezing the soldier's hands atop his head while they were on board the plane. His red face grew more ruddy as he screamed out to the soldiers.

"I will personally see to it that every soldier who does not stand down this moment will spend the rest of his miserable days rotting in a People's prison!" he screamed over the gusting wind.

They hesitated at first. After all, sometimes there was rice in the People's prisons.

"With no food!" the officer screamed.

The guns were not only lowered; they were dropped, flung. They clattered loudly and crazily to the frozen tarmac.

"That's better," Remo said, glancing around. His eyes alighted on Soe.

The former Berlin embassy man had been trying to sink back into the crowd. Remo bounded over to him.

"Hey, I know you!" Remo said, beaming in recognition. He slapped a hand on Soe's shoulder. "He'll be my driver."

"Please-" Soe begged of the officer.

"Fine," the officer said.

As Soe watched the last hope of salvaging his career drain away, a jeep was brought forward. He was pushed in behind the steering wheel. Remo took the seat next to him.

Rim Kun Soe wished he still had his gun with him. If he had, he would have ended his life right then and there. Particularly at the next words that issued from the filthy American's capitalist mouth.

"Which way to the presidential palace?" Remo asked, smiling.

Chapter 22

Mike Princippi suspected that it would someday come to this. He had known it since he'd collected the stone urn from the ruins of that cult in Wyoming a year ago.

It was a stupid, stupid move. He should have left the urn where it had been buried. The cult lay in ruins. The secret would have remained buried along with the urn.

The whole affair was a time in his life that was best forgotten. Some people had said that about his failed run for the presidency. But if they only knew about that urn, they would have conceded that the national embarrassment of losing the election was a bright spot in the biography of Michael "the Prince" Princippi compared to the terrible days he had spent in the vicinity of that ancient stone artifact.

He didn't know much about the history of it. Just that it had been found at an archaeological dig in Delphi and brought to America. Most recently, he had owned the urn for a brief time, finally turning it over to a local Boston museum when the strange dreams he was having refused to subside.

And now the Reverend Man Hyung Sun owned it. It was a chilling prospect.

Princippi was generally a practical man. The only mystical matters he had ever trucked in were those pertaining to the Massachusetts budget when he was governor. As far as anything otherworldly was concerned, he didn't believe a word of it. But the urn had changed his mind.

The powder contained in that ancient piece of carved rock possessed a force greater than he had ever imagined.

The being within the urn was a fragment of the ancient god Apollo. The Pythia, as it was called, was the oracular force behind the famous temple at Delphi. Indeed, it was for this creature who imparted knowledge of the future that the word oracle was given.

The Pythia saw the future. People had died for it. Most recently at the museum in Boston where it had been stored. And Mike Princippi had known about it.

It would be the end of his political career if this ever got out. Worse. Prison, possibly. Who knew what else?

Princippi thought of this as he got out of his battered old Volkswagen in the parking lot of the Channel 8 studio in Passaic.

Sun's limo was already there, as were several Sunnie vans. The tambourine-rattling nuts were probably scattered all over the studio like a flock of bald flamingos.

Mike Princippi was locked in with these people. Whether he liked it or not.

He knew that Sun was aware of matters unknown to the rest of the world, with the Pythia on his side. Sun knew that Princippi had been involved with the Pythia before. Although the former governor had not been in it as deep as the others at the Wyoming cult, he had been there. Sun had the goods on him.

But there was some hope.

The ashes were the strength of the Pythia, Princippi reasoned. If he could keep his mind completely blank and get close enough to the yellow dust, he might be able to get rid of it. Maybe flush it down a toilet or something.

He hadn't really thought about it at Sun's Manhattan apartment. At the estate in the Hamptons, he had not yet been able to get close enough. When he did, he would get rid of them. Once and for all. Sun would be left with an empty stone pot.

The rest would be hearsay. A crazy cult leader accusing a respected ex-presidential candidate of insane behavior.

Ultimately, it might be a smudge on his record. Maybe not, however. In this day and age of political scandals, from blatant lies to cover-up and blind public acceptance of it all, who knew? The only certain thing was, the longer the dust remained collected in that accursed urn, the deeper grew the hole Mike Princippi found himself in.

The former governor kept his thoughts buried as he strolled into the studio building. As he had expected, he found Sun on the set of his latest infomercial.

The head of the Sunnie cult sat on a sofa on the new set. Roseflower stood nearby. Princippi smiled weakly at the bodyguard as he walked over to the cult leader.

Another old Asian was with Sun on the set. He sat cross-legged on the floor at the feet of the Sunnie leader.

The stranger wore a traditional kimono and had skin the texture of sunbaked leather stretched to the cracking point. As hooded eyes sized up the approaching Princippi, his features curled into wrinkles of distaste.

"Hi," Princippi said, nodding to the Master of Sinanju. "You a Sunnie or something?"

"Or something," Chiun sniffed in reply. The look of disgusted condemnation never left his face.

"Uh, yeah," Princippi said. He turned his attention to Sun. "How soon are we starting?"

"Ten minutes," a harried voice announced behind him.

Princippi nearly jumped out of his skin. He spun. Dan Bergdorf stood behind him.

"What!" Princippi demanded. He realized only when he saw the stunned look on the face of the infomercial's executive producer that he had yelled the word. He glanced nervously over his shoulder at Sun. The cult leader was not even looking at him. "I'm sorry," he apologized to Dan. "You startled me. What did you say?"

"We start in ten minutes," the executive producer said. "You have the new script?"

"Me? No. No, I don't."

Dan grabbed a script from a passing stage manager. "Go over this first," he pleaded. "Cold reads on the first take never work."

"But that's the way we did it last time," Princippi argued.

"I know." Turning, Dan left the former governor clasping his new script in his moist hands.

Princippi looked back at Sun. "Um." He shrugged uncertainly. "Are you going back to the mansion anytime soon?" Princippi asked nervously. He tried to force a smile.

Sun looked up from the script he had been reading. "No," he replied. "Our work here will take some time. Why?"

"No reason," the former governor said. "It's just that I-I left my coat there. Maybe. Anyway, I thought maybe I could take a look around and see." Princippi pretended an idea had suddenly occurred to him. It was worse than the acting he had displayed in the first Sunnie infomercial. "Say, I have an idea," he said, snapping his fingers. "Why don't I go back. Sort of on my own. I could look for it myself. No need to bother you."

"Yes, that would be fine." Sun agreed.

Princippi beamed. He began backing away. "Great, I'll just-"

"There is a small matter ...." Sun began. His eyes were dead as he stared at the former governor.

Princippi felt his stomach turn to water.

He knew. Of course. He must know. He had the urn.

Sun knew of his intentions, knew that he planned to dispose of the powder in the urn. He never should have come up with the scheme to begin with. Never should have thought to go against the sinister force of the Pythia.

"You must wait until after we have completed this day's taping," Sun finished. He returned his attention to his script.

That was it. Mike Princippi felt as if he were dancing on air.

"Of course," he gushed. "When we're done here. After. I'll go there after. Alone. Or with you with me. But you can stay here. Whatever. Doesn't matter to me." As he stepped anxiously backward, he nearly knocked over a camera. Stumbling over the wires, he continued to babble until he was halfway across the studio.

Once Princippi was out of earshot, Chiun turned to Sun.

"He is lying," he offered blandly.

From his spot on the couch, Sun glanced down at the Master of Sinanju. "This I know," he replied in the same flat tone. "For can I not divine the future?"

"He also intends to do you harm." Chiun frowned. "But he does not give off the signals of one who means to make use of conventional weapons." He tipped his head as Princippi vanished from sight. "This is most puzzling."

Sun seemed surprised "You can gauge a threat simply by looking at someone?"

Chiun nodded. "A man's body tells much that is otherwise hidden. That Greek's is a mystery to me, however. It is almost as if he intends to do you harm without doing harm to you. How could this be?"

"Who can understand the Greeks?" Sun asked with a shrug.

Chiun accepted this. "Indeed," he said. "In pyon ha-da, we will none of us have to deal with the maze that is the mind of non-Koreans."

"It will truly be a glorious day," Sun echoed. He returned to his script. As he read, he wondered absently what the best time would be to kill the treacherous Michael Princippi.

WORD OF THE RETURN of the Master of Sinanju's white son to Korean soil was greeted with concern in the People's Palace in Pyongyang.

News of the incident at the airport spread like wildfire through the capital of Communist North Korea. Although he was seen speeding through the streets in the company of a disgraced Public Security Ministry officer, none of the forces on the ground were brave enough to intercept him.

Kim Jong Il sat in his secure basement office in the presidential palace. Waiting.

The room was four stories down in solid bedrock. To reach it, one had to travel in an elevator like a pneumatic tube that was accessible to only the elite of the nation. Soldiers were stationed in the two hallways that led out and around to the elevator in a labyrinthine design known to only eight people in the country. The soldiers had been led in blindfolded. Only when they were in place were the cloths removed from their eyes.

Briefly, the premier had considered stationing guards at his secret entrance, as well. He dismissed the idea almost immediately. His father, the late president Kim Il Sung, had ordered the escape tunnel to be dug. Afterward, he had had the workmen shot. The only person alive who knew of the tunnel was Kim Jong Il, who preferred to keep it that way. At the first sign of trouble from the hallway outside, he would slip through the secret panel and flee to safety.

While he sat sweating into his People's uniform, he stared off into space. The large-screen TV before him played a wide-screen laser-disc version of The Empire Strikes Back. He saw the film without watching.

One boot tapped relentlessly at the polished granite floor.

Retaliation had been a mistake, he now realized. He never should have let the People's Bureau of Revolutionary Struggle director talk him into it. The Master of Sinanju and his heir worked for the Americans. Even though there had been no explanation, the heads that had been mailed to North Korea were a sign of something. But what?

If the last report of the American's whereabouts was accurate, the premier might only have a few moments left to decipher the cryptic message. Otherwise, it might very well be his head that next wound up boxed for shipping.

The premier pressed both hands tightly against his throat as he tried desperately to think what the message had meant. His Adam's apple fought past his clutching fingers as he gulped in fear.

For Kim Jong Il, the third act was about to begin. And no one had bothered to give him a script.

PYONGYANG WAS A GHOST town.

Remo saw soldiers while he drove. They peeked out like frightened specters from doorways and windows. But no one made a move toward him as his jeep roared down the wide, empty streets.

The People's Palace loomed big and ugly before them. Remo ordered Rim Kun Soe to stop at the huge stone staircase before the massive building.

"Let's go," Remo said, climbing down from the jeep. He put one foot on the first broad step.

"You would dare enter the presidential palace, American capitalist cur?" Soe asked, astonished and angry at once.

"If this is where that rat Kim Jong Il lives, I guess so, Soe," Remo replied. "Hurry up."

Soe crossed his arms. "I will not," he insisted. "You will have to kill me first."

"As tempting as that may be, I need you as my passkey."

"I have no key to the palace, fool."

Remo smiled. "You are the key."

He reached over and dragged Soe across the seat, dropping the Korean onto the sidewalk.

Soe looked up, face a mask of seething fury. "I should have killed you in Berlin," he sneered.

"I wish you had," Remo sighed. "It would have saved us both a whole lot of grief."

Grabbing the Public Security Ministry officer by the scruff of the neck, Remo headed up the abandoned steps of the great People's Palace.

HE HEARD THE STEADY pop-pop-pop of automaticweapons fire from beyond the great steel door. It was still far away. Echoing along the labyrinthine halls.

Kim Jong Il chewed the inside of his mouth as he waited. He had always felt safe in this stronghold. If he escaped through his secret entrance, would he become a greater target once he reached the surface?

The bedrock in which his office was secreted absorbed a great deal of sound. Vacillating, he strained to hear how close the gunfire actually was.

Sudden silence.

The guards had stopped firing. That meant only one of two things. They had either failed or succeeded.

A fresh round of gunfire much closer to his sealed door gave him the terrifying answer.

"Impossible!" the premier hissed.

Somehow, the Master of Sinanju's protege had found his way through the maze. He was right outside the closed door of Kim Jong Il's inner sanctum.

Escape was now no longer a question. It was imperative. Leaving his television to display images of Darth Vader to an empty chair, the premier hustled over to a single framed poster on the wall next to his bar.

The artwork depicted Arnold Schwarzenegger straddling a motorcycle. The sunglasses that had appeared on the actor in the original picture had been airbrushed out. The Asian eyes that had been painted in stared menacingly down at the North Korean premier as he grabbed at the edge of the frame.

The frame swung away with a single tug, revealing a long corridor beyond it. Kim Jong Il was just picking one foot up over the threshold of the secret doorway when a terrible pounding began to echo through the basement room.

The gunfire had stopped. All that was left was the incessant pounding. Frozen in place, the premier watched as the metal door buckled beneath some great external pressure.

Kim Jong Il came to his senses all at once. He was just lifting his other foot inside the panel when the main door to the room gave way completely. It collapsed inward in a hail of crumbling concrete and tinkling metal shards.

The thing that had been used to batter in the door fell in after it. The battering ram groaned.

As he stood in the open door to his secret corridor, the premier's shocked gaze raked Rim Kun Soe. As he lay dazed on the broken door, the security agent's head bled profusely. His eyes rolled in their sockets, settling unsteadily on Kim Jong Il.

