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  square, star, circle, lines, lines, square, square, circle, cross, star, square, circle, circle, cross, cross, star, lines, star."

  As he called out the cards, the scientist wrote them down on her long yellow pad.

  "Done?" she asked.

  "Yes."

  "Want to change your mind on any of them?"

  "No. I'm not sure of the last two, though," he said. 'Tour perfume kept getting in my eyes."

  She laughed and began to turn over the cards, reading aloud Remo's prediction.

  "Cross," she read and turned the first card. It was a cross. "Cross," she read again. The next card was a cross. She began to read faster. "Square, cir-cîb, star, star . . ." Each card she called was the one she turned over. She looked at Remo in amazement. The first twenty-three were correct. She could not keep the excitement out of her voice. 'Twenty four and twenty-five, lines and star," she

  said.

  "Remember, I'm not sure," Remo said.

  She turned the cards over. Lines and star. "You could have been," she said. "You were right." She turned and looked at Remo. Amazement was on her face. She shook her head.

  Twenty-five out of twenty-five. I don't believe it. I've never seen anything like that."

  "It's going to be your day for surprises," Remo said, as he stood from his chair, put bis arms around Doctor Ledore, and pressed his lips to hers.

  She was tense for a moment, as if surprised, then her lips yielded and parted, and her tongue darted out J:o find Remo's. Holding her upright, he carried her toward the couch against the far wall of the

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  room. She pulled her lips back from his. He placed her gently on the couch, and she began to unbutton the jersey dress. 'Twenty-five out of twenty-five," she said.

  "Forget that," he said.

  "I can't," she said. "Is that all you can do?"

  It was Remo's turn to laugh.

  "No," he said. "That's not all," and he slipped off his clothes and turned to her.

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  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Remo and Chiun were in a light, breezy park near the foot of the St. Louis arch. Nearby was the Mississippi River, here at least partly clean with the biggest lumps removed, but still an American river, and therefore a body of water whose primary ingredient was toxic waste.

  Remo wondered if one day, some river in America would self-destruct and go afire just because its chemical content had passed the tipping point. If so, he hoped that little bastard of a firebug was sitting in the middle of it in a rowboat, fishing.

  "Why are you sighing?" Chiun asked. The old man was kicking his silk-slippered feet at pigeons that waddled up to him, looking for a handout of peanuts or bread.

  "Because I busted it," Remo said. 'Those fire loonies got away, and now I don't have any idea where they are. And now that they know somebody's after them, they'll be holed up out of sight somewhere. How the hell do I find them?"

  "Perhaps you are right," Chiun said, kicking at a pigeon. "I cannot argue with your firsthand knowledge of the criminal mind. So perhaps you should just abandon this quest."

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  "You've forgotten Ruby," Remo said. "This one's for her."

  "Ruby would not want you to kill yourself for her," Chiun said.

  "No?" said Remo. "That's what you think. That woman was into revenge, and I'm taking it for her. Case closed." He set his lips tightly together and looked out over the park.

  "You are just feeling guilty because you disported yourself with that woman this afternoon," Chiun said.

  "No, I'm not," said Remo, who was. "How did you know about that?"

  "You think after all these years I do not know what you do?" Chiun said.

  "Well, anyway, I'm staying after these guys. The question is how do I find them."

  "If you insist," Chiun said.

  "I insist."

  "You assume that they are going into hiding. But they do not necessarily know who you are. They may just simply think you were someone who blundered into their performance. You may just have been an annoyance that they already have totally forgotten."

  Chiun kicked at another pigeon, which waddled around at his feet, cooing.

  "You may be right, Little Father," said Remo.

  "I usually am," Chiun said. "So we must just keep watching for them in places where they can be expected to do business," he said.

  "We?" asked Remo.

  Chiun nodded. "Yes, we. Did you ever stop to think, Remo, that here, after Ruby's death, you

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  want to do something for her and what it is you want to do is to destroy her killers?"

  "Yeah, I've thought of that."

