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  Except the point went too far. It kept going. Which was the usual thing for a point to do when your whole body was behind it and there was nothing in front of it.

  Wessex had never seen anyone move that quickly. It was instantaneous. The American had been seated in

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  front of Lord Wissex, and now he was standing behind him. Now he knew how the giant black had been strangled so easily and why Bradford Wakefield III could so easily lose his two best killers.

  Friend had been right. Anyone who could destroy Wakefield's killers had to be hired. Of course, as the sailboat moved noiselessly toward St. Maarten's, and the incredibly blue waters churned up beneath them, Lord Wissex knew that he had realized all of that too late.

  "And you poisoned me too," said Remo. Wissex felt just the lightest of touches on his neck, but he could not move his arms and barely kept his balance. It was as if the man had discovered the exact nerves in his body that controlled his motion.

  Wissex knew that a time like this had to come eventually. It was part of the business and something he could accept. And he had made plans for this. His lower right molar was a hollow cap. All he had to do was push it out with his tongue and then bite down very hard.

  He pushed the tooth out, but he could not get his jaw open to crush it.

  "Why did you poison me?"

  "Blast you," said Lord Wissex. Well, his voice worked. That was something. The American had allowed his voice to work.

  "Why did you poison me?"

  "Why didn't you die?"

  "From poison? My body won't accept it."

  "I didn't see you spit it out."

  "I didn't. I held it in my stomach. Now Til spit. See? See the spit? See how the nice man spits? Tell the nice man everything," said Remo, and let the gooey green slime up through his throat to his mouth, which launched it into the clear blue Caribbean. Fish popped up to the surface in the green wake of Remo's spit, white bellies skyward. A little pitiful waggle of flippers, and the fish were dead.

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  "Who are you?" said Wissex through jaws that would not open.

  "I am joy and life and the spirit of goodness," said Remo. "Now you do some talking or I'll feed your belly to the fish and use your sternum for a hook."

  "That is vicious," Chiun said. "And we've never had a butler before. That's no way to treat a butler."

  "He tried to kill me."

  "Butlers are always murdering people," said Chiun. *'It is expected. But bad language, hostile language from an assassin is not. When you're done with him, save him. We've never had a butler before."

  "We'll see," Remo said.

  Lord Wissex tried to turn his head to see the two, but he couldn't. All he could see was the incredibly blue waters, and he heard the two argue about butler service, with the younger one accurately saying the butler would always be trying to kill them and the older one answering that one always had to expect some small problems with domestic help.

  And then the incredible pain began. It came first in little notes, as he was asked his name, asked how his body felt, asked the color of his hair, and then built in a symphony of hurt that Merton found he could control. With the giving of truth, absolute and total truth. He told things he didn't even realize he had known.

  He told of being penniless and being called one day at Castle Wissex by a man who understood how awful it was that Wissex lived in a country that no longer appreciated and rewarded courage.

  "What do you want?" Wissex had said.

  "I want the same services your ancestor provided for Henry the Eighth."

  "He killed people for His Majesty."

  "That is what I want," the voice said.

  "No," he said, and slammed down the receiver of the phone.

  The next day, he received a note. It read, "I only want you to do what is proper."

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  And on the phone later that day, he asked the man, "How can this be proper?"

  "Most proper. I am an international corporation not subject to national laws. Not above the law, mind you. But beyond it. And I have a tradition of hiring people to kill."

  "Proper, you say? Tradition, you say?" said Wissex.

  "Yes. And I want you with me as senior vice-president."

  "In charge of what?"

  "Tradition and propriety," the caller said.

  Wissex thought for a moment. "You must give me your word of honor, sir, that everything will ultimately be for the good of Great Britain, and therefore mankind."

  "You have it," said the voice.

  And then Lord Wissex learned the man's name. His name was Friend. He had never seen him.