"Traitor!" the premier screamed. His eyes went wide as Remo stepped into the room behind Soe.

Yelling in fear, the premier desperately dragged the secret door shut behind him. He almost got it closed.

Tugging on the interior handle, he found that it would not go the final inch. The door would be impossible to seal if it was not closed. All at once, Kim Jong Il noticed a set of fingers wrapped around the side.

His heart caught in his throat. With both hands, he dragged at the door. To no avail. Even though he pulled with all his might, the premier felt the door being dragged inexorably open. In a moment, he was face-to-face with the frightful visage of the Master of Sinanju's son.

"Remember me?" Remo asked sweetly.

Grabbing the Leader for Life of North Korea by the throat, Remo tossed him back into the basement office. Kim Jong Il landed in a heap near his crumpled basement door. Near him, Rim Kun Soe groaned.

"This is your doing!" the premier screamed. Scrabbling across the debris, he grabbed the security man around the throat. He began strangling Soe, banging his injured head against the steel door. The former embassy agent took the abuse with dull incomprehension.

Remo had to drag Kim Jong Il off Soe.

"Knock it off," he growled.

The premier wheeled on Remo. "So, do you intend to kill me?" he demanded.

"No, O Great Leader," Soe replied from the floor. He was still on the floor, trying to shake the ringing sound from his head. It sounded like a supper gong.

"I wasn't talking to you," Kim Jong Il snapped.

"No, I'm not going to kill you," Remo said. "Yet."

"What's the meaning of all this, then?" the premier asked. "Geez-O-man, you wrecked the place." He looked out through the open basement door. He spied several pairs of army-issue boots jutting into view. None were moving.

"We need to talk," Remo said.

"Is that all? Couldn't you have made an appointment?"

"Your thugs killed nine people suspected of being agents for America," Remo pressed on. "I'm here to find out what the hell is going on."

The premier frowned. "So, that is what this is about."

"That is what what is about?" Soe asked, dazed.

"Shut up," Kim Jong Il ordered. He turned to Remo. "I didn't want to do it at first," he begged. "They talked me into it. And anyway, I didn't think you or your old man were involved in this."

"Involved in what?" Remo asked. "I'm just here to make sure you people don't run around killing everyone on this benighted peninsula who ever accepted a handful of rice from some dopey CIA spook."

"So you don't know?" Kim Jong Il asked suspiciously.

"Know what, my premier?" Soe asked.

"Know what?" Remo asked, shooting a sour look at Soe.

Kim Jong Il nodded seriously to Remo. "Perhaps you should come with me," he said.

THE MORGUE WAS out-of-date by fifty years according to Western standards.

Premier Kim Jong Il himself led Remo into the chilly, windowless room. Bulbs flickered on in fixtures suspended from the ceiling.

"We are not as closed a society as some think. We allow some mail to enter our country from the South," the premier explained as they walked across the room. "These arrived on a flight several days ago."

They were at a row of drawers along a side wall. Kim Jong Il grabbed on to the handle and pulled the long sliding drawer into the room.

It was a standard morgue slab. But instead of the usual body that would be lying in the refrigerated interior, there were three separate large objects.

Remo looked down at the trio of severed heads. Ten fingers were arranged around each, like spokes on a wheel.

"I know you've got another famine going here," Remo said evenly. "Don't tell me your pathologists ate the rest."

"This is all we received in the mail from the South," the premier said. "Presumably from America originally. There are six more like these."

"Six?" Remo asked. Leaning, he squinted at the weirdly swollen face of the nearest man.

"Yes," Kim Jong Il replied. "We assumed it was a sign from your intelligence community. However, I allowed my people to convince me that it couldn't have come from you, since the heads were torn off in such a savage manner."

"You're right there," Remo admitted. "But this is definitely one of the guys we killed."

The premier blanched. "You did this?" he asked.

"Not the decapitation part," Remo said. "That's a mess. But see that?" He pointed to a tiny waning-moon-shaped incision in the nearest forehead. Blackened blood collected in the narrow sliver. "That's obviously Chiun's handiwork."

Kim Jong Il gulped. "The Master of Sinanju?" he asked. His tone betrayed his fear.

"The one and only," Remo said. He was frowning. "This is really wacky," he said, straightening up. "Smith said only the Koreans' bodies turned up. I just figured it was some ritual and the rest of them got eaten by fish or washed out to sea or something."

"Smith who?" Kim Jong Il asked.

Remo looked over at him, shaken from his thoughts.

"These guys were spies," he said, indicating the heads lying on the cold metal bed. "They were trying to kill someone, so Chiun and I whacked them."

"Impossible," the premier insisted. "They were stationed at the New York mission. The PBRS assures me that they were given no activation orders."

"Be that as it may, they were pretty active last I saw," Remo said. "The United States government had nothing to do with sending these parts over here. In fact, I'd guess it was probably someone trying to provoke something between our countries."

"Who?"

Remo did not reply. Instead, he reached out and grabbed a cluster of nerves behind the North Korean Leader for Life's right ear. He squeezed.

Kim Jong Il's eyes looked as if they were going to spring out of his head. He tried to scream, but the only sound that escaped his throat was a strangled chirp.

"Never mind. Just don't kill any more spies or even suspected spies," Remo instructed. "You got that?"

Kim Jong Il nodded. Frantically. Painfully. His eyes watered in agony.

All at once, Remo released him. The relief was blessed, instantaneous. He gulped in a deep gust of air.

"There," Remo said, as if finishing up. "Now, as long as you can keep the rest of your ducks in a row, we won't have any more problems."

"No problems," Kim Jong Il insisted, rubbing his ear. "None at all."

"Right," Remo said levelly.

He looked down at the heads one last time. Who had shipped them here? The bogus New York police? The Loonies? Whoever it was, Remo was pretty sure whose orders they had been following. He'd have a word or two with the Reverend Sun as soon as he returned to the States. But first, he had another duty to attend to.

Remo shoved the drawer shut. "By the way, I hijacked a South Korean plane in England," Remo said.

"I heard," Kim Jong Il replied, still feeling behind his ear. Surprisingly, there was no blood. "It is being detained at the airport."

"Let it leave unharmed," Remo instructed.

"It'll be as you wish," Kim Jong Il agreed.

Remo looked around, trying to think if there was anything else he had to do. "I guess that's it," he said with a satisfied nod. "Unless you can think of anything."

"No," the premier said, shaking his head desperately. He tried to force a smile. "Not that I can think of," he added, with hollow joviality.

Remo smiled back. Sincerely. "Great," he said. "That's settled. I guess we're through."

They began walking to the morgue door. Remo could only think of Smith and the doubts the CURE director had had about sending him to the Koreas alone. His smile broadened.

"So I'm not a diplomat, huh?" he asked the premier.

"No, you are not," Rim Kun Soe's weak voice called from the outer room.

Chapter 23

The woman looked as if she had cornered the silicone market in her chest. Though she jumped energetically, there was very little jiggle as she gushed her enthusiasm for her latest project.

"I don't, like, do endorsements," she babbled happily. "But when my agent called me about this one I, like, went totally and completely wild for the idea."

"Totally," agreed the young man next to her. He looked as if he spent eighteen hours a day at the gym and another fifteen at the dentist.

The pair were soap-opera actors who had been linked romantically in real life. Their affair had been the product of months of negotiations between their respective people. Neither his boyfriend nor her girlfriend was terribly happy with the business arrangement.

"I was just wondering," she said. "I was up for a movie part the other day. I think I did really, really good and all. Do you think they'll call back?"

The Reverend Man Hyung Sun looked blandly at the woman. "No," he said.

"No?" she asked, crestfallen. "Oh." Though she was deeply disappointed, neither she nor her costar made a move to leave.

Chiun was standing at Sun's elbow near the studio door. "Do you wish me to dispose of these empty-headed ones, O Holy Seer?" the Master of Sinanju offered in a loud whisper.

He did not have to.

"Okay, we're done here," Dan Bergdorf said, sweeping in from the set. The executive producer shepherded the pair of soap-opera actors away from his featured performer.

The two of them had been hired by Bergdorf for the latest Sunnie fortune-teller commercial. Soap stars had instant face recognition from the types of people who called psychic lines. These two were the flavor of the month.

"You're going to get a lot of callers telling you they phoned in because of Cassandra and Cleft," Bergdorf warned as he came back over to Sun, using the actors' TV names.

Roseflower was walking briskly behind him.

"As long as they call," Sun replied flatly. "We go now," he said to the Master of Sinanju.

Chiun allowed the cult leader's assistant to guide them out to the limousine. He got in the back seat with Sun while Roseflower climbed in behind the wheel. They were out of the Channel 8 parking lot and on the highway back to New York in a matter of minutes.

They had driven in silence for almost twenty minutes before the Master of Sinanju spoke. "Something puzzles me, Great Mystic," Chiun said.

"A question is the first step to knowledge," Sun intoned seriously.

Chiun resisted the urge to accuse the Sunnie leader of sounding like a Chinese fortune cookie. After all, he was the herald of pyon ha-da.

"Why must you do these programs?" Chiun asked. "They are demeaning. Beneath one as holy as you."

"You honor me with your words," Sun said. "But know you this," he continued, raising an instructive finger, "even a god must pay the rent."

And at these words, Chiun grew silent. He remained mutely troubled for the entire journey back to the East Hampton, Long Island, estate of Sun.

When they arrived, they found Michael Princippi's ratty old car already parked near the closed garage bays. Roseflower parked the limousine away from the main house.

Chiun and Sun walked together up the gravel pathway to the mansion.

"There are those who would do me harm," Sun said as they climbed the steps.

"They must get through me first, Holy Seer," Chiun said.

"I am pleased you say that," Sun replied. He paused, resting his hand on the door handle. "Such a one is in my home at this very moment. I have foreseen it. As have you, though to a lesser and mere mortal degree."

Chiun's eyes strayed to the battered Volkswagen rusting in the driveway.

"The one called Prince," he said.

Sun nodded. "I fear my life is in danger. You are my only salvation. Will you remove the evil from before me?"

"I live to serve, Holy One," Chiun said, bowing.

Sun returned the gesture, though with regal restraint.

"Then it shall be."

Smiling, Man Hyung Sun pushed the door open.

IT WASN'T THERE.

Princippi had searched for the ancient urn in every room upstairs. He could not find the stone container anywhere.

"He must have read my mind," the former governor muttered as he looked in the bedroom closet of the Reverend Sun for the third time.

It had been at his Manhattan apartment earlier. Sun might have moved it back. Hell, the Hamptons house was so huge it could have been hidden anywhere in any of the dozen buildings. Even on the grounds somewhere.

Princippi was frantic. He had been a party to the murders the first time around. Again, this time. It could ruin his life-any future career he might have-if that urn wound up in the wrong hands.

He looked around desperately at the big empty closet. Four walls. One mirror. A few hangers. Nothing more.

His heart thudded like mad. He felt his stomach twisting and churning anxiously. His bladder felt as if it were going to burst.

Bladder!

"Bathroom!" Princippi cried.

Running, tripping, he ran into the master bath.

It was huge. Whirlpool. Sauna. A tub seemingly as big as an Olympic pool.

Princippi dived at cabinets and closets, throwing towels and toiletries onto the tiled floor. His knees ached as he skidded to a stop in front of a pair of closed louvered doors. Hands shaking, he fumbled them open.

Nothing. Controls for the hot tub. No sign of the Delphic urn.

His head twisted around. He felt dizzy. Lightheaded.

The bathroom was a mess. Junk was strewed everywhere.

No urn.

No urn anywhere.

The entire estate to search.

No time.

He didn't know how long Sun would remain at the studio. The cult leader had told him he planned to stay behind for several more hours, but he might change his mind.

Mike Princippi desperately wanted to go to the bathroom. It felt as if he was about to wet his pants. He looked longingly at the toilet across the field of scattered debris.

No time.

Head reeling, he raced from the bathroom.

The bedroom suite was still empty. Run. Escape. Hide somewhere. Anywhere. Anywhere he would not think to look.

Blood drumming frantically in his ears, Princippi ran through the bedroom and out into the upstairs hallway ...

...directly into the Reverend Man Hyung Sun!

Princippi skidded to a stop. "I, uh... Hi!" He was sweating profusely. His ears rang like twin deafening gongs. "I was, uh, I was just going."

The ex-governor attempted to sidestep Sun but was stopped by a frail hand that seemed to come out of nowhere.

Chiun stepped out from behind the cult leader. His hand was pressed firmly against Princippi's chest. It was as if the former presidential candidate had slammed into a solid brick wall. Chiun's face was cold.

"You thought I would not know of your treachery?" Sun demanded. "How could you be so foolish?" There was almost a pitying expression in his angry eyes. Princippi caught a hint of the yellow fire in his pupils.

With his back to Sun, the Master of Sinanju did not glimpse the hint of demonic possession. He continued to stare-eyes glinting cold like midnight glaciers-at the former Massachusetts governor.

"I-it wasn't..." Princippi stammered.

The flickering yellow fire in Sun's eyes. The accusatory tone. Chiun's icy, level gaze. It was all too much for him. He shook his head helplessly.

