The Sky is Falling

"Do I have to watch again?" A voice in the darkness.

"Either all watch this or we watch our cities being destroyed, our farms becoming barren, and a slaughter that none of us who live benefiting from socialism will survive." An older voice in the dark projection room.

"It is so bloody." The first voice.

"Why not soldiers? Why do we have to see these pictures? Don't we have commandos? Judo experts?" There was silence before the film was run again. The room had a certain pressure to it, as though the very air had been squeezed in. It was not easy to breathe. It smelled of fresh linoleum and old cigarettes. There were no windows, and none of the men were even sure what part of Moscow they were in, much less which building. They had been told that no one and nothing other than they were needed. They had been taken from all over the socialist bloc and brought here to watch these films.

They were all surprised, therefore, when they were given secret information.

"No military man, no KGB expert, has been able to identify what we see here. None."

"When were these pictures shot?"

"Two days ago."

"Are you sure they are real? You know they might have gotten some Western wrestlers or gymnasts and faked all this. You know that Western technology can do wonders."

"It was photographed in Hanoi. And I was right next to the photographer. I saw it all with my own eyes."

"I am sorry, sir."

"No. Nothing to he sorry for. You are here because we don't know what this is. Nobody else who has seen these pictures can explain it. Ask any questions you wish."

"I can only speak for myself, but I have never killed anyone. I am an athletic coach, a gymnast. I recognize other leaders of our socialist sports world here. Running coaches. Weight-lifting coaches. Swimming coaches. What are we doing here? Why us? is the question I now ask."

"Because no one else has figured out what we are looking at. It is not tai kwan do, or judo, or ninja, or karate, or any of the hand-fighting techniques we are familiar with. We don't know. You know the human body. Tell us what you see."

"I see what I have never seen before."

"Look again." The picture began to roll once more and the long man took the knife wielder and, grabbing a wrist, used him like a whip, the feet being the snapping points. It could have been a ballet, the man moved with such grace, if the deaths were not so stunningly real and final.

Once the coaches knew that they were not responsible for understanding the moves, they could see small things they recognized.

"Look at the balance," said the gymnastics coach. "Beautiful. You can teach that and teach that and maybe one in a thousand learns it. But never like that."

"The concentration," noted the weight-lifting coach. "Timing," said the instructor who had broken the West's dominance of the pole vault.

Someone asked if it were a machine. The answer was no. Machines had that kind of force, but never the calculating ability to make judgments.

"He looks as though he is hardly moving. Beautiful. Beautiful." This from a skating coach. "You know that he has got the magnificent ability to know where everything is at all times."

Now the mood had been reversed. Admiration replaced horror. Some of the coaches had to restrain themselves from applauding.

Then one of them noticed something peculiar. "Look at the mouth."

"Right. Look at the mouth."

"It's puckered."

"It might be the breathing. There might be some special method of breathing that unlocks this all."

"Do the sound. Can you get a high resolution for the sound?"

"We already have," said the man beside the projection machine, and turned on the lights. He was the KGB general with the smooth face and rosebuds lips. The new general's pips glistened on his shoulders.

"Gentlemen," said General Ivan Ivanovich, sporting a new medal for combat. "The puckered lips were whistling. The tune was created by Walt Disney, an American cartoon company. It was for their cartoon picture Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The tune was a happy little melody called 'Whistle While You Work.' "

There was a deathly silence in the room as every man was reminded that they had been watching someone so very casually kill fifteen men. But one of the coaches was not deterred by the carnage. He asked for a copy of the film to use as a teaching instrument for his athletes. He did not even get an answer from the general. Another coach provided it.

"There is no one in the world we know of who could learn what we saw today."

Even better than swearing the coaches to secrecy, something that relied on their characters, young General Ivanovich had them shipped to a lush countryside dacha to wait for a few days or weeks or months, but hopefully not years. In brief, he imprisoned them.

Then he faced Zemyatin. The old man lived alone in a little Moscow apartment one could not tell was for the privileged. He had become almost friendly with the young bureaucrat who had tasted his first experience of combat. And if the young bureaucrat could forget his fear, he was even growing to like the Great One, who would just as soon have a high officer shot as light a cigarette.

When he returned from Hanoi with a tale of how the blood faces, the best killers Russia had been saving, were slaughtered like sheep, Ivanovich had been given those general's pips he had longed for. He had been told that his mission was a success, and for the first time he realized the freedom this old man offered. He was not looking to blame people. He was not looking to claim credit or escape disaster. He was looking to protect Russia.

And Ivanovich had done just that. The mission was twofold. And entirely different from the disaster in London. In London they had merely lost men. But here, they had learned something, according to the dictum of the old field marshal. You assumed the enemy was perfect until he showed you otherwise.

If the blood faces had eliminated the American agent, all well and good. But if they failed, then Ivanovich's mission with the film and the recorders was to let the man show them how they might kill him.

But even with the field marshal's praises for Ivanovich, the young general felt a bit apprehensive as he rang the doorbell. They had not yet, despite all the films and analysis, found the man's weakness.

A man roughly Zemyatin's age answered the door. He had a big pistol stuck in his floppy trousers. He had not shaved, and smelled of old vodka.

"He's having supper," said the man. Despite his age, General Ivanovich was sure that the pistol would be used more accurately and more often than any glistening automatic in a shined holster on the belt of a smart young officer.

"Who is it?" came the voice from inside.

"The boychik with the cutesy lips."

"Tell General Ivanovich to come in."

"You're eating supper," said the old man.

"Set another place."

"With knives and forks and everything?"

"Certainly. He is going to eat with us."

"I am not a boychik," said General Ivanovich, entering the apartment. "I am a general in the sword who protects the party and the people. I am forty-four years old, bodyguard."

"Do you want a saucer with your cup?" asked the old bodyguard.

"Set a whole place," came Zemyatin's voice.

"A whole place, big deal. A whole place for a pretty little boychik," said the old man, shuffling off to the kitchen.

While there were no grand Western furniture in this apartment as there was in the lush dachas outside the city for men of lesser rank than the Great One, there was enough radio and electronic machinery to staff the most advanced Russian outpost. Zemyatin always had to be informed. Otherwise, it was a simple apartment with a few books, a picture of a young woman, taken many years before, and pictures of her as she grew older. But there was that unkempt feeling in this bachelor apartment; those little things that women gave to the lives of men to create the weather of their lives was missing.

The dinner was boiled beef, potatoes, and a raw salad, with tea and sugar for dessert. The seasonings tasted like someone had just grabbed the first box off the shelf.

"I hate to tell you this," said General Ivanovich, "but we have had multi-analysis of the pictures, of the reports, of everything. We have not found a single flaw. We may be facing the one man who does not show you how to kill him."

"Eat your potatoes," said Zemyatin.

"But if you are not going to, don't mash them. He'll eat them tomorrow," said the bodyguard. "You wanted the saucer?"

"A full setting for the general," said Zemyatin.

"He may not even want tea," said the bodyguard.

"So he'll leave it," said Zemyatin.

" 'So he'll leave it,' " mimicked the bodyguard. "So I'll clean it up." He shuffled back from the bare table with the linoleum place mats into the kitchen.

"Ivan," said Zemyatin. "The reason I say we must assume that every enemy is perfect is that I am sure no one is perfect. All that has happened is that you have not found the American's flaw yet. So where, we must ask ourselves, have we been looking? This is crucial in our thinking-"

The bodyguard came back into the living room, brushing his shoulder into the conversation.

"Here is your cup. Here is your saucer," said the bodyguard. He banged the saucer down on the table.

"Thank you," said Zemyatin. "Now, Ivan, the world situation is this-"

"The glass on the saucer doesn't even have tea in it, but the pretty boychik has got himself a saucer. You want two saucers for the tea you don't have?"

"Give him tea," said Zemyatin.

"I am not sure about the tea," said General Ivanovich. "I would like to get on with this. We are dealing with a strange new element-"

"Take the tea," said Zemyatin.

"Tea," said General Ivanovich.

"He doesn't want tea. You made him take tea."

"I'll have the tea," said General Ivanovich. His bright, perfectly green uniform stood out like a shiny button in a rag factory compared to the old bathrobe Zemyatin wore, and the floppy trousers with the old lug of a pistol stuck in them that the bodyguard wore.

"Just because he tells you do to something, you don't have to do it. He pushed Russia around. Don't let him push you around."

"He is my commander," said General Ivanovich,

"Bully, bully, bully. We all get bullied by Alexei. Alexei the bully."

By the time the bodyguard got back with the steaming tea, Zemyatin had outlined the situation with brilliant simplicity. Unfortunately, the bodyguard wouldn't leave until General Ivanovich took at least one sip of the tea. It burned his tongue.

"He's not a Russian, Alexei," said the bodyguard, "He didn't put a sugar cube in his mouth."

"He's a new Russian."

"None of us are that new. He doesn't want the tea. Look."

"Would you mind if we defended Mother Russia in the midst of your dinner?" said Alexei.

"Every time you want needless saucers, we have got a national emergency," said the bodyguard.

"You are probably wondering why I keep him," said Zemyatin.

"No," said ivanovich, who was even now learning to think like the Great One. "Obviously he does the necessary things very well. You can within a doubt trust him to do certain things. In brief, sir, he does work."