  "Oh," came a voice from far away. "So you're the one. Your family. Henry the Eighth. What do you know?" It was the American talking, and he called to his companion.

  "Hey, Little Father. This is the Wissex. Descendant of that Wissex."

  "The one who serviced Henry the Eighth?" asked the Oriental.

  "You know of him?" asked Wissex.

  "Sure," Remo said. "Part of my training was learning all the traditions of the Masters of Sinanju. I remember one of them worked for Henry the Eighth."

  "Yes," said the Oriental. "He was called in because the gracious Henry had no one."

  "He had my ancestor," said Lord Wissex.

  "Correct," said the Oriental. "Remo, please recite."

  "And it came to pass," said the American, "that the lesser Wang came unto the shores of England, which had at that time conquered Wales and held Scotland in a form of alliance.

  "And the king was deeply troubled. Enemies abounded, the kingdom verged on civil war, and all he

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  had to defend himself was his Lord Wissex, a man skilled only at removing complicating children from women's bellies. Namely the king's complicating children from women's bellies. Would the Master of Sinanju properly service His Britannic Majesty for proper tribute? And train Wissex to kill grown men?

  "And the sum there was was four hundred of cattle, ten weights of gold, fifty of silver, five ships of corn grain, a thousand fat fowl, three hundred iron blades yet to be fashioned, ten thousand weight bronze, thirty-two fine chairs, fruit seed, twenty bolts of linen, un-worked...."

  "Lie," gasped Lord Wissex. "He was not an abortionist. My ancestor was an assassin."

  "You interrupted the list," said Chiun. "We haven't gotten to the pear trees, partridges, gold rings, calling birds, milking maids, and frenen hens. There were frenen hens."

  "Lie. He was not an abortionist."

  "Don't be ashamed of your ancestors, Merton," said the Oriental. "He was, after all, only English."

  "There were no pear trees," said the American.

  Merton Lord Wissex felt the American's hands re-leasB just a bit from the neck on that statement.

  "There were pear trees," said Chiun.

  "No, no," said Remo. "Louis the Fifteenth sent trees. I think they were plum trees. Henry sent turtledoves."

  "No, we never got turtledoves from Henry," Chiun said. "The British had fine pear trees. We never had plum trees."

  "I saw them in your village," Remo said.

  "You never saw plum trees in Sinanju," Chiun said.

  "I did."

  "Didn't," said Chiun. "Pear trees."

  Wissex pushed the tooth up out of its slot and up to the molars on the left side of his mouth. With his remaining power, he bit down on the empty shell of a tooth. It cracked, releasing a bittersweet syrup.

  He swallowed. His throat became numb, and then 108

  the tips of his fingers felt faraway, and he glided off into that sleep of sleeps.

  Remo felt the life go out of what was in his hand. He let the body drop.

  "They were plums," Remo said. "I ate one in Sinanju. 1 remember it. It was a lousy plum."

  "Because it was a pear," said Chiun. "You killed our butler."

  "No. He took his own Ufe. It was a plum."

  "Pear," said Chiun.

  The sailboat's skippe
r was amazed at how quiet St. Maarten's looked without its oil. An American gunboat stopped the sailboat.

  "If you enter, you cannot leave," came a voice over the bullhorn.

  "I know," the captain shouted back.

  "Did you people throw something overboard back there?" came the question from the gunboat.

  The captain asked his passengers. There were only two now. He didn't see the third.

  "Did anyone throw anything overboard back there?" he asked.

  "I know a plum from a pear," said the American angrily.

  "And so do I," said the Oriental.

  "Did you throw something overboard?" asked the captain again.

  "A body. He was dead," said the American. "Have you ever seen a purple pear?"

  When the boat docked at St. Maarten's, even the horsedrawn carriages squealed in their axles for a lack of oil.

  "This," Remo said, "is what happens without oil."

  "Not bad," said Chiun.

  "Beg your pardon," said the sailboat captain. "You didn't say back there that you threw a dead body overboard, did you?"

  "Sure," said Remo.

  On St. Maarten's, cars were stopped alongside the 109

  roads. Some of them were pushed off to the side. Little white waxy mushrooms covered their gas tanks.

  Remo stopped a well-dressed couple sitting in the back of a haycart. He and Chiun had left Chiun's trunks on the sailboat. Chiun thought they might use the cart for the trunks. Remo thought they would go back for the trunks because they probably would be finished here soon anyhow. The island was small. Chiun thought they could take the horsedrawn cart and use that to carry the trunks. Remo said it was too cumbersome. Chiun pointed out that it was not Chiun who allowed the butler to kill himself with poison. If Remo had not done that, this would have been settled because they would have had someone to deal with the trunks.

  "I'm working," Remo said. "If you won't help, don't harm." Then he asked the couple if they knew where the cars had first stopped working on the island.

  "Where did the first reports come from?"

  "From all over," said the husband.

  "From just west of Marigot. There's a small hill there, and farmers were complaining," said the woman. "It changed all their gasoline to waxy uselessness and burned their skin too."

  "We had a Porsche 911, a Mercedes 450SL, a Jaguar XKE, and a Chevette," sobbed the husband.

  "A Chevette?" asked Remo, wondering what they would need with a little, inexpensive runabout, with all those expensive cars.

  "The Chevette was the only one that stayed out of the repair shop," the man said.

  Remo and Chiun walked toward Marigot. It amazed Remo how steep the hills were on the little island. They were not mountains, but their steepness gave that impression. Cows roamed freely over their sides. Off in the distance, someone sang slow day-long songs, that easy, almost sleepy beat meant to go on for at least an afternoon. A chameleon perched on a black rock, black as the rock, winking at Remo and Chiun.

  "We could have used the cart," Chiun said. 110

  "Do you feel the death, Little Father? Do you smell it? The dread. The death. The lingering, ominous feeling?"

  "No," said Chiun.

  "Neither do I," said Remo. "And 1 wonder why. Before I became Sinanju, I would enter alleys or dark places and feel that, but now I don't. Maybe I'll feel a presence. I'll feel death but there are no drum rolls of fear. And I don't know why."

  "When you were a child, you felt like a child, with much fear, for that is how children protect themselves. By fearing and hiding. And this is proper. So when a person is grown but poorly trained, when he fails to be one with his body and his essence, then a gap in the personhood is created. An unknowing of life and death and of one's ability to use his body waits to be filled. And who fills it but the child who knew fear as its only defense?"

  "So I have been trained away from fear?" Remo said.

  "You have been trained away from those empty spaces. The fear will always be there. The child is the first and the last of all of us. It is said that at the moment of death, every Master of Sinanju will hear his own childhood say good-bye to him." -

  Remo knew enough not to tell Chiun that he thought that was beautiful. For that would have shown he did not understand. For in proper training, things were not beautiful, they were right. They were proper. Beautiful meant exceptional beyond the norm, but in Sinanju the norm itself was exceptional, in full unity with all the powers and presences of the universe. It was not beautiful.

  "That is so," said Remo simply, the highest compliment he could pay.

  They found the hill outside Marigot. A small white box of a factory stood on top. It was ringed by a cyclone fence with a sign that read: puressence, inc. Under that title was a motto: "A Clean World for our Times."

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  There was a guard in the guard booth. The guard was not using his gun because it had been used. His mouth was closed around it, and the back of his head was imbedded in the ceiling of the booth. He had blown out his own brains.

  Atop the hill, a voice from a loudspeaker shouted hysterically, "It's them. It's them. It's them. Quick, brothers. Don't let them get you. Don't let them get you."

  Suddenly, little popping sounds of rifles came from atop the hill. But no bullets were being fired down at them. There was no hiss, not even a flash of a muzzle. All the rifle fire stayed inside the building.

  Remo and Chiun moved quickly up the road, not a run but faster than a run, a smooth, loping movement where the heads did not bob but just went forward at increasing speed up the mountain.

  As they approached the white building, white as if bleached by the Caribbean sun, they heard giggling inside.

  They opened the door. Sitting at desks and microscopes and computer terminals were twenty men and woman, all slumped forward, all with dark, bloody holes where the backs of their heads had been.

  The heads were pumping blood from the last lurches of the still-working hearts.

  "They're coming, they're coming," came the voice from the loudspeaker. And then here there was laughter. It was not a wild laugh. It was a giggle.

  Behind a large crate, a blond bearded man sat giggling. He was missing three teeth, and his grin appeared silly. He nestled the microphone on his kneecaps. He wore a leather shirt and designer jeans and a ruby ring in his left ear-lobe. He seemed absolutely delighted that Remo and Chiun were now standing over him.

  "Heyyyy," he said with a happy breath of voice. "Hey. Welcome to Puressence. You're them. We just got the message you might be coming, and we're doing Plan 178-Y. That's heavy."

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  "What's 178-Y?" asked Remo.

  "I shout into the speaker that you're coming. That's my first program to follow. I did that really good. You wanna hear?"

  And, still giggling, the man yelled into the microphone, "They're coming, they're coming." His voice reverberated over the loudspeakers in the building.

  "What's that for?" asked Remo.

  "Heyyyy. Goodness and peace, baby."

  "I think that was the signal for your people to kill themselves."

  "What are you talking about? Nobody is going to kill himself because I yell into a microphone."

  Remo took a handful of the scraggly blond hair and lifted the man from the box and turned the grinning face toward the factory of dead people.

  "Well?" said Remo.

  "Coooool," said the man.

  "Cool?"

  "Yeah."

  "Why?"

  "They did what they wanted. They did their thing."

  "You triggered it. That is obviously some kind of panic response."

  "That's their problem, man. Not mine. No such things as fair or unfair."

  "What if I break your neck?" asked Remo.

  "Cooooool," said the man, and grinned the tooth-missing grin.

  "I take it you're on drugs," said Remo, dropping the man to the floor. He hit his head and grinned back up. A little flutter came from the
upraised feet as he popped a blue tablet into his mouth.

  "Step Two of Program One."

  "What drug is that?" asked Remo.

  "I think it's poison."

  "What makes you think so?"

  " 'Cause I'm dying."

  The eyes closed and Remo sensed a stillness in the body, the last complete stillness. The man was dead.

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  Remo had found a place, possibly the place where the fast-breeder bacteria had been manufactured, and now there was no one left to tell how it was made.

  But how could anyone get them all to commit suicide? And why?

  Outside, a soft purring of an engine made its way up the road toward the factory. It was a car engine on an island where cars did not run.

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  Chapter Seven

  "Bleem," said the woman stepping out of the back seat of a yellow and gray car that looked like a cross between a 1938 Ford and a Mercedes Benz. Sitting sullenly behind the wheel was a burly driver in a business suit, his bald head shining like a wrinkled pink artillery shell.

  The woman wore a white suit with international-class styling and carried herself with the firm pace of someone with much money and about to make much more.

  Her hair was like an ebony crown to a smooth, pale face. The eyes were so blue, they could cut. And her smile had a little-girl tinkle to it.

  She was so beautiful, Remo half expected the dead inside the plant to rise up to offer her their seats.

  "Bleem," she said again.

  "God bless you," said Remo.

  "Reva Bleem," she said. Her hand went out firmly to Remo's. Remo shook it. She offered her hand to Chiun. Chiun folded his hands under his morning robe.

  "That's rude, Little Father," said Remo.

  Chiun stepped back one pace and gave Reva Bleem an assassin's nod.

  "I'm Reva Bleem, president of Bleem International, American Bleem, Hoyt Bilco Bleem, