The Final Reel

Destroyer 116: The Final Reel

By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

PROLOGUE

"What does it mean 'does not fit our needs at the present time'?" This did Chiun, Reigning Master of the House of Sinanju, the sun source of all the lesser martial arts, ask of his pupil one sunny spring afternoon.

Chiun was an old Asian with walnut skin. His youthful hazel eyes were crimped in concentration at their leather vellum edges. A frown creased the parchment skin of his brow, casting an unhappy shadow across his weathered countenance as he examined the sheet of paper held in his aged hand.

"Give it here," said his pupil, Remo Williams. Taking the paper from Chiun, the much younger man scanned the few lines on the crisp sheet. He chewed languidly at his bowl of cold steamed rice as he read.

"It's a form letter," Remo said finally. "You've been rejected for something called Trials of an Assassin. Have you been writing novels behind my back again?"

Chiun snatched the paper back, face angry. "None of your business," he sniffed hotly. And, turning on a sandaled heel, he skulked off to a dark corner of their home.

"I HAVE A FRIEND," the Master said later that evening.

"No, you don't," Remo pointed out absently. He was trying to watch Nick at Nite.

"Silence, insolent one!" Chiun snapped. "This friend of mine is a budding writer."

"Sounds familiar."

"What would his best route be to seeing his words brought to life?"

"You mean aside from the Dr. Frankenstein route of throwing his manuscript out in the middle of a lightning storm?"

"Visigoth! I do not know why my friend would waste breath-nay, the best years of his life-on a vicious-tongued ingrate like you!"

Remo held up his hands. "I'm sorry," he apologized quickly. "This isn't exactly my field, Little Father."

"My friend is desperate. He would beg assistance from a lowly ox or ass if one could be found. With no farms in the area, you were his only alternative."

"I'm flattered," Remo said dryly. "So, what kind of a book did this friend of yours write?"

Chiun stood more erect, pushing back his bony shoulders. His crimson silk kimono responded to the motion, puffing out proudly at the chest. With a bright orange beak he could have been mistaken for an oversize cardinal.

"It is not a novel. This, my friend has tried in the past to no avail. He has written a screenplay detailing the travails of his life. It is an epic."

"I'm sure," Remo said thinly. "Is this the same friend who dabbled in movies a couple of times years ago?"

"I do not know the friend to which you refer," the old Korean answered vaguely. "I have so many. In any case the past ignorance of Hollywood is irrelevant. I need to know what my friend can do now."

Remo sighed. He had an assignment tonight and had planned on relaxing for a little while first. Turning away from the television, Remo stood and stretched out his hands as wide as they could go. He resembled a human T.

"This is wit, humor, originality and intelligence," he explained. He wiggled the tips of his index and middle fingers on his left hand. "This is complete, absolute, utter crap." He wiggled the corresponding fingers on the opposite hand. "Everything in between this and this," he said, wiggling the fingers on both hands, "gets produced in Hollywood. Nine times out of ten this stuff will get produced, too." He waved his right hand at Chiun before sitting back down.

Chiun's frown deepened. "So you are saying that my screenplay is too good for the idiots in Hollywood."

"I thought we were talking about a friend of yours," Remo said slyly.

"Oh, grow up, Remo," Chiun retorted. "I would be embarrassed to bring friends home with you always hanging around."

Chiun produced a feathered quill and a sheet of parchment from the voluminous sleeves of his kimono. Scissoring his legs beneath him, he sank to the floor in a delicate lotus position. He began jotting down hasty notes.

"How do I see to it that my movie is no longer too good for Hollywood?" the Master of Sinanju asked.

Remo gave up completely any hope of seeing the end of the I Love Lucy rerun he'd been watching. He shut off the television with the remote control before sinking down before his teacher.

"With most movies these days they come up with a few large effects sequences and then tailor a sort of story around them," Remo explained.

Chiun scribbled a few more notes. The feathered end of his quill danced merrily. He looked up from his parchment.

"Effects?" he asked.

"Explosions, helicopter chases, radioactive dinosaurs stomping around Midtown Manhattan. That sort of thing."

"But do not those things descend from the story?"

"You'd think that, wouldn't you?" Remo said. "But as far as I can tell, you'd be wrong. No. Effects first, story second. If the effects are big and loud enough, you can sometimes get away with no story at all. Like Armageddon."

"Amazing." Chiun shook his head. He scratched a few more lines on his parchment.

"Michelle Pfeiffer in a cat suit," Remo said suddenly.

"What?" the Master of Sinanju asked, looking up.

"Batman Returns," Remo explained. "The only thing it had going for it was Michelle Pfeiffer in a skintight cat suit."

"Pornography," Chiun insisted.

"Great box office," Remo replied. "At least until people found out that there was nothing else there."

"But were there not explosions?" Chiun asked, confused.

"Yeah, but the movie was dark and unpleasant. People like their violence to be uplifting."

"Uplifting," Chiun echoed, jotting down the word. "So in order for my screenplay to be successful, I need explosions, dinosaurs and half-naked white women?"

"And a happy ending," Remo added.

"Yes, yes, yes." Chiun waved a dismissive hand. "Uplifting pabulum. You have said this already." Gathering up his things, he rose to go.

Remo hesitated an instant before speaking once more. "That's assuming your movie was too good to begin with," he offered to Chiun's departing back. "It might have been something else." He added this last thought vaguely.

Chiun paused in the doorway. He turned very slowly.

"What else could it be?" he demanded.

Remo delayed answering for a moment. He didn't want to come right out and accuse Chiun of writing a bad screenplay.

"I dunno," Remo hedged with a tiny shrug. "Something I didn't think of."

"What you do not think of could fill volumes," the Master of Sinanju responded in a deeply superior tone. With that he flounced from the room.

"See if I come to your premiere," Remo grumbled.

And, rising with silent fluidity from the carpet, he left for his assignment.

Chapter 1

Everyone was armed.

A forest of slender black barrels aimed skyward-rigid testaments to proud Islamic defiance. The choppy fire of old Russian AK-47s rattled occasionally through the hot desert air. Bursts of bright orange fire erupted in angry spurts, followed immediately by exuberant cheers from the teeming, sweating, jubilant mass of humanity.

Far above Rebellion Square, on the balcony of the Great Sultan's Palace, Sultan Omay sin-Khalam watched the activity far below through weary eyes.

Catching sight of the sultan, a few men raised their weapons in a frenzied, sloppy salute. A whole section of the crowd turned to their leader as the ripple traveled outward. Guns were lifted in salute before the exuberance of the crowd finally collapsed into gunfire and whooping shouts. Even as the sudden frenzy of celebration was dying down in one part of the crowd, the cry was being taken up by another.

Omay watched it all, his gaunt face impassive. It was hot in his Fishbowl.

That was what he called the sheets of impenetrable Plexiglas that had been constructed out of necessity around his balcony--the Fishbowl. The bulletproof glass had been added during the 1980s as a security precaution made necessary because of his overtures to the West. And to Israel.

As he stood there, absorbing the heat of his personal tomb, the crowd seemed to fade from the landscape.

This was supposed to be a day of great celebration for both Ebla and its leader. However, Sultan Omay sin-Khalam's thoughts were not on this day, but on another. Long ago...

MAY 7, 1984. THAT WAS the date everything had changed. It was then that he had discovered the lump.

The small nation of Ebla, which was nestled in the desert north of Lebanon, did not have many doctors. The best in the country resided in the Great Sultan's Palace itself. But even though they were the best doctors in Ebla, the sad fact was they were still not very good.

Perhaps at one time the sultan's doctors had been good. But Sultan Omay sin-Khalam had been as healthy as a horse all his life. Even at sixty years of age, he'd had no need for doctors.

Years before, the sultan's advisers had hired several of the finest Eblan-born and Western-educated physicians money could buy. A staff of ten was kept on duty full-time in case of emergency. But aside from the handful of scrapes and bruises that had resulted from a few riding accidents, they went unused for decades. Over the years the doctors-who were all older than the sultan at the time they were engaged in service-passed away. As the men had died off, they were not replaced. By the time Omar discovered the lump in his armpit, there were only two doctors left.

That fateful day the sultan sat in the airconditioned coolness of his private infirmary. Although it was the 1980s, the room seemed to have been locked in time somewhere just after the Second World War.

Neither of the two remaining doctors seemed certain how to run the antiquated X-ray machine. They fussed around it like a pair of elderly sisters who had been asked to cook Thanksgiving dinner for the entire family and had forgotten how to start up the gas oven.

Eventually the sultan lost his temper. "Enough!" Sultan Omay barked.

Though startled, the men seemed relieved to abandon the old device. The sultan was sitting on a lovingly preserved black-leather examining table. It looked like a museum piece. The doctors approached their nation's ruler.

Omay was stripped down to the waist. His skin was dark, his chest broad and coated with a thick blanket of coarse black hair. Only lately had some gray begun to emerge.

"Could you raise your arm again, please, O Sultan?" one doctor asked.

The sultan did as he was instructed, although he released an impatient sigh.

The doctor probed the lump with his fingers. He frowned gravely as he turned to his colleague. The second doctor was frowning, as well.

"How long has this been here?" the first doctor asked.

"I only just noticed it," the sultan said.

"Hmm," said the doctor. His frown grew even deeper. It seemed to extend down onto his wattled neck.

"It is not normal?" the sultan had queried. "Normal?" asked the doctor, surprised.

"No. No, it is not normal." He probed the armpit some more. The sultan winced. The area was growing tender to the touch. It had not been so that morning.

"It is not right," said the first doctor.

"No, it is not," agreed the second.

"What must I do?" asked Omay.

"Go to England," the first doctor instructed firmly.

"America is better," reminded the second.

"America is best," agreed the first. "But Ebla is not on good terms with America."

The sultan listened to them with increasing agitation. These two were already sending him off to treatment in the hated West and neither one of them had yet told him his suspicions.

Omay slapped his hand loudly on the examining table. The two old men stopped chattering, turning their wide, rheumy eyes on the leader of Ebla. There was a look of sad fear in their bloodshot depths. "What is it?" Omay sin-Khalam demanded. The answer they gave shocked him. Lymphatic cancer.

Younger doctors were immediately brought in from abroad. They echoed the prognosis of the older physicians. It was cancer. The sultan, who had never been sick a day in his life, was suddenly faced with the grim specter of the most frightening of diseases.

Since the time of the revolution against Great Britain almost twenty years before, Ebla had been involved in the shadow campaign of terrorism against the nations of the West. It had joined Iran, Libya, Iraq and Syria in condemning the imperialism of America in particular. This secret war had claimed many victims over the years-nearly all of them innocent civilians. But with his diagnosis came the dawning of a new reality for Sultan Omay. To the shock of all outside observers, he publicly denounced the use of terror to achieve political ends. In particular he condemned state-sponsored terrorism, singling out countries he had once called allies. In a move that shocked the Arab world, he even announced that Ebla would now recognize the sovereign state of Israel.

It was a conversion unlike any since Saint Paul on the road to Damascus.

The change was heralded as a breakthrough in relations between the Mideast and the West. Sultan Omay was lauded for his new ideals. Gone were the condemnations of the now repentant advocate of terror. Banished forever. Laurels took the place of denunciation.

Of course, the hospitals of the West were opened to him. His cancer was treated in New York. Further proof of his spiritual rebirth was the fact he used Jewish doctors almost exclusively.

The worst of the cancer was removed surgically. Directed-radiation treatments were followed by months of chemotherapy. Even more radiation followed. At first the team of doctors who now ministered to the ailing monarch was not optimistic. But the doctors weren't familiar with the indomitable spirit of the leader of Ebla.

Despite all expectations save his own, Omay fought the cancer. And won. The particularly vicious form of the disease he had been suffering from went into complete remission. Yet another rebirth for the charmed sultan of Ebla.

Some skeptics thought that with his clean bill of health would come a resurgence of the sultan's former self. They were pleasantly surprised that they were wrong. Over the next decade of his life Omay fought harder than anyone else for the Mideast peace process.

It was easy to fall into the role of Great Peacemaker. After all, he was an international celebrity. Omay was applauded in newspapers. He was an honored guest at signing ceremonies at the White House. He spoke regularly at the United Nations.

There were times when he almost fooled himself into thinking that he had changed.

During this phase of the sultan's life, Ebla became increasingly isolated from its Mideast neighbors. The land that had once been an ally was now looked upon with deep suspicion.

Radical fundamentalists at home blamed Ebla's decline in the Arab community on Sultan Omay. Threats both internal and external multiplied at a rate nearly rivaled by the cancer he had battled. As a result it was no longer safe for the sultan to go out in the streets without armed escort. The Fishbowl was the most obvious example of the perilous world Omay had created in his own backyard....

STANDING BEHIND his sheets of bulletproof glass, Omay looked out across the low concrete buildings of Akkadad, the Eblan capital. The squat structures baked in the orange fire of the setting sun.

The chanting had begun anew. "Omay! Omay! Omay!"

He didn't respond. A speaker system had been installed when the Fishbowl was first built so that his voice could carry out across the square. He rarely used it. An address by the sultan generally brought a more hostile reaction from a crowd than his security people liked.

Below, the people were packed into Rebellion Square like cigars in a humidor. They looked up at him, eyes alight with patriotic fervor. Guns were raised defiantly. A few shots rattled in the distance.

They chanted not for him, he knew, but for the glorious revolution against the West, now thirty years gone. The recent anniversary was cause for national celebration. But if given half a chance they would gladly turn their weapons on him.

In spite of the threat they represented, Omay longed to go down among his people. But his was a life of imminent danger. More so since his latest doctor's report.

In spite of the healthy life-style he had been living, the cancer had recently returned more than a decade after he had been assured it was gone for good. And this time it was far more virulent than before. This time there was no hope. He had only a few months to live. Perhaps as much as a year. But this, he had been assured, was unlikely.

When the reality of his physical situation had sunk in, a fresh realization dawned on Sultan Omay sinKhalam. He finally saw the truth. He had sold his nation's soul for a few more years of life. The sultan himself had betrayed his beloved Ebla.

This thought had occupied much of his time of late. It clung to his consciousness now as he stared out over the rowdy throng of revelers.

People screamed. More guns rattled in triumph. A new wave of raised assault rifles rippled through the crowd, a sign of obeisance to their ruler high above them.

All at once someone got it in his head to fire on the Fishbowl. As the sun breathed its last and fled over the horizon, a few shots clattered against the protective glass.

Though his first instinct was to duck away, Omay did not flinch. He could not show weakness. For the moment weakness was displayed, he would be lost. The crowd would swarm the palace, killing him, his advisers, his servants.

Instead, Omay watched the melee with curious detachment. He even leaned closer to the glass. Soldiers forced their way through the throng. With the butts of their rifles they subdued the lone gunman, beating and kicking him. He was dragged away quickly, lest others grow sympathetic for the single brave protester. As the dust settled back to the ground in the wake of the man's scuffing feet, the crowd regained its previous air of defiance. Not directed at Omay, but again directed at the hated West.

He had been ready to leave before the shooting started, but afterward Omay lingered on a few minutes longer. It would not be seemly for him to give even the appearance of fear.

Although the palace was air-conditioned, it remained hot in the Fishbowl. The sun was gone now. Bright floodlights from the palace and surrounding buildings washed Rebellion Square in sheets of stark white.

His back was coated with sweat. He felt weak from standing. At long last Omay stepped back inside his royal residence. It was cooler in his private suite. He took a special, secret elevator from his bedroom down to a lower floor.

As he passed through the great audience chamber, which was nestled amid a vast complex of offices immediately below his personal residence, Omay's thoughts lingered on the man who had been brave enough to take a shot at his nation's ruler. The sultan would send word that the offender was not to be mistreated. More than likely the protester's actions were an objection to the direction in which the sultan had taken Ebla over the past fifteen years. The truth was, Omay agreed with the man.

That lone gunman would soon be surprised at the penance his sultan planned to make. As would the rest of the world.

The sultan crossed the hallway adjacent to the audience chamber. A few ministers and their assistants scurried from office to office farther down the hall. These were the trusted few. There were not many with whom he had shared his plans, as Omay did not want the word to get out too soon.

Another elevator intended exclusively for the sultan's private use waited in perpetuity on this floor. It was here now, doors wide.

Omay stepped aboard.

"Guest quarters," he hissed to the lift operator, his voice a weak rasp. He was immediately racked by a terrible cough.

Omay was doubled over, clutching his stomach in pain when the doors opened once more. His coughing spasm brought instant attention.

From the hall, servants' hands reached helpfully to the sultan. He swatted them all away.

"Leave me!" he commanded breathlessly.

The effort brought another coughing jag. Omay staggered from the elevator, falling weakly against the far wall.

After a long moment in which he thought his lungs would burst, the sultan managed to get his coughing under control. Another moment and his breath returned to him.

He straightened.

The servants had stayed at a respectful distance, hands outstretched if their master should beckon them. Wiping away tears of pain, Omay left them all. Alone, he steered his uncertain way down a private corridor.

Rich red tapestries lined the walls, stories of ancient Ebla woven into their ornate designs. This was the area of the palace where personal guests of the sultan stayed. He smiled through his pain as he thought of the three American secretaries of state who had stayed here over the past decade. Another would soon arrive.

Omay found his way to the last room along the right wall of the hallway. As he approached the open door, his wan features pinched in displeasure.

Desperate music flowed out into the hall. It had a loud, over-the-top brashness to it. Distinctly Western.

Inside the room the sultan found a solitary man seated before an imported Japanese television. An old Nishitsu-brand VCR sat atop the TV chassis. Two figures cavorted on the dark television screen. Both wore the ridiculous cowboy livery of America's Old West.

The lone man in the room stared unblinking at the action on the television. Although he had heard the sultan's wet coughing fit from the other end of the hallway, the man did not stir from his seat. He continued staring at the television even as Omay entered the room.

The sultan took a seat on the edge of the bed. His breathing was uneasy. He felt drained.

Outside, the sounds of street revelers filtered up through the thick palace walls-a reminder of glories past. And of triumphs yet to be.

"Why must you watch that?" the sultan asked once his breathing had steadied. He turned his nose up in disgust as he indicated the picture on the television.

"To study the beast welcomes understanding of it," the man said simply.

"It is a strange way of preparing oneself for a jihad," the sultan countered.

"We embark now on a most unusual stage in our holy war against the hated West, Omay sin-Khalam."

The sultan no longer reacted as he once had to this man's habit of calling him by name, not title. Omay was an Eblan. The man before him was a Saudi.

The sultan watched as the film ran out. The music ended. The filmed images disappeared for good. The VCR began to automatically rewind the videotape.

"Ebla's long sleep is at an end," the sultan announced softly as the visitor turned his attention to the old man on the bed. "As is my own. Ebla has paid a heavy price for my selfishness." Absently he felt through his shirt for the declivity beneath his arm where the first of the cancer had been removed. "It is time we cut the Jewish infestation from the Middle East and avenge ourselves to those who would aid the desecrators of the al Aqsa mosque."

"As you say, it will be done, Omay sin-Khalam."

"When do you depart?"

"This very hour. I arrive in the belly of the beast tomorrow."

Sultan Omay sin-Khalam smiled broadly. "Then tomorrow the ulema will begin writing a new, glorious chapter in Islamic history."

"And the streets of the infidel West will flow thick with blood," intoned Assola al Khobar. A rotten-toothed smile cracked the face of the renegade Saudi multimillionaire who had once been called the "most dangerous nonstate terrorist in the world" by U.S. national-security experts.

Across the room the VCR spat out Assola's bootleg copy of The Wild Wild West.

Chapter 2

His name was Remo and he was happy.

It had taken a long time for him to isolate and identify the emotion. After all, happiness wasn't something he was used to grappling with.

As a professional assassin in the employ of CURE, the most secret agency in the United States government, his mood had long ago found root in the darker end of the emotional spectrum. And there it festered. Throughout his adult life he had been by and large a dour person with flashes of annoyance colored by shades of bile.