  "Doesn't that tell you anything?" Chiun asked.

  "Like what?"

  "Like this. That you fulfill yourself as an assassin. That this is the only way, in your life, that you will find pride, by doing what you do best."

  "I've thought about that," Remo said. Tm still thinking about it. It's just that I really think I'm a nice person. ..." He paused, waiting for Chiun to laugh, but the Oriental did not respond. "I think I'm a nice person and I can deal with being both a nice person and an assassin. But how can other people deal with that? You think anyone else is going to think I'm a nice person if I tell them I'm an assassinF'

  "You are telling me that these other persons, whoever they may be ... their opinion of you is important to you." He kicked again at a pigeon that had wandered too close to his robe.

  "I guess so," Remo said.

  "That is a childish attitude," Chiun said. "Somebody has to be an assassin. You were just lucky enough that you were the one who was picked. Think of all the amateurs who try to be assassins and give the art a bad name. And yet you, you of all people, were lucky."

  "Some people might not regard it as good luck," Remo said.

  "And some people think the world is flat," Chiun said. "You care about these people?"

  Remo shook his head. "I don't know, Little Father. I just don't know."

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  "Really, Remo, someone must do something about these pigeons. They are worthless, dirty beasts that neither sing nor beautify the world and yet you Americans feed them fat." Another pigeon was brushing against his robe. Chiun found a peanut under the park bench and with the toe of his slipper pushed it forward. When the pigeon saw the peanut, he moved toward it.

  "And as for assassins being nice persons," Chiun said, "why not? I am proudly an assassin. Yet is there anyone nicer than me?" he asked. He stood up from the bench and his right foot lowered toward the pigeon. The flowing folds of Chiun's daytime kimono hid the bird from view, but Remo had caught sight of the bird's last spasm.

  He laughed, stood up, and put his arm around Chiun's shoulders.

  "No, Little Father," he said, "there is no one nicer than you."

  The assistant manager at their hotel apparently thought so, too, because he gestured to Chiun with a large smile when the old man and Remo entered the lobby.

  Chiun walked to the man, who whispered in his ear. When Chiun came back, Remo said, "What was it?"

  "Something personal," Chiun said.

  Remo laughed. "Personal? What personal?"

  "My personal," Chiun said. "Please go to the room. I will join you."

  "I don't understand this," Remo said.

  "This' then has company. There are so many things you do not understand," Chiun said. He put

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  his hand between Remo's shoulder blades and propelled him toward the elevator.

  Bemo stepped into a waiting car. As the doors closed, he pressed the open door button. The door opened again, and Remo saw Chiun walking toward a bank of telephones in the far corner of the lobby.

  Remo rode upstairs wondering what message it was that would bring Chiun to use a telephone.

  Remo was lying on the couch when Chiun returned to the room.

  "Why are you lying there, slug-a-bed?" Chiun asked.
>
  "Where would you want me to lie?"

  "I would want you on your feet and packing because we are leaving," said Chiun.

  "Oh? Just where are we leaving for?"

  "New York City."

  "That's nice," said Remo. "New York is beautiful in the summer. The heat from the pavement cooks the garbage on the sidewalk and casts sweet perfume over the muggers who are holding a convention on every street corner."

  "We are going, nevertheless," Chiun said.

  "Why?"

  "Because the firemen there are going on ... what do you call it?"

  "I don't know. What are you talking about?"

  "What is it when people don't want to work anymore?"

  "Public employment," Remo said.

  "No. Something else."

  "A strike?" suggested Remo.

  'That is correct. They are stricken," said Chiun.

  "Striking," Remo corrected. "How do you know?"

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  "I make it my business to be aware of such things," Chiun said. "Anyway, if the firemen there are stricken, then where else . . ."

  ". . . would our arsonists go?" said Remo.

  "Correct," said Chiun.

  "On to New York," Remo said.

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  CHAPTER TWELVE

  If somebody hadn't put too much orégano in the spaghetti sauce, there might never have been a fireman's strike in New York.

  Fireman First Grade Anthony Ziggata was preparing to go from a firehouse in Manhattan's Upper East Side to City Hall to shake hands at the conclusion of contract negotiations. He had showered in the firehouse and was getting ready to put on his dress blues.

  Ziggata had been a fireman for twenty-two years. He had last seen the inside of a firehouse as a worker nineteen years before, when he was first elected as a union delegate. He then rose through the ranks to become a member of the contract negotiating team and finally president of the Amalgamated Consortium of Firefighters.

  He was in this firehouse only because it was negotiating season, and at least once during every one of the bargaining sessions, one of the New York City newspapers got the original idea to send a photographer to accompany the union president on the job and watch him fight a fire.

  This year, the New York Post had had that original idea. Fortunately, there had not been a fire

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  alarm pulled in the district, so they settled for a picture of Ziggata cleaning hoses. Ziggata hated fires. They made him nervous, and when he got nervous, his skin broke out in itchy, scaly bumps.

  The contract he had been negotiating would cover the city's fire department for the next three years. It would guarantee that the fire department was the highest paid in the world. It did not guarantee that it would be the most efficient. Such suggestions were made only infrequently and tentatively by negotiators for the city administration and were quickly dropped when it appeared that for mere money, the city could buy continuing labor peace. This always appeared to be a good deal to City Hall, especially since the city had gone virtually bankrupt and now depended on Washington and Albany to pay its daily bills.

  Everything should have gone simply. Ziggata was whistling. The rest of it was a chip shot—just the formality of shaking hands with the mayor, smiling for photographers, and then he could go home. To his real home. But when he opened his locker, he found his dress blue pants on the floor of the locker.

  "Sumbitch," he yelled aloud. Who the hell did this?" He held up the wrinkled pants between thumb and index finger as if they were a particularly vile, smelly species of fish.

  Nine firemen lay around on cots, waiting for a bell to ring. Like firemen everywhere, they did not talk much to each other, preferring to lie on their cots and listen in to what the others were saying. Since none of the others spoke either, this did not make for much verbal camaraderie.

  But they were all together in one thing. They did

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  not like Ziggata being in their firehouse. Even though it happened only every three years at contract-negotiating time, there was a strong feeling among them that Ziggata might be spying for the city administration, ready to report them for some minor rule infraction. That this had not happened in the last nineteen years wasn't really important; what was important was that it could happen.

  "Who did this?" Ziggata yelled again.

  "G'wan," came a voice from the end of the room. "If you don't like it, leave."

  "Yeah," echoed another voice. "Who asked you here anyway, spy?"

  "Spy?" shouted Ziggata. "A spy? Ain't I your legally electoral representative? Ain't I bringing you back a big contract?"

  "Yeah, that's what you say. What are you getting out of it?"

  "Satisfaction in a job well done," Ziggata said. "I'd like to cut the throat of whoever threw my pants on the floor."

  "Go home," yelled another voice. "Wear one of your expensive Guinea suits. You got plenty of them."

  "Yeah," said another. "With our money, you got a lot of them."

  "Ooooooh," groaned a third as if in real pain. "Why does everybody get fat off us?"

  "You're paranoids," Ziggata yelled. "Frigging paranoids."

  "Yeah? Well, that don't mean you ain't taking advantage of us."

  "Screw you all,' Ziggata said. "If I never see you again, it'll be too soon." He had finished putting on

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  his uniform. He looked as if he had just gotten the jacket out of the dry cleaners and found the pants on a subway platform. "I look like hell," he said.

  "Stop worrying about how you look, and try to negotiate us a contract," a fireman yelled.

  "What?" screamed Ziggata. "I got us everything we wanted."

  "Bullshit," yelled back one of the fireman. He sat up on the edge of his bed. He was wearing an armless undershirt. He had tattoos on both arms from wrist to shoulder. "I got a brother-in-law in Skan-eateles, New York," he said. "Who cares?"

  "Yeah? Well, he's a fireman, and they get off the first day of deer season. Paid."

  "When the hell is the first day of deer season?" Ziggata asked.

  "I don't know but they get it off." 'They get any other holidays off?" Ziggata asked. "Like Christmas or July Fourth?"

  "Who the hell cares? They got deer season day. A paid holiday. But they probably got real union leadership."

  Ziggata realized it would do no good to explain to the firemen that the fire union had negotiated so many paid holidays for its members that the department's work year was hardly longer than that of public schoolteachers. It wouldn't do any good. His arms were starting to itch. He recognized the signs and tried to calm himself down.

  In a final attempt at restoring a spirit of friendship, he went to the pot of food on the stove at the end of the room and dipped out a small helping of spaghetti and sauce. He sat down at the white enamel-topped table in front of the stove, lifted a

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  spoon of spaghetti to his mouth, tasted it, then spat it out. Drops of food and sauce fell all over the front of his pants and jacket.

  "Sumbitch," yelled Ziggata. "Who the frig put the frigging orégano in that sauce?" He wiped his spattered mouth on the dirty tablecloth. "Look at me. I look like a pig." He ran to the sink to try to blot himself clean.

  "You always look like a pig," shouted back one of

  the firemen.

  "With our money," another one said.

  "I hate orégano," Ziggata moaned. "It makes me break out."

  "Everything makes you break out. I'm going to use orégano forever," a voice cackled from the corner of the room.

  So, itchy, bumpy, skin scaly Anthony Ziggata reached the mayor's office at City Hall and was not in a good mood and when the mayor smiled at him, waved across the room, and walked up to shake his hand and asked, "How'm I doing," Ziggata said, "You're doing shit."

  "What's wrong?" the mayor asked.

  "We ain't got no deal unless we get deer season day off."

  "Deer what?"


  "Deer season day. It's the first day of deer season."

  "When is it?" the mayor asked.

  "I don't know," Ziggata said. "Ask a frigging deer. I ain't no frigging deer."

  "Why do you want it off?"

  Ziggata took a deep breath. "There is a large hue and cry among the men of our valiant department for deer season day off as a paid holiday to bring

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  us parity with the vast majority of other fire departments across the breadth and depth and longitude of the United States."

  "You already have sixty-three paid holidays," the mayor sputtered.

  "Well, make it sixty-four. Deer day or we walk," Ziggata said.

  "Walk," the mayor said. It was the first time in twenty years that the occupant of the New York City mayor's office hadn't knuckled under to a threat. The mayor was surprised to look around and find that the clocks hadn't stopped, the sun had not stopped moving, and the walls of the building were still intact. He felt exhilarated. Probably, there were mayors and public officials around the country who said no once, maybe even two or three times a year. He bet they liked doing it. It was like having power.

  He yelled at Ziggata's back. "No, dammit. I say no, no, a thousand times no. I'd rather die than say yes."

  And so Anthony Ziggata, in a funk over the orégano sauce stains on his blue uniform, his skin itching, went out to the waiting reporters and called the city administration and specifically the mayor a gang of fascist, racist oppressors and repressors intent upon breaking the spirit of true trade unionism in America. And he said that if the firemen were expected to be ready to die for the city, as so many did, they were also ready to die for their honor, and the mayor had not heard the last of this.

  By the time the stories had reached the fire-houses of the city, they had been changed somewhat. The firemen "learned" that the city police had demanded in their next contract that each po-

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  liceman be paid three times what a fireman was paid, since they worked three times as hard. By unanimous voice vote, every fire company in the city authorized Ziggata to call a strike to hold off the rampaging police union plunderers. Ziggata by now had on a fresh pair of pants, and a bath had gotten rid of most of the itching, and he was home in Ozone Park, Queens, and he didn't want to hear from strike. But when he got the first of many phone calls calling him a traitor to the firemen's cause and warning him that he might forfeit the 125 percent of salary pension all firemen were entitled to after completing ten years of more or less loyal service, he did the only thing a self-respecting union man could do.