"Some are too weak, even for pyon ha-da," Sun said to Chiun. "This is such a one. All the gods together could not make this Greekling a true Korean."

"Huh?" Mike Princippi asked.

"Kill him," Sun commanded.

Princippi's eyes went wide. "No," he said. A spark of hope dawned. He wheeled to Chiun. "The urn. Ask him about the Delphic urn," the exgovernor pleaded.

His own voice sounded far away. It took him a second to realize why.

He had not spoken the words at all. They were heard only by him in his own mind. He knew this because one needed a throat, tongue and a working larynx in order to articulate sounds. Most of the aforementioned list had somehow inexplicably been ripped from the person of Mike Princippi.

Much of his neck lay in a pile on the carpet before Man Hyung Sun's bedroom. The Prince wondered briefly how they had gotten there and-all at once-he stopped wondering. To wonder, the only thing one really needed was a functioning brain, but the late Mike Princippi no longer had that particular item.

The former governor and presidential candidate slumped to the floor on top of the tattered bloody strips of his own throat. Even as he fell, Chiun was tucking his slender killing fingernails back into the folds of his kimono.

The Reverend Man Hyung Sun looked down at the body of Mike Princippi. He nodded, impressed at the swiftness of the attack. The yellow fire of possession no longer burned in his eyes as he turned to Chiun.

"You are quite skilled," he said, nodding his approval.

"I am honored you think so, Holy One," Chiun said with a pleased bow.

Sun smiled at the body. "Do you think you could teach me to move thusly?"

Chiun returned the smile. "It would be my pleasure, Seer of pyon ha-da," he said. His hazel eyes burned with quiet pride.

"WHAT KIND of man is this premier of yours?" Remo demanded.

Rim Kun Soe sat behind the wheel of Remo's borrowed jeep. They were parked on the tarmac at Pyongyang Airport looking out at an empty field. It seemed as if even the security people were in hiding.

"You did not tell him to keep the plane here for you," Soe pointed out. His head ached where Remo had used it to bash down Kim Jong Il's door. He had washed off most of the blood and applied a few bandages at the morgue.

"Did so," Remo challenged.

"You only told him to let it leave unharmed," Soe insisted. "You did not say to make certain you were aboard."

"Since when are you the Commie court stenographer?" Remo complained.

"I heard what I heard," Soe said. "If you wish to steal a plane from here, I would be pleased. If only to get you out of my company and to get my own execution over with faster."

"No deal," Remo said. "If your planes are built like everything else around here, it'd crash and burn before we even taxied from the terminal. The only plane in this country I trust is Kim Jong Il's and that jet's gotten too many miles on it for my liking lately." He frowned.

"Then you stay," Soe said.

"Not very bloody likely. How far a drive is it to Seoul?" Remo asked wearily.

"Approximately 130 miles. Through heavily fortified zones."

Remo sank back into his seat. "So what are you waiting for? Start driving," he ordered, crossing his arms.

Though it was suicidal for them to try to breach the security of both Koreas, Soe knew better than to argue. With a jounce of tires, the jeep took off across the vacant, windswept runway.

U.S. ARMY FORCES along the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea had been on high alert ever since the Tomahawk incident two days before.

Tensions were higher than at any time in Colonel Nick DeSouza's entire military career. And that was saying a lot. Since before Colonel DeSouza was born, the two Koreas had always seemed poised on the verge of war. Sometimes things were better; sometimes they were worse. But it was always a very real threat.

In recent years, the student demonstrators in the South had upped the ante for the Americans stationed along the DMZ. There had been protests-many violent-from the young in the lower half of the Korean Peninsula. Their press for a unified Korea would effectively push out foreign troops from the region, allowing the entire nation to be swept away in a tidal wave of soldiers from the North.

Almost fifty years of efforts to keep the Communists at bay would be for naught if the idiot students had their way. And after the bombing of the college in Seoul, things had only gotten worse.

Colonel DeSouza had no idea what that had been all about. The United States government had apologized for the mishap. The South Korean government had been understandably unforgiving. Given the circumstances, DeSouza didn't think he'd be very forgiving, either.

Yes, sorry about blowing up your university, and all. Hope you're not too upset.

Upset? Us? Not at all. It'd take more than one measly little cruise missile to bother us. A dozen, maybe. One? Forget about it.

DeSouza thought they were lucky that the whole damned population south of the DMZ hadn't overrun their position by now.

So there it was. Hostiles to the north. More hostiles to the south. And the United States Army plopped down right in the middle.

"Par for the course," DeSouza muttered as he ambled along the craggy southern lip of the Bridge of No Return.

The bridge was a narrow iron affair that separated the two Koreas. If there was ever a ground invasion from the north, it would start through this slender corridor.

As DeSouza sipped tepid coffee from a tin mug, he thought wryly that the assault they had always anticipated might come from a direction none of them had ever expected. The south.

Even as he thought it, he heard the sound of an engine whining somewhere distant.

He looked over his shoulder.

In the distance, he saw the encampment where the latest student demonstrators from the South had parked themselves after the bombing. There was activity around the camp, but no vehicles moving out of it. With a sick feeling, he realized that the sound was coming from the other side of the bridge.

"Perfect," Colonel DeSouza complained, flinging his coffee away.

A truck was parked in perpetuity in the middle of the Bridge of No Return. Its engine was left running so that if an invasion from the north ever materialized, it could be used to bottle up the bridge so that enemy forces would have a harder time in their push south.

DeSouza jogged partway out on the bridge, listening to the sound he had heard over the rumble of the big truck.

Jeep. Definitely a jeep. But if it was an invasion force, Kim Jong Il would have to have packed a couple of thousand troops onto that one jeep, because as far as Colonel DeSouza could tell, there was just the one vehicle.

A moment later, he realized that he had been right. A lone jeep bounced into view. Two men in the front seat. That was all that was visible from this end of the bridge.

Colonel DeSouza had been ready to shout orders to his men, thinking that the North was using the opportunity of crisis with the South to drive a wedge between the U.S. and its host nation. But as the jeep slowed to a stop on the far side of the bridge, he wasn't sure what to do.

A lone man got out of the passenger's side. DeSouza saw instantly that he wasn't Asian.

Tall. Thin. Dark hair. Possibly Mediterranean features. Definitely not Korean.

The man crouched down on the far side of the jeep, out of sight of DeSouza. After only a moment, the jeep tipped over to that side. The man reappeared. Under his arms, he carried two fat black objects. Whistling, he hustled across the bridge, leaving his jeep and driver behind. When he was close enough, DeSouza saw that he was carrying two of the jeep's tires.

The stranger hurried past the parked American truck with its running engine and over to DeSouza. Suspicious soldiers leveled their weapons but held their fire, awaiting orders from their commanding officer.

"I don't trust that bugger Soe not to run off," Remo complained as he marched up to DeSouza.

"You're an American," the colonel said, unable to mask his surprise.

"As an IRS audit," Remo replied with a tight smile. "Where can I put these? The idiot Koreans already lost a 747 on me. I don't want to lose a jeep, too."

He held aloft the two tires. DeSouza could see that he was unarmed.

"Who are you?" the colonel asked. Suspicion finally overcame surprise. His hand felt for his side arm.

"Do you mind, MacArthur?" Remo groused. In spite of a hundred weapons aimed in his direction, Remo looked around for a place to put the tires. He found a nice spot near the side of the bridge. He dropped the two of them there, turning back to DeSouza.

"I asked you a question," the colonel stressed. The gun was now drawn. His face was serious.

"Listen, I've had a lousy day," Remo explained. "I had to meet with one of the last Communists in the world outside of Washington and I feel like I need a week-long shower to clean off. Mind if I borrow a jeep?"

That was it. He'd had it with this wacko. Let someone else deal with it. "I'm going to have to detain you," DeSouza said firmly.

The colonel was about to gesture to a few of his men with his gun when he suddenly realized that the gun was no longer there. He was waving with an empty hand. Quickly, he looked to the stranger, thinking that he must have disarmed him somehow.

Remo shook his head. "Check your holster," he said.

DeSouza did. His gun was back where he had gotten it. The snap was even attached.

"The way things are going around here, you may need it later," Remo said. "I might be able to stop things from getting any worse if you'll just get me a jeep."

Colonel DeSouza considered for a moment. Finally, he glanced back at his nervous men. "Get this man a jeep!" he shouted. Turning to face Remo, he said, "Are you some kind of spook or something?"

"Or something," Remo said.

The jeep was brought forward. A soldier was even offered as a driver. Remo declined.

"From what I've heard, the South is going to be even dicier than the North," he said as he climbed behind the wheel. "And I'm pretty rough on drivers."

"Good luck," Colonel DeSouza offered.

The stranger-who was obviously CIA or was with some other covert agency-answered in a most enigmatic way.

"I believe in luck about as much as I believe in fortune-tellers," Remo muttered, turning over the engine.

Flooring the jeep, Remo raced away from the Bridge of No Return, down toward the student encampment.

Chapter 24

He remembered the camp.

Freezing-cold winters that seemed to last forever. Scorching summers that took up the time between blizzards. And no food. He remembered the hunger more than anything.

The prisoners had been forced to work. Many died hollowing the great gun caves in Stone Mountain, which overlooked the DMZ. Still more had perished digging the eight story subbasement complex of the People's Bureau of Revolutionary Struggle, the deep basement bomb shelter of the presidential palace or the labyrinthine undergrounds of government buildings all around Pyongyang.

It seemed that anything the Democratic People's Republic of Korea deemed important was buried so far below the surface that no one without a pickax and a hundred years would ever see it.

Man Hyung Sun had seen it. At least in its rudimentary stages. And he remembered.

He had starved as he wielded his ax beside other laborers. They chipped away for hours upon hours. Day would come up on their chipping. Night would descend, and still the relentless chip-chip-chip sound would fill the dark shadows.

Only when the cloak of night had been pulled so tightly that even the North Korean soldiers who oversaw their work force recognized the difficulty of the task were the prisoners allowed to shuffle off to their camp. They were awakened before dawn to begin the process anew.

This was how Man Hyung Sun had spent several long years in the early part of his life.

Sun had once been a soldier under the command of Kim Il Sung himself. He had been a favorite of the future president during those dark days when Kim led a Korean unit in the Soviet army during World War II. But when Kim Il Sung had become president of the People's Republic in 1948, the seeds were sown for their eventual falling-out.

Man Hyung Sun had been opposed to the invasion of the South by Kim that led to the Korean War. The president saw his opposition as treachery. His former ally was thrown into prison without any more compassion than one might show an ant underfoot.

Sun lived for several long years in the camp. The work was hard, the food scarce. The hunger? Severe.

There were many times he thought he would die. Many more that he wished he would.

It was only by a miracle that Sun ever escaped. As the work detail was being led back to the prison one cold dark night, one of the guards got sloppy. His attention was drawn away. Afterward, Sun never could remember why.

A scuffed shoe. A stumbling prisoner. Perhaps one of the emaciated wretches farther along had died. It did not matter. Sun saw his opportunity and took it.

While the guard was looking away, Sun smashed him over the head with a rock. He did not creep up. No stealth was involved. Indeed, he could not have managed it if he had to.

He saw an opportunity and sloppily seized it.

The trip across the frozen wasteland to the DMZ had been arduous and fraught with difficulties. There were soldiers, dogs, mines. Even tanks and planes. Searchlights.

None were looking for him specifically. They were just the regular accoutrements of a Communist dictatorship.

By some miracle, he made it. By an even greater miracle, the Americans had let him across. Man Hyung Sun became a free man on that day. Penniless, starving but free.

Fortunately for him, he already spoke English, having taken many courses at university as a youth. He stayed in the South only a brief time, eventually moving on to America.

His single foolhardy experience opposing Kim Il Sung notwithstanding, Man Hyung Sun was nothing if not savvy. He soon learned that the Americans had a law that allowed churches to operate without paying taxes.

Sun needed money and food. It was a match made in heaven. He founded the Grand Unification Church in 1956.

It was amazing how easy it was to manipulate the minds of the imbecilic American youth. The first were ordinary converts. He needed to do nothing special to convince them to devote their lives to him. In a land as rich as America, the spoiled, idle children were looking for ways to avenge themselves against their parents for showering them with so much. Sun and his church became the ultimate vengeance.

The culture of sloth was beginning to erode the foundations of the great Western nation in the years immediately following the establishment of his church. America was on the cusp of the 1960s. Man Hyung Sun read the times like a clairvoyant.

During the full blossom of the sixties, his followers were commissioned to bring others into the flock. Whether they wanted to join or not.

Sun had not been a Communist for nothing. He knew all of the advanced brainwashing techniques taught to the North Korean government by their friends the Russians. The new recruits were quickly converted to the Grand Unification Church. In short order, they were in airports all around the country haranguing travelers with flowers, tambourines and words of love from the Reverend Man Hyung Sun.

For more than a decade, parents were reluctant to charge the church with taking their children against their will. Most attributed the new attitude of their offspring to dope, free love, whatever. It was the times, after all. The kids would come around.

They didn't.

Only when the sixties became the seventies did people begin to look more deeply at the "conversion" tactics of the Reverend Sun. He managed to escape criminal prosecution on these charges, but it was during this closer scrutiny that his nonchurch-related tax irregularities became evident to the federal government.