But not anymore. At least not right now.

Only a few months before he had brought to an end one of the most miserable years of his life. During that time duty had skipped Remo Williams across the globe like a flat stone hurled across the water's surface. He had gone from compass point to map speck, crossing longitudes and latitudes, dropping down in countries he hadn't even known existed. But it had now, finally, completely, come to an end.

And it was at the end of this dark cycle that Remo found himself experiencing an alien sensation. When he stripped away all other emotional possibilities there was only one he was left with. Happiness. Remo was startled at the discovery. And, he quickly found, the fact that he was happy made him even happier.

For a man who had nearly always found gloom to be the most comfortable part of his simple emotional wardrobe, it was like entering a new world. He was a walking corpse who, after years of wandering, had miraculously shed its eternal shroud.

And so it was that the evening breeze found Remo Williams whistling happily to himself as he loitered on the broad front steps of Boston's city hall.

Remo smiled at passing pedestrians. Few smiled back. Although he had been standing in the yellow lamplight for almost half an hour, few of the passersby even paid him any attention at all. This was because there was precious little about him that would have warranted a second glance.

Remo was a thin man who appeared to be somewhere in his early thirties. Although the air was cool on this late-May evening, he wore a simple black cotton T-shirt and a pair of matching chinos. He was of average height, with a face that usually skirted the border between average and cruel.

In point of fact there were only two things about him that were outwardly unusual. First were his wrists. They were freakishly large-like enveloping casts of solid flesh and bone. The second was the copper-bottomed stainless-steel pot that dangled from his right index finger.

Given his attire, it was easy for those who saw him to assume he was some kind of indigent. In fact, of the people who did notice him, a few who passed him as he was waiting attempted to flip change into Remo's pot. These were obviously tourists.

In a state like Massachusetts-whose citizens had a habit of making virtues out of vices-Boston was still an enclave of extremists. Its residents were of the breed that regularly chastised the government for not offering more handouts to every group that screamed its disenfranchised status on the nightly news. In short, Boston's residents were extremely generous when it came to everyone else's money but were as tight as a Gabor face-lift when it came to their own.

Since their acts of personal charity extended only as far as the voting booth, it was a simple enough matter for Remo to weed the residents from the tourists. Those offering him handouts were the tourists.

As he stood waiting, a middle-aged pedestrian strolled by.

"You all set, pal?" the passerby asked, fishing in his pockets as he spoke. He didn't wait for a response. The man tossed a few crumpled singles at Remo's dangling pot.

With a speed that startled the pedestrian, Remo flipped the pot around. In a blur he used the bottom of the pot to swat the money away. The bills fluttered to the sidewalk.

"I'm fine," he promised with a smile.

Remo's would-be benefactor seemed surprised when his money was refused. He became even more so when he stooped to pick the bills up. Another hand was already on them.

"Just what do you think you're doing?" demanded a new voice. This one was shrill and tyrannical-and female.

The woman's face was a jiggling mass of sagging, angry flesh. Her prominent blue-blooded jaw quivered furiously at the man whose money she was attempting to take.

Remo recognized her. For years Jullian Styles had had a national cooking show, The Master Culinarian, on public television.

On TV she was comically frightening. In real life the octogenarian chef was a hunching, six-and-a-half-foot-tall walking parody of herself.

Remo remembered reading a blurb about Jullian Styles in one of the local papers a few years back. A black family had decided to move into her exclusive lily-white neighborhood in the Boston suburb of Brookline. A good liberal, Ms. Styles was a firm believer in the equality of all persons just as long as the people she considered equal to her had the good sense not to reciprocate those feelings.

When equality and decency threatened the bastion of racial purity that was her own neighborhood, the famous chef had been quoted as saying, "Why don't they ship these hubcap-stealing darkies to Harlem or wherever it is they keep those people?" In the ensuing melee her publicist claimed poor Jullian had been jet-lagged, drunk on cooking sherry and quoted out of context. Anyone else would have been run out of town on a rail. But because of her political leanings, reruns of Jullian's show were still a staple on public TV.

As Remo watched, the Master Culinarian shoved the man roughly to one side. Quick as a wink, she snatched up the crumpled dollar bills in her blueveined hand.

"Excuse me, but that's mine," the man explained weakly.

"This sidewalk is public property," Jullian Styles announced imperiously. "Therefore anything that lands on it becomes public property. I am the public. Therefore," she said, drawing herself up as far as the considerable hump on her back would allow, "this money is mine."

With that she turned on one sensible heel and marched away with the cash. The startled tourist didn't know what to say. He looked to Remo for help.

"Ah, Boston in the spring," Remo sighed in explanation.

As the baffled man wandered off in the wake of the haughty TV chef, Remo felt a sudden change in air pressure at his back. He glanced up at the Cambridge Street doors of Boston's city hall.

An entourage of six men had just stepped out into the chill night air. The man Remo was searching for was in the center of the small crowd. He looked like a walrus that had been kidnapped from an Arctic ice floe and stuffed into an ill-fitting blue suit. The too short arms that bounced at his sides seemed as if they'd just stopped by his body for a visit. His porcine eyes lacked even a rudimentary flicker of human intelligence.

The knot of men descended.

As the group passed by him on the staircase, Remo took a step forward. "Mr. Mayor?" he called, just to make sure.

When the lifeless eyes turned his way, Remo knew he had the right man.

When the mayor stopped, the group paused around him.

"What?" barked Boston's chief elected official, sounding for all the world like a yelping sea lion. His mumbling speech pattern sounded worse than it did on TV. It was as if his lips and tongue got in the way of his words. Remo was half-tempted to toss a fish into his mouth. Instead he smiled broadly. "I'd like to show you something," Remo offered grandly.

The men around the mayor tensed. They didn't see Remo as any great threat, since he wasn't carrying a visible weapon. Unless they counted the Revere Ware pot that Remo held up in the air before them.

"The mayor doesn't have time," one of the men snarled.

He was trying to get a clear look at Remo's face. It seemed to be vibrating in such a way as to make his features unrecognizable. Of course this was impossible. The man rubbed at his eyes, trying to force the blurriness from them. He noted as he did so that a few of the others were also rubbing at their eyes. "Of course he has time," Remo said. "Look at this."

Balancing the black handle on the tip of his index finger, Remo gave the pot's broad bottom a smack. With an audible whir it began to spin in place like a basketball on the fingertips of a Harlem Globetrotter.

"Impressed?" Remo asked.

"Is he supposed to be some kind of street performer?" the mayor asked his aide.

"Sort of," Remo answered as he gave the pot another slap. The whirring made the mayor's ears itch.

"Do you do anything else with that thing?" the mayor asked, childlike interest already waning. "Just one more thing. The Astounding Disappearing Ears Trick. But I need a volunteer from the audience."

"Let's go, sir," an assistant urged. His inability to focus on Remo's face was making him nauseous.

"Not you," Remo admonished. The whirring pot stopped.

There was a metallic gong. All at once the mayor's aide was sleeping on the city-hall steps. "What happened?" the mayor demanded. Another gong. A second man joined the first. "Will a volunteer please step forward?" Remo announced, seemingly oblivious to the gathering pile of unconscious civil servants.

"Stop doing that," the mayor complained to his staff. He nudged one of the men with his toe. Gong. Another man dropped onto the inert pile. "I just gave you an order," the mayor whined as another gong heralded the collapse of a fourth man. The final city-hall worker was pointing at Remo. "I think he's doing it," he announced, concerned, just before the last gong sounded, this one inside his own head.

The mayor stood, dumbstruck, within the slumbering rubble of his personal staff. When he turned to Remo, there was just the first flickering hint of understanding in the backs of his dull politician's eyes.

Remo held the gleaming pot aloft. A smile wrapped his face. "I see we have a volunteer," he announced.

To the mayor the kettle seemed to move with the slowness of a hypnotist's watch. Only when he was engulfed by a darkness more complete than the night in which he stood did he realize that this was an illusion.

It felt as if someone had clamped his head in a vise.

"You will notice, Mr. Mayor," said the street performer, his voice muffled by the pot's interior, "that your ears have completely disappeared. That's the 'astounding' part of the Astounding Disappearing Ears Trick."

Outside the pot Remo examined his handiwork. Too much head fit into too little pot. Mouth, chin and jowls stuck out from below the steel rim. The curved black handle jutted forward like a crooked witch's nose. The mayor's twitching mouth beneath the handle helped further this image.

"Is this a kidnapping?" the mayor asked fearfully.

"Only in the strictest sense of the word," Remo replied. "It's more like a lesson in good mayoring." And, taking Boston's mayor by his handle, Remo led the shaking, kettle-domed official down the broad staircase.

THE LIBERTY RALLY, which took place annually on historic Boston Common, had, over the course of its decade-long life, grown into the single largest prodrug event in the United States. Born of the radical 1960s hippie culture, the gathering managed to each year dump some forty thousand assorted drug addicts, pushers and thieves onto the Common's well-tended green lawns. Thrown into this mix of human flotsam were the requisite soulless teenagers, college-age revolutionary wanna-bes and celebrity activists.

In a land where freedom begat folly and true sacrifice came when daddy refused to give the kids gas money for the new cars he'd just bought them, the Liberty Rally became a focal point of rebellion among a class too strung out to realize how privileged it truly was.

On this first night of the eleventh such rally to be held, the air of Boston had taken on a hallucinatory quality. A smoky fog hung above the park. Even this late in the evening, city workers were still mopping up the remains of the unfortunate birds that had made the mistake of flying through the smokechoked sky above the Common earlier in the afternoon, only to end up as anesthetized splats against the sides of the Prudential and John Hancock Buildings.

When Remo Williams led the disguised mayor of Boston into the midst of the throng gathered on the Common, he was forced to keep his breathing shallow.

Booths had been erected, offering for sale all manner of hemp apparel. Shirts, hats, pants and coats that looked as if they'd been stitched by junkie seamstresses-which, in fact, they had--were laid out for inspection.

The clothing angle was being played up by the rally organizers. But in addition to the garment booths there were many more stands featuring all manner of drugs and drug paraphernalia. In spite of all the various drug activity all around, Remo had yet to see a single police officer.

When they reached the center of the Common, Remo stopped. He released the mayor's handle. "We're here," he announced.

"Where's here?" the mayor asked worriedly. Though he could hear the many voices, the Revere Ware pot planted over his eyes prevented him from seeing where he'd been brought.

Reaching out, Remo used the sharp edge of his index fingernail to score the side of the pot. Once he'd cut a perfect oblong, he used the suction of his thumb to remove the thin piece of curving stainless steel. Beneath the newly formed hole a single worried eye blinked rapidly.

The mayor gasped as he took in the scene. "This is that drug rally, isn't it?" he asked.

"Yes, it is," Remo replied. "It's also where you're going to learn how to be a good mayor."

"I am a good mayor," Boston's chief elected official insisted, thinking he'd been kidnapped by one of the gathering's many drug-addicted patrons. "I allow this rally to go on without a hitch every year."

"And therein lies the problem," Remo replied. The people whom the Liberty Rally attracted were the dregs of the dregs. The fashion of the day was distinctly retro. The young men and women who wandered in a smoky haze amid the kiosks wore tiedyed shirts and torn jeans.

Nearby a man hung naked from a tree. Even dangling upside down, the actor was recognizable. He had starred as the dopey yet lovable bartender on Salud, a long-running TV show set in Boston. Since that show had gone off the air, the young man had had an inexplicably successful film career.

"When I was in The Nation vs. Wesley Pruiss, you know, the guy from Gross magazine," the actor was saying to a nude woman who was suspended beside him, "I was stoned straight through production. Didn't hurt my acting one damn bit."

The woman was taking notes. Apparently she was some kind of reporter.

Seizing the mayor by the handle, Remo led him to the tree. He pointed to the unclothed celebrity. "This is a lunatic," Remo explained, his voice that of a patient preschool teacher. "What's wrong with this picture?"

"I don't see anyone," the mayor complained. Remo twisted the handle. The mayor found himself staring into the upturned face of the famous actor.

"Hey, man," the actor drawled. Taking in the mayor's kettle, his idiot's grin-worn straight or high-grew wide. "Hell of a fashion statement," he said with admiration. "You should really wear hemp, though. Sticks with the theme." He turned his attention back to the woman. "Now, where was I?"

"He's naked," the mayor gasped.

"He's also flying higher than Halley's Comet," Remo said. "Both things are against the law." Before the mayor could get his bearings, Remo grabbed the pot's handle. Again he led the man like a dog on a leash through the crowd.

When they came to another stop and Remo had twisted the handle once more, the mayor found himself looking at a cluster of teenagers.

They all had the wasted mien of the habitual drug user. The oldest couldn't have been more than fifteen, the youngest around twelve. Before them stood a man of about twenty, a haggard figure in scraggly goatee and faded denim. He was reaching into a mobile hot-dog wagon that he'd dragged to the Common. Instead of foot-longs, he was withdrawing plastic bags half-filled with marijuana. Greedy teenage hands passed cash for drugs.

"This is what we grown-ups like to call a drug deal," Remo said patiently. "It used to be that this sort of thing was conducted in secret. Thanks to you, it's going on in front of national television cameras."

Although the mayor could never have been characterized as the brightest bulb on the circuit, even he was beginning to see the direction in which his kidnapper was heading.

"They do have a permit," the mayor pointed out. The by-now-familiar tug of the pot handle dragged the mayor forward once more. He couldn't help but trail Remo to their next destination. A few moments later he found himself looking down with one weary eye across a table that was filled with all manner of drug paraphernalia.

Keeping with the main theme of the rally, there were joints, dime bags, bongs and roaches, but in addition to these there were also indications of harder drugs. Crack vials, needles and unmarked prescription bottles filled with various pills, powders and liquids covered the vendor's table. A big cardboard box sat on the grass near the booth.

"This is a de facto legal illicit-drug store," Remo said to the mayor. "Your policy has made this permissible."

With suspicious, bloodshot eyes the reed-thin peddler behind the counter examined the man with the pot on his head, as well as his companion.

"You dudes buyin' anything?" the salesman drawled.

"If you have a problem with how the Liberty Rally issue is being handled," the mayor said to Remo, "you're welcome to take it up with the city council."

Remo's hard knuckles rapped the outside of the mayor's kettle. The clanging rattled the mayor's fillings.

"You're missing the point of good-mayor school," Remo admonished. "Final-exam time. What have you seen tonight?"

"Uh...um...oh..,"

It was apparent as the one visible eye struggled with the question that they might be there all night before the mayor figured it out. Remo's own eyes rolled heavenward.

"That there's plenty illegal going on here to disband this silly rally once and for all," Remo said, exasperated.

"But the permit-" The mayor hesitated.

"Does not entitle its bearers to engage in illegal activities," Remo completed.

"Okay, if I do something-and that's still a big if, mind you-will you get this thing off my head?"

"Liquid soap," Remo replied. "Ears will ache for a week or so, but it should slip off after an hour of wiggling."

The eye grew crafty. With the answer already given, it was clear he intended to revert to the "don't upset the applecart" methods he'd used regarding most illegal activity throughout his tenure as Boston's mayor.

"Look," Remo said, "put it this way. Either you let the cops come in and put a stop to this nonsense, or I promise you the next pot I plant on your head isn't coming off even if you take a blowtorch to it. You'll be running for reelection on the Farberware ticket."

The eye shot open. "Well, why don't I just go see if I can find a policeman right now?" the mayor offered anxiously.

"By George, I think you've got it," Remo said. He gave the mayor a friendly pat on the kettle and nudged him out into the crowd. Handle aimed forward, the mayor stumbled through the multitude of druggies. A man with a mission.

Satisfied with a job well done, Remo turned to go. At the nearby booth another man had joined the first. The new arrival was better dressed, although in the sense of an upwardly mobile hood. He was probably some sort of supplier.

The vendor was whispering to his companion and pointing to Remo. When he saw Remo looking their way, the vendor grew concerned. Sick eyes strayed to the cardboard box Remo had seen earlier. By the look on the vendor's face, he was more concerned with the box than he was with the array of drugs spread out before him.

"What's in the box?" Remo asked, curious. Both men appeared shocked to be addressed. The vendor in particular grew panicked.

"Nothing!" he snapped.

The intensity of his response indicated that such was not the case. Remo approached the box. He had to push the vendor's desperate hands aside before he could pull it open.

He discovered a case filled with videocassettes. Frowning, he pulled one loose.

"You got a warrant?" the vendor shrieked.

"Star Wars?" Remo asked. His face scrunched up in confusion as he read the subtitle. "Isn't this playing now?"

He felt the muzzle of a gun press his ribs. When he turned, he found the better-dressed thug standing beside him.

"Put it down and get lost," the man menaced. Remo kept the tape in one hand. With the other he grabbed the barrel of the man's gun.

The gun swung up in a perfect, fluid arc. It met the spot directly between its owner's eyes with a satisfying crack, continuing deep into the man's brain.

As the dead man collapsed to the ground, Remo's confused expression didn't waver.

"Isn't this playing now?" he repeated. The vendor gulped. He nodded dumbly. "Thought so," Remo nodded smugly.

Tape in hand, he turned away from vendor and corpse.

ON HIS WAY OFF THE Common, Remo met the mayor once more.

Three grimy hoods had grabbed hold of His Honor and were spinning him around. Because of the kettle, the portly politician couldn't see them clearly. As he stumbled, the trio laughed uproariously.

"What's going on?" the mayor shouted fearfully. All at once there came a sharp tugging sensation at his legs. He felt himself being pushed to the ground. Once on his back, he distinctly heard the sound of a fly opening. An instant later his tubby legs got suddenly very cold.

"They're called junkies, Mr. Mayor," Remo called. His voice sounded faraway. "They steal in order to feed their habit. Right now they're stealing your pants."

"Stop them!" the mayor cried.

"Can't," Remo said. "Until you get back to city hall, it's technically still legal. Sorry."

Flat on his back in the damp grass, the mayor blinked his one visible eye in panic. As the mayor of Boston rolled and shivered in his pink boxer shorts, Remo Williams left the Common, a cheerful smile plastered across his face.

Nothing, but nothing, could shake his happy mood.

Chapter 3

When Remo arrived back home at the condominium complex he shared with the Master of Sinanju, he found every light in the building turned on.

He mounted the stairs two at a time, pushing into the foyer. As he walked down the hallway to the kitchen, Remo leaned into rooms and flicked off light switches. He assumed that Chiun was in a good mood, hence the compulsion to use up half the electricity on the East Coast.

On the kitchen counter near the fridge Remo deposited a sack of rice he'd picked up from the corner market. Beside it he dropped the illegal videotape. He was stooping to collect a pot from a lower cupboard when the Master of Sinanju padded into the kitchen.

Chiun's face clouded briefly as he looked at the items Remo had left on the counter. His eyes lingered particularly over the pirated videotape. After a moment's inspection the shadow passed from his wizened features and was replaced by a look of beatific contentment.

"I have made great progress on my screenplay while you were away," Chiun said pleasantly.

"Good for you," Remo said, feigning interest. He was in too good a mood to fight. "You know where there's another three-quart kettle around here?"

"You took the only one with you."

"Hmm. No biggee," Remo said. He took out the gallon pot. "You up for supper?"

Chiun wasn't interested in food. He watched Remo fill the large kettle with water. The old Asian tipped his birdlike head to one side as his pupil placed the pot on the stove.

"Would you like to hear what I have written?"

"Maybe after supper," Remo hedged.

"Maybe?" Chiun asked thinly. There was just an early hint of pique in his singsong voice.

"Definitely," Remo sighed, turning to the old Korean. "After supper I'm all ears, okay?" Something across the room suddenly caught his eye. He crossed over to the table.

"You are also all nose and feet," Chiun said, his airy mood returning. "But that is genetics and cannot be helped, even by a Master of Sinanju as gifted as myself. You will love what I have written thus far," he insisted.