"Good. Now, this killer they have. We don't know his flaw yet. All right. Good. Let's put that aside for just a moment. I don't care whether we kill him or not. A few men here or there does not matter."

"There is something else," Zemyatin continued. "The Americans have a weapon we are interested in."

"Would you identify it for me?"

"No," said Zemyatin. "But they were testing it in London, when this man appeared on the scene to snatch away our one lead to it. This extraordinary man. This man whom we don't know how to kill yet. Then he turns up in a South American country. Then he turns up in Hanoi. Why?"

General Ivanovich knew from the way the older man spoke that he was not supposed to answer this. "Because, as we gather from reports now coming in, he is looking for the same weapon."

"Is it possible they don't have the weapon? Maybe the British have the weapon."

"Logical, but we know everything the British have. We know all their layers of counterintelligence. Now I have told you more than I wanted about other departments. No matter. We must ask ourselves, why are they committing this weapon? As a deception?"

"If it were anyone other than the one I have seen," said Ivanovich, "I would say snatch him and get the information from him."

"What we are seeing on almost every level is an America far more cunning than we ever thought possible. Could I have misjudged, and is there another explanation for all this? I ask because we are approaching a point from where there is no return. A major decision awaits. It will be like a bullet that cannot be recalled. The world will never be the same. Our world. Their world. Never the same."

General Ivanovich thought a moment. "I'll tell you, sir, that before those pictures, before seeing what I have seen both through my own eyes and through the eyes of experts, I would have said yes, you are misjudging the Americans. I had never seen anything the Americans had done, outside of electronics, that would justify our respect."

"And now?"

"And now I know of a man ... a killing machine whose chin can dislodge the neck vertebrae of another human being. We have tried to put him down twice. And he appears twice. Is he new? Did he come just this month from nowhere? No. He has been around."

"Right," said Zemyatin. "But strangely, they are sending him after this thing we believe they have."

"If they are still looking for it, do they have it?" asked the general.

"Ah," said Zemyatin. "The Americans who never hid things that well before would ordinarily not hide things that well now. But look at this killer they had hidden so well. Who does he work for? We don't know. So they are smarter than we think. What a great deception to make one think one does not have the weapon until it is used, or tested some more."

"The question is, Comrade Field Marshal, are the Americans that cunning?"

"An enemy is perfect until he shows you how to kill him. I never thought we would see the day when I am hearing about one human being who is perfect. There must be something we do not know."

Ivanovich had an idea. His desk had been bothered, of late most intensely, by offers of the North Korean allies to perform services in the international arena. Before devoting all his time to the field marshal, Ivanovich had handled these diplomatic requests himself. Now he had shunted them off to a subordinate.

"Our friends in Pyongyang want to provide a service. They say that we insult them by not making them full partners in the socialist struggle. They have had some success recently and of course have trumpeted it to us. Why not use them on this American?"

"Throwing another piece of dung," said Zemyatin. "What could they possibly have that we don't have? The random purposeless killing for which they have an appetite interests me not at all."

"They have succeeded in killing an SDEC director, a man we couldn't even locate. And now, as a gift of pride, they are going to give us the pope himself. No more meddling in our western Polish border. The pope. The SDEC director dead and the pope about to be dead."

"Let me tell you about the Koreans. There is a saying that when one brings a Korean to wield a knife, one hires not a servant but a master. It's true. Never trust a Korean assassin."

"I am not saying trust."

"This is something you might not know, boychik, but it is an ancient saying. The czars tasted the bitterness. One of the first things we did was to get their records. I was the one who made the decision to employ some of the czar's best policemen. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Mother Russia used special Koreans extensively. Do you know who got killed as often as a czar's enemy? The czar. There is a saying in this country that nothing comes out of Korea but your own death. No to Koreans. No. Never. I say it. The czars before us said it. And our grandchildren will say it."

General Ivanovich snapped to attention while sitting. His back became straight, his heels touched, his chin lifted to level, and Zemyatin knew the young man was afraid again. But the old field marshal had not said this to instill fear. It was something he had trusted over the years, an order he had given when the KGB first began using satellites. Use anyone but a Korean. The KGB had followed it blindly like good bureaucrats.

One of the electronic consoles beeped, and the old bodyguard shuffled over and quickly had it going.

Ivanovich looked back at Zemyatin, the Great One, who gave a small nod. The young general understood that there had been a question as to whether this information could be shared with him in the room. Without even a spoken answer, the field marshal's shrug indicated the exact level of information that was allowed to be discussed with the general present:

"They have fired it again," said the old bodyguard.

"Where?" said Zemyatin.

"Egyptian Sahara. An area of one hundred square kilometers. Our people are there already and risking quite a bit to get us the information. The Egyptians work closely with the Americans."

"One hundred square kilometers. That's an area any army would occupy. An entire army."

"And fired in a single second."

"That is their last test. Their last. No more testing. What would they have to test for?" said Zemyatin.

"Is this the weapon the American is protecting?" asked the young KGB general.

Zemyatin dismissed the question with a hand. The old man thought awhile, his face becoming even older, more grave. Lines of death showed. The eyes seemed to be looking into hell.

Finally, the younger man asked:

"What is our next step toward their special person? Should we accelerate some tracking operation on him at this point?"

"What?" said Zemyatin as though coming out of a sleep.

"The American."

The bodyguard touched the clean crisp general's uniform. "Leave," he said. The American was of no importance now.

Shortly thereafter reports came in of two more firings in the area. On a map it clearly showed that in a strip of Egyptian desert equal to the size of the Balkans, Russia's soft underbelly, the sand had come under such intense solar heat that it had fused into a hard, slick, slippery surface not unlike glass.

To Zemyatin it was clear why they had chosen the Sahara. The transformation of the sand to glass was the one instant effect observable from a satellite. The Americans could, as he was doing now, plot the range of their weapon. All they would have to do was recalibrate, and lay Russia defenseless. There would be no more tests. The attack, he was sadly sure, could come at any moment. It was time to launch his own. In this moment, Alexei Zemyatin, the man who had only wanted to be a good butler as a boy, would show his true military genius.

He ordered the Premier to immediately inform the Americans that Russia would now share information about the fluorocarbon beam that could harm them all. He did this by telephone because it was faster.

"Tell them there have been certain effects on the missiles. Just certain effects. Do not tell that the missiles are or are not destroyed. Certain effects."

"But, Alexei . . ."

"Shhh," said Zemyatin. It had been suspected but not yet proven that the Americans could bug any telephone line in the world from outer space. "Do it. Do it now. Have it done by the time I get there. Yes?"

His bodyguard noted that the young general had not drunk his tea.

Zemyatin was driven by another old bodyguard to the Premier's dacha. The weather was crisp and hard and there were many soldiers outside. They stood in greatcoats and shiny boots looking formidable. Alexei was still in his bathrobe.

He walked through the soldiers outside, and through the officers inside, and nodded the Premier into the back room. The Premier wanted to take some generals with him.

"If you do I'll have them shot," said Zemyatin.

The Premier tried to pretend he had never been so lavishly insulted in front of his own military. Zemyatin had never done this before. Why he was starting now, the Premier did not know. But there were certain formalities that should be observed.

"Alexei, you cannot do this to me. You cannot do this to the leader of your country."

Zemyatin did not sit. "Did you contact the Americans?"

"Yes. They are sending their Mr. Pease back again."

"Good. When?"

"They seem to be as nervous about this as they say we should be."

"When will he be here?"

"Fifteen hours."

"All right, we will have some technical people add to what we know to stretch out our information. Figure eight hours for the first conference, then we all sleep. That should get us another twelve hours. We will stretch this for two days, forty-eight hours. Good."

"Why do we give them faulty information for forty-eight hours?"

"Not faulty. We just won't give them the fact that their beam totally destroys the electronics in our missiles until the second session, and in that session we keep them locked up with us until the forty-eighth hour has passed."

"Why, are we giving them the truth about our missiles being useless?"

"Because, my dear Premier, it is the one thing they don't have yet," said Zemyatin. "Look. At this moment they have everything they need to launch an attack with this weapon and do it successfully. Everything. We would be through. They could sit in Moscow tomorrow and you could throw stones at them."

"So why give them the last thing they do not know?"

"Because it is the only thing for which they might delay. The only thing they need now is absolute assurance that our missiles-not their own, which I am sure they have tested this weapon on-but ours, do not work when hit by the unfiltered sun's rays. They will delay because we will give ourselves up on a silver platter."

"Do we want to do that?"

"No. What we have done is past the point of no return. While they are delaying for the last thing they need, our new missiles will go off."

"You mean in two days?"

"Within two days."

"When exactly?"

"You do not need to know. Just talk peace," said Zemyatin. He did not, of course, trust the head of the Russian government with this information now that the top bureaucrat had given him permission to launch the missiles in their very building. That was the reason for the time data given to every commander who perilously trucked the huge cumbersome death machines into the new Siberian sites. Alexei Zemyatin did not trust all of them to fire at once, given a sudden order. The trigger on the gun had already been pulled. Two days from now the holocaust would come out of its barrel.