Sun went back to prison.

It was not as it had been in North Korea. He had more food than he could eat, and he was still able to run his religious empire from inside. Upon his release, he decided to take a more low-key approach to his religion.

Property became very important to Sun. Also his Washington newspaper, which he frequently used as a forum to harass his old friend, now bitter enemy, Kim Il Sung.

It was while working at his newspaper that he began hearing stories of a place out west. Supposedly, for a fee, one could learn the future there.

The service was only available to the very wealthy or the very connected. Actors, businessmen, politicians-all swore by this place.

Something about the story intrigued Sun. It was not on a conscious level. More of a dream trying to push itself into the reality of his daily life.

Sun planned to visit the ranch where the prophesying was alleged to take place, but history was one step ahead of him. There was an explosion at the Truth Church. Along with many deaths. Sun had been too late. Or so he thought.

The day of the explosion at Ranch Ragnarok was the day he began having the visions.

They were bizarre, surreal images. Waking dreams.

There was the great plain. As vast as time and space itself. A sky so red it was as if it had been painted in thick daubs of blood. Ground as bloody as the sky above. And sitting in the center of the lonely battlefield, a single morose figure. A patch of yellow. Beckoning. Always beckoning. Calling out to Man Hyung Sun.

He had been chosen. He did not know why, only that he had been selected above all others.

The spirit was frail. The visions strong at times, weak at others. It took many months to realize what was being communicated to him. During this time, he did as the mysterious, dreamlike figure suggested. More Sunnies were indoctrinated into the faith. The sailors aboard the U.S.S. Courage, some New York police officers, some South Korean student protestors, as well as several other individuals-the importance of all of whom was unknown to Sun. He merely did as the spirit commanded. Still, he did not know where to locate this strange force. It took him a great deal of soulsearching to find out.

When he was finally certain, the reverend had dispatched his Sunnie servants to find Michael Princippi and to find the urn of the Pythia the exgovernor had carried away from the ruins of the ranch in Wyoming.

Sun needed only to come in contact with Princippi to know that the former governor had been ignoring the signals being sent to him by the Pythia. The essence of the spirit was strong within the sneaky technocrat. The Pythia had been trying desperately to seek his aid, but Princippi had ignored it. Sun was not like the ex-governor. He had heeded the call.

It was glorious. Once the urn of yellow powder was in his possession, the waking dreams were far more powerful. There was someone else in his mind at all times.

The Pythia was stronger when Sun was near the urn, but once he had accepted the essence of the ancient offshoot of the Greek god Apollo within him, not a moment passed wherein he did not feel the presence lurking within him.

It was fitting. In Greek mythology, Apollo had driven the chariot of the sun across the sky. His fractured essence had sought out one called Sun.

In his first moment of complete possession, Sun had been given a vision by the Pythia. A gift to reward him for his loyal service. Blessed with the ability to foretell the future, the yellow spirit had let Sun see himself in the very near future. He would be a king. The nation he had fled in ignominy would be his to rule over. There would be no North, no South. It would be complete. Whole. Under the iron fist of Man Hyung Sun.

Sun loved that vision, lived for it. It was like a drug to which he had become hopelessly addicted. He longed to see it now, as he stood on that desolate plain in his mind.

THE PYTHIA SLUMPED before him. A strange combination of yellow cloud and human features. Only in this place of unreality could the images be remotely reconciled.

"I grow weaker still," the Pythia lamented. The voice that rattled up the spirit's throat was a pathetic rasp.

"The Greek who ignored your entreaties is no more," Sun offered, as if to cheer up the ancient spirit.

"Do you think I do not know? It is I who told you of his treachery." Squatting in the misery of its own yellow smoke, the Pythia shook its head bitterly. "The time I wasted on that Greek. If my master were here, if my strength were greater, he would not have ignored me. My power was once feared by man. I am a shell of what I once was."

Sun seemed uncomfortable. "You are a powerful seer," he said. He tried to think of something that would bolster the Pythia's flagging spirits. "My 900 line is ringing off the hook," he offered suddenly.

At this, the Pythia looked up at Sun. There was a scornful expression on its bronzed face.

"Vengeance propels me, though my spirit longs for nothingness," the Pythia intoned. "It is time."

"For what?" Sun asked.

"Time to crush my enemies."

Sun's heart raced. The Pythia had prophesied to him that his time of ascendancy would come immediately on the heels of the final defeat of the men from Sinanju.

"What do you wish for me to do, O Prophet?"

"The young one is already in place. Your minions have done well to draw him into my trap."

"Thank you, Great Herald," Sun said proudly.

"It is time to bring the old one there, as well."

Sun's face clouded. "I thought it was your wish to keep them apart."

"It was. It no longer is. The time has come that we should bring them together." The Pythia smiled. "And set them against one another."

And as the Pythia went on to describe its plan to the Reverend Sun, the cult leader could not help but smile, as well. Their deaths-and his future-were all but assured.

CHIUN WAS SITTING in his balcony sunroom, which overlooked the grounds of Sun's estate, when the reverend knocked on his door once more. The Master of Sinanju bade the cult leader enter.

"I have been meditating," Sun said, sitting across from Chiun on the balcony.

The Master of Sinanju did not bother to mention that the all too familiar stench of Sun's after-shave had preceded him into the room yet again. Every time Sun meditated, he came back smelling like a French brothel. His breathing shallow, the old Korean merely nodded.

"I have had a revelation," Sun continued. "It is time."

Sitting in a lotus position on the floor, Chiun had not yet opened his eyes. He did so now.

"Time for what?" he asked, not daring to allow hope to betray his studied tone. The answer sent his soul soaring.

"Pyon ha-da is upon us," Sun said. "As is my moment of greatness. We must return in haste to the land of our birth so that I might be allowed to ascend to my proper place as leader of unified Korea. I wish you to be at my side."

Chiun rose from the floor like a puff of thin smoke. "It will be my joy to safeguard your holy life, Seer of pyon ha-da," the Master of Sinanju intoned, squeaky voice chiming with undisguised joy. The bow he gave to Man Hyung Sun was reverential.

Chapter 25

The student activists of the South were more difficult to get through than the whole of the People's Defense Forces of the North from Pyongyang to the demilitarized zone.

In his U.S. Army jeep, Remo Williams had to dodge bricks, bottles, rocks, sticks and just about anything else the "peace-loving" student demonstrators found to throw.

As he was racing through the streets of Seoul, someone hurled a Molotov cocktail onto the hood of his speeding jeep. The bottle crashed with the sound of shattering china, and the gasoline mixture splattered orange flames back across the windshield. Remo drove through the fire.

Riot police were out in full force. White helmets protected heads while thick transparent face shields extended down to bulletproof vests. Kevlar gloves and blast-resistant shields completed the rest of the armor the police had been forced to wear over their jumpsuits.

From the look of the debris field that was the streets of Seoul, the demonstrations by the students had taken a bad turn during the previous night. Charred cars lined the road, some still sending plumes of acrid smoke into the clear winter-blue sky.

Remo weaved his way through students and police alike, arriving relatively unscathed at the South Korean National Assembly building.

Roving packs of students could be seen wandering between buildings and cars. They looked like the irate villagers out of an old horror movie, determined to rid the local castle of an evil scientist. All they needed were a few pitchforks and some torches to complete the image.

Remo prayed that for now his vehicle would be safe from the students. He didn't plan to leave it there long.

He abandoned the jeep by the side of the road. At a run, Remo flew up the stairs and into the big building.

PRESIDENT KIM DAE JUNG had personally called for the secret emergency meeting of the Kuk Hoe, the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea. All 299 members of the unicameral body were present, as well as every cabinet and high-ranking security officer in the nation. With the number of people crammed inside the assembly hall, the president wondered how long his secret meeting would remain a secret.

The issue before them was one he had not thought to seriously face in his lifetime. Reunification with the North. It had been brought up many times in the past, but it had always been unthinkable to reasonable people. But reason had taken a holiday since the American bombing of Seoul National University.

"The Americans take our relationship for granted!" the ranking member of the Party for Peace and Democracy shouted from behind the podium. "They believe that they can drop bombs on our heads and we will still scurry over to them like dogs beneath their master's table. It is time we demonstrate to the powers of the West that we, too, are a force to be reckoned with. Only a unified Korea can show such strength."

It was the same speech many others had given. From his seat behind the main podium of the parliamentary chamber, the president watched the faces in the crowd.

Only about one-fifth were from the Reunification Democratic Party. These were usually the ones screaming for talks with the North at every perceived slight from the West. But they had remained largely silent this day. Suppressing grins, they had watched others from more conservative parties get up and give the same speeches they had given in the past.

The president had tried to call for calm in the face of this latest crisis. Washington had apologized for the Tomahawk incident. Screaming would not bring the dead back to life. Nor would it rebuild either the destroyed portion of the university or the fragile bridge to the West.

He was shouted down.

The entire nation was spinning out of control. If these supposedly rational elected officials were so frenzied over this issue, there was little hope for the rest of South Korea. Indeed, the rioting overnight in Seoul had been the worst in the president's memory. And he had been an activist and political prisoner years before.

And so he sat, staring into the abyss, helpless to stop his countrymen from taking that last step into madness.

"I cannot help but say that we saw this coming." The ranking delegate of the Reunification Democratic Party had taken the stage. The smugness oozed like snake oil from every pore. "The Americans cannot possibly understand us or our culture. Some of you have had trepidations when we have discussed the inevitable union with our northern cousins. You must all admit now that the North would understand us better than America. The United States bombs us and then they say they are sorry. That might be good enough for our president, but it is not good enough for us."

"What if we say we're really, really sorry?" called a voice from the rear of the assembly hall.

Faces shocked, the assembly turned as one to see who it was who had the audacity to shout out during a floor speech. Their expressions grew even more amazed when they saw that the speaker-though he spoke flawless Korean-was distinctly non-Korean in appearance.

Remo Williams strode up the aisle toward the speaker's stand. At his seat above and behind the podium, the president of South Korea was as alarmed as the members of the National Assembly.

"You see?" shouted the highest-ranking member of the Reunification Democratic Party over the murmurs of the crowd. "Do you see how they feel as if they can just storm in here? We are not an ally-we are but a servant!"

Remo hopped up to the platform. "And you are a whore to your masters in Pyongyang," he said.

The speaker's microphone amplified his words, carrying them back across the National Assembly. There was a gasp from the crowd.

The Reunification Democratic Party member's face turned red with rage. Forgetting all decorum, he lunged at Remo, arms outstretched.

Remo sidestepped the man, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck as he passed by. He hefted him high into the air before the assembly. "See the true servant," he announced in perfectly accented Korean. "People like this want you to surrender your freedom to the idiot son of Kim Il Sung."

A look of disgust creasing his hard face, Remo flung the man to the floor of the assembly.

The president had found a microphone by now. "Who are you?" he demanded of Remo.

Remo looked over at the man. "I am the son of the Master of Sinanju," he announced.

There were gasps from the crowd. Remo heard many of the men whispering "Sinanju" to one another. Good. By the looks he was getting, many of them had heard of the ancient house of assassins.

"I have heard the Master of Sinanju had taken a white as his heir," the president said, nodding. "But I have heard that you work for America."

"That's right."

"Then you are here on behalf of American interests," the president of South Korea pressed.

"I am here in the interest of sanity," Remo replied. "There doesn't seem to be a heck of a lot around here lately."

"How do we know you are truly of Sinanju?" one of the members of the Democratic Justice Party shouted from the assembly floor.

"Yes!" yelled the embarrassed member of the Reunification Democratic Party. "You are not Sinanju! He is CIA!" he cried to his fellow assemblymen.

"A spy!" shrieked another.

The murmuring, which had been more confused than anything else until now, began to grow more hostile. Things were getting out of hand. Remo had to find a way to calm the assembly down.

He glanced around. The nearest thing available was the podium at which the representatives to the assembly had been taking turns denouncing America and calling for reunification talks with the North.

Slapping his hands to either side of the quarterton slab of wood, Remo tossed the big stand up into the air. The National Assembly gasped as the huge stand rose impossibly toward the vaulted ceiling of the chamber.

All at once, the podium reached the crest of its arc, dropping like a lump of lead to the stage. The assembly held its collective breath, expecting the impact to be deafening. But five feet before it was set to crash, its movement was abruptly arrested.

The men and women watched in astonishment. The podium had landed on the tip of Remo's raised index finger.

With his free hand, Remo began spinning the huge podium in place-like a kid in a schoolyard performing a simple basketball trick. As it whirred, the stand began to hum a loud, even purr.

Remo's hand flew faster and faster until the stand was a blur. It eventually moved so fast that it seemed to disappear altogether. That was when the sawdust appeared.

Wooden powder flew off in large clouds with each invisible spin of the podium. If someone had thought to check his watch, he would have seen that it all took no more than forty seconds.

The whirring stopped. The podium reappeared.

It was now only a narrow piece of wood, fatter at the top and bottom. Like an apple that had been eaten to the core. Remo stood in an ankle-deep pile of dark sawdust.

He set the remains of the podium down.

"I am the future Reigning Master of Sinanju," Remo announced to the crowd. "Does anyone still doubt me?"

No one dared dispute his claim. None in the assembly dared to even speak.

"Good," Remo said, satisfied. He glanced around, finding the president. "You," he said, pointing to the terrified Kim Dae Jung. "We've got to talk."

He grabbed the president by the scruff of the neck and hauled him from the room. No one in the astonished assembly attempted to stop him.

"ARE YOU HERE to kill me?" the president asked nervously once the two of them were alone. They were in a private office off the main assembly chamber.

"I could have picked a less public way of doing that, don't you think?" Remo asked blandly.

The president thought about some of the things he had heard about the Masters of Sinanju. If only a handful of them were true, he would not be alive now.

"Then you are not here to kill me," he said. The president breathed a relieved sigh and was immediately annoyed with himself for being so concerned for his own life.

"No," Remo said. "I'm here to figure out what the hell is going on."

"I suspect you know already as much as I do." The president took a seat behind the cluttered desk in the room. He looked old. And tired. "It is madness. All of it."

"We didn't launch the missile on purpose," Remo insisted.

The president waved a dismissive hand. "I know this," he said. "It was a stupid mistake."

"Maybe not," Remo said.

This caught the South Korean leader's attention. "You say it was not deliberate, then you hint it might have been. Which is it?" he asked.

"It's not deliberate on behalf of the U.S. government," Remo explained. "But according to my information, the men who fired the cruise missile into Seoul all committed suicide afterward. That tells me they were protecting someone."

The president shrugged. "A theory," he said.

"What else would it be?" Remo asked.

"I do not know," the president admitted wearily. "It makes sense-I will admit that. But I am tired of making sense to that mob out there." He motioned vaguely in the direction of the assembly hall. "The young cry out for reunification with the North. They do not know what it would be like. Our population is greater, but Kim Jong Il's tanks are stronger. Without the involvement of the United States, we would fall under the treads of the invaders from the North."

"Tell them that, then," Remo argued, his tone exasperated. "Tell them we didn't have anything to do with the bombing, that it was probably part of some bigger scheme and that they'll have a certifiable nut running things around here if they don't smarten up."

The president looked at him, eyes dead. "You drove to get here, presumably?"

"What's that got to do with anything?" Remo asked. "Yeah, I drove."

"You saw the conditions in the streets. The student demonstrators have been a problem for us for a long time. Blessed with the ignorance of youth, they refuse to believe the world's harsh realities. But whereas before they were merely an annoyance, they have gained great strength in the wake of the bombing. They have stronger sympathizers now who are powerful in government. Reunification is no longer a dream. I fear it is an eventuality."

"You're just going to roll over and play dead?"

"What more can I do?" the president asked.

Remo's face was fierce. "You think the students here are weak, blind fools?" he demanded. "I say you are. You're the one who should be out there screaming at the top of your lungs against that crackpot Kim. Hell, he might be the one behind all of this."

"Perhaps." The president shrugged.

It was the feeble indifference in the move that did it to Remo. The willingness to betray freedom because it was easier than standing up to a tyrant.

Remo's mouth set in a firm line, thin lips pressed into bloodless white strips.

Reaching across the desk, he grabbed the president of South Korea by the front of his shirt. Lifting by a bundle of shirt and tie, he hauled Kim Dae Jung out over the rubble of the desk, toppling an angry shower of papers and envelopes to the floor.

Wordlessly, Remo hauled the president from the cramped office. His eyes were filled with visions of death.

Chapter 26

The squadron of six North Korean Foxbat fighters intercepted the Reverend Man Hyung Sun's personal jet as it was flying west across the Sea of Japan.

The Sunnie pilot tried to calm the flaring tempers of the MiG-25 pilots, but the military fliers seemed more hostile than usual. As if something had recently ruffled their feathers.

Chiun was sitting in his normal seat above the left wing when he was asked to step into the cockpit by one of Sun's comely stewardesses at the urging of the harried flight crew. Annoyed, the Master of Sinanju hustled up the aisle.

"We're still over international waters," the pilot explained when Chiun stepped into the small cockpit. Sweat dripped down his broad forehead. "I think that's the only reason they haven't shot us down yet."

"I would speak with them," Chiun announced.

"Gladly," the pilot said.

The Sunnie copilot operated the radio while the Master of Sinanju spoke.

Chiun cleared his throat. "Whoresons of Pyongyang harlots-" he began.

"We're dead," moaned the pilot.

"-begone from the skies around this most holy aircraft, or face the awesome wrath of the Master of Sinanju."

The two Foxbats that were visible through the cockpit windows remained locked in place. The twin AA-6 Acrid rockets on the nearest wings of each fighter were reminders that there were four more planes just like them somewhere behind Sun's jet; each was equipped with four of the deadly missiles. One would be enough to blow the unarmed jet from the sky.

The Foxbats matched the speed of the civilian jet, never wavering a fraction. For a few tense moments, not a sound issued from the lead fighter.

Chiun stared over at the port MiG. The pilot's domed head was visible through the cockpit glass. The old Korean stared daggers at the man.

"We're about to pass into North Korean airspace," the copilot announced worriedly after a short time.

As they watched their controls with steadily increasing apprehension, the MiGs remained glued to their positions beside them.

Mere seconds before they were to pass into North Korean airspace, a voice crackled over the radio. The MiG pilot sounded as if he would choke on the message he had been ordered to deliver.

"Proceed, Master of Sinanju. And welcome home."

Only then did Chiun tear his eyes away from the man in the Foxbat. Turning abruptly, he left the bewildered cockpit crew and returned to his seat.

"Is there a problem?" Man Hyung Sun asked. The cult leader had been napping in his seat across from Chiun and had just awakened.

"None, O Holy One," the Master of Sinanju replied.

Chiun settled in to watch the wing. He had heard that sometimes they dropped off during takeoffs and landings.

COLONEL NICK DESOUZA couldn't believe his eyes. The CIA spook who had crossed the DMZ only a few hours before had not only made it safely through the gangs of student rioters running amok through South Korea, but was already returning. And he was not alone.

DeSouza thought he recognized the Korean passenger as the battered jeep bounced back into view up the road to the old iron bridge.

"It's a little worse for wear," Remo said as the jeep skidded to a stop. There were various dings all around the vehicle. One of the front windshield panels had been shattered at the corner. The telltale burn marks of Molotov cocktails were all around the hood and sides.

"You signed the insurance form. It's your problem, not mine," DeSouza deadpanned as Remo hopped down to the ground.

"Things still quiet?" Remo asked.

"The kids haven't attacked yet, if that's what you mean," the colonel said. "No troop movements out of the North, either, according to intelligence."

"A silent coup," Remo commented dryly.

Glancing past the idling truck on the Bridge of No Return, he noted that Rim Kun Soe still sat morosely on the opposite side of the bridge. Remo was certain that, left to his own devices, the Korean security officer would have hightailed it out of there by now.

Trotting, Remo went over and collected his North Korean jeep tires from their resting spot on the southern side of the bridge.

"Let's go," Remo said to his passenger.

The South Korean president had yet to get down from the American Army jeep.

"I will not," Kim Dae Jung announced.

"Wrong time to grow a backbone, pal," Remo said.

He dropped each of the tires one at a time, giving them a nudge with his toe the moment they hit the road. They each took off like a shot, rolling straight across the bridge and into the nose of the listing North Korean jeep.

Soe popped out of the driver's seat in a heartbeat, racing around to collect one of the tires. He vanished around the far side of the distant jeep.

"I give Soe one minute to reattach those wheels and bag out on us," Remo said to the president. "You either walk, or I carry you."

"That's the president of South Korea," Colonel DeSouza announced with the shock of sudden recognition. He had come in behind Remo.

"Your point being...?" Remo asked blandly.

"I have been kidnapped," the president said to the Army colonel. "This fool intends to deliver me into the hands of the North."

"I'm trying to defuse this bomb before the whole place goes up around our ears," Remo promised.

DeSouza seemed uncertain as to what he should do. He shot a glance at his men. They had not raised their weapons at Remo's appearance this time. Many of them stood at a distance, faces curious. The colonel could give them the order to fire at any time.

Remo sensed the military man's internal conflict.

"You've been carrying their water for how long?" Remo asked. "And you see how they're treating you. Who are you going to believe, me or him?"

"As president of your host country, I demand you defend me against this crazy man," Kim Dae Jung insisted.

DeSouza glanced from the president to Remo. He then looked out across the Bridge of No Return.

"You'd better hurry," the colonel said to Remo, eyes flat. He backed away from the jeep. "Your driver's already working on the second tire."

THE GREAT LEADER FOR LIFE of North Korea, Kim Jong Il, stood on the freezing tarmac. Wind whipped the flaps of the fur-lined Red Army-issue hat that was pulled tightly down over his ears.

All around him, men stood protectively. There were generals and foot soldiers and men from the government. All freezing and huddled in on themselves, afraid to stamp their feet against the cold.

The jet had appeared a few minutes before. It faded up out of the milky white winter sky like a reverse dissolve in one of his precious Hollywood movies.

Korean Foxbat fighters remained at a respectful distance from the civilian craft.

It was humiliating. To have two planes violate North Korean airspace twice in the same day was unthinkable under almost any circumstances. Unpardonable under all but one.

Two, actually.

The first was gone, thank God. That white one always gave Kim Jong Il the screaming meemies.

The second had just touched down at the far end of the runway.

The premier thought it best to meet personally with the Master of Sinanju, considering the fact that it was he who was responsible for the deaths of some of the North Korean agents in New York. Although it was not authorized by Kim Jong Il's government, the dead agents had apparently gone off on some sort of murderous rampage that had put them in the path of the men from Sinanju. The premier wanted to make it absolutely clear that there was no animosity between his regime and Sinanju. That was why he was here.

There was also a part of him that thought a face-to-face meeting with the old one might help with the young one. The Reigning Master of Sinanju was frightening and quick to anger, but he was also occasionally deferential-at least on the surface. The young one was not like that at all, and was therefore all the more frightening. Kim Jong Il reasoned that if he got on the good side of the father, the son might like him more.

The premier's ruddy face was hopeful as he watched the cluster of aircraft swarming toward him.

As the MiGs soared off, the private jet raced over toward the premier's party, slowing quickly. It rolled to a stop near the Great and Wonderful Leader for Life.

Even as the engines were powering down, the rear door of the aircraft popped open. The short staircase descended, dropping neatly against the rough asphalt.

Kim Jong Il smiled so broadly he thought his frozen face would crack. He did not want to provoke even a hint of anger in the Master of Sinanju.

The soldiers and functionaries around him smiled, as well. They were one big, happy Communist reception party.

As the premier and his group watched, a man stepped down from the plane.

The Leader for Life blinked. For a moment, the frozen smile remained locked in place.

The man was not the Master of Sinanju. Even through his surprise, Kim Jong Il thought he recognized him. The face was from a time far away. He could not quite place...

His smile melted into a scowl of recognition.

Kim knew him all too well. He was a traitor to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The man's newspaper regularly insulted the Great Leader from the cowardly safety of the United States.

All thoughts of the Master of Sinanju were gone. Kim Jong Il turned to his troops, aiming a fat finger in the direction of the traitorous Man Hyung Sun.

His order crackled as clear as the frigid winter air around them.

"Shoot him!" screamed the Leader for Life of North Korea.

REMO HAD NO LUCK at the presidential palace. According to the premier's frightened underlings, Kim Jong Il had left suddenly for the airport. No one knew why.

He was forced to drag his untrustworthy little band back out into his borrowed North Korean army jeep. As they rode through the streets of Pyongyang to the airport, Kim Dae Jung hid behind the back of Remo's seat.

"It is not safe for me here," the president of South Korea said nervously.

"It's a hell of a lot safer here than in your own streets right now," Remo replied.

"No, this filth is correct," Soe said from behind the jeep's wheel. "Though he has a Korean face, he is no more than a capitalist running dog lackey of the pig West."

"Is that all with hyphens?" Remo asked.

"What?" asked Soe.

"Just shut up and drive," Remo suggested.

"I would kill him if I had the chance," Soe persisted.

"You won't get the chance." Remo sighed.

"I have to go to the bathroom," the president of South Korea whined.

"You should have thought of that before we crossed the Thirty-eighth Parallel," Remo said.

"I will kill you the first chance I get," Soe said over his shoulder to the president.

"What part of 'shut up' don't you understand?" Remo snapped.

They drove in silence for a few long moments.

"I am not saying that I will kill him," Soe said to Remo suddenly, "but if he were to die by accident-" Remo bounced Soe's head off the dashboard. After that, the security officer remained quiet.

They were still a good distance from the airport when Remo spied the private jet soaring in, attended by the squadron of North Korean fighters.

"There's a familiar sight," he said, brow furrowing in concern.

"That is not your lost plane," Soe pointed out.

"No, but it's the same setup. Why would a bunch of Korean jets follow another plane without shooting it down?"

"Perhaps it is Kim Jong Il's. Is he scheduled to go abroad?" the South Korean president asked hopefully.

"No," Remo said. "And if you'd get up off the floor you'd see that it's landing, not taking off." He shook his head after another moment's consideration. "I can think of only one reason why they'd be taking a hands-off approach like that."

"What?" Soe asked.

Remo glanced at the driver. "Do you really want to know?" he said.

Soe judged Remo's wry tone. The security officer glanced at the cluster of planes soaring in toward the airport, still far across the dreary North Korean capital. He suddenly realized why Kim Jong Il had gone to the airport.

Remo could tell by the look on his face that Soe had figured out who was on board the plane. "You better hope for your sake that last shipment of gold made it back safely."

He was so intent on watching the landing plane that he didn't comment on the look of instant, horrible fear that blossomed on the face of Rim Kun Soe.

THEIR HESITATION HAD saved all of their lives.

The soldiers were about to fire at Man Hyung Sun, as per the order of their Glorious Leader for Life, when another figure appeared from the open door of the jet.

Chiun's face was severe. The trails of his golden kimono flapped wildly in the bitter wind.

"Hold!" the Master of Sinanju commanded.

The men were taken aback by the harshness of the command. Their weapons were raised to Sun, but they were looking beyond the cult leader at the wizened form of the Master of Sinanju. Kim Jong Il saw Chiun, as well.

"Hold your fire! For God's sake, hold your fire!" the premier screeched.

The North Korean leader took off his great furry hat and began jumping between his troops, swatting down gun barrels that were still hesitating in the air.

The troops soon got the point. Those who had not lowered their guns at once soon put theirs down, as well. Greatly relieved, Kim slapped his hat back on his head, slightly askew. He instantly thought better of the move, ripping the hat off once more. He held it politely in both hands as he went to greet the Master of Sinanju.

"Welcome home, O glorious and awesome Master of Sinanju-he of lightning hands and eagle eye. Whatever your son has told you, don't believe it," he blurted out, quickly adding, "unless it's good. Hah-hah." He forced a chuckle to take the edge off things.

"Greetings, first son of Kim Il Sung," Chiun replied. He bowed respectfully.

Kim returned the bow nervously, dropping his hat as he did so. A hundred hands swarmed into view to try to pick it up. The premier kicked or swatted them all away.

"It is a pleasure to meet you," Man Hyung Sun said. He extended a hand to the premier.

"Forgive me, O Awesomeness," Kim said, ignoring the hand. He grabbed up his own hat. "But might I inquire. as to why you are in the company of this traitor?"

"Traitor?" Chiun asked bewildered. "This man is no traitor. He is the savior of all Koreans."

"Listen to this wise one, my premier," Sun said, his tone sly.

"No way," the Leader for Life insisted. "Your paper said I had the brain of a duck and the wit of a Kennedy. If that ain't treachery, then I'm Fatty Arbuckle."

"My quarrel was with your father," Sun said smoothly. "If I have transferred any of my feelings for him to you, then I deeply apologize. But he is dead. We are not. Let us inter our past differences with his bones."

"Easy for you to say, Loonie," the premier challenged.

There was a flicker of anger in Sun's eyes. Chiun interceded before the war of words could escalate.

"What is past, let us leave to the past," the Master of Sinanju intoned. "It is for the future that I have returned to the land of my birth in the company of this holy man."

"My ass is holier," Kim Jong Il said. "And it smells better. What the hell kind of stink-o-rama cologne are you wearing?" He flapped his hat in front of his face.

Chiun pulled the hat away and swatted the premier over the head with it. Thus cowed, the premier grew silent.

"Heed you this!" the Master of Sinanju shouted to the gathered North Korean soldiers and officials. "Today is the dawning of a new era for all the world!" He indicated Sun. "This man is a seer of divine inspiration! He has seen the future. The future of Taehan-min' guk, as well as that of Choson Minchu-Chui Inmin Konghwa-guk! These are but titles! Worthless names that have separated this blessed land for far too many years! This day, we will be one! Together as a united Korea will we face the future! The future of pyon ha-da!"

The many hooded eyes of those gathered grew wide at the last words. Even the premier took a shocked step back. He quickly gathered his senses, glancing from Sun to Chiun.

"It is true?" he asked.

Chiun nodded. He crossed his arms impassively over his bony chest.

"We must prepare for destiny," Man Hyung Sun said somberly. His flat face was confident.

The premier seemed unsure what to do for a long moment. The wind continued to blow crazily around him, throwing the trail of his greatcoat out behind him like a desperate drab windsock. At long last, he spoke, his words dull.

"Kim Jong Il is not so foolish to resist the pull of future history," the premier said somberly. It was as if he were delivering the eulogy at a dear loved one's funeral.

In a move that would have shocked the world political community, the Leader for Life of North Korea sank slowly to his knees on the frozen tarmac before the traitorous Reverend Man Hyung Sun.

And, just as shocking, behind their leader, hundreds of Korean troops and civilian government agents did the same.

"WHAT IN THE BLAZING heckfurters is this?" Remo Williams asked as his jeep bounced onto the Pyongyang Airport runway.

It was as if they had stumbled into an outdoor Muslim prayer service. Except instead of facing Mecca, the Koreans on the tarmac were facing two very familiar figures.

"If they are praying, perhaps we should come back later," ventured the South Korean president, near Remo's left shoulder. He was peeking over the back seat.

Remo ignored him. "Bring us up in front of that mob," he instructed.

Soe steered the jeep in a straight line toward the aircraft that stood directly before the hundreds of kneeling men. They stopped before the throng.

Remo climbed down next to Chiun.

"What are you doing here?" Remo demanded.

"This is a free country, is it not?" the Master of Sinanju sniffed

"No, actually, it's not," Remo snarled. He looked down at Kim Jong Il. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Paying respect to the herald of pyon ha-da," the premier explained.

"Pyon ha-da?" The shocked voice came from Remo's jeep. All at once, the president of South Korea climbed out onto the runway. He was joined quickly by Rim Kun Soe. "It is true?"

"The time has come," Kim Jong Il announced from his prostrate position before Sun.

"C'mon," Remo snapped at the dictator. "Don't tell me you believe that crapola?"

"Pyon ha-da!" the president of South Korea repeated, his voice a shocked gasp. He began getting to his knees beside the leader of the North.

"Oh, don't even start," Remo growled at him. He grabbed the president under the armpit, hauling him to his feet.

"You cannot fight the inevitable," Man Hyung Sun said seriously.

Remo wheeled on him. "Look, you don't even want to get into this with me, pal," he warned, raising a threatening finger to the cult leader.

"Remo!" Chiun said, aghast. "You will show proper respect for the Messenger of the Korean Age."

"Respect?" Remo scoffed. "He's lucky I don't rip his lungs out and knot them around his frigging neck." He took a step toward Sun.

There was a sudden blur, like a scattering of gold dust in the gale-force wind. All at once, the Master of Sinanju stood protectively before Man Hyung Sun. His hands were down at his sides. Knots of ivory bone, ready to strike.

Remo took a shocked step back. "What do you think you're doing?" he asked.

Chiun's face was cold. "Guarding the life of the prophet with my own."

Stunned, Remo released his grip on the president of South Korea. The man sank slowly to his knees next to the North Korean premier. Remo hardly noticed.

"I can't believe you're falling for this fraud, Chiun," Remo said, shaking his head in astonishment.

"A fraud is only a fraud to those who disbelieve him," Man Hyung Sun intoned.

Remo ignored the platitude. He was staring into the fiery hazel eyes of the Master of Sinanju. There was not a hint of deception in them. He appeared to be quite serious. Was this the final, fatal look that had been seen by so many of the old Korean's victims?

Chiun seemed poised to strike. And for the life of him, Remo could not tell if he was bluffing.

A few present on that icy runway sensed that there was an epic battle about to commence. Looking up from where they knelt, they spied the two men standing face-to-face. In truth, what was happening was more an epic sizing up.

Remo rotated his thick wrists absently as he looked down at the tiny wisp of a man who had taught him so much. Chiun stared back, face impassive.

Remo was the first to blink.

"The hell with this," he said, stepping back. He waved an angry hand. "You'll see I'm right soon enough."

Stepping away from the Reverend Sun, Remo slumped back against his jeep, arms crossed sullenly across his chest.

Chiun relaxed his stance. Hands slithered up the sleeves of his golden kimono, locking on to opposite wrists.

The Reverend Man Hyung Sun beamed.

"Do we not see the future already?" he proclaimed. "When every face is Korean and every mind and soul equally wise, there will be no more competition. No more fighting. No more conflict. Paradise waits in pyon ha-da!"

Sun clapped his hands loudly together. All eyes looked up to him. The cult leader indicated that the men should rise. Soldiers came forward to help the dictator of the North and the democratically elected president of the South to their feet.

"Bring transport!" Sun called "The future begins in the wounded belly of this divided land!"

Limousines, jeeps and trucks were driven onto the runway. The leaders of the two Koreas climbed into the first limo together as the rest of the men scattered among the remaining vehicles. Sun ducked back inside his jet to collect a package.

While he was gone, the Master of Sinanju approached Remo.

"Are you coming?" Chiun asked, his voice betraying no emotion.

"Yeah, I'll go," Remo said. "But I don't believe in any of this crystal-ball bullshit."

Chiun shook his head. There was not a trace of warmth in his eyes. "It no longer matters what you think," he said seriously. "It is destiny."

Turning away from his pupil, the Master of Sinanju went in search of transport. He did not look back.

Chapter 27

Spy satellites and reconnaissance planes were the first to see it. The information was radioed back and up along the chain of command until secure phone lines from Washington to Moscow, from London to Beijing, were ringing off the hook. In military war rooms all around the globe, the slow, relentless movement of the caravan toward the Thirty-eighth Parallel was greeted with great apprehension.

And in the lead limousine of the mighty line of army and civilian vehicles, Remo Williams sat brooding. He was also trying to stay out of range of the Reverend Sun's wretched after-shave lotion.

"Is he always like this?" Man Hyung Sun whispered to the Master of Sinanju.

"Sadly, yes," Chiun replied. "It is a trait he picked up from his mother."

"Leave my mother out of this," Remo snapped. "You never even met her."

"Neither have you," Chiun sniffed. He pitched his voice low again. "He is an orphan," he said to Sun.

"That's none of his damned business, either," Remo said harshly, his eyes betraying his deep anger.

"Perhaps we should leave this one alone for now," the Reverend Sun suggested. "I fear only pyon ha-da will turn him from his deeply ingrained white ways."

"Listen," Remo said, "I'm not picking a fight with you, Chiun, but there is no way in hell the entire human race is going to turn Korean overnight."

Chiun nodded. "That is correct."

Remo brightened. "So you agree this is nuts?"

"No," Chiun said. "I merely agree that it will not occur overnight. Seer Sun has informed me that pyon ha-da will take place during daylight, so that the entire population of the world can witness its moment of flowering perfection."

Remo closed his eyes. "Half the world is dark at any given time," he said. "How's Houdini gonna fix that?"

"When the world is Korean, the Creator of all things will no longer allow night to fall," Chiun explained. "He only invented darkness to at least partially mask the shame he felt for his mistake at the heavenly oven. When there are no more whites or blacks or other inferiors, there will no longer be a need for night."

"Remind me to toss out my night-light," Remo deadpanned.

"You need not be so recalcitrant," Sun offered. "Your father in spirit has told me that you already possess some Korean blood."

"Nice of him to share a family secret," Remo said, his voice level. He glanced at Chiun.

"As part Korean already, you will be superior to the others who will only be naturalized Koreans. You will be a leader in the new order."

Remo laughed mockingly. "So even with this big crackpot change of yours, there's still going to be some sort of wacky caste system."

"Order must be maintained," Sun nodded.

"Spoken like a member of the future ruling class," Remo muttered. He turned away from the others, staring out across the bleak Korean countryside.

"Do not pay attention to him, Holy One," Chiun instructed with a frown. He nodded to the cult leader, abruptly changing the subject. "Perhaps this is a good time for our next lesson."

"Very well," Sun agreed.

Remo continued to stare out the window as the two men spoke. He felt the springs in the seat beneath him shift as Man Hyung Sun settled into a more comfortable pose.

"Concentrate here," he heard Chiun say. "This is the center, the beginning of all life. Pull your breath into this white hot spot. Feel it coursing through you."

Remo started. He spun, looking over at the two men. He was shocked by what he saw.

Chiun was leaning from the seat across from Remo and Sun's. He had his slender fingers pressed into the rounded paunch of the cult leader's abdomen. Sun inhaled deeply. With Chiun's deft manipulation, he pulled breath down into the natural point deep in the pit of his stomach.

Remo glanced wildly up at Chiun, outraged by what he was seeing. "You're teaching this faker Sinanju!" he demanded.

"He expressed an interest," Chiun replied. "Which is more than can be said for you at our first meeting."

"This is crazy," Remo said, furious. "You can't teach that con man Sinanju."

"How dare you?" Chiun flamed. "Who are you to say with whom I can or cannot share my wisdom?"

"I'm the Apprentice Reigning Master," Remo snapped. "That's who. Now knock it off."

Chiun's eyes instantly narrowed into savage slits. For the second time in less than an hour, the tension between the two men was as it had never been at any time in their near three-decade relationship.

For his part, Remo refused to back down. Chiun had always taught him that the art they both plied was a link to ages past. Passed on from Master to Master, Sinanju had woven its invisible deadly thread throughout history. It was a craft and a way of life far too important to be wasted on the likes of the Reverend Man Hyung Sun, no matter if the swindler learned only the basics. To his very marrow, Remo knew that he could never allow the ultimate betrayal of Sinanju to take place, even if the betrayer was his own adopted father.

They stared at one another for a long time across the well of the limousine. Finally, with no words spoken between them, they both broke away, staring out opposite windows.

Man Hyung Sun repressed a smile. "Are we finished?" he asked, one eyebrow raised.

"Yes, we are," Chiun said coldly.

And the way in which he spoke the words told Remo that the old Korean was speaking about more than just a simple breathing exercise.

As he stared out at the dreary Korean countryside that was passing rapidly by the limo, Remo felt a welling hollowness slowly drag away the anger he was feeling. It pulled and pulled until there was no fury left.

When it was gone, there was nothing inside him but a vast emptiness. So great was the sensation of isolation, he found himself longing for the rage. It was as if the blackness of eternity had opened up and swallowed his soul.

It no longer mattered to Remo what happened here in Korea, or in the rest of the world for that matter. Let the world sort out its own problems. Remo had his own to deal with. In the blink of an eye, his entire life had ended.

Chapter 28

The wealth of information coming out of both Koreas was matched only by the amount Smith had yet to learn.

He had hooked into the Central Intelligence Agency database at the outset of the latest crisis. The computer monitor buried in his high-tech desk showed him up-to-the-minute satellite images of the movements in the North. Scrolling text from CIA headquarters indicated what the Langley analysis teams were coming up with as explanations for the sudden, bizarre activity.

Smith had his own theory.

Remo.

There were strange reports coming from the South. Only the Reunification Democratic Party was talking, and then only in cryptic statements. From what Smith could gather, there had been some kind of disruption at the National Assembly. Afterward, the president had gone into seclusion.

Somehow, Remo had affected the man. To what end, Smith had no idea.

He had only sent CURE's enforcement arm into Korea to await orders, not to stir up trouble. Smith could only guess that the problem Remo was having with the Master of Sinanju had caused him to act unilaterally in this crisis. And now it looked as if the divided country was ready to erupt because of his actions. Whatever they might be.

Smith had tried to get in touch with the Master of Sinanju at the Sun estate. His hope was that Chiun could stamp out the fuse Remo had set. The CURE director was upset to learn that Chiun had departed with Sun to parts unknown. It was only when he tried to trace the old Korean that Smith, to his horror, had learned that the cult leader, and presumably the Master of Sinanju, had taken Sun's jet to North Korea. They had apparently landed without incident.

And so both Remo and Chiun were likely there. Each with his own hidden agenda. Neither obeying orders from Smith.

It was the worst crisis Smith could think of facing in recent memory, including his dire trip to the hospital. The two Masters of Sinanju were like rogue nuclear warheads, ready to blow the entire Korean Peninsula to kingdom come.

And all Harold W. Smith could do was monitor the increasingly tense situation.

The phone to the White House rang suddenly. Smith was relieved for the distraction.

"Yes, Mr. President?" he asked, cradling the red phone between his neck and shoulder. He continued to access reports even as he spoke.

"What the hell is going on in Korea, Smith?" demanded the President. He felt confident asking about the country now. Someone had shown him a map, and he was pretty sure he could find where it was without help.

"Unknown at present," Smith said truthfully.

"Didn't you send your people in?"

"Not exactly," Smith hedged.

"What's that supposed to mean? Did you or didn't you?"

Smith stopped typing for a moment. He closed his eyes as he spoke. "As best as I can tell, they are both somewhere on the Korean Peninsula."

"Somewhere?" the President asked. "That's pretty damned vague."

"I cannot get more specific at the moment," Smith said. He quickly changed the direction of the conversation. "But I can tell you a few things. To begin with, the student protestors in the South have grown even stronger since the Tomahawk incident. The streets of the South-and those particularly in Seoul-are no longer safe. The reports I have read detail rioting on a huge scale."

"What about their president? Some of my people are saying that he's gone underground."

"I have heard similar reports, though they are unconfirmed at the present time."

"Whew," the President said. "It sounds like it's falling apart in the South."

"Indeed," Smith echoed. "And it looks as though the North might be capitalizing on the social instability. Even as we speak, a line of vehicles is approaching the border between the countries."

"I've heard," the President told him. "My people are saying it's an invasion force."

"They are wrong," Smith said crisply. "I am looking at highly detailed images right now. While there are military vehicles in the convoy, there are also civilian cars. I seriously doubt even Kim Jong Il is insane enough to mount an invasion of the South using limousines."

"There are limos?"

"Yes, Mr. President."

The chief executive sounded more than a little annoyed. "I wonder why my people didn't tell me that," he complained.

"Perhaps they were preparing you for the possibility of invasion," Smith suggested. "However, it is never my intention to deliberately mislead a President. I will give you the facts, and allow you to make a judgment. For good or bad."

"Thanks for not sugarcoating it for me," the President said levelly. It was obvious he was irritated by Smith's contention that he might make a bad decision. "So what do we do about the situation?"

"Nothing."

The President was surprised. "Shouldn't we do something?" he asked. "It won't look good to the world if I just sit on my fanny during all this."

"It is not always necessary, Mr. President, to respond to every little thing that happens in the world. Sometimes, when left alone, things work out on their own."

"So we should take a wait-and-see attitude?"

"Yes," Smith agreed. "But I think none of us need worry about a long wait. Whatever is going on there, things appear to be progressing at a brisk pace."

"Armageddon is supposed to happen fast, isn't it?"

Smith did not respond to the pointless question.

"Our troops along the Thirty-eighth Parallel are on high alert for any eventuality," the CURE director said. "They had been prepared for many years for an assault from the North. The last few days, they have had to worry about the South. Now it appears as if they have to be concerned with both directions. If you are looking for something to do, I would recommend that you have your strategists prepare some sort of withdrawal plan for our men on the ground."

"Retreat?" the President asked.

"The social order of the South is on the verge of collapse. The North will most certainly sweep in to fill the power vacuum. If the Koreas unify under Pyongyang, it goes without saying that our troops will no longer be welcome."

The President sighed. "I'll get on the horn with the Pentagon," he said "With any luck, your people will be able to iron out this mess before it gets any worse." He broke the connection.

Smith dropped the cherry-red phone to its cradle. He stared for a long time at his computer screen.

The images of the cars were fuzzy. The resolution on the satellite over the Koreas was not particularly great. But it was clear enough.

There were a lot of them, snaking back along the road to the North's capital. But were there enough vehicles for an invasion force?

He had assured the President that it was not possible. That Kim Jong Il was not that crazy. But was he?

Smith realized all at once that he had been looking blankly down at the computer screen for almost ten minutes. He was frozen in place, hand still resting on the open desk drawer with its dedicated White House phone.

Things would work out. For better or worse.

He slammed the desk drawer shut. Spinning away from his computer screen, Smith stared out through the one-way picture window behind his desk at Long Island Sound.

Above the waters, the winter sky was sallow. The weathermen promised snow today. Smith would watch for the first flake to fall. He had nothing better to do.

Chapter 29

At a signal from Sun's limousine, the convoy containing the leaders of both Koreas paused on its way to the historic reconciliation. The many vehicles slowed to a stop two miles shy of the demilitarized zone.

The hundreds of North Koreans who had followed Sun from Pyongyang swarmed reverentially around the prophet of the Great Korean Age. Soldiers and politicians alike got to their knees on the bitterly cold road, hands raised above their heads in supplication. Sun waded through the mass of humanity like a conquering god.

"Is something wrong, O Seer?" Kim Jong Il asked from a spot near the second limousine. He, too, was kneeling on the ground, alongside the South Korean president.

"I fear so," Man Hyung Sun admitted. "Tell me," he said, turning to the South Korean leader, "how will our journey to the border be interpreted by your people?"

"Our people," the president corrected.

"Yes," Sun said, smiling tightly. "This was not an attempt to trick you. There is still a government in place in Seoul. They will have heard of our caravan."

"That is likely," the president admitted with a frown. "They will not be pleased. However, there are other concerns in the South right now. Our streets are dangerous. Unrest and violence run rampant through our capital. I am certain that my kidnapping is also troubling. I suppose it is possible that we have not been noticed."

"They know," the Master of Sinanju said. He stood behind Sun, hands tucked inside the sleeves of his kimono.

Remo was the only other person besides Sun and the Master of Sinanju still standing. He remained several yards away from Chiun. As his teacher spoke, he turned away.

"The capitalist troops along the border will be prepared," Kim Jong Il interjected. "Even if the South does not know, they certainly will."

Sun nodded. "Precisely," he said. "It is far too dangerous for us all to proceed, though I know you all wish to share in this glorious moment. Our number must be trimmed to only the most essential, lest we risk destroying all we hope to achieve."

"Can't you see the future?" Remo mocked.

Sun turned to him. "I see," he said, blandly. "And I interpret. It is not my place to tell all."

"Convenient out," Remo snorted. Crossing his arms, he stared off at a frozen rice paddy. As he looked at the barren expanse, he could feel Chiun's eyes boring angry holes into the back of his head.

"The leaders of this divided land should come with me," Sun announced to the crowd. "As should the Master of Sinanju. The rest must stay here."

There was a disappointed groan from those gathered.

Sun raised his hands. "Any slight sadness you feel now will turn to unbridled joy with the coming of pyon ha-da."

With that, the cult leader pushed back through the kneeling throng to the open door of his limousine.

The president of South Korea and the premier of the North followed behind him. Padding silently in the wake of all three men came the Master of Sinanju.

Remo stuffed his hands in his pockets. Sullenly, he left the crowd and wandered over to the waiting car.

When Remo reached the limo and began to climb in, an arm suddenly barred his way.

"You cannot come," Man Hyung Sun announced from the back seat. His eyes were flat.

"Move it or I break it off," Remo warned, indicating the cult leader's arm with a nod.

"Remo!" snapped Chiun. He had been getting in the other side of the black limousine. His head bobbed above the roof now as he stared furiously at his pupil.

"I mean it, pal," Remo said to Sun, his voice perfectly level. "If you don't want to go through the rest of your life with one wing, you'll move. Now."

This was the last straw for Chiun. The old Korean flapped around the rear of the car, coming up beside Remo.

"Forgive this one, Great Seer," Chiun spit. "He is a fool."

"Better a fool than a stooge," Remo countered.

Chiun bridled at the insult.

"This is a holy moment," Sun interjected. "It is not open for disbelievers."

"I don't know what kind of half-assed, get-rich-quick scheme you've cooked up," Remo said. "But there's no way you're going without me."

Remo felt Chiun move in closer. His steady voice chilled Remo to the icy center of his barren soul.

"Leave," the old Korean commanded.

Slowly, like the deliberate movement of a glacier through a mountain-rimmed valley, Remo turned to his teacher.

"Make me."

The challenge was given. Remo did not need to wait to see what Chiun's response would be.

Stepping sideways, the Master of Sinanju moved away from Sun and the limousine, keeping Remo in sight at all times. He circled until he felt that he was a safe distance from the man he had sworn to protect.

Careful to keep up his guard, Remo matched Chiun's moves, becoming the mirror image of his teacher. As they danced around one another, the limo melted farther and farther away.

The crowd of Koreans broke out around them, forming a concentric circle outside the much smaller center that was the two combatants. Even the two Korean leaders scampered back out of the waiting car to watch the inevitable fight. Only Sun did not trail them.

"You are a blasphemer," Chiun hissed as he circled Remo.

Remo shook his head. "He's a liar, Chiun. You know it on some level, I'm sure."

They were far enough away from the limo. Sun had still not followed them.

"He was a confidence man at one time," Chiun agreed hotly. "But are you so blind that you cannot see that is past? People change. The troublemaker Jew you so revere was a carpenter before the onset of celebrity."

"A carpenter isn't a bunco artist," Remo advised.

"No," Chiun admitted. "A bunco artist can sometimes make something of himself."

Still circling and without yet making a single move toward each other, the two men slid off the road and out onto the frozen mud of the rice paddy. Their curious and expectant entourage followed.

THROUGH THE SMOKY GLASS of the limousine, Sun watched them go. He had clicked the door shut after the crowd moved across the road. Now, as the huge group stepped out onto the broad wasteland, he bent over, collecting something from the floor.

It was the package he had retrieved from his private jet back at Pyongyang airport. Tucking the flat box up under his arm, he slid out the far side of the limo.

Stealing back down the long line of vehicles, he found the first jeep with a set of keys left inside. Climbing in, he glanced over to the field where Remo and Chiun and their crowd of followers stood.

They were far away. Largely blocked by a line of official North Korean government cars.

Smiling, Sun started the jeep. He pulled out on the side of the road opposite the crowd. He drove along the bumpy shoulder to the front of the line, nosing in front of the armor-plated limousine that he had never intended to take to the border.

Driving off, he saw briefly in the wide expanse of the Korean countryside the blood-red arena of his waking dreams. It flickered in like a mirage.

The wounded form of the Pythia hovered at the periphery of his consciousness. Although its cloak of yellow smoke seemed more faded than ever, there was a sense of satisfaction in the ancient spirit.

"You have done well," the voice in his mind rasped. "All has happened as I have foretold."

As he bounced down the long road to the Thirty-eighth Parallel, Sun felt his heart swell with pride. "And I will rule this united land?" he asked.

"Of course, my vessel," said the vision as it began to slowly fade. "Of course."

And if the demon force did not cloud his mind so completely, Man Hyung Sun might have detected the hollow tone of untruth in the words.

CAPTAIN YUN YONG GUN of the North Korean frigate Chosun had been defying orders for the better part of four hours.

The increased student activity in the South had brought some concern to the North. Captain Gun was supposed to be patrolling farther up the Korean Bay near Nampo, where the waters of the Taedong-gang flowed out into the Yellow Sea. It was part of the muscle flexing that had been going on in the North Korean military for the past several days.

Instead of sailing north, the captain of the Chosun was loitering farther south, in the North's territorial waters west of Haeju.

There he waited.

He smiled blissfully as the appointed hour approached, oblivious to the stares he was receiving from his men. It did not matter what they thought. Nothing mattered except the wisdom of the great holy man whose followers had shown him the proper path in life. His only regret was that he had not been able to share any of his revelations with the men under his command.

When the time came, Captain Gun ordered his men to begin the prelaunch sequence for two of the Free Rocket Over Ground old Soviet tactical missiles that had been adapted for use aboard the Chosun.

As his orders were followed, he fretted that the payloads of the two FROGs were conventional HE warheads and not nuclear. Nuclear would have been more fun. With atomic warheads, he would have been able to see the mushroom clouds from where his ship bobbed in the rough waters of the Yellow Sea.

When all was ready, Captain Yun Yong Gun personally entered the new target sites into the system. When his weapons officer pointed out that one of the sites was within the boundaries of North Korea itself, Gun pulled out his automatic and shot the man between the eyes. In the resulting confusion, the captain fired both missiles.

The frigate Chosun felt as if it would rattle apart as the two FROG 7s rumbled from their sleepy nests and arced up into the sky over the great black sea.

Captain Gun did not witness the majestic sight. As the twin infernos of tail fire were clearing the launch tubes on deck, he was already pressing the barrel of his automatic against his own temple.

The sharp explosion from the muzzle of his weapon was muffled by two things: Captain Yun Yong Gun's brains and the sound of the sleek missiles roaring inland.

THINGS HAD GONE FROM BAD to worse to something even worse than worse, and it still looked as if they had yet to hit rock bottom. At least that was Colonel Nick DeSouza's assessment of the Korean crisis.

He had been on the blower with the commander of U.S. forces in the region no more than ten minutes before. There was word out of Washington that the Pentagon was trying to come up with a scheme to clear all service personnel out of the DMZ. Of course, this would require more U.S. forces to be dropped into play. Ninety thousand, according to the report DeSouza had heard.

As was the case of late, the United States would beef up its forces and then lag behind to make sure everyone else was safely away. The UN, the Red Cross-even the damned Girl Scouts if there were any left in Seoul. All of them would be covered by U.S. service personnel. Only when it was strictly American asses that were left on the line would the U.S. ground troops be given the okay to bug out. Of course, by then there would probably be a full-scale ground war raging around them and there would be no escape route left.

Tension was high among the troops as he toured the last line of defense between the North and South. It was no wonder. It looked for all the world as if the DMZ was about to be overrun by both the North and the South.

The colonel looked back down the road toward the camp of the student demonstrators. Dusk had started to settle in, and with it came the inevitable bonfires. The figures skulking around the open flames seemed to be moving more purposefully. Or maybe it was his imagination.

"Calm down, Colonel," DeSouza muttered to himself as he tore his eyes away from the huge encampment.

He glanced in the opposite direction, across the Bridge of No Return.

Colonel DeSouza had heard about the convoy that was heading their way from the North. Intelligence claimed that it was probable the force was not hostile. There were too many civilian cars in the line. One report even had two of the bulletproof limos of Kim Jong Il himself at the lead.

DeSouza didn't doubt that there was some kind of force heading his way. What he did not trust was the speculation that it was not hostile.

There was no telling what was going through the mind of the North Korean premier at any given time. Some claimed he was eccentric; others insisted he was insane. Colonel DeSouza fell into the latter category.

Obsessed with motion pictures, Kim Jong Il was probably filming the invasion from the comfort of his limousine. Who knew? Maybe one of the nukes the North was supposed to have been working on sat in the back seat. The car would be driven as far as the demilitarized zone, and kaboom!

It could be anything. To try to outguess the Korean premier was to go crazy oneself.

DeSouza felt the frustration of not knowing what was going on, but hid it from his men. His face was blank as he stared beyond the ever running truck parked at the midpoint of the Bridge of No Return.

The faintly rusted bridge was the tenuous link between the two halves of the Korean Peninsula. Whatever was going to happen as far as the North and South were concerned would happen there. Everyone along the DMZ knew it.

As he was staring-seemingly into space-the colonel heard the sound of a whining jeep engine.

The men around him tensed.

DeSouza spun. "How far away is that convoy?" he demanded of a subordinate.

"Two miles, Colonel," reported the soldier, who had just run up from the command center.

"It was two miles ten minutes ago."

"It's stopped, sir. No forward progress at all in that time."

The colonel turned back around. The jeep sound still persisted. Briefly, DeSouza thought it was the spook returning-the guy he had pegged as CIA. As he watched, the vehicle appeared out of the rugged terrain.

It wasn't the CIA operative. The man behind the wheel was Korean. What's more, he was dressed in the uniform of a South Korean general.

The jeep screeched to a stop at the far side of the bridge. It was still rocking on its shocks when the general popped out. He threw his hands into the air.

"I must cross at once!" he demanded. "An emergency situation has developed!"

"I beg your pardon, sir," DeSouza called, "but who in the hell are you?"

"I am Assistant Minister Bae Park of the Ministry of National Defense of the Republic of Korea and I have important information for my government."

DeSouza shook his head. "Do you have any identification to back up your claim?"

The man stepped onto the bridge. He walked slowly, hands still raised above his head. "Idiot!" he spit. "Is not this uniform identification enough? When I went on my secret mission to the North, I buried it not far from here in the event of just such an emergency. Now I order you to let me pass."

He was at the idling truck and still coming. The men around DeSouza were tensing, guns trained on the lone intruder. Some looked to the colonel for orders. The rest stared coldly at the general.

"I'm sorry, General, but I can't do that."

The man was beyond the truck by now. He was nearly over to the other side of the bridge. He stopped only a few yards away from DeSouza.

"The North is about to drop a bomb on your fool head!" the general screamed.

He stabbed a finger into the darkening northwestern sky.

Colonel DeSouza followed the frantic gesture. He saw that a new star had appeared in the sky.

No, two. But they were not stars. With sudden horror, he realized all at once what the swiftmoving objects were.

"Incoming!" DeSouza screamed, racing from the bridge.

The South Korean general was forgotten as the men scrambled for cover. As the rockets from the frigate Chosun roared in, the Reverend Man Hyung Sun threw his hands down. Running in his baggy South Korean army general's uniform, he scrambled into an American jeep.

Steering away from the imminent explosion, he raced down the road away from the DMZ.

THE AIR AROUND THEM crackled with electricity. The men who had gathered around as the two Masters of Sinanju squared off felt the hair at the backs of their necks rise from the palpable energy being thrown off by the only human beings on the face of the planet trained to the limits of their physical and mental capacities.

Neither of them had yet struck a blow. It was like some friction-causing dance that would go on and on until the energy level became so unbearable that the built-up power would have to be released.

To the spectators, the younger Master of Sinanju seemed strong and agile, but the old Master exuded a sense of quiet confidence and grace.

At the center of the crowd, Remo washed slowly around the flawlessly artful movements of his mentor.

Chiun had yet to attack. One thing was certain-Remo would be damned if he'd be the one to strike the first blow. If Chiun was so sure of his allegiance to Man Hyung Sun, he would have to be the first to lash out. Only then would Remo defend himself. But so far, Chiun had not fired a fist.

The surge of raw, violent power welling up around them was beginning to throw off Remo's senses. His nervous system was so finely tuned that it could not long take exposure to the kind of unseen dynamic energy that was produced by another Master of Sinanju. It was like putting a magnet next to a compass.

Expecting an attack, they had both cranked up their senses to the limit. When one did not materialize, they still could not tune down their level of preparedness, lest in relaxing either one of them would leave himself open to an assault from the other.

Remo was beginning to sweat. Across the cold plain, he could see beads of perspiration break out on the furrowed parchment forehead of the Master of Sinanju.

They were both beginning to tire.

Remo felt dizzy. He tried to concentrate the awkward sensation away.

Chiun suddenly stumbled over a small stone that was jutting from the frozen mud. He caught his balance quickly, resuming his deliberate circuit around Remo. Though he did not otherwise show it, the point was made. He was feeling as lightheaded as Remo.

The parked cars swept up behind Remo as the two men pirouetted around one another. He felt the crowd, more dense at his back toward the road.

Ordinarily, he would have been able to hear and sort every individual heartbeat within the multitude. Here, they were just background noise. A cacophony of thudding.

He circled back around. Chiun was now moving toward the road. They were almost to the point where both of them were parallel to the stretch of desolate roadway when Remo's senses picked up something from the string of army vehicles.

It was an odd sensation. Something concentrated, directed at him.

No. Beyond him now.

As Chiun moved toward the road, Remo realized that whatever had been focussed on him was now aimed at Chiun.

He was straining too hard. It was too difficult to push his senses farther than Chiun. He was about to shift his attention solely back to the Master of Sinanju when he heard a distinct metallic sound. It spurred him to action.

Without warning, Remo lunged at Chiun.

The Master of Sinanju seemed genuinely shocked that Remo would actually attack him. His almond-shaped eyes opened wide as he prepared a defensive blow. But there was no defense to what Remo next did.

Using every ounce of Sinanju-trained strength and energy in its most crude form, Remo flung himself clumsily atop Chiun. The two men toppled in an awkward bundle to the frozen rice paddy.

A lone bullet sang over both their heads.

As the rifle crackled through the wasteland, the fascinated crowd scattered in a panic. The collection of men-including the president and premier-ran for cover behind various vehicles.

"Get off, lummox!" the Master of Sinanju demanded. He batted and pushed Remo off him.

Another shot rang out. Remo threw himself back on top of Chiun, pushing both of their bodies to one side as he did so. The second bullet thudded into the earth where they had been.

"This is inexcusable!" Chiun shrieked. He kicked Remo away, scampering quickly to his feet. "Why do you leap on me like a perverted ox?"

"I was saving your life," Remo growled.

A few more shots rang out. The friction that had been building between them was now broken. With their senses back to normal, the latest volleys were easily avoided by both men.

"You were doing no such thing, for I am about to die of embarrassment. Have I trained you to be Bulk Hogan?"

"I figured you'd thank me. I know you were too far away to sense him."

"I was no such thing," Chiun sniffed. He adjusted his kimono skirts with fussing agitation.

"Whatever," Remo replied, annoyed.

They turned in unison to see who it was who had started taking potshots at them. Remo was not completely surprised to spot Rim Kun Soe bracing a rifle against the hood of a parked North Korean army jeep.

Running, the two of them crossed the distance to Soe before he was able to squeeze off another shot. Remo yanked the gun away from the Public Security Ministry man, cracking it in half. He dropped the two sections to the ground.

"What is the meaning of this!" Chiun demanded.

"He's ticked at you for calling him the son of a Pyongyang whore the whole time we were at the Berlin embassy," Remo supplied for Soe.

"Oh, and am I now to be shot at for speaking the truth?" Chiun asked, jamming his fists against his hips.

"He was also probably trying to keep you from carving him a new belly button for not getting all your gold back to Sinanju." Remo smiled at Soe. "Just because I didn't say anything, it doesn't mean I missed your jaw smacking the dashboard when I mentioned the gold."

Chiun's eyes had grown wide. "This is true?" he cried, his voice rising several octaves.

"It is not my fault," Soe begged. "A government edict froze all incoming freight. I discovered the last shipment in a storage area when I was reassigned to the airport."

The premier of the North and the president of the South had come forward once Remo had disarmed Soe. At the security man's latest revelation, however, Kim Jong Il began to tiptoe slowly backward.

Chiun wheeled on the two leaders. Kim froze.

"Does this pile of dog droppings speak the truth?"

"All deliveries were held up at the airport after the head incident," Kim Jong Il admitted uncomfortably. "I suppose some of your gold could have been left behind. But it wasn't my idea," he added quickly, raising his hands in a defensive posture.

"Observe your future, crazed offspring of the corrupt Kim Il Sung."

Chiun raised a finger as he spoke, long nail extended. With a daggerlike thrust, the sharpened nail penetrated the belly of Rim Kun Soe.

The security officer's eyes grew wide in shock as Chiun wrenched upward. The razor-sharp nail sliced from Soe's navel to his sternum. Steaming organs slipped from their resting place, plopping to the frozen ground like heavy water balloons.

Soe's mouth formed a frantic, slow-motion O. But even as the intense pain was registering, he was pitching forward. He fell on the viscous bags of his own internal organs. Once he dropped, he did not stir again.

Chiun aimed the killing nail at the body of Soe.

"That is you if my gold is not in Sinanju this day," the Master of Sinanju intoned to the North Korean premier.

"I swear it will be done," Kim Jong Il insisted. His eyes were sick as he looked down on the security man's body.