"I'm sure," Remo said disinterestedly. "What's this?" From the low taboret he picked through a bundle of shredded brown paper. Strewed across the table's surface, it looked like the remains of an old supermarket shopping bag.

"What is what?" Chiun asked innocently. Remo's eyes narrowed suspiciously as he lifted a particularly large section of paper. It said Safeway on one side. When he flipped it over he saw the name R. Blodnick printed in letters so carefully formed they might have been typed. The last name was one of his many aliases. His address was printed neatly underneath.

"Did I get something from Smitty today?" Remo asked. He glanced around for the package contents. Aside from the paper itself, there was nothing in sight.

"Oh, that," Chiun said, as if suddenly remembering. A bony hand waved dismissal. "Give it no more thought. The contents were unimportant."

"Smitty must have thought it was important enough to shell out the dough for express mail, Little Father," Remo insisted. "What is it and where is it?"

"The what is not important," Chiun sniffed. "As for the where, it is in here somewhere."

"Where?" Remo pressed.

"I do not remember. Nor do I have time to form a search party with you, 0 Dudley Dimwit of the Mounties." He turned abruptly from his pupil. "You have kept me from my work long enough." With that the old Korean bounced cheerfully from the room.

"I hate it when he's happy," Remo grumbled. Feeling his own light mood begin to evaporate, he began methodically searching the room for the mysterious item his employer had mailed to him. It took him five minutes to locate. He finally found it in the wastebasket beneath the rotting carcass of the previous evening's duck dinner.

Remo washed the plastic surface as carefully as he dared with a sponge and warm water, drying it with a half-dozen paper towels. After he was finished, he carried the object into the main living room he and Chiun shared. Along the way he noted that all the lights he'd turned off on his way in had been turned on once more. This time he didn't bother shutting them off.

In the living room Remo raised the small black object accusingly. "It's a videotape," he announced. The Master of Sinanju looked up blandly from the dozens of parchments scattered around the woven tatami mat on which he sat cross-legged. A goose quill quivered in his wrinkled, bony hand.

"Duh," the old Korean said. He bowed his bald head back over his papers and resumed his work.

"Dammit, Chiun, this could be important."

In his hand the tape became a black blur. Wind whistled shrilly through the plastic case. Eventually this noise stopped as the momentum Remo built created a vacuum around the cassette. In this void the water droplets from the interior did not so much roll off the tape as they did evaporate.

"I hope that didn't erase it," Remo said worriedly once he was through. He examined the tape. It seemed fine.

Chiun didn't look up. "It is only a greasy Arab running around amid fat white men," he insisted. "There was no beauty or depth. Nor were there any explosions or dinosaurs. A poor effort all around. I give it a strong thumbs-down."

"Thank you, Roger-freaking-Ebert," Remo griped. Remo brought the bone-dry tape over to the VCR, which sat on a stand beside their big-screen television. For a long, silent moment he studied the videotape machine. Finally he turned to the Master of Sinanju.

"How do you work this thing?" he asked sheepishly.

"Masterfully," Chiun replied, head bowed.

"Har-de-har-har. I'm serious."

"And I am busy," Chiun said, not looking up from his work.

Remo frowned. He turned back to the machine. He had watched Chiun use the device hundreds of times. The Master of Sinanju was one of the first people outside a television studio to own a private recording device. In spite of decades of having one of the machines in the house and the many upgrades Chiun had gotten since the original, Remo was still lost.

He turned on the TV and tried shoving the tape in the VCR. He watched the television expectantly. Nothing happened. Remo frowned.

He tried taking the tape out. It was stuck.

"If you break it, you own it," Chiun said sweetly. Remo shot him a dirty look. The Master of Sinanju's speckled eggshell head was bowed over his parchments. He was writing furiously.

Grumbling, Remo returned to the kitchen. He took the kettle from the stove, dumping the water in the sink. Dinner would have to wait. He returned to the living room carrying a small screwdriver. He dropped the videotape he'd picked up from the Boston Common drug dealer atop the TV.

Twenty minutes of cursing later he had removed the upper assembly of the device. Wiggling the tape from side to side, he managed to remove it from where it had been wedged sideways inside the machine. He had just finished putting the body back on the chassis when the phone rang. By this time his good mood was all but gone.

"You want to get that?" Remo asked as he tightened the last screw.

When he glanced at his teacher, Chiun was still writing placidly on his parchments. He made no move toward the phone.

"Don't get up," Remo snarled to the Master of Sinanju. Leaving the VCR, he crossed over to the telephone.

Remo snatched up the receiver. "What do you want?" he snapped.

The voice of Dr. Harold W. Smith, his employer in the supersecret government organization CURE, was like a lemon squeezed onto a dry rock.

"I see you are your usual jovial self," the CURE director droned. There was an uncharacteristic hint of amusement in Smith's tone.

"Don't you start acting all happy on me, too," Remo warned. "Chiun is bad enough. If you decide to go all giddy, I'm going to sit in a tub of warm water and open my wrists."

"Do not expect me to clean up the mess," Chiun chimed in.

Remo slapped a palm over the mouthpiece. "I'll be sure to bleed all over your screenplay," he sneered.

Chiun stuck his tongue out at Remo. Even so the flicker of a smile didn't leave his face. The old man's continued happiness only irked Remo all the more.

"I took care of Mayor Hophead," Remo muttered to Smith, his voice an annoyed grumble.

"So I assumed by the reports I have read," Smith replied. "The organizers of the Liberty Rally are already complaining of police harassment. There have been more than two hundred arrests for narcotics possession in the last hour alone. Many of the protesters have opted to leave rather than risk arrest."

"So we've loosed a couple of thousand glue sniffers onto the highways and byways of Massachusetts. Job well done."

"I think so," Smith said. "If there is no longer tacit approval from the city of Boston, then a proper message of intolerance will be sent to the nation's youth."

"What have you been smoking, Smitty?" Remo scoffed. "Their parents put Mr. I Didn't Inhale in the White House twice. Hell, mom and dad are probably growing the stuff in organic gardens for their kids these days."

"You seemed more than happy to accept this assignment earlier today," Smith said with thin puzzlement.

"Yeah, well, it's been a slow couple of months," Remo muttered. "I forgot what a real assignment feels like."

"That could soon change," Smith said cryptically. "Have you viewed the tape I sent you?" Remo glanced at the Master of Sinanju. The old Korean's ears were sensitive enough to have heard all that Smith had said. Even so Chiun pretended he didn't hear Smith's question. However his smile stretched farther across his delicate features.

"I had a little trouble with that," Remo said evenly. He looked directly at his teacher. "I think Chiun might have trashed the tape when he was snooping through my mail."

The Master of Sinanju's smile vanished faster than a coin up a magician's sleeve. The tiny Asian shot from the floor like a spray of angry steam.

"Do not listen to his exaggerations, Emperor Smith," Chiun called loudly. "The package sprang apart upon arrival. Remo is lucky that I put the magic picture spool in a place for safekeeping--otherwise the beautiful images contained upon it might have been lost forever."

"You want me to tell you what he uses for a strongbox?" Remo said loudly into the receiver. The old Korean's narrowed eyes shot daggers at his pupil. For Remo the glare had the opposite of its intended effect. Somehow the Master of Sinanju's sudden burst of anger helped to raise Remo's own spirits.

"Yes?" Smith questioned expectantly.

"Never mind, Smitty," Remo said dismissively. "And as far as the tape goes I haven't seen it yet. I need a little help with the VCR first."

"Can't Chiun help you?"

"He's not exactly in the helping mood," Remo explained.

The hard stare Chiun had been giving Remo bled into a look of disgust. The old man sank back to the floor. When he resumed his work, his sour mood lingered.

While Chiun scratched angrily at his parchment sheets, Smith talked Remo through the process of inserting the videotape into the VCR. After a few rough starts Remo managed to get the tape to play.

A picture appeared on the television. Remo saw an old man standing on a glass-encased balcony that overlooked a huge square teeming with human activity. Guns sprouted up like desert weeds. The images looked to have been taken in the Middle East somewhere.

"Exterior, desert, night, establishing," Chiun announced tersely, as if reading from a script. "A crowd of greasy Arabs fills a square with 1001 Arabian body odors. Really, Remo, can you not view this hackneyed drivel elsewhere? I am trying to create here."

Remo ignored him. He was busy studying the figure on the television screen. The old man was somewhat familiar, although Remo was relatively certain it was no one he had ever met. "What am I looking at, Smitty?" Remo asked.

"The first man on the tape is Sultan Omay sin-Khalam. He is the ruler of Ebla."

Remo snapped his fingers in realization.

"He's the guy who had cancer," he said. "He put a knot in the diapers of all his old terrorist buddies when he went straight."

"Yes," Smith said flatly. "Although his evolution into a peacemaker began some fifteen years ago, the circumstances of his conversion have always left me with lingering doubts as to his sincerity."

"Trust you to still be suspicious after a decade and a half," Remo said dryly. His eyes narrowed. "Wait a minute," he added, "the picture just changed."

There was a younger man on the screen now. He was a tall, twitchy-looking figure in a long, scraggly beard and mustache. He was walking alone down a busy street.

"That is Assola al Khobar," Smith supplied, tart voice stretched tight. The obvious note of contempt in the usually dispassionate tone of the CURE director surprised Remo.

"Assola?" Remo asked, scrunching up his face. "Why does that sound familiar?"

"He was mentioned extensively on the news last summer," Smith explained. "He is the son of a Saudi billionaire. Al Khobar has used his own millions to finance a campaign of terror against the United States."

"That's right," Remo said. "The embassy bombings."

It had made international news the previous August. Simultaneous explosions at the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam had killed hundreds and injured thousands more.

"Al Khobar was linked to the explosions in East Africa," Smith said somberly. "But those were not isolated incidents. There was a bombing at a National Guard training center in Riyadh the previous November. He also supplied the cash for the World Trade Center bombing in 1993."

"Wait, are you saying he backed the Messengers of Muhammad?"

Almost three years previous CURE had encountered a group of Muslim fundamentalists whose well-financed campaign had wrought havoc on the U.S. postal system. The final blow dealt by these messengers of death was to be a radiological bomb called the Fist of Allah. Fortunately Remo and Chiun had been able to cripple its delivery system before the device was able to reach its ultimate target-New York City.

"It appears as if the Deaf Mullah had a supply line of funds unknown to us at that time," Smith said tautly. "Al Khobar can also be linked to the 1983 Marine barracks attack in Beirut. He is partnered with Hezbollah, which has a history of terror against the United States and its allies."

"What about Global Movieland?"

After the East Africa bombings the United States had fired missiles against two suspected terrorist training camps. The attack against the South African franchise of the American-based restaurant chain had followed in the wake of these retaliatory strikes.

"Al Khobar claims direct credit for that bombing, as well," Smith replied. "His activities around the world are run through Islamic charities. As a result of his generous contributions to like-minded individuals, he had set up a network that shielded him from detection. Immediately after the African bombings he went underground in Afghanistan."

"Too bad it wasn't six feet under," Remo muttered.

"Yes," Smith agreed simply. "I attempted for a time to use CURE's facilities to locate him, but he proved impossible to find. Then we were distracted by our own business of the past year. Al Khobar became a back-burner issue."

"I'm glad the heat's back on. I assume by this tape you found the creep," Remo said hopefully. On the TV, Assola al Khobar continued to walk down the long street. The high white wall past which he strolled appeared to be too well maintained for the Middle East. Remo didn't even see a single bullet hole in the facade. The blurry cars that whizzed by looked too new and too big for it to be the Middle East. However the sun that beat down upon the terrorist was hot. Almost like a desert.

"A retired CIA operative took this footage of al Khobar three days ago," Smith explained. "He believes he has sent it to his former agency."

The wall finally broke open at a wide gate. Assola al Khobar turned up the sidewalk, passing alongside a small guard shack. He vanished inside the walls. The last image before the tape turned to staticky fuzz was of a cluster of stars on the front of the guard booth.

"That symbol looked familiar," Remo said, puzzled. He switched off the television.

Smith knew immediately what he was referring to.

"It is the constellation Taurus," the CURE director explained. "It is the constellation that appears northwest of Orion at the beginning of the year."

"No," Remo frowned. "I've seen that specific symbol before." As he thought, his eyes strayed to the other tape he'd brought in from the kitchen.

"Got it, Smitty," he announced, palming the video he'd picked up on Boston Common.

He went on to tell Smith about the drug dealer at the Liberty Rally and the case of videotapes that appeared to contain multiple copies of a current motion picture.

"There is a great deal of money to be made in video piracy," Smith admitted after Remo was through. "In any event that is beside the point. The symbol is that of Taurus Studios. It is a Hollywood film company that has been floundering for many years."

Remo knew there'd be trouble the moment Smith said the name. Halfway through the word Hollywood, Chiun's ears pricked up. His bald head shot up from his writing, twisting to the phone like a dog on a scent. The twin tufts of gossamer hair above each ear quivered in anticipation.

Remo pressed the receiver firmly against his ear, using suction to block out any further chance of Smith's words reaching the Master of Sinanju.

"Holly Madison." Remo nodded seriously. "Good first lady. Bad cupcakes."

From the corner of his eye he gauged Chiun's reaction. The old man was watching him suspiciously.

"I never really liked them myself," Remo babbled. "Was always sort of partial to Twinkies. Course, all that stuff's like strychnine to me now. You know a single strip of beef jerky'd put me in the hospital for a month?"

As he spoke, he continued to eye the Master of Sinanju. He was grateful when, with agonizing slowness, Chiun lowered his head. Inwardly Remo breathed a sigh of relief.

Smith seemed grateful to simply get a word in edgewise.

"What are you talking about, Remo?" the CURE director asked.

"Don't ask me," Remo said. "You brought it up."

He could almost hear Smith's frown. The CURE director didn't press the issue.

"As I was saying," Smith continued, "Taurus was a failed Hollywood enterprise. Until recently it was thought that it would quietly die out, its film library having already been sold off to the highest bidder. However the studio was purchased by Sultan Omay sin-Khatam a few months ago. There is word now that he has plans to reinvigorate Taurus by making the most expensive film in the history of motion pictures. Although no budget plans have yet been released, he is calling it the greatest epic in the history of film."

Something suddenly clicked in Remo's brain. "Smitty, are you telling me Assola is-" he caught himself, not wanting to alert Chiun "-here?"

"The footage you saw was of Assola al Khobar entering the gates of Sultan Omay sin-Khalam's Taurus Studios."

"So much for old Omay going straight," Remo said.

"That is part of your assignment," Smith told him. "Before removing al Khobar, I would be curious to learn what Sultan Omay's connection is to the terrorist. I have already arranged a flight for you and Chiun."

Remo glanced at the Master of Sinanju.

"Um, it'll be my pleasure to whack this Assholey guy, Smitty, but I think Chiun is going to have to give this one a miss. He's kind of busy right now."

Smith was surprised that Remo would refuse the company. "Very well," the CURE director said. "You should have no trouble handling this alone."

"Piece of cake, Smitty," Remo said confidently. Their conversation done, both men hung up without exchanging goodbyes. When Remo turned away from the phone, he found the Master of Sinanju's hard hazel eyes trained on him.

"There is no such person as Holly Madison," Chiun said, eyes slivers of suspicion.

"Hmm. I wonder whose cupcakes I was eating, then?" Remo mused. "Oh, well, speaking of food, you wanna eat? I'm starving."

Chiun placed his quill delicately across a single sheet of parchment. "We will eat," he said, rising to his feet. "If only to see if you choke out of guilt for lying to the one you call Father."

In a cloud of silent suspicion Chiun padded before Remo out of the room.

Alone, Remo heaved a sigh of relief. He'd jumped the first hurdle. And in spite of what the Master of Sinanju might think, he wouldn't crack. He would absolutely not tell Chiun where he was really going. He was saving them all a lot of grief. After all, it would be impossible to get any work done in California with Chiun hawking his latest screenplay to every waiter and cabana boy in L.A.

As he was leaving the room the pirated videotape atop the television caught his eye. The Taurus Studios logo stared out at him from the spine of the box. It was stupidity on a level he had never encountered before.

"What kind of idiots would use their own company logo on a shipment of illegal merchandise?" he wondered aloud.

This thought on his mind, he slowly trailed the Master of Sinanju down to the kitchen.

Chapter 4

"They were this close," lisped the effete male secretary. He held up a thin, pale hand-index finger and thumb a hair apart. A pointless gesture since the person he was talking to was on the other end of the telephone line. "This close to getting their little bronzed fannies tossed out onto Wilshire without so much as a toodle-oo."

He paused as he listened to his manicurist drone on. Sometimes the man could be such a bore. He adjusted the wire headset on his delicate, bleachedwhite coif as he let the man prate on for more than three whole seconds.

"Well, Nishitsu is the one that put them in charge," the secretary said conspiratorially. "You should have seen it when the studio went eye deep in a pool of red ink. Little Jappos in their tiny little Chairman Mao pajamas running around bowing and screeching at everyone in sight."

The manicurist asked another question.

"I thought so, too, love. But before you could say 'Give my regards to Broadway,' in swoops Sultan Omay with some sort of grandiose scheme to resurrect Taurus. He actually hired them both back."

The secretary listened for a moment before snorting loudly at a remark the manicurist made about the Taurus bull and one of his employers at the studio.

"Too true, too true," agreed the secretary with a girlish giggle. "Only his tailor and a thousand Sunset whores know for sure."

The office door suddenly swung open, and the secretary stiffened in his seat as a pair of men at the fringe of early middle age entered the foyer. "So, five o'clock, then?" he said into the phone. His voice dropped low. "Yes, it's them." His voice rose again. "Perfect, love. See you then."

With a careful stab of a perfectly buffed fingernail he severed the connection. The secretary folded his hands neatly atop his desk as the two men strode past him.

"Any calls?" one of them asked gruffly.

The secretary shook his head. "Uh-uh." He smiled.

The man who asked the question seemed displeased with the response. "What about press? We get any press today?"

"Not in Variety," the secretary replied. With every syllable he spoke it sounded as if he were about to burst into song. He tapped a copy of the trade paper, which was the only other item on the neat desk save his slender high-tech phone.

The unchanged ill humor of the two men clearly indicated that there was no place other than Variety they thought of as legitimate press. They pushed open the glossy glass-and-silver door beside their secretary's desk. Etched into the glass was the legend Hank Bindle And Bruce Marmelstein: Magic Makers. Beneath these words was the logo of Taurus Studios. A small reference to the Nishitsu Corporation had been scratched over by the business end of a set of Porsche keys.

Inside the huge office was as sterile as an operating room. Two gleaming chrome-and-glass desks with matching chrome chairs were positioned on either side of the room so that each was the precise mirror image of the other. The desks faced the glass doors and had been set up beneath a long picture window. The enormous blind that hung before the window was drawn tightly.

A half-dozen framed movie posters were lined up on the wall beside the right desk. The same six posters also adorned the left wall. In this weird mirror image the mates of each poster stared across the room at one another like wallflowers at a highschool dance.

Aside from the desks, chairs and artwork, there was nothing else in the large, empty office. The whole room seemed to be a sort of modern vision of an old sitcom episode where the two stars were fighting. Visitors to Bindle and Marmelstein's Taurus offices half expected to see a line of masking tape running up the middle of the room. In fact, at the end of the Japanese Nishitsu reign and before the Sultan Omay acquisition, there had been.

Bindle and Marmelstein felt the sticky tape residue tug at the soles of their matching Saucony Hurricane running shoes as they crossed the antiseptic gray carpeting. They plopped down behind their respective desks.

Neither man looked at the other.

In spite of the heavy soundproofing they'd had installed when Nishitsu had put them in charge of the once profitable studio, both of them were able to hear a low, steady rumbling from beyond the sealed window behind them.

Something within the room rattled in response to the earthshaking movement outside. It was not the posters, whose frames had been permanently secured to the walls with solid-gold screws at great cost to the Nishitsu Corporation.