In Washington, McDonald "Hal" Pease was told that the Russians were willing to share secrets now. They had realized that they shared a fragile planet with the rest of the human race.

"I'll believe it when I see it," said Pease.

Chapter 16

If there was a remote chance that Alexei Zemyatin might call off the attack on the suspicion that America might not itself be really planning its own attack, a simple cassette would smother that faint suspicion with brutal finality. Actually there were twenty little cassettes in a cheap plastic case with a colorful brochure. The packages cost three dollars each to manufacture, and sold for eight hundred.

They promised to bring out the leadership potential in every man. What they did was hypnotize people into ignoring reality. On his steady corporate rise Reemer Bolt had bought many such self-fulfillment programs. Their basic message was that there was no such thing as failure.

There were facts and there were conclusions. One had to separate them. When Reemer Bolt looked at a field of useless cars, it was not a fact that he was ruined, his cassette program told him. The fact was that fifty cars had been ruined. The fact was that he had notched his company one step closer to ruination. But Reemer Bolt himself was not ruined.

Look at Thomas Fdison, who, when he had failed in ninety-nine different ways to make a light bulb, said he had not failed. He had really discovered ninety-nine ways not to make a light bulb on his sunny road to success.

Look at General George Patton, who had never let ideas of failure bother him.

Look at Pismo Mellweather, who had produced the cassette tapes. Mellweather was a millionaire many times over, even though he'd been told as a child he would never amount to much. Teachers had even called him a swindler. He had spent time in jail for extortion and embezzlement. But now he had homes in several states because he had dared to face his own self-worth. The key to succeeding was not succumbing to the false notion that you had failed in some way.

Failure, the tape said, was a state of mind just like success. One only had to accept the fact that one was a winner and one would become a winner. Pismo Mellweather had sold three hundred thousand of these cassette programs with the astronomical markup, and had made himself a success for life.

Reemer Bolt had bought one of those programs and had listened to it so many times that at moments of despair he would even hear Pismo Mellweather's voice. And so while he now looked at a field of disaster, by nightfall he was able to see the car experiment not as a failure, but as just another way the miracle device should not be used.

"Reemer," he was told by an assistant, "we blew it."

"Little men blow things. Big men create success from what others call disasters."

"You can't manufacture anything with an electronic part in it," said the assistant. "You can't use the rays here in the world. The world is electronic. Good-bye. Good night. Do you have the employment section of the paper?"

"No," said Bolt, with the gleam of a true believer in his eyes. "We have discovered that we must manufacture nonelectronic products."

Many products were not electronic, the assistant pointed out, but none of them lent themselves to cheaper manufacture by exposure to the unfiltered rays of the sun.

Bolt's leadership kit solved that problem. Its message was that every problem had a solution if only a person unlocked his leadership power through a simple and tried method. One should think about a subject very hard, the tape advised, and then put it out of one's mind and go to sleep. In the morning, the answer would come.

In this hour of trial for Reemer Bolt, he did just that and the answer did come to him in the morning.

An assistant phoned him with a suggestion. Heated sand made glass. Glass was not electronic. Glass was still used. Why not make glass at the source? Undercut the price of even an Oriental laborer.

Thus was conceived the experiment that convinced a nuclear power that it was going to be attacked. The Sahara was chosen because it had the most sand. If the process worked, you only had to send your trucks out to the desert with a glass cutter and haul back the cheapest and perhaps the most perfect glass in the world.

"Why most perfect?" Reemer Bolt was asked.

"I don't know. It sounds good," he said. When the results came in he was so ecstatic he called a meeting of the board to announce an even greater breakthrough. Indeed, the initial survey showed that the glass was perhaps as clear as anything this side of a camera lens. And they had just made several hundred square miles of it. They could produce a million square miles of perfect glass every year. Forever.

"Forever," screamed Bolt in the boardroom of Chemical Concepts of Massachusetts, Inc. And then, in case anyone with a remaining eardrum had not heard him, he yelled again. "Forever."

"Reemer," said the chairman of the board, "what happened to that wonderful car-painting procedure?"

"A minor problem, sir. We are going to wait for that to come to its full fruition. Right now I am going to get us all our money back and then some. Once that is done we'll push ahead with the car-painting process."

Several of the members were puzzled. No one seemed to be agreeing.

"I will tell you why I asked," said the chairman of the board. "While the glass concept is good, by creating several hundred square miles of glass in Egypt you have just ruined the glass market for the next sixty-five years according to my calculations."

"Can we cut the price?"

"If they don't need as much as you have put on the market, you already have. No profit from cheap glass."

"I see," said Bolt. He felt something strange and warm running down his pants leg.

"Reemer, have you just wet your pants?" asked the chairman of the board.

"No," said Bolt with all the enthusiasm of a man who understood his leadership potential. "I have just discovered a way not to go to the bathroom."

It was a night of exhaustion. Delirious, delicious exhaustion, with every passionate nerve aroused and then contented.

That was before Kathy made love to Remo. That was in Hanoi, going from one government office to another. From one military base to another. That was in the dark alleys while a city went mad searching for the killer among them.

Several times the police would have gone right by if Kathy hadn't knocked over something. And then she saw them come against this wonderful, magnificent, perfect human being, and die. Sometimes their bones cracked. Sometimes death was as silent as the far edge of space. Other times, those special times when they came roaring down upon them, the bodies would go one way and the heads would go another.

It was before dawn when Remo said, "It's not here. They don't know where it is."

"That's too bad," said Kathy.

"Then why do you have that silly grin on your face?" asked Remo.

"No reason," purred Kathy. She nestled into his arm. It didn't feel very muscular. "Are you tired?"

"I'm puzzled. These people don't know where the fluorocarbon thing is. They never heard of it."

"That's their problem."

"What else do you remember about it?"

"Just that awful man in San Gauta."

"I dunno," said Remo. They were in a warehouse marked "People's Hospital." It had been labeled that way during the Vietnam war so that when the Americans bombed the warehouses they could be accused of bombing hospitals. The reporters never mentioned that it stored rifles, not wounded.

It still stored weapons, Remo and Kathy saw, but now they were for battles in Cambodia or on the China border.

So much for the peace everyone had predicted if America left.

"Are you ready to move?" asked Remo.

"No. Let's just stay here tonight. You and me." She kissed his ear.

"Are you tired?"

"Yes, very."

"I'll carry you," said Remo.

"I'll walk. How are we going to get out of here? We're white. It's a police state. Are we going to walk out through Indochina? That will take months."

"We'll go out through the airport."

"I know you can get us through any guard, but they'll shoot down any plane you get to. There are no alleys to hide in. It's flat. You might make it somehow, but I'll die," said Kathy. She was still wearing the suit and blouse she had arrived in. The shoulder was ripped, but she felt this only made her sexier. She knew her own deep satisfaction had to be sending out signals to this man, making him desirable as well. After all, hadn't he suddenly taken her here into this warehouse when the killing was over?

"Would you mind if I died?" asked Kathy. She wondered if she were acting like a little girl. She grinned coyly when she said this.

"Sure," said Remo. She was the only one who knew anything about this mysterious device that could end life on earth.

"Do you mean it?" She hated herself for asking that question. She'd never thought she would. She'd never thought she would feel like all the other girls in school had felt, giggly all over, fishing for any little compliment from the man she loved.

"Sure," said Remo. "Don't worry about the airport. People only see what they're trained to see."

"You can make us invisible?"

"No. People don't look."

"I thought Orientals were more sensitive to their surroundings."

"Only compared to whites. They don't see either."

She was amazed at how simple and logical it all was, so natural. The human eye noticed what startled it, what was different. It noticed what it was supposed to notice. The mind didn't even know what it saw. People thought they recognized others by their faces, when actually they recognized them by their walk and size and only confirmed the identification by face.

This Kathy knew from reading. The way Remo explained it, it sounded more mystical but still logical. He said the mind was lazy, and while the eye really saw everything, the mind filtered out things. It filtered out twenty men and blurred the message into a marching column. Remo and Kathy easily joined a line of marching guards, and by being part of the mass, just moved with it. If she had dared, she would have moved her head to look into the faces and see them actually staring through her and Remo. But Remo had told her to listen to her own breathing and stay with him. That way she would remain part of the natural mass of the moving column. He told her to think of his presence.

For Dr. Kathleen O'Donnell that was easy. She was ready to stay with this man forever. She listened to her breathing as she sensed the choking odor of burning jet fuel and felt the ground tremble with the big engines revving up. She knew she was boarding an airplane because she was climbing up. But the miraculous thing was that she did not feel as though she were climbing.

Then they were in the aisle and there was a fuss over seats. The problem was that two other people did not have seats. They did not have seats because she and Remo were sitting in them. Remo settled it by showing the others two seats even the flight attendants weren't aware of in the back. The people didn't return.

"Where did you put them?" she whispered.

"They're okay," said Remo.

When the flight was airborne it was discovered that a stockbroker and a tax lawyer had been stuffed into the lavatory seats.

It was a British airplane. They had to find someone who could determine what had gone wrong, why there were two extra people for seats that did not exist when the extra people had tickets.

Since there was a new labor contract with the British airline, a crew member who was also practiced as a mediator took charge. Remo and Kathy sat comfortably all the way across the massive Pacific to San Francisco. By the end of that flight, the mediator had formed a committee to establish who should be blamed for the failure to provide seats. The stockbroker and the tax lawyer stood the whole way, massaging where they had been pressed into the lavatory.

At the airport, Remo dialed Smith's special number. "It ain't there, Smutty," said Remo. "Not even remotely there."

"We have found one in the Northeast but we can't locate it. I am sure the Russians are going to attack. I am alone in this, Remo, but I know I am right."

"What do you want me to do, Smitty?"

"We have got to make the Russians trust us."

"Do they trust anyone?"

"They think we are behind the fluorocarbon beam. They are sure of it. They are sure we are using the beam to destroy them."

"That doesn't sound like they are going to trust us."

"They may, if we do something."

"What?"

"Stay there. Right on that line."

Kathy waited contentedly by the baggage-return racks. Every once in a while she blew Remo a kiss. Men glanced at her longingly. They always did that. She had never met a man she couldn't have if he liked women. But she had never met a man until this one whom she wanted. "Wanted" was too weak a word. This was a man who was like air to her lungs and blood to her cells. This man was hers, part of her, beyond separation.

She blew him another kiss. She knew her clothes were dirty by now. She was penniless. She had lost the sole of one shoe in Hanoi. Her undergarments had ceased to be comfortable in San Gauta. And she did not care. Kathleen O'Donnell, whose dress had been regal armor all her professional life, did not care. She had everything she needed, especially for her secret desires.

Her only thought at that moment was whether Remo wanted children. He had mentioned something about his friend wanting him to get married and have children. Kathy could give him children. She could give him everything. And more.

She wanted to trot over and kiss him. She wondered what people would say if he took her right there on the baggage rack. Would she mind? She would enjoy it, of course. But she wondered if she would mind what people would think.

No, there was only one person whose opinion she cared about, and that one person was no longer herself. He had just hung up the telephone and was coming over to her. "You need money or anything?"

"No. I don't need anything, Remo," said Kathy. "It's strange, I used to think I needed things before. But I don't now. I have everything."

"Good," said Remo. " 'Cause I'm leaving."

Kathy giggled. "I love your sense of humor."

"Bye," said Rerno.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm leaving," said Remo. "Gotta go. Business."

"Where?" said Kathy, suddenly realizing that he was actually leaving her. She shivered under the shock, her hands tight and trembling.

"Gonna save the world, sweetheart. So long," said Remo.

"What about saving the world from the destruction of the ozone shield? That's saving the world."

"That's number two. Disasters nowadays have to wait in line."

"How can it be number two? It can make the entire world unlivable."

"Not right away," said Remo. He gave her a kiss on the cheek and headed for an Aeroflot office. The way Smith had set this up, there was a chance, a fair chance, that even Sinanju might fail. In his effort to save the country, he had all but told Russia that he was sending a man in.

"Thanks a lot," Remo had said when he heard the plan the President of the United States had approved. "But how do you expect me to come out of this alive?"

"You can do anything, it seems, Remo."

"Except what you set up for me. You're going to get me killed."

"We have to risk that."

"Thanks."

"Look, Remo. If you don't make it, none of us will make it."

"Then kiss your bippee good-bye."

"You'll make it, Remo," said Smith.

Remo had given a little laugh and hung up. That was before he kissed Kathy good-bye and before he went to the Aeroflot office. He had looked at a picture of the crude Aeroflot jet, remembered how many men Russia was willing to lose in the Second World War, and then slowly backed away. Very slowly. He could not use that plane.

Dr. Kathleen O'Donnell watched Remo leave. She waited, believing that he would return. She told herself that he was playing a joke on her, a cruel joke. He would come back and she would insist that he never play that joke on her again.

Do anything he wanted to her, she would plead, but not that. Never leave her like that again. Several men stopped to talk to her, seeing she was alone. A few pimps at the airport offered her work.

When she let out a scream that halted everyone at the baggage racks, she acknowledged that he had done it. He had actually left her.

Someone tried to quiet her. She poked her nails into his eyes. Airport police came running. She poked them, too. They wrestled her into a straitjacket. Someone gave her a sedative. With the chemicals heavily drugging her mind, she felt only a roaring, all-consuming hate. Even drugged, she was planning her revenge.

Someone found her passport on her body. They wondered how she had just gotten a British entry stamp, without the debarkation stamp from their customs.

She told them a story. She told them several stories. She got Reemer Bolt on the telephone. Bolt's voice cracked as he was trying to explain that everything was not lost.

Kathy told him to contact the lawyers of Chemical Concepts of Massachusetts. She told him to contact her banker. She told him how much money to wire. She told him to get her out of there. She told him the magic words: "Everything is going to be all right, Reemer."

"Of course, but how?"

"I am taking over," she said.

"Your project? Your responsibility?"

"Of course, Reemer."

"You are the most wonderful woman in the world," said Reemer Bolt, realizing there was a way out of this mess.

Thus when the technicians started complaining later that day that Dr. D'Donnell was going to destroy the world, Reemer Bolt had little sympathy for them.

Kathy, returning on the first flight back east, had stormed into Chemical Concepts of Massachusetts and, without even a change of clothes, begun ordering the technicians around.

Bolt happily endorsed everything. But soon the technicians began sneaking out of the beam generator station with tales of what was going on.

"Mr. Bolt, did you know that she has placed a locked wide arc on the beam?"

"No. Frankly, I don't care," said Bolt. "It's Dr. O'Donnell's project, and what she does with it is her business. I tried to save it with marketing directions, but I don't know if I can do anything now."

Then another technician entered Reemer Bolt's office. "Did you know she is building a second beam generator?"

"Thank you for telling me," said Bolt, and promptly began preparing a memo from him to Kathy with another copy to the board of directors. That memo would suggest that they first make one beam generator feasible before they invest in another.

All the technicians came in on the next one:

"Did you know that she is doing a central eclipse with a locked perpendicular arc on the second generator?"

"No, I didn't," said Bolt with great thoughtfulness. "But I do resent your coming to me with tales about another officer of this corporation. Underhandedness is not the way Reemer Bolt likes to do business."

"Well, for one thing, if she turns on that second generator, none of us is going to be able to get out alive."

"What about the radiation suits?"

"They're only good for standing near it. And the arc she's going to set up for that second one can wipe out all life from here to Boston."

"Keep up the good work," said Bolt, who immediately set about establishing a Rhode Island branch of the corporation, something he was going to have to do before she turned on the second beam.

In the laboratories Kathy O'Donnell heard all the complaints. The technicians' objections became increasingly shrill. And she cared not a whit for any of these people. She hardly even heard them. She didn't even enjoy the obvious suffering of one of the technicians as he described the horror she could inflict on the world with these changes and additions to the program.

Kathy O'Donnell did not care. Remo had left her.

Everyone was going to pay for it, especially Remo.

Chapter 17

Ironically, it was Chiun's understanding of Russia that might get Remo killed. Smith had no choice. That was the horror of these great events. Everyone was really helpless to do anything but try to avoid the megadeaths they all faced.

Smith had wanted Chiun to penetrate Russia. Even now he would rather have launched Chiun into Russia than Remo. But Remo was all he had. No one knew where Chiun was or what he was doing. Smith reviewed what Chiun knew about Russia. Smith had made the correct move. The rest of the government was wrong.

Chiun, in some strange way, read the Russians like children read comic books. It was all clear to him. Every move that seemed baffling and threatening to the West was like a colorful, unmistakably simple design to Chiun.

"Russia is not an enigma wrapped in a riddle. You are the enigma wrapped in the riddle so that simple imperial logic seems strange." Smith rarely understood the Master of Sinanju.

Chiun, of course, did not approve of wars, cold or warm, because the art of the assassin in such a conflict was always replaced by hordes of amateurs. Wars were also unjust, especially the modern ones among conscripts, because "your eighteen year olds die instead of your kings and generals." The implication was that if an assassin were hired instead of an army, justice, not mass murder, would be done.

What Chiun had seen so simply, and what had at last explained that the world had little time left, was the Russian manner of fighting. He had explained it in terms of ying and yang, fear and not-fear, strength and not-strength. It was, in brief, Oriental mishmash. Except Chiun always seemed to be able to tell what Russia would do when he was asked.

So Smith himself had taken all Chiun's ideas on Russia and translated them into mathematics, a subject he knew well. It was called the Russian mode. He had done it for himself, and had once offered it to the government but was refused. Frankly, Smith couldn't blame them because many of the terms to feed into the formula were things like "face" and "spine."

"Face" was what the Russians showed you and "spine" was what they were really doing. As in the body, the spine showed where everything was really going. The face could look anywhere. But the spine was where a person was. And so when this latest incident had begun, Smith had fed the moves of the "face" into the Russian mode designed from Chiun's mystical formulas. They actually weren't so mystical if you read everything as a never-ending fight for life. Sometimes the Russians were stupid. But more often than not they were brilliant.

It was Chiun's formula that had first suggested a possible link between the opening of the ozone shield and the building of the irresponsibly dangerous new missiles. The link was fear. And every move America made only worsened that fear, because the Russians believed, had to believe, according to Chiun's explanation, that America had a weapon that could easily destroy them and was planning to use it.

Chiun's formula said that when the Russians built their first-strike missiles they already felt that all other armor might be or was definitely useless.

The trust of mutual terror that had kept the countries in a nuclear stalemate had been broken because Russia was sure that America was about to win it all. That's where Russia's spine really was.

The face showed hostility. The spine showed fear. When the American special negotiator went to Russia with a gift of showing defenses as food faith, it had only confirmed that America had something so strong it would make ordinary Russian missiles useless. Spine.

When Russia invited the special negotiator back, it wanted to show peace by its willingness now to share the reports on the damage done to Russian missiles by exposure of electronics to unfiltered sun. The face was reasonable. The spine, according to Chiun's formula, showed they had really decided on war.

All of this became ice clear with the last Russian move, the suddenly reasonable face after hostility. The last Russian move unmistakably completed the entire formula. They were going to use those new missiles soon. A day maybe, two days, and they would be on their way.

There was no way to explain this to a harried President because the unmathematical translation was that after strong bitterness, sudden sweet was the sign of the steel spine. America could not launch a nuclear war because Smith had seen a computer translate a mathematical formula back into a term called "steel spine."

But if there was hopelessness on one hand, there was a chance on the other. If Chiun's understanding was correct, and Smith was sure it was, there was one way to show Russia that opening the ozone shield was not an American weapon.

America had one slim chance before the missiles went, probably from both sides. The opportunity to prove that the machine that destroyed the ozone shield was not an American weapon was gone. What they had to do now was show they had a greater weapon that they did not use.

To be brief and Western about it, America had to show the Russians that anytime they wanted to, they could take apart the Russian government, but had chosen not to do so.

America's word was not good enough for that. America had to do it for the benefit of the person who really ran Russia. The negotiator had indicated that there was another person behind the Russian Premier because the Premier had run out of the room and come back with a different answer. This was not a surprise because the Premier was the face. It was the spine that was hidden. The spine ran Russia.

When McDonald Pease had returned to Russia for the supposed cooperation, Smith had asked for and received permission to include a special message. It read:

"To whoever really runs your defenses: We know we cannot prove to you that we do not open up the skies with a secret weapon. So be it. But know this as a sign of our intentions not to conquer you: at any time we wish, we could take apart your Politburo and make your leaders prisoners in their own land. But we have chosen not to do so. Why? Because we really do not wish to conquer you. The weapon is just one man." And then there was a brief description of Remo so they would know where all the hell came from, and that his was really a peace move, not a search-and-destroy mission in the heart of Moscow.

Smith had told the Russians Remo was coming. He had taken away what was perhaps Remo's most valuable protection: surprise.

And Remo accepted this with a wisecracking thanks. But Remo's signal was ringing now.

"I can't take the Aeroflot," said Remo.

"Why not?"

"If you were expecting some sort of superweapon and you were willing to get thousands of your people killed just to win a war, wouldn't you shoot down the plane that brought him in?"

"We'll fly you over at high altitude," said Smith. "But the parachute won't work from that far up."

"I'll work it."

"Remo, I know you know what this means. And you know I am not sentimental. But good luck."

"You're going to get me killed and the big-deal emotional pitch is 'good luck'?" said Remo. "Don't break down in tears all at once."

The last flight allowed to land at Moscow carried the American McDonald Pease. Shortly thereafter, the airdefense command received a strange order. No flight was allowed to land, including Russia's own civilian aircraft.

Any flight that did not attempt to land was to be shot down immediately, no matter who was on board.

In the whole tragic business, Alexei Zemyatin had one bright note.

"They have finally showed us the flaw in the perfect enemy," he said, showing young General Ivanovich, KGB, the note from the American peace mission. The old field marshal knew this sharp young man whom he had been training to think had connected the major problem of war with the minor one of this single agent. That there was going to be a nuclear war within forty-eight hours he did not tell Ivanovich, who did not have to know about it at this point. The young general already had more facts than Zemyatin liked to trust any single person with. He showed Ivanovich the note brought by the special American envoy, McDonald Pease.

"So the man himself was the awesome weapon. That explains it. So America means peace," said Ivanovich.

"No, of course not. They want us to delay because they want to figure out a way to finish us off. Apparently someone over there has seen through our agreement to negotiate, and is willing to sacrifice this 'weapon.' "

"Are you sure?"

"As sure as I can be," said Zemyatin. They were in his apartment. Zemyatin had a cup of brandy and had poured one for the general. The bodyguard was asleep, snoring loudly.

"They sacrifice the lesser weapon to protect the greater."

"Unless, of course, what they say is true."

"No. They have sent that man to his death. We know he has incredible speed. He has incredible strength. But he is one man. Maybe he can dodge one bullet, but he cannot dodge a thousand. He is one man and he has shown us his flaw. We have films of him. A sergeant could figure out what to do," said Zemyatin.

Ivanovich's face had lost its smoothness. His eyes narrowed. "Yes, we will kill him, because he is one man. But what is his flaw?"

Zemyatin swirled the brandy around in the teacup. The years, the dead, the wars, had left him tired, tired beyond his years.

"His flaw is his commanders. They have sent him to us on a platter. And if they are that kind, we will eat from it. There will be much death in the coming days. It would be nice, boychik, if the world were butlers and pantries, yes?"

Then they toasted each other, draining the imported brandy and putting their cups down on the table. There was work to be done and the drinking was over.

The bodyguard was awakened by a message from the Kremlin neizatiators that the American McDonald Pease had just discovered he was a prisoner, and that they were not really negotiating. Pease was giving them an alternative.

"Shoot me or let me go. And you'd better shoot me because I'm leaving,"

"All right," said Zemyatin. "Give him what he wants." A guard and an officer entered the negotiating chambers. The guard put a bullet into the brain of AMcDonald Pease and left him in the locked room with the Americans, who suddenly lost any possible hope that the Russians were interested in peace. Pease's body was left where it was to remind the Americans not to try to escape to their embassy.

They all remembered what Pease had said on the plane coming over:

"I long for the day when it will be a crime in the world to shoot an American. When people know they are going to be punished good if they mess us over."

The Russian missile command spotted the American plane first, high above missile range. It was the familiar CIA recon plane, but this time it dropped a load-too small for a nuclear bomb, however. It appeared to be a stick, roughly six feet long, and two and a half feet wide. Five miles up, everyone at radar control realized it was a person.

"That's the one," said a staff officer. "Got to be him." The whole defense structure of the city was waiting for him. No one knew, of course, why everyone should be so anxious to kill one person, but the rewards were going to be great. It was hoped, but not demanded, that his head would be intact for identification purposes.

"Shoot when the parachute opens," came the order. KGB cars were dispatched to retrieve what was left of the corpse. As backups, local police units were also alerted to pick up the body. Both groups had orders, if the person was still alive, to finish him off carefully.

At four miles up, the order to hold fire was given. At three, then two miles, there was muttering about firing so low in the city. He might slip out.

At two hundred feet there was only a puzzled chuckle of contempt. There was no need to fire. The parachute wouldn't have time to open at the speed the man was falling. Hopefully, some skin would be left intact so that he could be identified.

The radar did not pick up a sudden jerk of the body at 120 feet. Remo had pulled the ripcord.

If he'd had time to think about it, he probably would have gotten himself killed. He never intended it to float him down like a normal chutist. That would have given him too much time up in the air being hung out for bullets.

Remo simply broke his fall with the parachute. He did that by slowing his descent to the speed of a drop off a ten-story building. He met the earth with his center in control. He met the earth moving. He knew certain places in the city where the men he wanted would be.

The parachute was found within four minutes of Remo's landing.

General Ivanovich, in charge of this elimination, was informed immediately. He had bunkered down at 2 Dzerzhinsky Square in his old KGB office.

There was no body attached to the chute. Ivanovich made a note: "Possible decoy?" If so, where was the body? On the other hand, he himself had seen what this man had done in Hanoi. It was possible that the American had such good control of his body that he could survive a fall that would kill others. Not, of course, a fall from five miles up. But a lesser one.

"Was the parachute opened?" asked Ivanovich.

"Yes, it was, Comrade General, but at two hundred feet . . ."

Ivanovich hung up. All right, the American had landed alive. But they were ready for him. They had been given special orders for this very special single person. The blood faces had shown which tactics were useless. Now all personnel were told never to wait for a clear field of fire, but just to fire, filling the entire area with flame and bullets. One could not expect to hit this man aiming. Blanketing was the only answer.

It was 11:15 P.M. Moscow time. By 11:30 there was a report from the Rossiya Hotel that the entire top floor of the building had been penetrated. The top floor was allocated to the director of state information, who was hysterical and accusatory.

The Rossiya was the finest hotel in Moscow.

"General. Your men attracted him. He got through your men. He got through my men. Stop him. This is Moscow. Stop him."

"What did he do?"

"He made a mockery of your men. Not a scratch on them or him."

"Did he do anything to you?"

"He created lies."

"What lies?"

"I am in charge of truth. I give no credence to anything Americans say."

"So you spoke with him. You know he's an American. What lies are you talking about?"

"Under duress I was forced to sign a statement which is an obvious lie."

"What was the lie?"

"That we are defenseless against him, and that I would be a dead man if I didn't sign. And you know, he was right. "

"Thank you, director," said Ivanovich.

At the apartment house atop Lenin Hills, overlooking Moscow on Verobyevskoye Way, the supreme commander of the KGB refused to sign any paper. He paid for it with his ribs. They were torn out of his body.

Again, none of the officers or enlisted men guarding him was hurt.

Report:

"We only knew he was in the apartment complex when the body was discovered."

Report:

Dacha near Kaluga just outside of Moscow invaded. Again, none of the enlisted men injured. Admiral murdered for strangest reason. Did not write fast enough.

Report:

Minister of Defense crushed to death in the Kremlin complex while eating a light snack of cheese and crackers.

And so on through the night. Through every secured place, into every trap. Occasionally the guards saw someone enter and got off a few rounds. It was hoped that by morning, this invader would be more vulnerable. But in the morning, the crushing truth came home.

The Premier's complex had not only been successfully invaded in daylight, but the Premier had written out several prayers and promised, in writing, to build a shrine to the gods of a small fishing village in North Korea. The invader was now waiting to speak to "the guy who really runs things."

"You win," said Ivanovich. He notified Zemyatin. They had failed. They had not found the flaw.

"This person-this thing-has taken apart our government."

"I will talk with him," said Zemyatin. "Tell him where I live."

"Should I bring him to you?"

"Boychik, this may surprise you, but I have never killed or ordered killed anyone I did not have to. And I am not going to start now. You stay there. Let's not lose anyone else to this crazy animal. Maybe America is telling the truth. Eh?"

"Maybe we can slip someone close to him when he enters. Maybe we can use the North Koreans. They have something as awesome as . . ."

"This front has collapsed, boychik. But I tell you, son, that you have done well. You will be a field marshal sooner than you think."

"But we lost."

"Both of us have seen that you can make the right decisions. That is the kind of man Mother Russia needs, not someone who is lucky because two hundred thousand men somewhere suddenly do something better than expected. I am ordering you now, young bureaucrat with the smooth face, to coordinate everything should I not live."

And then, by hand messenger because he wanted to take the greatest precaution about the missiles, Zemyatin sent the message that could not be listened in on by American electronics to the young general who could think. The message explained about the simple, crude, and malevolently dangerous new Russian missiles now ready to fire.

Ivan Ivanovich was going to replace the Great One as adviser to the leaders of Mother Russia, but strangely this young man with so much ambition did not rejoice in the promotion. Because he realized while working with the Great One, Field Marshal Alexei Zemyatin, that the thrill was not in wearing more buttons on one's shoulders, but in winning.

Without being told, Ivanovich stationed men at a distance from the old man's apartment house and ordered them to do nothing. He was almost tempted to shoot one of the guards to wake them up. Zemyatin might have done that.

Zemyatin did not see the guards and would not have cared about them anyway. He saw this young American stride into his apartment without knocking and began giving instructions.

The American, strangely, could speak an old form of Russian dating back to Ivan the Terrible, but not too well. Zemyatin's English was rusty but better than the American's Russian. The American was under the impression that he had showed he could conquer Russia.

"So you see you can trust us. We don't control that fluorocarbon thing, or whatever it is. So put down your new missiles, and let us work together in getting this beam thing."

"Are you done?" said Zemyatin.

"I guess," said Remo. "Do you want me to kill some more?"

"No. You have done enough of that. You may even be able to destroy our government. But you alone cannot conquer Russia. You can kill but you cannot rule."

"I don't want this dump. Nothing works right here."

"You did not perform that demonstration around our capital because we don't have something that works." Remo glanced at the bodyguard. He was an old man, but there was a way he carried his body around the big pistol in his belt that showed he had used that weapon. It was obviously not an ornament.

"You want to win an argument or do you want your gizzard on the floor?" asked Remo. He waved some of the signed statements in front of Lemyatin. The old man flipped through them, amused at who had buckled and who had not.

"I do believe your people would believe that you might be a superior weapon to that fluorocarbon beam that lets in the deadly rays of the sun. Which means you may be telling the truth."

"You must know what America is like. Who would want your place when we have ours?"

"Son, I have seen the workings of the minds of counts and commissars, so do not bring something so absurd to my table as the dish that governments act rationally. You have earned a degree of my trust."

"Then put down your missiles," said Remo.

"There is a problem with that. You are going to have to think now. We created those missiles because we were sure at that time that America was responsible for the device and that it was a weapon. Further tests conducted in your country, young man, appeared to confirm our original estimate. We had to create a missile you could not damage. Not to say that such a device could put out our missiles. But it would place them in a category of unreliability we could not accept. Are you following me?"

"We showed we could knock out all your missiles so you had to build new ones."

Zemyatin controlled an acknowledging nod. It did not shock him that the man looked so average. The most dangerous things in the world were the commonplace. The bodies around Moscow were proof enough. He did not have to see muscles.

"These new missiles have two orders that can be delivered. Go and no-go. That is exactly why your intelligence agency correctly called them 'raw buttons.' "

"So tell them no-go."

"Without burdening you with details, the deployment system across a nation larger than yours was necessarily cumbersome. We do not have some electronic command that maneuvers the missiles in series of calculated changeable firings. If we say 'no-go' it would take weeks to get everyone organized again, to get the orders out again. In effect, in this missile age they would have to be put down forever."

"I am not against that," said Remo.

"We have a designated firing time, soon to be upon us. If you kill me there is no way to put down those missiles. If you torture me, you will get a wrong command that will tell them not to listen to the right command if it should come next."

Remo noticed the electronics against the wall, the dishes yet to be cleared from the table, and the old bathrobe this man confidently wore while discussing the gravest matters of state. This was the one, he was sure, he was to look for. The one who made the deals.

"In brief, young American, it is either war or no war, the rawest of raw buttons. To tell them to stand down means virtually abolishing the system. And for that, I must have more proof than your showing off. I am sorry."

"So it is war."

"Not necessarily, " said Zemyatin. "We have time. I will not tell you how much. But we do have time."

"If there is a war, you are not going to survive it. And tell your friend over there not to bother with that blunderbuss he has stuck in his pants."

"Another death, American?"

"I don't keep score anymore," said Rerno. "If those missiles go, I will spend a lifetime in this mess you call a country evening things out. I want you to know that no chairman or commissar or king will live one night. I will make your country into desert, a body without a head, a dung heap among nations. I don't want conquest. To win Russia is to win nothing."

"For you. But for me, it is everything."

The bodyguard whom Remo knew wanted a chance with the gun suddenly turned to the electronics. Remo caught only vague words of the language, but he knew that something horrible had happened.

"American," said Zemyatin, "I now believe your government has been telling the truth about that weapon. Unfortunately."

Remo waited to hear what the Russian leader meant by 'unfortunately'."

"Your government may be stupid, but it is not completely so. The beam has been directed toward your northern pole with the largest arc yet, on a continuous scan parameter."

"Wonderful," said Remo. What was he talking about?

"In brief, the ozone shield is being punctured continuously above the polar ice cap."

Remo eyed the Russian suspiciously. So what? he thought.

"Terrible," he said.

"Yes," said Zemyatin. "Unless that machine is stopped, the entire polar ice cap will be turned to water. So large is the polar ice cap that the oceans will rise many, many feet. Low-lying areas of the earth will be flooded, and that means most of Europe and America. Civilization as we know it will be doomed."

"That machine can really get you so many ways," said Remo. "What is the source?"

"Your America. The beam has been on long enough now for us to get a fix on it. Your northeast corridor."

"Good. If you can get a fix on it, we must know exactly. Anything in that electronic junk on the wall that can get an American phone number?"

"Yes," said Zemyatin. And Remo gave Smith's secret number to the Russians for dialing.

While the bodyguard was dialing, Zemyatin asked, "Are you part of the CIA?"

"No. Internal, mostly."

"Secret police?"

"Not really. We don't want to control anything. We just want to keep the country from going under."

"We all say that," said Zemyatin.

"But we mean it," said Remo.

"Of course," said the Great One of the Russian Revolution.

Smith's voice came over the transatlantic line surprisingly clearly.

"This line is being eavesdropped on, Remo," Smith said. There were gadgets in his office, Remo knew, that could tell that, but he had never heard Smith say that before.

"I would be surprised if it weren't, Smitty. This is a KGB line."

"Doesn't matter. We have located the beam. You will not believe what it is doing!"

"Continuous parameter scan on the polar ice cap. Low-lying areas are going to be flooded," said Remo.

"Right," said Smith, wondering if Remo had suddenly learned to deal with technology.

"The source is located just outside of Boston on their high-tech Route 128."

"Then you can put it off now, and we can show their leader. I found him. His name is Zemyatin, Alexei. He has a stupid bodyguard."

"Can't do that. Not that simple. There are two of those beams. One of them, we've been told, is called the doughnut. In its center, perhaps two hundred square feet, everything will be all right. Outside of that center, in a ring two hundred miles wide, everything will be exposed to the unfiltered rays of the sun. Washington, New York. Everything. It will be a disaster of enormous proportions."

"Ask him how he knows," said Zemyatin.

".How do you know?" asked Remo.

"That is the key, Remo. She has told us about it. If the government takes one step toward her machines, the doughnut goes off. Remo, she knows you and she wants you. That woman you were with is behind all this."

"Dr. Kathleen O'Donnell?" asked Zemyatin. Remo nodded. He didn't have to ask Smith.

"She wants you. She will settle for no one else. I am glad you called."

"You mean she would destroy a world just to get another date or something?" Remo asked.

He saw Zemyatin signal his bodyguard. Another phone was produced. Zemyatin spoke hurriedly. He was getting that psychological profile he had ridiculed before. He presented the facts to the nervous KGB officer in charge of the British desk.

The answer was horrifying.

"That is precisely what she would do," came back the voice from the other end of the phone. "One death or a million deaths means nothing to her. She might even enjoy them."

"Tell your commander, American, we are coming. You and me," said Zemyatin.

On the way out of the apartment, Remo slipped the pistol from the bodyguard's belt and crumbled it in his hands.

"It wouldn't have worked, sweetheart," he said to the old warrior clutching at space.

He also warned Zemyatin to give the command to stand down the new raw-button missiles, because Remo did not trust planes.

"I mean, what if something happens to you?"

"I am sure that with your awesome protection, American, nothing will. When I see the beam destroyed, then I will tell them to stand down. Trust is too rich a meal for an old man who has supped on the chicanery of international politics. Not at my age. Not now."

"I don't care. You want us all to go up in a nuclear cloud if you have a heart attack? Fine with me. I think all you Russians are crazy."

Alexei Zemyatin shrugged. It was not his country that had allowed something like the fluorocarbon beam to be produced.

Chapter 18

It was said of those who fought closely with the Great One that they began to think like him. So, too, was it with General Ivanovich.

Traditionally, the North Koreans had been dismissed as gloating barbarians, too ruthless and crude and incompetent to even consider using a joint exercise.

This time, their intelligence chief, Sayak Cang, was not humored and dismissed; this time, General Ivanovich stepped in, for even as Zemyatin and the American monster were boarding the plane for the flight to America, Ivanovich knew he had taken charge. He was not seeking how to appear well no matter what happened. He was looking to make this dangerous world work in Russia's favor. That was the secret of Zemyatin's brilliance. And the Great One knew Ivanovich understood that now.

That was why Zemyatin had told him about the American discovery of the device in their own territory and the Russian missiles ready to go like a timer on an American coffeepot; without an order, just a date. Even now Ivanovich could hear the Third World War clicking away with all the mindlessness of a mechanical clock. He did not panic. He thought. And when the North Korean boasted about finishing de Lyon himself, Ivanovich did not wait to get some superior to join him in this new bold move he was taking upon himself.

He had remembered Cang from a visit to Moscow. The man's only weakness was cigarettes and a sense of inferiority which he hid well. There was no reason for North Korea to eliminate a Russian problem in Western Europe, but Ivanovich understood immediately the North Korean action. Instead of laughing at the North Koreans for doing something seemingly not in their direct self-interest, Ivanovich ordered a direct salutation sent to Kim II Sung with a request for advice from their genius in special action work abroad.

What Ivanovich did, in effect, after all these years, was to have his country answer the North Korean's call. Sayak Cang was on a line immediately inside the Russian embassy, an access Ivanovich, too, had risked ordering. But now, thinking like Zemyatin, he understood that retribution at home did not matter, especially since the American monster had personally crippled the great government of the Soviet Socialist Republics.

Ivanovich held an entire country in the palm of his hands as he talked to the once lowly Sayak Cang.

"We stand in awe of you, and seek your protection," said Ivanovich. "You are the leader of the socialist world."

"I have lived my life to hear those words," said Cang. His voice cracked. Was it the emotion? It sounded so much like fear.

"We had failed so many times with our problem in Western Europe that we called it insurmountable. You solved it."

"You see we are a great nation."

"Great nations have burdens, Sayak Cang. We have sent one of our leaders with a monster of a man, a killer you could not fathom, to America to seize a weapon that will destroy the Eastern world," said Ivanovich, shrewdly playing on Russia's Asian connection.

"We not only can fathom any American killer, we can crush him like a leaf," said Cang. Cang cleared his throat. He sounded nervous.

"There is a man whom we must have killed," said Ivanovich. "We have failed. There is an object we must have. There is a great game America is playing against us, and we are losing."

In an almost stuttering voice, Cang asked what the game was. Ivanovich gave him the location of the American device near their city of Boston in their northeast province of Massachusetts. The general also gave Cang a description of the American monster and the Russian whom he wished saved. What Russia wanted was the device taken, the American dead, and the Russian, his name Zemyatin, taken out of the country, safely if possible.

"We can do that. We can do all of it."

"But it must be done now. Your experts who have shown us the way must take off now. Immediately."

"Perfect. I really don't have much time now either way," said Cang. "Give all the glory to Korea because I will not be here."

"Are you all right?"

"I must build the only door our greatest sun cannot pass through. The door is death. In that I will control him." Ivanovich did not explore that. He gave the North Korean intelligence chief his salutations, and then tried to reach the plane Zemyatin was on to let him know what he had done. There just might be that flaw in the American after all. For the way the French SDEC director was killed, according to reports from the Paris embassy, was virtually identical to the way the American monster killed.

Fire was going to be fought with fire.

Cang could not feel his arms or legs, or even the last breaths in his throat. Good, he thought. I am lucky. The timing is perfect.

He ordered the Master of Sinanju to be informed of where he was. Cang had been hiding for days now, trying to figure out exactly what his country could do. He knew he was a dead man. He accepted that. But how could his country use his death? And then the Russian gave him the perfect way to use a life any reasonable man had to admit would be over soon.

Chiun had figured out who had stolen the treasure of Sinanju and why.

He had told Cang in their last meeting:

"Pyongyanger, dog. The treasure will be restored to the House of Sinanju. And I will sit here to receive it. I do not carry burdens like a Pyongyang dog."

Cang did not protest. He bowed and left, and went into immediate hiding, warning the President for Life to stay out of the country at all costs until this disastrous corner could be turned. He had not even asked Chiun how he had figured out who had stolen the treasure. Now he would know that, too. He was using the door even Chiun and all the Masters of Sinanju were defenseless against.

When Chiun entered Cang's rock-deep office, Cang was lying on a mat with his head on a piilow and smiling inwardly because his lips were hard to move.

"I am dying, Chiun."

"I have not come to witness the disposal of garbage," said Chiun,

"The poison I have taken robs me of almost all sensation. I cannot feel, therefore you cannot make me tell you where I put your treasure. I am about to pass through the only door that can withstand an assault by a Master of Sinanju: death, Chiun. Death." Cang's fading eyes saw that Chiun remained still. He did not talk. Good. He did not wish to waste time. Cang had ordered what he wanted to be written out in case the poison acted too quickly. It was all the descriptions the Russian had given him, including the location of the machine. Chiun was to bring the machine to Russia and then he would be told where the treasure was. And incidentally, there was a presumptuous American he was to kill, and a Russian he was to save.

"I am to trust you now?"

"Trust or not. Do the task or not. I am leaving you and you cannot follow through the door of death. No one here knows where the treasure is, and you can kill for a hundred years and never find it."

Chiun read the note again. He knew where Boston was. He had spent so long in America, wasting the best years of his life in one country serving the insane emperor who refused to take the throne. He knew Boston. He knew whites. He was perhaps the foremost authority on whites in the world.

"Tell me, O Great Master, how did you fathom I had stolen the treasure? Tell me that, and I will give you one piece now."

"The Frenchman told the truth. He didn't know who had sent him the coins. This I know. And the great theft by the pope was impossible."

"How did you know that?"

"The popes have not shown any skill since the Borgias. To steal the treasure of Sinanju, maybe, only maybe, could have been done by a Borgia pope who sought conquest and land. But for the one decent period, the popes have been as useless as their founder, caring not for the glory of gems, the power of land, but for fanatic and useless things like prayer and their Western cult manners of charity and love, and whatever other peculiarities are endemic to their kind."

"You truly know whites, don't you?" said Cang.

"They are not all the same. But Pyongyangers are. They are dogs without the virtues of courage and loyalty," said Chiun. "Where is this piece of treasure you are willing to return?"

"Underneath me," said Cang.

Chiun rolled him over with one foot and found a minor silver statue taken as tribute by a minor Master, Tak. Tak was always the Master Chiun used to forget when memorizing the cadences of the history of the Masters of Sinanju.

Chiun ordered one of the flunkies to return the statue to the village of Sinanju and let the villagers place it on the steps of his house in tribute.

Cang now faced the floor after having been rolled over. No one dared roll him back in the presence of the Master of Sinanju. But with his last breaths, Cang explained what Sinanju meant to Korea, and that all Koreans should now work together. He had not desired to touch such a treasure but he knew of no other way to induce service from a Master of Sinanju now working in the white lands. Cang's last words were of his admiration for Sinanju, and his love of Korea, and his plea that Koreans work together as the true brothers they always had been. Only in that way could the land they all loved be free of foreign domination. These were Cang's last words as he passed through the door even the Masters of Sinanju could not penetrate to harm him. He spoke them into the hard floor of his office. The floor heard the plea much better than the Master of Sinanju.

Chiun had left for America after seeing which piece of the treasure had been returned for an answer to the question.

It was Ivanovich's competence that led to the great battle of America's high-tech Route 128 just outside of Boston. He knew the last moment that Zemyatin could call off the missile attack. He found out the speed of the airliner headed toward Boston carrying the Korean detachment. He had only one element to control, and he did that to perfection.

He slowed down the Russian aircraft. Zemyatin apparently understood because there was no complaint. They did pick up conversations ground America to air Russia between the American monster and a man named Smith. Smith was asking what on earth kind of game the Russians could be playing now. Even his computer couldn't figure that out.

Famous ports around the world began noticing the strange new tide licking ever so slightly at their piers and wharves.

Scientists around the world were tracking the phenomenon over the polar ice cap. The ozone shield was thinning, opening and threatening to collapse, bringing with it the last gasp of life on earth.

And General Ivan Ivanovich controlled it all with the simple speed of an aircraft headed toward America. He played it perfectly. Chiun's car and the car bearing Remo and Zemyatin arrived at the barricades outside of Chemical Concepts of Massachusetts virtually at the same time.

Remo and Chiun cried out:

"Where were you?" And each answered with his own version of: "I am here now. All right?"

The paratroopers, state police, national guard, and local police had all received orders to seal off the building, but they didn't know why. They were all ordered now to pass the barricades and not to let anyone through until otherwise ordered.

What they could not be told from above was that they were only constituting a pitiful holding action. Their barricades would not protect them, would not stop the madwoman from incinerating everyone around her in the northeast corridor. They had orders to let only one person through: the one she wanted.

When three men tried to get through-one Oriental, one American, and one Russian-the guards reacted swiftly. "I just want one, the handsome one," screamed a beautiful red-haired woman from the flat building of CCm. "Remo isn't bad-looking," said Chiun, wondering where in that ugly building the machine was.

"The young white. Remo. Get in here."

"You know her?" said Chiun. "You've been hanging around with whores."

"How do you know she's a whore?"

"She's white, isn't she? They all do it for money."

"My mother was white," said Remo.

"Gentlemen," said Zemyatin. "The world, please. It is coming apart in a multitude of ways."

"You don't know for sure who your mother is. You told me you're an orphan."

"She had to be white. I'm white."

"You don't know that."

"Gentlemen, the world," said Zemyatin.

"Remo, you get in here now," screamed Kathy O'Donnell from the factory window.

"He is not white. Don't believe him," said Chiun. "Ungrateful as a white, yes. Slothful, yes. Cruel, yes. Shortsighted, yes. But he is not white. He is Sinanju."

"Remo, that is the woman," Zemyatin broke in. "She has got the machine. You get the machine to stop. I will put through the stand-down order of the missiles, the polar ice cap will stop melting, and we may all live to see tomorrow."

"Am I white?" said Remo.

"You are as white as snow," said Zemyatin. "Please. In the name of humanity."

"Not white," said Chiun, moving through the guards.

"White," said Remo, pushing Zemyatin through also, and leaving a couple of guards trying to disengage their weapons from their jumpsuits.

"Asking another white? Ask me," said Chiun. "You couldn't do the things you do and be white. Yes?" Inside the building, none of the typewriters were working. None of the bookkeepers were pounding on computer consoles. Only a few terrified technicians and a man named Reemer Bolt huddled in a corner.

"You've got to stop her," said Bolt. "I can't even get out of here. I've got to establish a Rhode Island branch office."

"You, Remo," called out Kathy. She had a bullwhip in her hands. She raged with venom. "Are you sorry now? Are you sorry you left me?"

"Sure," said Remo. "Where's the machine?"

"I want you to apologize. I want you to suffer the way I suffered."

"I'm suffering," Said Remo. "Where's the machine?"

"Are you really?"

"Yes."

"I don't believe you. Prove it."

"What can I say? I'm sorry. How do I turn off the machine?"

"You love me, don't you? You have to love me. Everyone loves me. Everyone has always loved me. You came back for me."

"What else?" said Remo.

"Do you really love me?" said Kathy.

"Where's the machine?"

"It's underground, in the basement. It's firing continuously," screamed Bolt.

Kathy O'Donnell thew herself in front of a locked steel door. She thrust out her magnificent bosom. She allowed her soft lips to smile. She knew that Remo loved her. She knew he had to want her. She couldn't have been that physically excited by someone who didn't crave her also. "Over my dead body," she said. "That's the only way you get to the machine."

"Sure," said Remo, and obliged her with a simple stroke into her beautiful forehead as he opened the lock to the machine's basement bunker. The technicians followed, along with Zemyatin.

Rerno and Chiun looked at the console and the glittering chrome tanks in amazement.

"There should be an Off button somewhere," said Remo.

"She locked the arch parameters," said Bolt. "You've got to power them down or ruin them."

"I go for ruin," said Remo.

"No," said Chiun. "We need it. We have got to deliver it to the Russians. Destroy that machine and we will never get back our treasure."

Zemyatin did not know how General Ivanovich had managed to arrange this, but he had known something was happening when the young general had slowed down the plane. So this was it. Brilliant.

Zemyatin saw Remo move toward the machine, but it seemed only like the jerk of a finger, for the Oriental had done the same. Slowly, ever so slowly, they appeared to turn and face each other and then remained immaculately still.

They did this for ten minutes on Zemyatin's watch before he realized what he was seeing. When top boxers fought each other, they felt each other out. To the person who knew nothing about boxing it looked as though the fighters were doing nothing, when actually the most important part of the fight was happening. The American monster had apparently met his equal, and their movements were so quick as to be beyond the human eye, like a bullet.

Zemyatin checked his watch again, and the crystal cracked. Vibrations tickled his toes through the soles of his feet. The American technicians, who would be needed for the future use of the machine if the Oriental won, stood back. They were still horrified by their earlier domination by the beautiful redhead and then by her sudden death. If they are so evenly matched, Zemyatin reasoned, then a small help to the Oriental might turn the tide. But as he tried to get behind Remo, he felt a vibration so strong it almost liquefied his ligaments. Then he knew for sure that this great battle he witnessed was as far beyond the human eye as the first great cataclysm of all creation.

Then the white spoke. He was breathless.

"Little Father, the world is flooding. If nothing else, we will lose to waters all the great ports of the world. All the great cities on rivers will go. New York, Paris, London, Tokyo."

But the Oriental did not break contact, nor did he break off the awesome fight now beyond the eyes of those who watched.

"And Sinanju is a village on a bay. It will go before Paris."

Suddenly the room was filled with shattered console, broken drums, parts resembling shrapnel. In a smoking heap, the beams were done for.

The American monster was gasping for breath. The Oriental's kimono was wet with perspiration. "Good-bye, treasure of Sinanju. Thank you, Remo," said Chiun.

"Stand down your missiles, Russian," said Remo.

"Of course. Why not? We never wanted a war."

"You did well enough for someone who didn't want one," said Remo. But he insisted on waiting for verification that the missiles had been stood down.

"I am trusting you not to build another one of these weapons."

"Big deal, trust," said Remo. "Why would we want to destroy ourselves, too?"

"For me, it is trust. You are the first one I have ever trusted, monster. And I trust you because you know no fear. You have no need to lie to me. So be it."

When verification came from the American satellites and was transmitted through Smith to Remo, Remo allowed as how the deal was done, and hoped they would never fight again.

"Not with those missiles. They are so crude that, once stood down, they can never be used again. It was a very raw button," said Zemyatin.

"You mean on that order, the new missiles are down forever?"

"Forever," said Zemyatin.

And on that, the American he trusted said softly: "Thanks, sweetheart. And I am the first you ever trusted?"

"The first since I was a young man. Yes," said Zemyatin at the irony of that first person being an American enemy.

"You lose," said Remo, taking out Zemyatin's frontal lobe with a simple precise backhand that left the front of the face work for the wax embalmers of the Kremlin if they ever wanted to stick what was left in a museum alongside Lenin and Stalin.

Zemyatin could not in the least have improved America's position anymore by living.

"Done," said Remo.

"Not done," said Chiun, who understood the move Remo had made against the Russian to be correct.

The important thing was that the treasure of the House of Sinanju had been lost, lost because Remo had failed to join Chiun in favor of running after white interests. The least Remo could do to partially make up for that lack of gratitude was to write in his own hand a small sentence saying that he very well could have had a Korean mother because he didn't know who his mother was, being an orphan.

"I can't do that, Little Father," said Remo. "I am who I am. And that's it."

"Only a white would be so ungrateful as to not admit he was a Korean," said Chiun.

THE END

* * *

Aftermath: Reemer Bolt went on to become president of a major corporation on the strength of a resume that showed he had been responsible for a fifty-million-dollar project with international ramifications both scientific and commercial. Guy Philliston, of the top-secret British intelligence organ called Source, was called in to handle another problem. According to the Americans, the Russians had placed a mole high up in British intelligence. The man was of a better British family, believed to be homosexual, and of course a total traitor to his country and the whole Western world. Philliston's only comment on getting the assignment to ferret out this blighter was: "Hardly narrows it down, you know."