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  Remo. "Oh, I know that's what she's got in store for me. Why else would she have me constantly talking about plots to do me in?' He sighed. "It's all becoming too much for me. Sometimes I wish she'd just murder me and get it over with." He drained the last of his brandy.

  "But why does Randy Nooner want to take over the army?" Remo asked.'

  With some effort Artemis hoisted himself from his embroidered wing chair. "That, my special friend, is the question," he said wearily.

  He focused on Remo's lean figure. A twig, he ,thought. One good shove against a plaster wall, and those skinny ribs would pop like marimbas. A right hook to the head, and Remo's neck would twist and splinter. A couple of broken legs thrown in. A mashed nose. Good lord, real lord, he thought, how long had it been since he'd mashed a nose?

  "You all right?" Remo asked, concerned about the look of frenzy that was beginning to glaze in Ar-temis's eyes.

  "Lamb of Artemis," Thwill intoned, lumbering toward Remo. "Do not try to hide your fear. The moment of one's death is one of glory," he said, picking up speed. Remo moved to another corner of the room. Thwill followed at a trot. "Look to the Hereafter," Artemis called, tucking in his shoulder and soaring into a flying tackle. Remo ducked in time to avoid 228 pounds of lurching pork loin. Had Artemis made contact, he would have slammed Remo just below the chest cavity. As it was, however, Artemis's heave propelled him into the wall, cracking his right shoulder and showering him with dried plaster.

  Stunned, Artemis dragged himself to his feet and

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  lunged again, this time head-on into a rocking chair that swung crazily for a moment before dumping Artemis with a crash onto the bar. Glass flew everywhere. A shard caught Artemis over his left eyebrow, and blood trickled down his face as he rolled shakily to the floor.

  "Here, let me give you a hand," Remo said, extending his arm to Thwill.

  "So you want to fight dirty, huh?" Artemis raged, slapping Remo's hand away. "We'll see who can fight dirty around here. No more mister nice guy, buddy." As he jumped to a standing position, he slipped on a_pool of Jack Daniels and careened into a bookcase beside the bar. The impact of Thwill's body against the Louis XV étagère caused a shelf to break in two, toppling dozens of leather-bound volumes onto his head. They landed with thunks as Artemis staggered beneath them. "You know how to throw a punch, boy,. I give you that," Thwill said. "Look, I just want to help you up." "Trying to trick me, are you?" Legs buckling beneath him, Artemis pulled himself up to a squat and grabbed the biggest object on the bookcase, a 2-Vi-foot-tall Chinese vase painted with cherry blossoms. Breathing heavily, Thwill aimed himself for Remo, the vase clutched tightly in his arms.

  Remo backed away. "Mister, I'm not looking to fight with you," he said. "I just want to discuss—" "My ass," Artemis hissed. "You're trying to kill me. Some special friend you turned out to be."

  And with his final shred of strength, Artemis Thwill raised the Chinese vase over his head and lowered it fiercely in Remo's direction. Unfortunately, the window was also in Remo's direction, directly behind him, in fact, and when the vase began

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  its mighty descent downward, it was through the window, with Artemis trailing helplessly behind it and cursing Randy Nooner with his last breath. In a second, Artemis Thwill and the Chinese vase struck pavement below. Both cracked.

  "Pax Vobiscum," Remo said. He snapped the lock on the door and stepped quietly into the hallway.

  Samantha had heard the racket and run in from the living room, Chiun following behind. She was already screaming. "You killed him!" she shrieked. "It's clear-cut murder."

  "I didn't kill him," Remo said.

  "Of course you did, darling," Samantha said. "Murder. Do you know what double indemnity pays for murder?" With brisk efficiency, she pulled a sheaf of papers from a bureau drawer. "With a policy this size—"

  "He killed himself," Remo said.

  Suddenly Samantha's sparkling eyes grew murky and cold. "Don't you ever say that to me again," she said.

  "I just wanted you to know I didn't kill your husband—"

  "It better be murder, mister, or I'll follow you the rest of your miserable life."

  "Okay, okay," Remo said. "Whatever makes you happy. Where's Randy Nooner?"

  "Gone," Samantha said, her voice still menacing. "And you'd better take off, too, if you know what's good for you. My husband was murdered, the murderer got away, and I get double indemnity." She whirled ferociously on Chiun. "Right?"

  "Of course, gracious lady," he said, nodding.

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  "For the sake of your double identity, Remo will be pleased to murder your husband."

  "He's already been murdered," Samantha stormed.

  "So much the better," Chiun said. With a bow, he followed Remo out onto the grounds of the army base in search of Randy Nooner.

  Samantha reached her by telephone. "I just wanted you to know that Remo guy you brought over here is on his way to your place."

  "Fine," Randy said. Tin not at my place. Your call was transferred automatically to the car. How are you, Samantha darling?"

  "I'm rich," Samantha said, barely able to contain her excitement. "Artemis is dead. Remo killed him."

  There was a moment of silence, followed by peals of laughter. "Perfect," Randy gasped. "Perfect, perfect. Now our Artemis is a martyr for all time."

  "And I just made a half a million dollars in insurance money," Samantha said.

  "We'll drink a toast to him when I get back"

  "When will that be?" Samantha asked.

  Randy said something that didn't make sense to Samantha. Samantha asked her to repeat it, but Randy had already hung up. For a moment Samantha kept the dead phone to her ear, puzzling over the words she thought she had heard Randy Nooner speak. They didn't make any sense, for what she thought she had heard were the words: "When I'm queen."

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  Eleven

  Randy Nooner's house was guarded by a solitary sentry, a young man with red hair and freckles and sky-blue eyes as vacant as space.

  "Your name," he said flatly as Remo and Chiun approached.

  "Call me Ishmael," Remo said.

  With precise, robot movements the sentry took a small piece of paper from his pocket. On it was written the name of the man Randy Nooner had called him about from her car. He stared impassively at the name on the paper. "Spell 'Ishmael,' " he said.

  "R.E.M.O."

  The letters matched. "Enter," he said, stepping aside.

  The moment Remo and Chiun walked over the threshold, a whistle blew, and all the exits to the house closed and locked simultaneously.

  From the corner of his eye, Chiun spotted a khaki sleeve in a window. "Down," he commanded.

  Remo dropped to the floor. "What the hell—"

  A spät second later, the open fire began. Light

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  from the blaze of a half-dozen M-16's spat through the room in a fury of destruction.

  "To the blind spot in the corner," Remo whispered, nodding toward a space angled between two windows. Judging the trajectory of the bullets from the positions of the soldiers at the windows and the smoldering, jagged holes on the floor, Remo and Chiun wriggled in a quick pattern past the bursts of fire to the corner.

  "We can reach the cellar door from here if we move fast," Remo said.

  Arching his back nice a cat's, Chiun sprang forward in a blur into the rain of bullets and out the other side. Remo met him inside the cellar door.

  "Look, I thought we were just making a house call. I didn't expect the charge of the light brigade, either."

  "Be silent and find a way out of this noise," Chiun shouted over the din of gunfire.

  "Okey dokey," Remo said, searching for an opening in the basement walls. The only window was a small rectangle through which could be seen the legs of a soldier firing into the ground floor. Remo watched the legs quizzically. "Don't they know we're not up there anymore? They just keep shoo
ting into an empty room."

  "Perhaps you could ponder the quality of their eyesight at another time," Chiun suggested. "Get us out of here. Now. It is expremely irritating to one of my serene disposition to be subjected to this dialogue of Western weaponry. Particularly with us as the target."

  Tm looking, Little Father."

  "You sing. You crash cars. You lead me into rooms full of booms. Never do I experience peace of

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  mind with you. I am but a poor innocent in the twilight of his years. When have I asked for anything more than a quiet evening made lovely by the scent of the wild rose—"

  "All right, already," Remo yelled. "We'll use the window."

  "Remove the person standing in front of it first."

  With a sigh, Remo said, "Yes, Little Father," and etched a deep groove around the perimeter of the window with his fingernail. Then, using the tips of his fingers for suction, he pulled the glass inward without a sound.

  The soldier above continued to fire into the house, oblivious to the activity by his feet until they were swept from beneath him and he felt himself being yanked at incredible speed through the small opening of the basement window. Before he could scream, Remo silenced him with a two-finger thrust to the throat.

  "C'mon," Remo said. "I'll lead, in case there are more waiting outside." He pulled himself partially through the narrow opening and peeked out. Two other soldiers were at the wall, but they too were firing steadily into the house, their eyes locked on the maelstrom of bullets and dust inside the house. With a leap, Remo cleared the opening and ran some distance behind the soldiers. Chiun seemed to materialize magically beside him.

  They skirted the house silently until they stood behind a lizardy-looking officer Remo recognized as General Elalhassein. The general's hands were clasped behind his back. In the next instant, they hung limply at his sides, his arms having been disconnected at the shoulders. He screamed sound-

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  lessly, his eyes rolling, as Remo held him by his neck and whispered, "Where is Randy Nooner?"

  The general's mouth opened and closed like a tuna's. "Airport," he managed.

  Remo's grip tightened, "More."

  "Quat."

  «What?"

  "He said Quat," Chiun snapped. "I have told you that these persons come from Quat. Why do you persist in asking such irrelevant questions amid this deafening noise?" He stuck two fingers in his ears to muffle the sound of the soldiers' ceaseless gunfire.

  "What for?" Remo asked, gripping the general by the eye sockets. His body contorted in pain, his useless arms flailing helplessly each time Remo yanked his head backward.

  "To see—to see the sheik," Elalhassein groaned.

  "Which sheik?"

  "Which sheik," Chiun mocked, pulling his fingers out of his ears. "Remo, your stupidity is unfortunately even greater than your hatred of serenity. I see that as usual I must rectify this matter myself." With a gentle tug, he removed the general fr©m Remo's grasp and tossed him floating into one of the windows of the now-decimated house. Within seconds his body was riddled with the bullets of the Vadas-sar soldiers, his limbs jerking with their impact, his blood spurting in all directions.

  "Silence!" Chiun screeched.

  The soldiers stopped at once.

  The sudden silence settled upon them caressingly. Chiun's eyelids fluttered, and a smile spread over his face. "Idiot," he said walking away, "there is only one sheik in Quat, and he is of the same name as his father and his father's father and all of the

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  lowly, talkative, meat-eating ancestors before him." Remo jogged to catch up with him. "Well, if you don't mind, seeing as I don't happen to know every ruler who ever welched on a deal with Sinanju, how about letting me in on the sheik's name?"

  "It is inconsequential. Throughout the centuries of their existence, the Quati could never afford the services of a Master of Sinanju. And led as they have always been by the sheik Vadass, they never

  will."

  Remo stopped in his tracks. "The sheik what?"

  "Vadass. It is the name of that so-called royal family of camel herders."

  Remo remembered the swarthy officers of Fort Vadassar, who spoke their strange language at the press conference, and he recalled the dying words of General Arlington Montgomery: "Vadassar . . . They're going to kill us all." He broke into a run. "Chiun, we've got to get to the airport," he said.

  "Where are we going?"

  "To Quat. Smitty was right. This army base is about as American as Omar Khayyam. Whoever this Sheik Vadass is, I've got a hunch he's pulling the strings of all these puppet soldiers."

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  Twelve

  The ancient walled palace -of Sheik Vadass contained one-thousandth of one percent of the country's population and 99 percent of its income, owing to a longtime national policy of taxation whereby subjects not in some visible stage of starvation were executed as traitors and their holdings confiscated. The policy was much admired throughout the rest of the developing world. At their annual meeting in the main casino in Monte Carlo, the International Association of Freedom-Loving and Non-Aligned Nations invited the sheik to attend and to address their members on agrarian reform and redistribution of wealth, some of them not yet having figured out a way to get every last coin in their nations. Sheik Vadass did not answer their request. The association passed a resolution calling hún a tool of imperialist capitalist Zionism. It ordered a copy of the resolution suitably inscribed and mailed to him, along with a private letter that said they would rescind the resolution if he came and talked to them the next year. He ignored the resolution and the letter. He ignored everything. Nothing came out of Quat. No

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  export. No cash. No natural resources. Not even a breeze.

  As Remo and Chiun approached the stone walls on camelback, their guide, a wizened old man dressed in only a loincloth, brought the beasts to a halt.

  "We are near the entrance to the Sacred Palace of Vadass," the old man said. "I may go no further, lest I defile the perfect beauty of the palace with my presence. I beg to take my leave here, out of sight of the palace guard."

  "I guess they'd grab whatever we paid you for the trip," Remo said.

  The old man shrugged. "It is the law of the land."

  "I am familiar with your laws," Chiun said. "That is why we are paying you with the contents of our traveling bags. They are filled with food." Chiun pointed toward the camels, laden with heavy lacquered trunks.

  The man's face brightened. "All these, sire?"

  "AU," Chiun said, smiling broadly.

  "That's a nice gesture," Remo said.

  "All but that red one," Chiun amended, "and the black one."

  Remo and the old man unloaded the two trunks for Chiun.

  "And the blue one."

  "Is this yours, too?" Remo asked, touching a flat yellow box.

  "Ah, yes. That is for my sashes. Also the violet."

  The camel snorted, having been relieved of all but two cardboard boxes roped together across its back.

  "The rest is yours," Chiun said grandly.

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  The old man bowed again. "Many thanks, sire," he said and led the camels away.

  "You know, Little Father, it's not exactly easy to sneak into a palace with five steamer trunks," Remo observed.

  "Nothing is easy for the slothful."

  "You're a real morale booster," Remo said, slinging the largest of the trunks over his shoulder before scaling the wall. He pressed his fingertips into the rough surface and edged upward with his toes, constantly shifting his balance to accommodate the wobbling of the trunk.

  "Slow," Chiun said, clucking disapprovingly, "very slow."

  "I'm doing my best, Chiun."

  "And if a tribe of desert killers were to come running toward you wielding spears, would doing your best prevent them from attacking?"

  "If, if, if," Remo said, reaching the top of the wall and sliding silently down the far side
with the trunk. "How hypothetical can you get? You're a worrywart, Chiun."

  Leaving the trunk on the inside of the wall, he scaled it easily. "If anybody came this way chucking spears at us, then believe me, Little Father, I'd come up with something." He hoisted the second of the large trunks over his shoulder and again began the arduous ascent up. the wall.

  Chiun smiled. "I am pleased to hear your assurance," he said.

  "Why?" Remo asked.

  "Because here they come."

  From the far end of the wall, a band of small brown men wearing loincloths and turbans and

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  carrying long spears turned the corner and rushed toward Remo and Chiun.

  "Oh, hell," Remo said.

  "Just do your job. I will distract these hooligans."

  As the first of the spears flew toward Remo, who was carrying a trunk across the top of the wall, Chiun jumped high in the air to intercept it with his forearm. With his leg, he kicked another spear harmlessly out of the way. The small brown men came closer, their weapons hurtling through the air. Chiun knocked them away easily, his robes billowing as he leaped to protect Remo from the metal-tipped spears.

  "Couldn't we just leave one trunk behind and get into the palace? We could have room service pick it up later."

  "Silence, lazy one. When the Master of Sinanju requires your suggestion, he will ask for it." With one hand, Chiun grabbed the last of the flying spears and turned it on the empty-handed warriors. They ran shrieking in the opposite direction.

  Chiun poised the spear delicately between his fingers and let it fly with a supersonic crack that filled the air. It entered a brown back, slid through the man's body and continued in its course, impaling two others and depositing the bodies on two others with a bone-crushing thud.

  As Remo carried the last of the trunks over the wall, Chiun charged the retreating band. Amid wans and dying moans could be heard the cracking and snapping of bones and joints as the bodies piled up in a formless heap. Within minutes, all that was left of the attackers was a bloody pool in the sand filled with random arms and legs and open, unseeing eyes.

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  Then, lifting himself lightly off the ground, Chiun adhered himself to the wall and climbed up like a spider. He met Remo on the other side, where the desert had been transformed into lush greenery watered by sprinklers.