They listened for the source of the noise, trying to hone in on whatever was causing the persistent glassy rattle. After a moment Bruce Marmelstein noted with a smirk that it came from his partner's desk. Neither the look nor the location of the rattle sat well with Hank Bindle.

Irritated that his should be the only piece of furniture rattling, Bindle pressed a button on his desk. Half of the room-length blind-the half behind Hank Bindle-slowly powered open, revealing a wide studio lot. Not to be outdone, Marmelstein pressed an identical button on his own desk. His half of the blind opened, as well. Swiveling on chrome bases, the men spun their chairs around simultaneously.

The lot below them was bustling with activity. Two sides were hemmed in by large studio buildings. The third consisted of the office complex in which Bindle and Marmelstein now sat. The fourth opened out into another wide lot, which, in turn, ended at a distant white wall.

Every inch of space in the first lot seemed to be filled with all manner of military equipment. There were antiaircraft guns on flatbed trucks. Military transport vehicles. Jeeps, trucks and Land Rovers.

In between the vehicles milled men with rifles and machine guns. They were dressed in flowing white robes. Loose-fitting mantles covered their heads and hung down across their shoulders. Many of the men wore headdresses of cordlike material around their mantles. There were hundreds of men dressed in this manner all around the first lot.

A cloud of dust rose from the second, more distant lot. Through the smoky film a column of tanks could be seen involved in what appeared to be some sort of military maneuvers near the white wall. The relentless ground-shaking of these metal behemoths was obviously responsible for Hank Bindle's rattling desk.

Bindle and Marmelstein watched the activity through the one-way glass of their huge office window. Cold air from the superchilled room frosted the edges of the glass. At long last one of them spoke.

"I'm a little troubled by this whole war-movie concept," Hank Bindle said. It was the first complete sentence he had spoken to his partner since the Nishitsu Pullout.

"Bad box office," Bruce Marmelstein echoed.

"Forget that Saving Private Ryan fluke. Hell, I could have sold tickets to my scrotum tuck with a cast like that." His tan face was drawn into a serious expression. Not so serious that it might cause wrinkles. He wasn't due for a peel for another six months and he wanted to minimize the damage between now and then.

"We could come up with an angle," Bindle ventured to his partner.

"You mean like a Schindler's List for the nineties?" Marmelstein suggested.

"Schindler's was nineties," Bindle sighed. "Better yet. Strike while the iron's hot. How about Schindler's List II?"

"No, I don't think Spielberg will go for it."

"Damn," Marmelstein muttered. A spark of inspiration suddenly struck. "Did Schindler write any more lists?"

"What, you mean like Schindler's Other List?" Bindle said, taking up the thread.

"Posolutely," Bindle enthused. "Maybe no one's bought up the rights yet." He stabbed at his intercom. "Ian, get me Schindler on the phone."

"Schindler, Mr. Bindle?" the effeminate voice of their young secretary droned.

"You know, the guy with all the lists. Tell him we'll give him whatever he wants not to sign with Amblin for the sequel."

"Or Dreamworks," Marmelstein cut in on his line.

"Just set up a meeting," Bindle ordered, shooting an annoyed look at his partner. He released the intercom. "Now, you realize before we even get started, someone's going to have to take the fall when we hose this list guy," he said pensively. He wheeled in his chair. "How important is Ian to you?" Bindle asked Marmelstein.

"He knows where a lot of the bodies are buried," Marmelstein reminded him. "Especially the you-know-what with the you-know-whats."

"What?" Bindle asked, totally confused. "Iratedpay ideotapevays," Marmelstein replied in his best pig Latin.

"Damn. Oh, well, once we get Schindler in here we'll have to scapegoat someone else." He spun back to his desk, stabbing his intercom. "Ian, find us a scapegoat from the mailroom," he announced.

"Already done," the secretary sang.

Bindle was just smiling a triumphant set of perfect white caps at his partner when Ian cut in again. "And Mr. Koala is here."

Bindle's smile vanished. At the same time the office doors pushed open. A dark-skinned man in an ill-fitting business suit and a beard that looked as if it had lost a fight with a rabid raccoon stepped into the chilly room.

Bindle and Marmelstein both stood to greet Assola al Khobar.

The terrorist was followed into the room by Ian. The secretary minced efficiently in his wake, carrying with him a chrome office chair. He breezed over, placing it neatly in the hot spot between Bindle's and Marmelstein's desks. All the time he spoke on his wireless phone.

"What do you mean Israel?" Ian demanded, his sibilants spattering the slender headset with tiny bubbles of spit. He sighed in exasperation. "Well, get me Israel, then," he said, rolling his eyes. Spinning balletlike, he marched back out the gleaming glass doors.

Al Khobar raised an eyebrow at the mention of the Jewish state. He sat down in the chair before Bindle and Marmelstein.

"There is still a problem at the harbor," al Khobar said without preamble once they were alone. "Your customs will not give clearance to the two cargo ships we discussed this morning."

Bindle and Marmelstein straightened uncomfortably in their chairs. They looked like interpretive dancers executing a strange choreographed routine. "Yes, about that..." Marmelstein hedged.

"I don't know if you're tight with the sultan," Bindle interjected.

"And if you are, that's just fine," Marmelstein added.

"Fine. It's better. Perfect." Bindle nodded.

"But if you've-you know-got his ear or anything, you might want to tell him that this war-movie thing..." He tipped his head pensively, like a doctor trying to politely advise a patient to shed a few pounds. "Well, if he's basing success on that little World War II flick from last summer, he should know it might not be the best idea going."

"War movies are duds," Bindle agreed rapidly.

"Box-office poison," Marmelstein quickly agreed with the agreement.

"Zero appeal. We're talking first-weekend grosses under ten million."

"Probably under five."

"Worse. Under one."

Bindle and Marmelstein looked at each other. They shook visibly at the horrible prospect. It had happened in Hollywood many times before. A lot of times to Bindle and Marmelstein productions.

"It is to be a war," al Khobar said flatly. "The one who pays your salaries insists."

"On the other hand war movies are signaling a comeback," Bindle said, in a change of gears so sudden his cerebellum nearly smoked. "Look at The Thin Red Line."

"Light on box office, heavy on Oscars," Marmelstein echoed. "Take Patton."

"Good Morning, Vietnam, " Bindle bubbled.

"Platoon."

"For one," Bindle said happily.

The Arab's expression could have been chiseled from ice. Beneath his scruffy beard his lip curled to a sneer.

"There are two cargo ships filled with containers necessary for this production waiting at Los Angeles Harbor," he said slowly. His piercing coal eyes did not blink as he glared at both men in turn. "I expect everything aboard them to be off-loaded and on this lot by tomorrow morning. Otherwise there will be changes in the command structure at this studio. Do you understand?"

Neither Bindle nor Marmelstein caught the end of what Assola had said. They were both too busy lunging for their respective phones.

They couldn't quite remember how to work the device. It had been so long since they'd had to operate one alone. Both men stabbed madly at buttons for several frantic seconds. They were nearly in tears by the time the soothing voice of Ian broke in. The secretary calmly placed the call to the harbor. Afterward it was Marmelstein-the business end of their team-who talked to the harbormaster.

Hank Bindle, who was the creative arm of the Bindle-Marmelstein pairing, sat nervously before the Arab. Al Khobar regarded him with cold disdain.

Bindle cleared his throat. "Er, about the production schedule," he offered timidly. "I hate to say this-and, believe me, it usually isn't like me to stop a picture in preproduction or anything-but do we actually have a script? I mean, there wasn't one before and, well, you know..." He smiled weakly.

"I am writing the script," Assola al Khobar announced.

Bindle smiled, this time more sincerely than before.

"Really? I didn't know you were creative, Mr. Koala," he said, mispronouncing "Khobar" just as he and his partner had ever since their first meeting with the terrorist.

It was al Khobar's turn to smile. To the Hollywood mogul the row of half-rotted teeth the Arab displayed beneath his shaggy mustache was deeply disconcerting.

"When called upon, I can be quite creative," Assola al Khobar said. He seemed to enjoy some private joke.

Bindle chuckled supportively, even though he had no idea what it was he was chuckling at.

"Do you have any idea how much the movie industry grossed last year!" Bruce Marmelstein was screaming into his telephone headset at the adjacent desk. Veins bulged on his salon-tanned neck.

Bindle tried to tune him out.

"Now, how about a director?" Hank Bindle said. "I've been thinking maybe Cameron or Burton. Of course, Spielberg is always up there, but he's priggish to work with."

"I will direct, as well," the man Bindle knew as Mr. Koala said.

"Write and direct?" Bindle asked cautiously. The spark of hope he'd allowed to burn within him since preproduction fizzled instantly. "Are you sure you might not be stretching yourself too thin? After all, Streisand puts her fingers in everything, and her movies are pretty much all bombs."

He heard a snort from the neighboring desk. When he looked he saw that Bruce Marmelstein was glaring at him. Bindle sucked in a horrified gust of air. He had forgotten. He had spoken the name of the unmentionable one in the presence of Bruce Marmelstein. He shrugged apologetically to his partner. In another moment it no longer mattered. Marmelstein turned abruptly away from Bindle. "Do you like your job?" he screamed into the phone. "Do you want to keep working in this town?"

"We haven't discussed budget," Hank Bindle said to al Khobar, looking away from Marmelstein. "I only ask because you said we start shooting this week. Now that we've got the script and director ironed out, we should begin thinking about cost."

Before the terrorist could respond, there was a thin plastic click of a button being depressed. Bindle and al Khobar turned their attention to Bruce Marmelstein.

"I miss the days of those big, fat phones," Marmelstein complained to both men. "The ones you could really slam."

"Well?" Bindle pressed,

"All set," Marmelstein said. He grinned his best Betty Ford Clinic smile at Assola al Khobar. "They're unloading even as we speak. I don't know what the hell you want with all those tanks, though. Now, what were you two discussing? The budget?"

"Yes." Bindle nodded uncomfortably. "We should actually sort that out now."

But having gotten the word from Marmelstein, al Khobar was already standing.

"Three hundred million," he said indifferently. The words hung like silver snowflakes in the chilly air.

Mr. Koala had obviously misspoken. That was the only explanation. Bindle's and Marmelstein's eyes were flat.

"Excuse me?" they said in unison.

"The budget is three hundred million dollars. The sultan wishes an epic. Something that will be remembered long after he has gone the way of mortal men."

"Three hundred million? Does that include advertising?" Marmelstein asked.

"Would it ordinarily?" al Khobar asked.

"Not really," Marmelstein said, glancing at Bindle. "Production cost is first. Advertising comes after."

"Then it is production," al Khobar confirmed.

"I've got to get this in the trade papers," Bruce Marmelstein insisted. "This is huge. This is colossal. This is the biggest movie ever made." His voice rose to what was almost a girlish squeal with each breathless word.

Hank Bindle was thinking about what this would mean to his career. This was beyond Titanic proportions. For the moment he forget the fact that he would be working with a novice director-screenwriter-producer.

"This is bigger than big," Bindle said to Marmelstein. He shook his head numbly as he tried to envision ways to skim money from the production into his personal bank account.

"It will be the biggest thing in the history of this city," al Khobar promised.

As he turned, the smile returned. Again there was something beyond it. Something sinister. Something almost movie executive about it.

Bruce Marmelstein cleared his throat.

"Hey, would you like me to hook you up with my dentist?" he offered to the Arab's retreating back. "We can work it into production costs." He was thinking of those teeth on Entertainment Tonight. Marmelstein shivered at the thought.

Al Khobar wasn't listening. He was already across the office. Without so much as a goodbye, he was gone.

"Probably sensitive about them," Hank Bindle suggested.

"Wouldn't you be?" Bruce Marmelstein asked.

"Perish the thought," Hank Bindle replied.

Ian suddenly buzzed in on the intercom. He was sorry to report that Oscar Schindler was dead. "Talk to his estate," Hank Bindle commanded. "Maybe he left another list lying around."

Chapter 5

Remo took an early-morning flight west, arriving at Los Angeles International Airport just before noon. Renting a car at LAX, he took the San Diego Freeway north to west L.A. Santa Monica Boulevard deposited him into the heart of Hollywood.

He had been to the motion-picture capital of the world a few times in the past, and each successive time he was less impressed than the last. A rather remarkable feat, considering he'd hated it the first time he was there.

Asking directions from a pedestrian, Remo learned that Taurus Studios was located in Burbank. The man was sitting on a bench reading a copy of Variety. The headline boasted a revival at Taurus. The Bull Is Back! it proclaimed in letters more appropriate to the signing of an armistice or a political assassination. In smaller print it trumpeted the studio's new three-hundred-million-dollar motion picture.

Remo left the man to his paper and drove farther north.

Taurus Studios was located on several acres of prime real estate near Hollywood-Burbank Airport.

A single, virtually unbroken wall surrounded the entire complex. Remo recognized it as the same wall that was in the videotape he had viewed the day before.

He headed for the main Victory Boulevard entrance.

Even before he had driven up to the front gate, Remo could smell the powerful aroma of mustard and barley wafting over the wall. He was surprised to see dozens of men in long white robes wandering in and out of the small pedestrian gate beside the guard shack.

Remo drove his rented car up to the small speed bump at the main vehicle entrance. A red-faced guard in his late fifties leaned out of the shack.

"Name and business," he said in a bored voice. Remo showed the guard a badge that identified him as Remo Gates, a lieutenant with the LAPD. The guard studied the ID for a moment. "Is there a problem, Officer?" he asked, handing the laminated card back.

"We got a call downtown that someone was molesting a camel," Remo answered, matching the guard's uninterested tone.

The guard glanced at some of the men wandering back and forth on the other side of the shack. They looked like extras from Lawrence of Arabia.

"I'm not surprised," the older man said with a disapproving grunt.

He raised the gate, allowing Remo inside.

Remo parked his car in the first visitor's space he found. Leaving the vehicle, he wandered on foot into the spacious studio lots.

He soon learned why the guard had been so willing to accept his story. A long line of shaggy brown camels turned dull eyes on him as he walked up the palm-bordered sidewalk to the main office building. The animals were tethered by long ropes to otherwise empty bicycle racks that were bolted to the pavement.

Farther away-unseen by Remo-he could hear the distinct sounds of horses whinnying. The scent in the air told him that there were at least as many horses as camels.

The lot in front of the Taurus executive office building looked like an unlikely village for lost bedouin. Men decked out in full Arab garb squatted next to fires set in metal wastebaskets. They were cooking and eating and shouting to one another in a tongue Remo did not recognize.

There were camels here, as well. The large animals were scattered among the milling crowd, chewing languidly and spitting frequently. Remo dodged a sloppy dollop of camel saliva as he stepped through the front door of the three-story office building.

There was a commotion going on at the main reception area. A group of four Arabs was fanned out before the desk of the perky young receptionist. One of them muttered something in the same language Remo had heard outside. It was obviously an obscene comment, for the other three laughed among themselves, leering at the girl as they did so.

The woman had no place to go. She was visibly nervous, but seemed somewhat accustomed to the abuse. She was clearly unprepared for what came next. As the door swung silently behind Remo, one of the burly men reached out and grabbed a firm white breast.

The woman screamed.

Her reaction seemed to provoke them even more. The four men pushed toward her, teeth bared, faces filled with lascivious glee. Her chair clunked against the wallboard behind her as she wheeled as far back as she could. It would never be far enough. As she screamed and cringed in horrible anticipation, a voice suddenly cut in from across the large airconditioned foyer.

"Excuse me, fellas," Remo said from behind the panting men.

He was pointing to their headgear as the men turned around. Their flushed faces were not pleased. "Studio security. Did you steal those towels from the commissary men's room?" Remo asked seriously.

As the burly men parted, the receptionist looked hopefully between them to the voice that was her salvation. When she saw that Remo was alone, her face fell.

"You are not with studio," one of the men demanded in choppy English when he saw no uniform on the intruder.

"Shh. I'm undercover," Remo whispered, a finger to his lips. "And it looks like you are, too. You stole those bedsheets from props, didn't you?"

Two of the men reached below their robes. When their hands reemerged, they were clutching long, curved daggers. The looks of sexual passion they had worn a moment before had given way to expressions of violent glee.

The quartet advanced on Remo.

Remo didn't really want to cause a scene. At least not before he found Assola al Khobar.

As the men closed in, Remo singled out the biggest of them. He was a towering, six-foot-seven-inch brute with a dark, leathery face that looked as if it had seen a thousand desert sandstorms. This man had no knife. His large hands-each as big as a catcher's mitt were held out as if to strangle Remo.

The pecking order was clear enough. The lumbering giant was the leader. As Remo expected, the others fell back as the big man lunged forward.

Remo leaned away from the grabbing arms of the man. As the grasping hands found only empty air where a neck had been an instant before, Remo was already moving in past the extended right arm.

Behind the big man now, his hands flashed up, whipping the headdress down from atop the man's head. It slipped perfectly down around his throat. Tug, twist.

The Arab was trying to get his bearings. Remo was no longer in front of him. And there was a sudden, terrible pressure at his throat. The man's eyes bugged open as he realized what had happened. As he struggled to remove the strangling cloth from around his neck, the other men dived forward to assist.

Remo dodged the other three, spinning the big man in place, to use the bulk of the large body as a barrier between himself and the three other Arabs. He bounced them away with his living shield.

"Remo no play now," Remo called apologetically from behind the meaty mountain of Arab. "He very busy."

The giant gulped at empty air. Quivering fingers tore at the cloth, to no avail. Failing to loose the cloth, he reached back over his shoulders for Remo, grabbing at anything. Everywhere his hands snatched, Remo was not.

The Arab's leathery face went white, then blue. When the last of the oxygen in the huge man's lungs finally gave out, he slumped forward. Remo dropped the body to the floor.

"That's what you get when you mess with studio security."

With a sudden clear shot at Remo, the others hesitated.

They looked at the unconscious body of their comrade.

They looked back up at the thin white American smiling placidly at them.

And they reached the same conclusion at the same time.

The three men ran from the reception area as if it were on fire. Their frantically flapping robes looked like the bedroom laundry left out in a monsoon. The doors swung shut on the white California sunlight.

Remo stepped over the sleeping giant and up to the reception desk.

The receptionist had pushed her chair back to her accustomed spot behind the desk. The young woman took a deep breath, patting down her perfect blond hair as she did so.

"You okay?" Remo asked, concerned.

She shook her head, startled by the question. "What, that?" she asked. "Oh, I'm fine. I'm used to aggressive men." She finished fussing with her hair. "After all I've worked here for two years. These friends of the new owner are just a touch more aggressive than, say, your average action-film star."

"Aggressive?" Remo asked, astonished. "Where I come from that'd be considered attempted rape."

The woman winced. "That's a strong word. Don't you remember the claims of anti-Arabism when True Lies came out? I don't want to be accused of negative stereotyping."

"What, assault isn't assault unless it comes from a white European male?" Remo said in disbelief.

"That's right," she replied simply. There wasn't a hint of irony in her voice.

She had finally gathered her wits about her. After another deep, cleansing breath she turned her attention to the man who had saved her from certain physical violence.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Remo said uncertainly.

"Perfectly," she insisted with an efficient smile.

"All right," Remo surrendered. He would never figure out Hollywood. "I want to see whoever runs this asylum."

Her eyes narrowed in instant suspicion.

"Do you have an appointment?" the woman asked.

"WHAT ABOUT ARNOLD?" Hank Bindle asked his partner.

"Already locked up for the next year," Bruce Marmelstein said. "Besides, the bloom is off the rose on his box-office appeal." He shook his head, annoyed.

"Keaton?"

"Has-been."

"Willis?"

"Never was."

"Hoffman?"

"Puh-lease," Marmelstein scoffed. "We want this movie to make money."

Hank Bindle leaned back in his chair. He slapped the cold surface of his desk in frustration.

"Just our luck," he complained. "We've got a budget that can afford Hanks, Cruise and Carrey and we can't get one of them."

"It's this insane production schedule," Marmelstein griped. "We start in less than two days. Most of the real stars are locked up with next summer's projects already."

"Oh, gawd," Hank Bindle cried, placing his face in his penitent hands. Matching pinkie rings touched either side of his expertly sculpted tan nose. "Three hundred mil and we're going to wind up with PeeWee Herman and Soupy Sales."

It was during this-the closest thing to a prayer Hank Bindle had offered up in his entire adult life-that Ian suddenly buzzed in.

"There's someone here to see you."

Their secretary's voice sounded odd. Almost dreamy.

Hank Bindle raised his face from his perfumed hands. His partner was looking at him, confused. Since the budget story had been leaked to Variety there had been a vast number of people trying to get in to see the studio executives. However they weren't scheduled to meet with anyone until later that afternoon.

Neither man had a chance to ask who their visitor was. All at once Ian hustled into the room, his normally pale face flushed red. He carried the same chrome chair he had brought with him before. But instead of Mr. Koala, he was followed this time by a thin young man who would have had to dress up to gain admittance to the Viper Room. The stranger wore a white T-shirt and tan chinos and walked with a quiet, confident glide that caused sparks not on the carpeting, but in Ian's longing eyes.

Ian slid the chair efficiently into its usual spot.

Without a word as to the identity of the man he had ushered in to the Taurus inner sanctum, Ian backed out of the room. His eyes never left Remo's lean frame, even as the door slid shut behind him. On the other side of the entrance, his breath formed clouds of steam on the glass.

"You people have cornered the market on ditzy secretaries," Remo commented to the studio heads. He avoided the seat, choosing instead to stand before the pair of soulless glass-and-chrome desks.

"And you are?" Bruce Marmelstein asked leadingly. His tone was frosty.

"Annoyed," Remo replied. "Where's Assola? Or Koala, according to your secretary. Or whatever the hell name he's going by today."

"Do you mean Mr. Albert Koala?" Hank Bindle asked icily.

"I thought the 'Al' was for 'Alvin,'" Bindle said to his partner.

Remo was looking at the two studio executives, a confused expression creeping across his features. It took him a moment to place them, but it suddenly came back to him.

Years before, while en route to a backup system in St. Martin, the files of CURE had been accidentally rerouted during a freak storm over the Atlantic, winding up in the computer of a Hollywood screenwriter. Without knowing what the information truly meant, the writer had fashioned into a screenplay some of the exploits of Remo and Chiun contained in the files. He had pitched the idea to a pair of producers who were as blind to the true nature of the files as the writer. Hank Bindle and Bruce Marmelstein.

Remo had been on assignment at the time, and so it was up to Harold Smith to deal with the producers and the writer. Remo had met them only briefly when he had accompanied Smith to L.A. to retrieve both the computer information and the various screenplays the writer had left with the producers.

Apparently since that long-ago visit these two men had risen above their position as lowly producers. They were now in charge of an entire studio. With what little he knew of the pair, Remo was glad he didn't own stock in Taurus.

"Yes, well," Hank Bindle droned slowly, "in spite of what Ian might have led you to believe, we are not in the habit of passing out the locations of our business associates. Now if you don't mind, we are very deeply involved at the moment in the creative process."

"Yeah," Remo said with a nod. "Your megaflop."

"I'm calling security," Bruce Marmelstein snipped. He reached for his slender high-tech phone.

"You might want to reconsider that decision," Remo said, stepping over to the desk of the business arm of Taurus Studios.

Marmelstein was hooking the wire to his radiotelephone around his head. He wiggled the mouthpiece in front of his overly-glossed lips.

"Give me one good reason why," Marmelstein said crisply.

"I'll give you two."

Remo held up two stiff fingers in the traditional Cub Scout salute. With a sweep of his arm, made deliberately slow so that the two men would not miss a thing, he brought his fingers down hard against the edge of Bruce Marmelstein's desk.

A loud, rattling crack filled the room, as from ice settling on a winter pond on a still night.

A perfectly straight fissure moved inexorably from the impact point of Remo's fingers across the surface of the wide desk. When it reached Bruce Marmelstein's corseted belly, the desk simply split in half. The two heavy sections flopped outward, thundering to their chrome sides. When they struck the carpet, the perfect halves of glass shattered into a million pieces each, raining down onto the chrome sections of desk like ice crystals dropped into the frigid office air.

Marmelstein was left sitting before empty space, the radiophone still hooked around his greasy, dyed-black hair.

"I think he's at L.A. Harbor," Hank Bindle offered without missing a beat.

"Definitely," Bruce Marmelstein said. "Say, while I've got the phone, would you like coffee? Bagel? Croissant?"

"I'm all set," Remo said. "Thanks."

He turned and left the office. Ian had to jump to avoid being struck in the face by the thick glass door.

After he was gone, Hank Bindle smirked at Bruce Marmelstein's broken desk. Just then the tanks in the parking lot behind him resumed their maneuvers. His own desk began its persistent glassy rattle.

"You know, three hundred million is a lot of cash," Bindle offered, nodding absently to his desk. Marmelstein looked from the rattling, intact desk of his partner to the shattered remains of his own. "New desks?" he asked, suddenly happy.

"New desks," Bindle affirmed.

Chapter 6

The Air Force 727 climbed steadily into the warm Italian sky after pulling away from the gummy tarmac of Ciampino Airport outside of Rome.

The moment she was settled on board, United States Secretary of State Helena Eckert treated herself to a long, well-earned nap. She had spent three days in the American Embassy at Via Veneto. Three long days awaiting a mere forty-five-minute audience at St. Peter's Basilica with the ailing Pope. It was a meeting that the beleaguered U.S. administration had insisted was politically prudent considering the health of the pontiff.

All things considered, the Pope had looked fine. A little weary, perhaps, but not particularly ill. The secretary of state viewed the time she'd spent in Italy completely wasted. And she had no intention of similarly wasting her time on board the plane. Before the plane had even leveled off for its flight across the Mediterranean, she was asleep. The sound of the secretary's snoring could be heard by the flight crew all the way up in the cockpit.

Lately Helena Eckert took her naps when she could. It was only recently that the nightmares had stopped. About a year ago she and two other highranking diplomats attached to the United Nations had been kidnapped. She and the British ambassador to the UN had come through the ordeal in one piece. The late Russian ambassador had not been so lucky.

While in the clutches of their crazed abductors, the three diplomats had been subjected to bizarre scientific experimentation that had enhanced their physical abilities to incredible extremes. After her liberation, Helena had been forced to undergo a reversal of the process-otherwise, she had been bluntly assured, she would die.

Afterward, she reverted to her normal physical self-a schlumpy sixtyish matron with an ample bottom, a short fuse and an inability to climb more than two stairs without getting winded. And she had trouble sleeping. Fortunately that aftereffect of her ordeal seemed to be waning of late. On her plane ride over the Mediterranean, she slept like Rip van Winkle on NyQuill.

Unfortunately the restful slumber didn't last long. Helena was awakened by an aide after what seemed like only a few minutes.

"What is it?" she snorted, blinking the sleep from her saggy, mascara-smeared eyes. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing, ma'am," her efficient male aide said. "We're ready to land."

Tasting the film on the roof of her mouth, the secretary of state looked out the small window next to her seat. She was startled to see that the plane was indeed on its final approach. The green-and-brown tinged ground of Italy had been replaced by an endless wash of beige.

Rising wearily from her seat, the secretary of state gathered up her handbag wherein resided her omnipresent supply of makeup.

Helena Eckert hurried to the rest room. She had only a few minutes to compose herself before her plane would touch down in the capital of Akkadad in the Khalamite Kingdom of Ebla.

THE CAR RIDE from the airport to the Great Sultan's Palace was odd. Yes, that was how the secretary of state would have characterized it. Distinctly odd. In fact, if not for the good relations Ebla enjoyed with the U.S., Helena would almost judge the atmosphere as tense.

She knew her driver-an Eblan diplomat she had met twice before-spoke English, but the man offered very little in the way of conversation. He and another Eblan companion sat silent as stones in the front seat. They did not even communicate with one another.

The secretary chalked their silence up to a bad day. After all, everyone was entitled to have one once in a while. Helena herself was working on her second full year of them.

But the mute escorts were not the only odd thing about this trip. The car that had been sent for her was strange, as well. It was not a limousine, as was the norm. A group of nondescript government vehicles had been waiting on the tarmac for the sec retary of state and her entourage. As soon as she'd deplaned, she had been ushered wordlessly into the first car.

Odd. Definitely very odd.

There was one other American in the car with Helena-the young man who had awakened her on the plane. The two of them sat together in the back seat.

The secretary turned to the young diplomat, pitching her voice low. "Hugh, did something happen while I was asleep that I should know about?"

The aide shrugged, shaking his head. "Nothing Washington told us about," he admitted.

There was a worried look lurking in the back of the young man's eyes. He tried to mask it as he looked back over his shoulder. The other cars were still following closely behind the secretary's. He seemed relieved that they were.

As she straightened up, the secretary of state gave the young man a comforting pat on the back of his hand.

"All in a day's work, Hugh," she said with a certain smile. She adjusted her lumpy frame in the car seat.

But behind the studied diplomatic expression, seeds of doubt were beginning to germinate in the mind of America's chief diplomat.

THE RUMORS OF SULTAN OMAY'S resurgent illness had been filtering out of Ebla for some time now. For a moment after leaving her car in the burning sun of Rebellion Square and walking into the main entrance of the Great Sultan's Palace, the secretary of state felt like some sort of morbid diplomatic vulture, swooping down to check for signs of life in heads of state.

She knew that this was a silly thought. These sorts of junkets were necessary. Especially in this region, and especially given the utter lack of anything even remotely resembling a coherent foreign policy in the current administration. It was important to the United States that the sultan reaffirm his commitment to the peace process. Even after all these years as a proved conciliator.

The concerns Helena Eckert had felt in the car vanished the moment she saw the careworn face of Ebla's leader. The famous face was kind, not cruel. The laugh lines beside his eyes had crinkled in joyful appreciation at every meeting they'd had since Helena assumed her post. In the touchy-feely brand of diplomacy she trafficked in, the secretary of state would even go so far as to term the man a friend.

But her friend was gravely ill. There was no doubt about it. The thought that it might be a resurgence of the cancer that the Eblan leader had so valiantly battled years before filled Helena's heart with pity. And a dying ruler would certainly explain the unusually taciturn manner of her driver.

The secretary wore an appropriate bland-bordering-on-concerned expression as she mounted the purple-carpeted staircase to the second-floor landing of the palace. Sultan Omay met the American delegation at the head of the stairs.

The Eblan leader's smiling face did not smile today. Helena did for him.

"Sultan Omay," the secretary of state said, stopping beneath the high marble arches at the top of the long staircase. "It is my pleasure to renew our friendship."

The secretary of state bowed slightly and offered a hand to Omay.

So frail he looked as if a desert breeze might topple him down the staircase, the sultan of Ebla dropped his eyes to the extended hand. He left it empty. Omay raised his eyes to the secretary of state's. The sickly white tip of the sultan's tongue appeared between his parched lips.

A phlegmy wet sound issued from the mouth of the sultan of Ebla. To the shock and horror of all the assembled American diplomats, it was followed by the expulsion of a single ball of viscous saliva.

Sultan Omay's spit slapped into the jowly face and neck of America's first female secretary of state. "What on earth!"

Helena instantly lost her diplomatic poise. She recoiled from the foreign ruler, grabbing instinctively at the handkerchief she always kept tucked inside the sleeve of her light designer blouse.

The response of the secretary of state to Sultan Omay's unexpected attack brought an even more unexpected reaction. As she reached for her silk hankie, every door in the palace seemed to burst open at once. Armed Eblan soldiers poured out into the hallway. They were shouting and waving Russian-made weapons. More swarmed menacingly up from the bottom of the staircase.

The tension level they'd experienced in the car soared through the roof as the secretary's entourage wheeled. Heads whipped back and forth in terror. Guns jammed ribs. Hands rose into the air.

It seemed as if the entire Ebla Arab Army had been dispatched to subdue the small group of unarmed diplomats.

"What is the meaning of this?" Helena stammered.

Her stunned brain was working overtime. She still had her staff at the airport. If they could just get back to the plane somehow...

Before she could even formulate a plan, the main doors on the first floor flew open. All eyes turned. The United States Air Force, Army, support staff and Secret Service personnel who had been left on the secretary's plane were shoved roughly into the palace by even more Eblan soldiers.

The faces of the new American arrivals were bruised and bleeding. As one of the men crawled across the carpet, an Ebla Arab Army soldier kicked him viciously in the stomach. The man dropped painfully to the floor, hands clasped to his belly.

The entire tableau was frozen for a long moment. The only sound the secretary of state seemed able to hear was the frantic beating of her own heart.

The silence was broken by a single loud clap from the sultan's pale, wrinkled hands.

Helena jumped at the noise.

A small cellular phone was quickly brought forward. Omay took it, extending the device to the secretary of state. His eyes were cold.

"I expect you have a call you wish to make, woman," Sultan Omay spit in clipped, precise English.

Helena Eckert didn't know what else to do but accept the phone in her shaking hand.

As the thick saliva of Newsweek's "Great Peacemaker of Ebla" dripped down onto the ample bosom of the American secretary of state, the terrified diplomat began entering the special government prefix for the United States.

Chapter 7

The loneliest post in the entire intelligence service of the United States of America was manned by an individual who had neither the time nor the inclination to think of himself as lonely. This stubborn determination to pointedly ignore his obvious isolation had served Dr. Harold W. Smith well in his three-decade-plus stewardship of the secret organization known only as CURE. Another man wouldn't have lasted more than a few years before the strain of solitude caused him to crack.

Not Smith.

He was completely without ego. He also lacked a need for social approval. And any sense of loneliness would necessarily stem from either one of those two things. Therefore, Smith did not feel lonely. QED.

That wasn't to say he didn't occasionally dwell on his solitude. On the isolation. But neither of those could be accurately called true loneliness.

Smith's mental state was perfectly suited to a man who spent eighteen hours per day in the same chair, behind the same desk in the same office for more than thirty years. Fifteen hours on Sundays.

He neither enjoyed the isolation nor disliked it. It just was.

This calm acceptance of his lot in life was one of the reasons why a young President at the start of a decade that would prove to be tumultuous had chosen Smith for the position of director of CURE.

Back in the early sixties it seemed the very fabric of the nation was tearing. To preserve the greatest experiment in democracy the world had ever known, it would be necessary to subvert its most cherished founding document. Both CURE and Smith would turn a blind eye to the Constitution. In this manner the President hoped to save the country for future generations.

That President was long dead. And his unknown legacy to his fellow Americans was a solitary patriot who still toiled-detached from the rest of the country-to heal the wounds of a troubled nation.

Smith was alone now in his Spartan administrator's office in Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York. Folcroft had been the cover for CURE's covert activities since the organization's inception.

Smith was like a character lifted from a 1950s black-and-white television set the tint set firmly in shades of gray. His three-piece suit, his hair, his very demeanor was gray. Even his skin was grayish, although a pacemaker had lately turned his traditional ashen pallor to a more robust fish-belly tinge. The single splash of color on his gaunt frame was the green-striped Dartmouth tie that hung in perpetuity around his thin neck.

The only sound in the tomb-silent office was the drumming of Smith's arthritis-gnarled fingers.

On the other side of his office picture window, cheerful afternoon sunlight dappled the waters of Long Island Sound in streaks of white as Harold Smith typed methodically away on the computer keyboard buried at the edge of his onyx desk. An angled screen also hidden beneath the desk's surface was Smith's portal to the world.

Navigating by touch, he made his way through the endless electronic corridors of the Net, trolling for anything that might warrant the attention of CURE. It was blessed mundaneness after a period of great turmoil for the organization he led.

Remo's current assignment was fairly straightforward. There was no real need for Smith to monitor his activities. Assola al Khobar was somewhere in California. Even if he was acting as an agent for the sultan of Ebla, he was only one man. Remo would have no problem with him.

Although Smith would not shy away if the circumstances warranted it, political assassination was not part of CURE's charter. Unless the sultan himself were entwined in some grander scheme involving al Khobar, Remo would simply take out the terrorist and be done with it. However, anything CURE's enforcement arm might learn about the sultan's possible terrorist connections could come in handy in the future.

Smith's suspicion of Sultan Omay sin-Khalam singled him out even further. Smith was the only man left in the world, it seemed, still mired in skepticism when it came to the Great Peacemaker of the Middle East. Of course, Smith knew he could be wrong. It was entirely possible that Omay's purchase of Taurus Studios was an innocent act. Perhaps one of his minions-unknown to the sultan himself-had lured al Khobar to California for reasons of his own.

Whatever the case Remo would find out. In the meantime Smith could busy himself with the pleasant tedium that he had neglected for much of the past year.

Smith was exiting the Reuters home page on the World Wide Web when a muted jangling issued from his desk.

Abandoning his touch-sensitive keyboard, Smith opened his lower desk drawer. When he pulled the old-fashioned cherry-red receiver to his ear, his face was already registering a look of pinched displeasure.

"Yes, Mr. President?"

"I just got a weird phone call, Smith," the President said in the hoarse rasp that was familiar to all Americans. "She sounded real worked up, so I figured I better call you."

It was as Smith suspected. The CURE director sighed, too weary even for anger. There had been far too many such phone calls from the White House in the past few months.

"Mr. President, your woes with the female staff of the White House are your political concern. I cannot make it any clearer than I have already, so I repeat -I will dismantle this agency before I allow you to subvert it."

"Not that," the president groused, tone laced with bitterness. "Believe me, I know where you stand. I've got members of both parties nipping at my heels thanks to you."

Smith resisted the urge to tell the President that he had no one to blame but himself for his current predicament. Given the man's tendency to ascribe blame everywhere but in his own backyard, it was only natural that he would accuse Smith of being the cause of his own self-destructive behavior.

"You know anything about this Ebla place?" the President asked.

Smith's spine stiffened at the mention of the Middle Eastern country. "What of it?" he asked.

"First off where the hell is it? I got lawyers up the yin-yang here, but no one who knows diddly about geometry."

"Geography, " Smith corrected.

"That the one with the maps?"

"Yes, Mr. President," Smith said impatiently. "And Ebla is neighbor to Israel. Is there a problem there?"

"About ten minutes ago I got a call from the secretary of state. The old bird sounded real upset. Said that she and her entire entourage had been taken hostage by Ebla."

Smith's gray face was stunned. "What?" he gasped.

"I thought she was kidding at first. I know she's been pretty ticked at me since I made her and the rest of the cabinet vouch for me last January. I figured it was payback. But it's true. She was badly shaken up. Said that the Eblan army had her surrounded in the Great Sultan's Palace in Akkadad."

"A coup?" Smith said. Already he had returned to his computers. A quick scan turned up nothing. He could find not one word yet on the abduction.

"No," the President said. "He made that crystal clear."

"She," Smith corrected as he typed. "And surely it was not the government. Perhaps an angry terrorist faction."

"You don't understand, Smith," the President explained. "The 'he' who made it clear was Omay. The sultan himself got on the phone after the secretary of state."

Smith's arthritic fingers froze over his keyboard. "You are certain?"

"As certain as a special prosecutor with a bug up his butt," the President replied sarcastically.

"Did the sultan sound as if he was under duress?"

"No way. No one put him up to it, if that's what you mean," the President said. "He sounded pretty happy when he issued his demands."

The welling fear of what was to come seemed to hollow Smith from within. His shoulders slumped as he sank slowly back into his cracked leather chair.

"Demands?" he asked, voice drained of all inflection.

The President took a deep breath. "He wants complete Israeli disengagement from Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan Heights, as well as an immediate stop to all American funds earmarked for Israel. He also demanded a stop to-" He paused. "Wait a minute, I had to write this one down." There was a rattle of paper. "This is quoting, now. 'A stop to the U.S. global dispersal of poisons from America's cultural capital.' His words exactly."

Smith's mind was reeling. He held on to the smooth black edge of his desk for support. "Cultural poisons?" Smith said. "I do not understand."

"He had me on that one," the President admitted. "I finally pinned him down. The guy means movies."

Smith's mouth went dry as a sack of bleached flour left out in the desert sun. His thoughts instantly turned to the sultan's recent acquisition of Taurus Studios.

"Hollywood," Smith croaked.

"What was that?" the President asked.

"Hollywood, Mr. President," Smith stressed. "To anyone abroad Hollywood is America's cultural capital."

"Abroad?" the President rasped. "It's the same here at home. Where have you been for the last century, Smith?"

Smith thought of precisely where he had been-if not for the entire century, at least for a good chunk of it. Tethered to his desk. Like a convict with a life sentence.

"What has he threatened if his demands are not met?" the CURE director asked weakly.

"He informed me that he'll execute the secretary of state and her entourage publicly, as well as destroy America's cultural capital, if we don't agree within two days."

"Forty-eight hours," Smith said aridly.

"As an aside, I'm a little worried about this whole 'destroy Hollywood' thing," the President admitted, for the first time sounding genuinely concerned. "I've got a couple of standing job offers out there when I finally leave office."

Smith wasn't listening. His brain was already clearing. The CURE director was sorting through the information he'd been given, trying to make sense of it.

"By 'America's cultural capital,' he means Hollywood," Smith reasoned slowly. "It is safe to assume he would not make a threat against it if he did not believe he already had the means to carry through on such a threat."

"He also warned me that he'd retaliate against any aggressive actions we might take," the President offered.

The life drained from Smith's face. "Oh, my God," he said, his voice a wheezing whisper.

"What?"

"You remember the terrorist Assola al Khobar?" Smith stated quickly. "The man responsible for the embassy bombings in East Africa last year?"

"Remember," the President scoffed. "How could I forget? He was a godsend in the middle of all that intern junk last summer. A perfect distraction, and the military and CIA guys had to go and drop the ball. It's all their fault. We spent a hundred million trying to blow the bejesus out of him, and he didn't even have the decency to turn up dead."

"Al Khobar is in California," Smith blurted.

The President was shocked. "What?" he demanded.

"I sent our enforcement arm to neutralize him. I had hoped that his appearance in this country was unrelated to Ebla. We must assume, however, given these latest developments, that he is acting as an agent of Sultan Omay." Smith's analytical mind was calculating options. "If any ill were to befall al Khobar, it would likely be construed by Omay as an act of aggression," he said.

"Well, you've got to stop your man, Smith," the President insisted. "At least until we can get the secretary of state and her people out safely."

"I have no way of contacting him," Smith grudgingly admitted. "He contacts me when he is on assignment."

"Dammit, Smith, you're supposed to defuse a crisis, not make it worse," the President snapped. "Think of my legacy. If my secretary of state gets killed on foreign soil I'm going to look bad again. Conspiracy nuts are still talking about that plane crash with the commerce secretary." A thought occurred to him. "What about the other one?" he asked abruptly. "The old guy."

"He is available," Smith conceded.

"Use him, then," the President ordered. Smith took a moment to consider.

For whatever reason, Remo had wanted Chiun to stay home. But the stakes had just gotten much higher. If Remo succeeded in his original assignment and eliminated Assola al Khobar, he could inadvertently trigger an incident both at home and in the Mideast. And, Smith thought with some bitterness, if the great figure of conciliation, Sultan Omay sin-Khalam, struck the right spot in the Arab-dominated world, the fragile peace that had held for years could be shattered forever.

On top of all this there was yet another problem. With his endless parade of political difficulties, this President was increasingly looking to CURE as a tool to be used in his own self-interest. Of course, Smith had and would always refuse such entreaties. But that wasn't the point. This man who occupied the highest elected seat in government simply didn't understand or didn't care that the organization had been deliberately set up so that the sitting President could only suggest assignments. It was the oldest fail-safe Smith employed and it had always served him in good stead.

All this did Harold Smith consider for a few long seconds. It was too long for the liking of the leader of the free world. Angry, the President was about to break in again when Smith finally spoke.

"I will see what I can do," the CURE director said simply.

And with that he hung up the phone on the protesting voice of the President of the United States. As soon as the red phone was secreted back in its drawer, Smith lifted the blue contact phone on his desk surface. He hoped with all his heart that the Master of Sinanju was in an agreeable mood.

For the sake of the entire world.

Chapter 8

The Master of Sinanju was in a less than agreeable mood.

The deadliest assassin on the face of the planet was seated on his simple reed mat in the center of the living room he shared with Remo Williarns. He had not moved from this spot in more than twelve hours.

Before Remo had left on his assignment, the old Korean had badgered his pupil into going out to an all-night video store. Chiun instructed him to rent several films that had been termed "blockbusters" by their respective studios.

He found them all dreadful. They lacked warmth, depth, beauty. Everything that his original screenplay had possessed in spades.

The new screenplay he had been working on the previous evening was in sections on the floor. It was arranged like a large paper quilt. In a flurry of creativity, he had written many more such sheets while watching the succession of awful popular films. He was attempting to infuse new elements into his original story by dropping various dinosaur, alien and explosive car-chase scenes amid his older scenes.

The new screenplay was largely complete, but he was not happy with the way it was turning out. Tired from his sleepless night of creativity, the Master of Sinanju rose from the floor. Turning from his patchwork screenplay, he padded slowly down to the kitchen.

The refrigerator yielded only a little cold rice left from the previous evening's meal. Not even enough to fill his hungry belly.

Remo had been a glutton last night. Every time Chiun questioned him about the assignment Smith had given him, Remo crammed even more food into his mouth.

If the Master of Sinanju were of a suspicious nature-which, of course, he was not-he would have been suspicious of Remo. This he told Remo at dinner. Several times.

For his part Remo had fumbled through a mouthful of food each time, finally agreeing to rent Chiun's movies in order to-in his words-get Chiun "off my back."

It seemed to be the poor old Korean's lot in life. An ungrateful pupil for whom the slightest effort on behalf of his Master became a massive undertaking. An entertainment industry that refused to recognize simple beauty when confronted with it. And on top of everything else an empty belly.

He determined to make Remo somehow pay for all three miseries when he returned.

This thought cheered him.

Chiun dumped some of the cold rice into a large stoneware bowl. He returned the remaining portion to its shelf in the fridge. He was just padding over to the low taboret when the telephone rang.

His first instinct was to ignore it. After all, answering the telephone was generally Remo's job. But all at once he decided to answer it. If whoever was on the other end of the line irritated him in any way, he could blame Remo for yet another indignity heaped upon his frail old bosom.

"You have reached the Master of Sinanju," he intoned loudly, picking up the telephone, "but be warned. I need neither storm windows nor inexpensive airfare, for my home is warm and I travel in secret at the whim of your fool nation's government. You have three seconds to reveal your intentions, lest you annoy me. Begin."

"Master Chiun," Smith's frantic voice broke in. There had not been a chance to speak until now. "It's Smith."

"Smith who?" the Master of Sinanju said slyly.

"It's me, Chiun." Smith's lemony voice was more tart than usual. "Your employer."

"Ah, Emperor Smith. Forgive my suspicious nature, but we have had a rash of nuisance calls of late. Remo usually deals with them but he is not here, he having eaten all the rice in the house and doubtless gone off in search of more."

"Chiun, please," Smith stressed. "An urgent situation has arisen."

"Alas, I am quite busy at the moment, O Emperor. Though my soul eternally soars on the wings of eagles to carry out your immediate bidding, I toil now to bring future glory to your throne. All hail Smith the Omnipotent!"

He hung up the phone.

It rang before Chiun had reached the table. "Speak, unworthy one," Chiun announced into the phone.

"Chiun, don't hang up," Smith pleaded.

"Sorry, wrong number," Chiun said, hanging up the phone.

It rang instantly. When Chiun again lifted the receiver to his ear, he did not speak.

"This concerns Remo," Smith blurted out to the empty air. He prayed Chiun did not hang up on him again.

"What of my son, the rice eater?"

"The assignment he is on has taken a critical turn. I need you to stop him from following through on it."

"As I have explained, I am quite busy," Chiun said. His tone was flat, bordering on perturbed.

"It is imperative that Remo be stopped," Smith emphasized. "There is an immediate threat to the Middle East, as well as to our own West Coast."

"I assure you that the west coast of Korea is secure," Chiun said blandly. "There is no other 'our.' "

He was in the process of hanging up once more when Smith finally said something that sparked his interest.

"Hollywood could go up in flames," Smith asserted.

The phone returned woodenly to the Master of Sinanju's shell-like ear.

"Explain," he declared evenly.

"There is not time," Smith said. "Suffice it to say that Hollywood is in danger. Remo, as well."

"How can this be?" Chiun said. "Remo is in the province of Detroit."

"Detroit?" Smith asked, confused. "Remo is nowhere near Detroit. He flew out to Los Angeles this morning."

Chiun's voice was bland. Menace sparked the depths of his hazel eyes. "He informed me that you had sent him on a trifling errand to the land of grime and autos," he said.

"No matter what Remo told you, I assure you that he is in either Hollywood or Burbank. Taurus Studios has facilities in both places. That is where you need to look for him. I have booked you on a flight out of Logan. It leaves in half an hour. A cab is already on the way. You must stop Remo before he succeeds in his assignment. Have him contact me the minute you locate him."

It was Smith's turn to sever the connection. Chiun's face was dull as he replaced the receiver in the wall hook, but hints of anger were visible in the recesses of his slivered eyes.

Outside, a horn suddenly honked loudly. Smith's cab.

Chiun glanced around the kitchen. There was no time to eat. No time to even pack properly.

No need. There was only one thing he needed to pack.

Leaving his meager bowl of rice untouched, the Master of Sinanju hustled down to the living room.

Chapter 9

The construction of Los Angeles Harbor began at the very end of the nineteenth century in order to accommodate the growing export of petroleum from southern California. It was to eventually become one of the largest completely artificial harbors in the world.

Long Beach, where the harbor was built, was a suburban port city located nineteen miles south of the city of L.A. but still within greater Los Angeles County.

Having never been to L.A. Harbor, it took Remo Williams an hour and a half of searching from Los Angeles the city through Los Angeles the county before he eventually found Los Angeles the harbor. That it was located in the city of Long Beach only heightened his sense of confusion.

At the harbor a helpful merchant mariner pointed him in the direction of the latest ships bringing heavy equipment in for the Taurus Studios three-hundred-million-dollar production.

"You look beat," the man said sympathetically after Remo had thanked him.

"I just spent a year of my life this afternoon driving around L.A. looking for this place," Remo groused.

"Why didn't you take the Harbor Freeway?" the man asked with a "what are you, stupid?" shrug before wandering off.

At the moment Remo found it impossible to argue with the conclusion of the man's body language. A few minutes later he parked his car in a small lot filled with well-maintained pickup trucks and walked out amid the rows of berthed ships.

The sun was hot; the sky was coated with a film of vague grayish-white. The breeze that blew in at times from across Point Fermin and the Pacific beyond did nothing to cool the warm air.

In spite of the broad sky above, a strange sense of claustrophobia hemmed in the docks on which Remo walked.

He found the Taurus ships exactly where he had been told they would be. There were two of them. Large cargo ships loaded with huge metal shipping containers. The containers resembled 18-wheeler truck trailers that had been stripped of their wheel assemblies and stacked one atop another like massive building blocks.

Dozens of towering stacks lined the vast space before the bridge of one of the ships. The other vessel was already half-empty. Trailer trucks on whose doors was stenciled the Taurus Studios logo waited in line on the docks.

As Remo walked up to the ships, an industrial crane lowered a container to the first of the flatbed trucks. Men went quickly to work hooking the huge steel box in place. They were finished in moments. Once the load was secured, the truck drove off, only to be replaced by the next vehicle in line. The procedure began anew.

The boxes atop the two vessels seemed certain to topple over at any minute. Of course, Remo knew that this would never be the case. The containers were designed to fit one atop the other. Like gigantic plastic milk crates.

These stackable containers had helped revolutionize overseas shipping. Not only were they moved easily with the aid of huge cranes, but their innocuous shells also helped discourage piracy. Since each case was identical to the next, thieves could never know what was truly valuable and what was not. The contents were a mystery to everyone but the shipper.

What seemed odd was that these containers were being sent away without being properly inspected. Remo assumed that the trucks were being stopped somewhere away from the docks so that the contents could be searched carefully before the containers were allowed to leave the shipyard.

There was a great deal of activity on the dock in front of the pair of cargo ships. More Arabs were here, as well, just as they had been back at the Burbank studios of Taurus. The Arabs were mixed in this time with a variety of brash young Hollywood types and overweight Teamsters.

The dark faces of the Arabs were clouded in looks of perpetual suspicion as they roamed amid the Teamsters and studio men, their flowing robes dragging in the coagulated pools of oil spilled long ago.

The young men from Taurus could not have been long out of college. They had the earnest, peeved looks of spoiled rich kids who were used to getting their way. Manicured fingers pointed in every direction. To the ships, to the crates, to the crane, to the trucks.

The Taurus men wore oversize suit jackets of blue, purple and green. Apparently the coats had been fashioned from the same material used to keep eggs from sticking to the bottom of frying pans, for they had a glossy Teflon sheen. Ponytails hung halfway down their jacket backs and bobbed in irate protest with every shouted word.

For their part the Teamsters seemed to be ignoring every word uttered by the young men. They went about their jobs with the sort of infamous union sluggishness that would have put a giant sloth to shame on its most indolent day.

As he came upon the bustling, shouting crowd, Remo was looking for only one individual in the sea of nearly three dozen men. But as he scanned the group, he didn't see Assola al Khobar's face.

Unable to locate the terrorist, Remo singled out one of the studio types.

"Hey," he said, tapping the young man on the shoulder, "is Mr. Koala around here somewhere?" He was embarrassed to use the name Bindle and Marmelstein had given the terrorist.

The Taurus man turned his head slowly, disdainfully to Remo. His head was the only part of his body that moved. The studio man saw instantly that he was looking at a Nobody.

The affronted studio executive looked down at Remo's hand where the offending finger that had had the temerity to touch his person had scurried off to join its four disreputable friends. His entire face puckered arrogantly.

"I beg your pardon," the young man said through clenched teeth.

His nose was so pinched it looked as if someone had sewn his nostrils shut. Indeed this was actually the case. He had instructed his plastic surgeon to make the two openings razor thin. Of course he had stressed that they not be so narrow as to preclude the insertion of a straw.

"Koala," Remo repeated. "They told me at the studio he was here."

"Was is the operative word, isn't it?" the man said caustically. Wind whistled from his slitlike nostrils.

"Don't tell me he's gone." Remo complained.

"I believe I already have."

With that the man turned away. He rolled his eyes histrionically to a pair of his ponytailed colleagues who stood nearby.

Remo exhaled in frustration. "Where did he go?" he asked.

"I think he went to the Hollywood lot," one of the other young men offered. "He's supposed to be working with the stunt teams today."

The expression on the face of Remo's young executive became horrified. He could not believe that his associate didn't have sense enough not to talk to a Nobody. The kid was only six months out of college. He obviously did not have the life experience that came with eighteen whole months working for a major movie studio.

The junior executive's misbegotten notions of courtesy had the precise effect that that sort of thing invariably had. As the more senior of the young executives shot a withering glare at his companion, Mr. Nobody became even more emboldened.

"What's all this stuff for?" Remo asked, crinkling his nose. He pointed over at the ships and their cargo.

The older of the young men raised a staying hand to his junior, lest the other executive inspire further conversation in the Nobody. He then turned his withering eye on Remo.

"Excuse me," the man said with a deep, impatient sigh, "but are you anybody I should care about?"

Clearly he thought Remo was not. Before the question had passed his lips, he was turning back to his companions. He nodded to the younger Taurus executive, silently informing the man that this was how one dealt with Nobodies.

It was the attitude that did it. The ponytail bobbed smugly over the shiny blue suit jacket. The face was aimed deliberately, snidely away.

Remo had already had a bad enough day without having some preening Hollywood type copping an attitude with him. Before he even knew it, he was reaching out. His hand curled around a fistful of ponytail.

The young Taurus executive knew he was in trouble the minute his Tony Lamas began rising slowly and inexplicably from the oil-stained dock. As he began to sense the odd phenomenon of his body levitating, he also became aware of a horrible wrenching sensation at the back of his head. The pain worsened as his floating body turned slowly in place. He found himself-hovering in air-face-to-face with the same Nobody he had just brushed off. The Nobody's hand disappeared beside his head.

The Teamsters seemed to enjoy the arrogant young man's predicament. They pretended not to notice Ponytail Man dangling in midair even while slanting satisfied glances at the confrontation. For their part the Arabs stayed away, too, their suspicion deepening at the sight of Remo.

"I am really a very nice man," Remo explained calmly to the executive.

"I'm sure you are," gasped Ponytail Man. He stretched his toes to the ground. They missed by inches.

Remo frowned. "But you've been behaving in a not nice way to me. Now, I asked a polite question. Where I come from, polite questions are responded to with polite answers."

"A film!" Ponytail Man cried. The pain in the back of his head was white-hot. Explosive. "You must've read about it! The biggest ever!"

"All this junk is for one movie?" Remo asked, surprised.

"Mr. Koala demands realism," Ponytail Man said. "With our budget we can afford to have realism shipped in."

"Koala?" Remo said. "Isn't this stuff up to Bindle and Marmelstein?"

"Yes, yes!" Ponytail begged. His eyes were tearing. As was his scalp. "But Mr. Koala is their superior."

"Polypeptide strings are superior to those two," Remo commented aridly. "So Koala's in on this movie?"

"Yes!" the man pleaded. He was weeping openly now. "It's his baby."

Remo was rapidly losing interest in the whole movie angle of this assignment. He tipped his head as he examined the artificially constructed face of the young executive.

"Did anyone ever tell you your nose looks like a wall socket?" Remo asked.

He dropped the man to his feet.

Back on solid ground, the ponytailed executive instantly began inspecting the back of his head with sensitive fingertips. He was surprised when they came back blood free.

"So where in Hollywood did Koala go?"

One of the other executives quickly told Remo the location of Taurus's Hollywood lot.

"Great," Remo complained. "More bumper-to-bumper driving. I hope I have an easier time getting out of here than I had getting in."

Turning, he walked away from the small crowd. "You should have taken the Harbor Freeway," the younger, more courteous Taurus executive offered to his departing back.

When he was certain Remo wasn't looking, Ponytail Man smacked his young colleague in the head, even as he continued to probe gingerly at the aching portion of his own scalp.

The punk was too polite. He'd never in a million years make it in the movie business.

Kids these days just didn't have a clue.

Chapter 10

This was Waterworid, Heaven's Gate and Bonfire of the Vanities all rolled into one. An epic disaster on a scale grander than anything in the history of motion pictures. With no script, no A-list stars and an AWOL director, the latest, greatest Taurus Studios film was in danger of becoming a career-crushing cataclysm. And no one was feeling the pressure more strongly than the cochairman of Taurus, Hank Bindle.

In the back of his chauffeur-driven jeep, Bindle was touring the Hollywood lot of the old Summit Studios complex. Summit had been around since the earliest days of Tinseltown, but like most of the big old companies it had fallen on hard times of late. It was forced to lease out much of the lot space it had employed during its moviemaking heyday. With the funds generated by the rent, the former feature-film company was able to concentrate on its more lucrative television enterprises. Right now Summit had turned over every lot and soundstage to the new Taurus war epic.

Bindle looked at the rows of tanks and jeeps. They were much more organized here. Lined up in perfect order as if ready for an actual invasion.

Throwing themselves into their roles, the Arab extras Mr. Koala had brought with him from Ebla were seeing to it that the war vehicles were in perfect operating condition.

Hank Bindle had to admit it. At least on some level the dedication of these extras was to be lauded. But not being creative, they couldn't possibly know what they were really in store for.

Bindle was being driven past what seemed like the two hundredth desert-camouflaged tank and was rounding a cluster of curving palm trees when he spotted his partner walking toward him from the abandoned Summit office complex.

Ordering his driver to stop, Bindle got out of the cherry-red, open-topped studio jeep. He walked over to meet Bruce Marmelstein.

"Cutthroat Island, anyone?" Hank Bindle wailed to a passing Arab, loud enough for Marmelstein to hear. The man was oblivious. "Geena Davis in a pirate movie! And Matthew Modine. Who in the hell is Matthew Modine? Gawd, this is a disaster waiting to happen. For three hundred million we might as well dig up Irwin Allen."

He and Marmelstein met in front of a brown-and-tan-painted tank. The Arab tank crew labored diligently around what looked like an actual working machine gun.

"Um, it's not quite three hundred million anymore," Bruce Marmelstein said to his partner. The financial expert at Taurus appeared sheepish. "What are you talking about?" Bindle asked. "Well, you knew those new desks weren't free. And you know we couldn't bring in new furniture without remodeling the whole office."

"Tell me something I don't know," Bindle snarled.

"For one thing we've gone through almost fifty million so far," Marmelstein said.

Bindle scrunched up his face. "How long ago did Koala unfreeze the sultan's account for us?" Marmelstein looked at his brand-new, solid-gold, diamond-encrusted wristwatch. His own smiling face replaced that of Mickey Mouse. He had dispatched one of his assistants to Switzerland to have the watch created to his specifications the previous day.

"Twenty-two hours if I read my hands correctly," he said.

Bindle frowned. "Obviously this project is going to be more expensive than originally budgeted," he said somberly. He waved a hand at the nearby tank crew. A new gold charm bracelet clattered against his bronzed wrist. "I can't possibly create with these insane limitations. We're going to have to tell Koala to loosen the sultan's purse strings."

Marmelsteut glanced at the nearby Arabs. They weren't so close that they could hear the two studio executives. Still the financial expert pitched his voice low.

"Actually Koala seems to have made a slight error with the business accounts. Either that or it's a mistake on the Ebla end."

"What sort of mistake?" Bindle asked. A horrible thought suddenly struck him. "Don't tell me I have to bring this in under three hundred million!" he demanded angrily. "I couldn't possibly. I will not compromise the artistic integrity of this film studio because some old skinflint can't be understood through a mouthful of dentures and couscous-"

"Hank," Bruce Marmelstein interrupted.

"It's an outrage!" Bindle raved.

"Hank."

"I won't let them do it!"

"Hank, the mistake is in our favor," Marmelstein whispered. He shot a nervous glance at the Arabs. They weren't paying any attention to the pair of studio executives.

Bindle's eyes became instantly cunning. His voice dropped to a breathy whisper. "We can get more?" he asked.

"A lot more," Marmelstein said quietly. "They don't have much finance sense over in Ebla. The sultan's people tied his personal accounts in with his business and state accounts. I guess when you're a sultan they're one and the same. Anyway, by buying the studio and giving us power over discretionary spending, he's set it up in such a way that we can tap into everything."

"What do you mean, everything?"

"I mean everything. Every last rupee or kopeck or shekel or whatever the hell currency they use over in Ebla. Every account the sultan has belongs to Taurus."

"Is it legal?"

"Is our little videotape venture legal?" Marmelstein countered.

Bindle grew confused. "Is it?" he asked.

"No."

He grew concerned. "Is it prosecutable?"

"Gray area," Marmelstein said. "Probably not."

"Can we set Ian up to take the fall?"

"Absolutely."

Hank Bindle's eyes lit up like a kid's on Christmas.

"I'm finally going to get to make the movie I've always wanted to make!" he exclaimed.

"How much do you think you'll need?" Marmelstein asked.

"Seven hundred million at least," Bindle said. "But we could go as high as a billion if I need reshoots. And forget about Koala directing. This baby is all mine. C'mon, let's get over to Taurus. We have a lot of work to do before Oscar night."

Bindle's jeep had remained close by. The two men climbed rapidly aboard. Leaving the rows of military hardware in their dust, they hightailed it out of the main gate of the old Summit lot.

The tanks waited solemnly behind them, their silent turrets angled in the direction of Beverly Hills.

TAURUS'S HOLLYWOOD LOT had once been the property of Manco, Blomberg large grinning hyena known the world over as the MBM symbol had for years hung proudly above the studio gates. But in these days of high-stakes studio mergers and buyouts, the hyena had given way to the bull. The star-cluster symbol of Taurus now adorned the walls of the venerable old film studio.

Remo had an easy time finding his way back from Long Beach by taking the Harbor Freeway up to the appropriately labeled Hollywood Freeway. He'd been ready to stop to ask someone where he could find the Hollywood annex of Taurus, but before he did he spied the familiar studio logo.

He found that this Taurus lot was easier to get on than the first. The guard at the front booth waved him through without even looking up from his magazine. There had been so many people driving on and off the complex all day long that he'd given up checking IDs a little before noon.

Once inside, Remo came to the rapid conclusion that Taurus Studios should probably begin scouring the night sky for a camel constellation to replace its current bull. The substitute would be a better representative of the studio considering the huge number of the animals the filmmaking company had imported for its latest production.

There were camels everywhere. Arab wranglers had pulled them into something resembling disciplined lines. Still, the stubborn creatures were not completely cooperative. Men with whips and riding crops patrolled the ranks, lashing out whenever an animal broke from the line.

The strangest thing about the sight was that it was far from unique. In fact, on his way here, Remo had noticed similar activities in many of the other studio lots around town. Taurus had obviously rented space from nearly everyone for Sultan Omay's film.

He was surprised by the harsh treatment the animals were receiving. As he watched the cruel men going from line to line he began to doubt the "no animals harmed" disclaimer he'd seen for years at the ends of motion pictures.

He spied Hank Bindle and Bruce Marmelstein chattering animatedly near one of the canvas-topped studio jeeps. The vehicle was parked near the first in a line of faux-adobe bungalows near soundstage 3. As he approached, Remo thought he recognized the two people the executives were with.

Remo pulled in behind Bindle and Marmelstein's jeep. He left his rental car and wandered over to the small group.

Hank Bindle was in the middle of a sales pitch to the new arrivals.

"So what do you think?" Bindle asked excitedly. "It'll be a love story-war event. I was thinking we could even give it a futuristic touch. Maybe The Bodyguard meets Full Metal Jacket meets Stargate."

"I don't know," said one of the new arrivals-a man with a wide cherubic face. His dull imbecile's eyes were hidden behind an expensive pair of sun glasses. "Can we give it a human touch? Maybe something that has to do with saving the manatee or Mother Earth?"

"I like the earth angle," the other stranger said. She was a woman in her early sixties who looked as if she were dressing for this weekend's sock hop. She was tall and as thin as a pin. Her giant eyes seemed to cause her wrinkled lids discomfort with every blink.

Bruce Marmelstein checked a leather-bound notepad.

"We can work in the earth," he said with an enthusiastic nod. He smiled broadly to the couple. "Earth is great," Bindle agreed. "We can fit Earth in. Maybe Mars, too. Maybe even some of those other planets they've got up there."

"An outer-space epic!" Marmelstein cried.

"A Star Wars for the next century!" Bindle exclaimed.

"It's got to have heart," the man insisted. "And a message."

"We can put a message on Mars," Marmelstein said.

"Total Recall!" Bindle exclaimed.

"Perfect!" his partner enthused.

"I wonder what this industry was like for the poor slobs who actually had to come up with the ideas the rest of you have been stealing for the last hundred years?" asked a sarcastic voice. It came from where they'd left their jeep.

When he turned to find its source, the face of Bruce Marmelstein fell precipitously.

"Oh, no," the executive complained. "You again."

"Yeah, me again," Remo groused as he walked up to the others. "And believe me, I'm not exactly thrilled, either. Your little Koala buddy wasn't at the harbor. They told me he'd be here."

"He isn't," Bindle said quickly.

"I'm sick of traipsing around this cracker factory," Remo said. "I'll wait for him." He crossed his arms, appraising the two new arrivals. "Do I know you?" he asked the man and woman.

"Really, don't be insulting," Hank Bindle said with a nervous laugh. "Of course you do. This is Tom Roberks and his lover, Susan Saranrap." He indicated the man and woman, respectively.

"Dead Guy Strolling," Roberts sneered haughtily. "Director."

"Zelma and Patrice," Susan Saranrap sniffed snobbishly. "Star."

"Watched two minutes of each," Remo Williams said with a friendly smile. "Bored."

"Hah, what a joker," Bruce Marmelstein interjected anxiously. "He's a friend of Mr. Koala, our liaison with the new owner." He turned to Remo. "I'm sure I can find someone who'll hook the two of you up."

The studio exec tried to steer Remo away from the two celebrities. He found to his dismay that every time he tried to take hold of Remo's arm, the arm was somehow not where it had been a second before.

"So, have you made any progress on your latest bomb?" Remo asked sweetly.

Marmelstein stopped trying to grab his arm. "We've got a working title," Marmelstein said quickly. He glanced at Tom Roberts and Susan Saranrap.

"We love it," Bindle enthused.

"It's perfect," Marmelstein agreed.

"See if you love it, too," Bindle said. He raised his arms into the air, framing an invisible title between his outstretched hands. "The Movie." He intoned the words with the same reverence a priest used when referring to the Resurrection.

"The Movie," Marmelstein bubbled happily. "Forget 72 or ID4. We have TM. And the beauty part is that legal thinks by calling it TM we've already given trademark warning without labeling it. We can wait a few months for the uncopyrighted TM fire to really heat up in the hinterlands silkscreen market and then swoop in with massive lawsuits for trademark infringement."

"Plus it'll be the movie," Bindle said. "The greatest event in cinematic history. The movie to end all movies."

"And it's going to star Tom Roberts and Susan Saranrap," Bruce Marmelstein added with a hopeful grin.

"What's the matter?" Remo asked. "The entire A-, B- and C-list of actors crap out on you?"

Tom Roberts had had enough. "Who is this clown?" the actor demanded. He whipped off his glasses, as if in preparation for a fight.

Remo's attention had suddenly shifted beyond the small cluster of Hollywood types. He thought he spied a familiar face through a break between the two nearest bungalows. It was near one of the lines of camels in the adjacent lot.

"Hey, I'm talking to you," Tom Roberts insisted. He sent a pudgy, angry finger into Remo's chest. The finger never reached its target. The chest and the man it was attached to were no longer where they had been.

Roberts, as well as Bindle and Marmelstein, was completely baffled. It took them a moment to locate Remo. When they finally did, what they saw was only a fleeting glimpse of the thin young man as he slipped rapidly down the hedge-lined alley between the pair of adjoining bungalows.

Remo was closing in on the gaunt, bearded figure of Assola al Khobar.

And, unbeknownst to Remo, the action he intended to take threatened to trigger a disaster of explosive global ramifications.

Chapter 11

This is where I came in.

It was this thought that passed through Remo's mind as he moved swiftly between the neatly trimmed hedges toward the familiar shape of Assota al Khobar.

Remo had had it with these Hollywood wackos. Smith wanted Remo to find out from al Khobar what Sultan Omay's interest was in Taurus Studios. Once he'd wrung this information out of the terrorist, he could zap the wholesale murderer once and for all and get back to something resembling a normal life.

Al Khobar had not yet seen him. The swarthy man's back was to him as Remo approached. The terrorist was in deep, angry conversation with several of Bindle and Marmelstein's war-movie extras. He pointed out beyond the walls of the old MBM studio, waving his free hand in a circular motion above his head. He then swept a broad hand out across the rows of patiently waiting camels. Assola al Khobar looked almost like a general preparing to lead his troops into battle.

Remo broke through the narrow hedge alley between the matching bungalows. A bleached-out sidewalk opened onto the vast, camel-filled lot.

There were Arabs everywhere. One, it seemed, for every camel present. And a rough count put the camel total somewhere near three hundred. A lot of men.

This was too tricky. Remo didn't know who all these movie extras were, but it seemed unlikely that they were all from Ebla. More than likely they were local hirelings-possibly illegal Mexican immigrants-who had been dressed in Arab garb. But there were certainly real Arabs mixed in. If he dragged al Khobar off in front of them, there could be a major riot on the Taurus lot.

Moving swiftly, Remo made a snap decision. He wouldn't ask al Khobar about Omay. Let Smith and his computers figure out what the sultan was up to. Remo would simply kill the terrorist and make his escape quickly, before the crowd could work up a head of angry steam.

He was only a few feet away from his target now. There weren't many men in Assola's immediate vicinity. Not enough to start a riot.

Kill him and get out. A good plan. Given the circumstances, the best plan.

The parking lot was thick with the stench of manure. A camel snorted hotly as Remo passed by. Al Khobar was yelling in some strange Arabic tongue.

Turning all at once. Seeing Remo.

A look of confusion turned to one of suspicion. Too late-Remo was already there, his arm tucked back, coiled to fire forward.

Fingers curled, palm flat, Remo drove his hand out. The blow was flawless. It launched like a well-oiled piston toward the chest of the Arab terrorist.

A hair before the point of impact Remo's hypersensitive skin felt the brush of material from al Khobar's robe. A fraction later he sensed the familiar negative pressure from the displaced air around the body.

Next would come the familiar crack of bone as the lethal assault propelled thin white chunks of the Arab's splintered sternum back into his vital organs.

Remo had delivered the same blow countless times in the past. Always with the same result. Until now.

The air around al Khobar dispersed obediently before Remo's killing hand. The chest was as open as an Iowa cornfield-the bone ready, eager to explode. According to everything his body was screaming at him, the blow should have worked flawlessly.

But when it was through, nothing had happened. It was over. Done. Al Khobar was dead. He must be.

But the terrorist still stood before him. Alive and suspicious. Angry eyes darted from Remo to a point beside Remo's right shoulder.

Remo's face darkened in instant concern.

The blow had to have registered. It was impossible for it to have gone unnoticed.

And then Remo felt it. So perfectly had the pressure point been manipulated, he had not even been aware that the blow remained incomplete. His mind told him that Assola al Khobar was dead. But his eyes told him that he was alive...

And that his arm was locked in place a fraction of a millimeter before the Eblan terrorist's chest. Someone had expertly overridden the network of nerves that controlled his arm and shoulder. He realized with a sinking feeling that there was only one man on Earth adept enough to break through his body's defenses.

Al Khobar was forgotten.

Remo turned, already knowing what to expect. He found himself staring into a pair of familiar hazel eyes. They were not pleased.

"You are a long way from Detroit," the Master of Sinanju accused coldly.

Chapter 12

Harold Smith could not have been more relieved to hear Remo's voice on the other end of the line. "Remo, thank goodness. Was Chiun able to stop you in time?" Smith asked urgently.

"Yeah, he stopped me," Remo complained.

He was in Bindle and Marmelstein's Hollywood office. The room was undergoing major renovations. The walls and the ceiling had been torn down. Crates of furniture with exotic-sounding names were piled in the outer room.

Remo had chased the work crews out in order to get a little privacy for his phone call. The Master of Sinanju had abandoned Remo to talk to the studio executives.

"Thank God," Smith exhaled.

"But now he's not talking to me," Remo went on. "He's ticked that I sneaked out here without him. What's the rhubarb, Smitty? I was a hair away from pulling the plug on that creep."

"No," Smith stressed, the passion in his voice an unusual departure from his customary measured, nasal tone. "Under no circumstances are you to injure Assola al Khobar."

"Okay, now you're beginning to annoy me. I thought that was the job."

"It was," Smith said. "But the circumstances have obviously changed. I had thought you would have called in, given the latest developments."

"What latest developments?"

"You did not hear of the abduction?" Smith asked.

"Smitty, I'm in Hollywood," Remo said sourly. "If the talk isn't about gross points, back-end deals or the new all-cabbage diet, it ain't talked about. What abduction?"

Smith took a deep breath. He went on to explain about the kidnapping of the secretary of state and her entourage in Ebla. He also told Remo of the threats against America's entertainment industry, Israel and the call for the cessation of funds to the Jewish state.

"Sounds like you called it right as far as the great Omay is concerned," Remo said once Smith was through.

"I have managed to tap into the computer files of his personal physician in New York," Smith continued. "What I learned might explain the sultan's change. As you probably know already, he was quite ill more than a decade ago."

"Didn't he almost die?" Remo asked.

"Had he remained in Ebla he would have. Their medical technology is woefully inadequate. It was at this time that he began his peace overtures to the West."

"He made nice-nice with us because he wanted to save his own ass," Remo commented.

"That is the likeliest scenario. But after his recovery he remained a tenuous friend of Western interests."

Smith grew uncomfortable. It was always difficult for him to gauge the motivations of madmen. He pressed on. "It is possible that during this period he simply enjoyed the notoriety his role as peacemaker afforded him," the CURE director offered. He didn't seem convinced of his own argument. Years of toiling in anonymity did not afford Smith much insight into the minds of grandstanders.

"He liked the limelight," Remo said, accepting Smith's appraisal. "That's not a bad conclusion, especially considering the whacked-out town I'm in right now."

"Yes," Smith said. "In any event his cancer receded and he has since given lip service to peace. He has been allowed in and out of the United States for years."

"Then another possibility is that he was afraid of a relapse," Remo suggested. "If he went back to his old ways, we'd never let him back in this country again."

"That is true," Smith said. "And we will not, although given his current prognosis it seems no longer to matter one way or another."

"Why?" asked Remo. "Is he sick again?"

"According to his medical records he is terminal."

Alone in Bindle and Marmelstein's office, Remo frowned. "That's nuts," he said. "He's got to know we'd pop him the minute he comes in for treatment."

"He has forgone all treatments," Smith explained. "The prognosis was grim regardless. He opted not to endure radiation treatment or futile surgery. He has not been back to see his doctor in eight months."

"He's not coming back, is he?" Remo said glumly.

"Neither to New York nor from the abyss of madness, it would seem," Smith replied tightly.

"All right," Remo said. "I see where this is going. Book me on the first plane to Ebla"

The CURE director's response surprised him.

"Absolutely not," Smith insisted.

"Why?"

"The situation in Ebla has grown more tense since the abduction," Smith explained. "I do not know if you are aware of the geography of the region, but Ebla rests largely above Lebanon on the Mediterranean."

"I've got a rough idea," Remo admitted.

"Then you might know that there is a strip of land in Ebla a few miles wide called the Anatolia Corridor. It runs the length of Lebanon down to the northern border of Israel, sandwiched between Syria and Lebanon. Since the abduction it has become known to our intelligence services that the Ebla Arab Army has begun to mass at the bottom of the Anatolia Corridor. They have been joined on maneuvers by members of the Akkadad Public Security Force. In addition the Royal Eblan Air Force is on full alert."

"If he's thinking Ebla can take on Israel, he's going to be in for a big surprise," Remo noted.

"Perhaps not," Smith answered. "While Ebla alone is no match for Israel militarily, it is likely that such an action on the part of one Arab state could spur other nations in the region to similar action. Israel would be no match for the combined forces of Ebla, Iran, Iraq and Syria, for instance."

"Okay, I don't get it, Smitty," Remo said with growing impatience. "You don't want me to bump off Omay and you don't want me to bump off Assola. What the hell do you want me to do?"

"Nothing for the moment. The United States is in the process of increasing our military presence in the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf. Allied nations are joining suit. The President has informed me that he is considering allowing the military to respond in kind if engaged."

"This is stupid," Remo complained. "World War III is busting out all over, and you want me to sit on the sidelines?"

In glum frustration he pulled open the blinds behind a paint-spattered ladder to find that he was looking out over the vast army of camels and Arabs. The activity level outside had increased dramatically. Robed men were beginning to mount the skittish animals.

On the phone Smith was talking rapidly. "Until a course of action can be determined, that is precisely what I want you to do," he replied. "In his first communication with the President, the sultan of Ebla threatened America's cultural capital. I believe he has set up some kind of scheme to attack Hollywood and that Assola al Khobar is involved somehow."

The light of realization flashed on. Looking out the window, Remo blinked dumbly.

"Uh-oh," he said. His voice was small.

"What is it?" Smith asked, instantly concerned.

"Um, you might not believe this, Smitty," Remo said worriedly, "but I think I might be looking at Omay's army."

From the window he scanned the lines of camels and men. His thoughts drifted to the tanks he had seen on Taurus's Burbank lot. And it seemed all the other lots in Hollywood and Burbank were hosts to similar activity.

"Explain," Smith demanded sharply.

Remo told him about the camels and military vehicles, as well as the men with them.

"Remo, how could you not see what they were doing?" Smith gasped once he was finished.

"What am I, Kreskin?" Remo said defensively. "This is Hollywood. They said they were making a movie. What the hell else was I supposed to think?" Though the impulse was exceedingly strong, Smith resisted the urge to chastise Remo. It was a supreme effort.

"How could Omay have gotten so much into this country?" Smith mused aloud. There was an angry edge in his voice.

"I think I know," Remo said sheepishly. "There were all sorts of cargo containers down at the harbor. Do you know where L.A. Harbor is, by the way?" he challenged.

"It is in Long Beach," Smith answered crisply.

"Oh," Remo said. "Anyway there were tons of these things being off-loaded from a pair of ships."

"I have some of the shipping records before me," Smith volunteered. "Several vessels have come into the harbor since Omay purchased the studio." There was a pause on the line as the CURE director scanned his computer screen. "The manifests say that the containers carried special film props. Customs cleared them through with no problem."

"I think customs might have taken a powder on this one, Smitty," Remo said sarcastically. "I didn't see a single agent within a country mile of those containers."

"You are suggesting someone bribed the customs officials?" Smith asked.

"There's an Arab army on the loose in Hollywood with more military hardware than Saddam Hussein has in his rumpus room. What do you think?"

Across the country, in the solitude of his Folcroft office, Harold Smith leaned his bony elbows on his desk. Eyes closed, he pinched the bridge of his patrician nose as he considered.

"We have no options," he said slowly. The admission of helplessness chewed like bitter-tasting acid straight through to his native New England core.

"There's got to be something we can do," Remo insisted.

"No. There is nothing," Smith said. "It is the perfect trap. Its two parts are set to spring a world apart if but one side is upset. If you eliminate al Khobar, the sultan will kill the secretary of state and invade Israel. If the sultan is removed in Ebla, a cataclysm will befall Hollywood, the nature of which is still unknown to us. We are helpless."

"Are you going to just leave a foreign army on the loose in California?"

"It is already on the ground, Remo," Smith droned. His caustic tone made it clear he thought part of the blame for this rested on Remo's shoulders. "Al Khobar has men everywhere in the Hollywood area, if what you told me is accurate." Smith opened his eyes. He was suddenly intensely weary. "Give me time to think. There must be an option. I will endeavor to find it."

On the West Coast, Remo forced a smile. "Don't worry, you will," he said. His attempt to cheer up Smith sounded patronizing at best, pathetic at worst. He tried to change the subject. "Oh, you might be interested to know Bindle and Marmelstein are in charge of Taurus," Remo offered weakly.

"I know," Smith told him. "And it is irrelevant to your current assignment." It sounded as if the life had drained from him. "Is this the number where you can be reached?"

"I'll call you when I book a hotel room," Remo said.

"Please do," Smith said, his voice devoid of all energy.

When he hung up the phone, the CURE director left Remo feeling intensely guilty. Rotating his wrists in frustration, Remo looked back out the window.

By this time the camels had all been mounted. The Arabs atop them-and they were Arabs, not Mexican extras as Remo had foolishly thought tipped their heads back. Tongues extended, they offered triumphant screams to their fellow Eblans. A chorus of shrieking ululations echoed off the soundstage exteriors, carrying through the office walls.

Battle cries.

Real guns and real swords rose high in the warm California air.

And as Remo watched, his stomach sinking, the victorious Eblans spurred their camels forward. Beasts pounding a crazed chorus, wave after wave of soldiers began riding out through the gates into the parched street beyond the Taurus walls.

A cloud of dust rose high into the dry air, kicked up by the furious beating of more than a thousand frantic hooves.

With tire squeals and angry horn honks, the Bentleys and Porsches that had been driving along the road in front of the studio slammed on their brakes or pulled onto sidewalks, steering out of the path of the crazed Eblan army.

Cries of triumph filled the air.

The invasion of Hollywood had begun. And Remo Williams could only watch it happen.

Chapter 13

The occupation of Hollywood and Beverly Hills up to Burbank in the north, and down through Culver City in the south, took less than four hours to complete.

Within the first hour forces from the United States Army and the California National Guard had established a neutral zone running over to Glendale in the east, skirting downtown Los Angeles and up around the San Fernando Valley to Santa Monica in the west. As the forces of the Ebla Arab Army secured more-permanent positions within the zone, the U.S. military sat outside. Waiting. They had been instructed to do nothing to provoke a situation that might harm innocent civilians.

The situation offshore was no better. Vessels of the U.S. Navy from the Pacific fleet were on high alert between the mainland and Santa Catalina Island. But a safe channel had been established to allow free travel of Eblan vessels into L.A. Harbor. So while the Navy was present, it could do nothing to stop the influx of more men and materiel for the sitting Eblan army.

The streets of Hollywood, Burbank and Culver City had been abandoned to Eblan soldiers. Tanks and jeeps, as well as men on camels and horseback, patrolled the otherwise empty thoroughfares. Every soldier held an automatic weapon in his triumphant hand. Americans remained for the most part hidden fearfully behind locked doors.

The sights he beheld sickened Remo Williams as he drove through Hollywood's streets in a Taurus Studios jeep.

The store windows along Rodeo Drive had been shot out. Expensive leather garments were strewed across sidewalks and atop the hoods of abandoned Rolls-Royces.

Someone had driven a tank over a fire hydrant. The tank was long gone. The hydrant continued to shoot a stream of water high into the air, flooding the street and washing away some of the goods first looted, then abandoned.

The water was halfway up the jeep's tires as Remo toured the street, unmolested by Arabs. They always seemed to be wherever he wasn't. Growing bored at last, he drove back to his hotel.

When Remo pushed open the door to his suite, he found Chiun seated placidly on the floor. Even with the chaos all around them, the old Korean was as calm as a wooded glade at sunset.

Chiun wore a hyacinth kimono. Along the back of the garment twin peacocks raised multicolored feathers, their edges outlined in striking gold accents.

Even amid all of the terror and uncertainty, the Master of Sinanju had found someone at Taurus willing to retype his screenplay. The text had been transferred from parchment to standard computer paper and was now contained in a special leatherbacked binder.

Chiun was scanning the hundred-plus sheets of paper. As he worked, he occasionally clucked unhappily, making a correction in red ink in the wide margins.

"I'm back," Remo announced glumly.

Chiun looked up. "Remo enters, clomping and braying like a wounded mule," he said merrily. The Master of Sinanju returned to his work.

"Stop talking like the freaking narrator," Remo griped.

Shuffling across the room, Remo gathered up the remote control from atop the hotel television. Collapsing boneless into a chair, he turned on CNN.

The Eblan story was still raging strong. He hadn't really expected otherwise. Turning down the sound, he watched images of men on camelback riding along a closed section of Santa Monica Freeway.

It was only a few minutes after Remo started watching the TV that Chiun finished scribbling on the last page of his screenplay. The old man made a small, final mark, closing the binder with a lordly flourish.

"Perfect," he exclaimed grandly. Remo ignored him.

"You have noticed, no doubt, that I am talking to you once more," Chiun announced.

"Yep," Remo said with a bland sigh. He continued staring at the screen, his thoughts elsewhere.

"When I learned of your deception, I was understandably cross," the Master of Sinanju scolded gently.

"Listen," Remo said, shaking his head. "I know what you're like when you're around this town. I figured you'd get all moon-eyed looking for Raymond Burr and Edward G. Robinson and I wouldn't get any work done. Besides, it was supposed to be a quick assignment."

"There, you see?" Chiun said placidly. "Even when you incorrectly paint me as a burdensome celebrity stalker, I am not cross. I am in a magnanimous mood, Remo. Bask in my achievement."

"Okay," Remo groaned. "I'm not gonna get any peace until I ask. What have you achieved?"

"Success," Chiun proclaimed. With one wickedly sharp fingernail he tapped the cover of the screenplay on the floor beside him. "I have written a story filled with sex and violence. Oh, it is a marvelous thing, Remo. Dinosaurs and pyrotechnics abound. One does not turn a page without coming upon a thrilling car chase or a dastardly space alien. Oh, what a wonderful day to know me. An even more glorious day to be me. You, Remo, are truly blessed."

"I feel blessed," Remo said flatly. "Slide it over." He leaned forward in his chair.

Hands a lightning blur, Chiun snapped up the screenplay, slapping it to his thin chest.

"Are you a film producer?" Hazel eyes narrowed with cunning.

"No," Remo said, exhaling loudly.

"Are you connected in any way with the motion-picture industry?"

"You're not going to let me see it, are you?"

"It is not that I do not trust you," Chiun replied. "But there are vipers in this business. Had you been more forthcoming with me about the city to which you were traveling, I might let you see a page or two. However..." His voice trailed off.

"Okay, fine." Remo accepted the refusal, falling back in his chair.

"Perhaps a single line of dialogue," Chiun offered.

"Nope. I'll wait for the movie."

"You might have to wait several months. The noble film titans Bindle and Marmelstein are deeply involved in another project at the moment."

"You cut a deal with Bindle and Marmelstein?" Remo asked, surprised.

"No contracts have yet been signed. Ideally I will be the center of a bidding war between rival studios."

"Chiun, Bindle and Marmelstein are with Taurus Studios."

The wizened Korean held aloft a fist of bone. "The mighty bull! How fitting for a pair like them. Strong, independent. They truly share the spirit of that great animal."

"The only thing Bindle and Marmelstein share with bulls is a capacity to produce endless piles of shit," Remo amended.

"You are jealous," Chiun sniffed.

"I am not jealous," Remo said.

"Yes, you are," Chiun replied. "How sad for you, Remo. The shadow cast by greatness is cold and dark indeed."

"Chiun, let me explain this to you slowly. Taurus is owned by Sultan Omay of Ebla."

"Sinanju never worked for Ebla." Chiun waved dismissively. "It is an irrelevant nation."

"Not anymore," Remo said. "The sultan only bought the studio as a front to launch a stealth invasion of America. There is no Taurus Studios. There is no movie in the works. And Bindle and Marmelstein are going to be out on their ears as soon as Smith can find a way to shut down all of Omay's shenanigans with the least amount of bloodshed."

"No film, you say?" Chiun asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow. The parchment skin near eyes and mouth flickered faint bemusement.

"Of course not," Remo replied. "It was all just a big, insane scheme."

With confident fluidity the Master of Sinanju rose to his feet. All the while he continued to hold his screenplay close to his chest like a maiden guarding her virtue.

"Come with me, O doubter," Chiun exclaimed, spinning on his heel. Embroidered peacocks dancing across the back of his brocade robe, the old Asian stomped out into the hallway.

Remo had nothing better to do. Shutting off the TV, he slowly trailed Chiun outside.

Chapter 14

Whoever in filmmaking had said to never work with children or animals had never worked with foreigners. Hank Bindle was sure of this because he was certain that if they had, they would have added Eblan extras to the list.

"Cut, cut, cut!" Bindle screamed. "Hello? Can anyone hear me? Has everyone around here suddenly gone deaf?"

He flung his megaphone to the ground in exasperation.

"I can hear you, H.B.," his assistant volunteered.

"Shut up," Bindle snapped.

They were on an outside lot at Taurus's Burbank studio. Trucked-in sand covered an entire acre of parking lot. A small oasis-one-twentieth scale-had been inserted into the sand at the rear of the lot near the Taurus water tower. The tower would be digitally erased later.

Two dozen men with camels stood haphazardly near the front edge of the makeshift desert. This appearance of randomness had taken all morning to meticulously arrange.

All of the men wore flowing robes of white. That is, all but one. This individual was dressed entirely in black. He alone sat atop one of the camels. Heavy black fabric was drawn across his mouth and nose and down over his forehead. A pair of beady eyes peeked out from amid the thick material.

As he strode over to one of the extras, Hank Bindle apologized profusely to the pair of angry eyes. "I'm so sorry, luv. Why don't you have someone get you something from craft services? And you," Bindle shouted as he turned to the extra, "can't you get that animal to stop whizzing all over my movie?"

There was a wide area of dampness in the sand beneath the camel. The creature even appeared somewhat guilty. Bindle thought it should. With seven cameras whirring from every conceivable angle at once, every inch of the dark yellow stream had been caught on film.

The Arab extra shrugged. "There is no stopping," he said, unconcerned. "They go when they must."

Bindle leaned in close to the camel. Its big nostrils breathed hotly in his face. Bindle's voice was filled with menace. "Leak on my set one more time and I will personally give you a chain-saw humpectomy. "

As if taking this as a cue, the camel behind Bindle opened up. A pungent aroma instantly filled the air as the dark liquid spattered the ground around the feet of the studio executive.

"Oh, my gawd," Hank Bindle cried as he bounded from the worst of the deluge, arms flapping in terror. "That's it! That's it! I can't take it anymore. Someone call Skywalker Ranch. I want eight dozen fully animatronic, nonpissing camels by the end of the week! I'll pay anything they want."

He stomped his feet in the parking lot. Gouts of camel urine squirted from his shoes out onto the pavement, drying instantly to vapor in the hot California sun.

To an outsider it would have looked as if Hank Bindle were doing some kind of bizarre rain dance. He was still knocking pee from his Guccis when Remo and Chiun strolled up.

"Hail, Bindle the Resourceful," Chiun announced in greeting.

Hank Bindle looked up, peeved. When he saw Remo and Chiun, his sour expression moderated somewhat.

"Oh, it's you," Bindle grumbled. "Hi."

His college-age assistant had grabbed a towel from makeup. Wobbling in on both knees, she began vigorously wiping the tops of his expensive shoes.

"Witness, Remo," Chiun intoned. "The reputation of the mighty co-king of Taurus is such that women throw themselves willingly at his feet."

"It looks more like a crummy job than hero worship, Little Father," Remo commented.

The woman switched from one shoe to the other. Hank Bindle shifted his weight accordingly.

"Is there something you two want?" Bindle asked.

"Tell my doubting son what it is you are doing," Chiun said to the executive.

"I'm trying to direct an epic motion picture, but all I'm getting is bad light and a fountain of camel piss."

Remo looked over at the mock desert scene. No camels were relieving themselves at the moment. The men stood around impatiently, waiting to resume shooting.

Remo squinted up at the man on camelback. The eyes above the black veil looked vaguely familiar. By this point the man on the camel had had enough.

"Are we gonna try this again sometime this week?" the biting voice of Tom Roberts asked from behind the veil. "I'm sweating my hump off up here."

"No, Tom, luv," Bindle said with a sigh. "Take five."

Unctuous assistants appeared out of nowhere to assist the actor down from the camel's massive furry hump. Whipping off his veil, Roberts stormed off to his trailer.

Remo turned to Bindle. "Do you actually think you're making a movie?" he asked, amazed.

"Not just any movie," Bindle said. "This is the greatest story ever told." He kicked his kneeling assistant away.

"Wasn't that the life of Christ?" Remo asked blandly.

"Who?" Hank Bindle asked. He continued before Remo could reply. "We've got the financing to make an epic. And while this minor unpleasantness is going on around town, we're the only studio up and running."

"By 'minor unpleasantness,' I assume you mean the foreign invasion," Remo said dryly.

"Hey, one man's invasion is another man's opportunity."

"Spoken like a true collaborator," Remo told him.

"Listen, we've got a lock. No one else is producing jack-shit around here. If the Arabs can hold on to Hollywood long enough, Taurus will be the only studio with a film out next summer, aside from a few rinky-dink indie productions. But who cares about them? I'm talking major motion pictures. We're it."

"Bindle, there was never a movie," Remo explained slowly. "It was just a cover."

"What are you talking about? This is the movie," Bindle said excitedly. He waved his arm expansively to include all of Hollywood. "There's drama, action, a background love story. Plus we've got stuntmen and extras who'll work for nothing." He indicated the real Arabs who were milling about the phony desert with their camels.

"You're filming the occupation?" Remo said in disbelief.

"Isn't it great?" Bindle asked with a thrilled shudder. "Sultan Omay has given his blessing. I think he wants it as some sort of vanity project, but who cares. We'll ship off a print to him and then send four thousand copies around the rest of the country. Four? Hell, eight. Eighteen. It'll be the only thing playing."

The studio executive had a demented look in his eyes as he calculated the number of screens his movie would be appearing on around the country. It was almost too mind-boggling to consider.

"What of my film?" Chiun interjected.

Bindle blinked away his distracted expression. "What?" he asked. "Oh, that. Well, your pitch made it sound pretty good," he admitted. "But I've got to admit I'm a little skeptical. No offense, Pops, but it doesn't look like you've exactly got your finger on the pulse of the average American moviegoer. Hell, it doesn't even look like you've got much of a pulse of your own."

That was it. Bindle was as good as dead. Chiun would never accept a personal insult. Particularly one directed at age. Remo waited contentedly for the Master of Sinanju to decapitate the Taurus executive.

He was shocked by Chiun's response.

"What a delightful wit you possess," the old Korean said with a polite smile.

"You think so?" Hank Bindle asked.

"It is as insightful as it is unique," Chiun continued.

"You've got to be kidding," Remo griped.

"I am the funny one of the Bindle and Marmelstein team," Bindle confided to the Master of Sinanju. He glanced across the lot, making sure his longtime partner wasn't anywhere nearby. "Bruce doesn't have much of a sense of humor. I think it comes from his hairdresser days."

"He was a hairdresser?" Remo asked.

"Hairstylist, actually," Bindle said. "That's what he always called it. At least back in the days when we were allowed to mention it. He was the hairstylist to the stars."

"That certainly qualifies him to operate a major motion-picture studio," Remo said sarcastically.

"Do not belittle the profession of coiffeuse," the Master of Sinanju scolded Remo. "It is a valuable and noble service."

"Is there any damn thing you won't say to get that movie of yours made?" Remo demanded.

Chiun considered for a moment. "No," he admitted.

"Bruce worked on some of the biggest heads in town," Bindle continued, pitching his voice low. "In fact Barbra Streisand kept him on for years." Chiun's almond-shaped eyes grew wide.

Remo glanced worriedly at his teacher. He knew that the Master of Sinanju had harbored a secret crush for the actress-singer for years. But because of some alleged personal slight, the wily old Korean had turned his affections elsewhere a long time before. Remo could see by the look in his eyes that the Master of Sinanju had never truly lost his abiding affection for the celebrity.

A single bony wrist pressed against Chiun's parchment forehead. He reeled in place.

"Be still, my heart," he exclaimed. "Remo, prepare to catch me lest I faint."

"Get bent," Remo suggested, crossing his arms. Chiun didn't even hear him. The Barbra Streisand story was what did it. He was ready to sign with Bindle and Marmelstein-the only people he could trust to do justice to his screenplay. It didn't hurt that Taurus appeared to be the only game in town. "Here," Chiun sang. He had stashed his screenplay up one sleeve of his kimono. He pulled it out now, handing it over to the executive. "Take it, great Bindle. You are a man of refinement and artistry. Make magic of it."

Hank Bindle took the script. He immediately passed it off to the assistant with the urine-stained towel.

"We'll get back to you," he said.

"Of course. Tell me," Chiun asked, voice pitched low, "does your friend and colleague, Marmelstein the Fortunate, possess a lock of the Funny Girl's golden tresses?"

Bindle didn't have time to answer. They were distracted by the whine of a jeep engine.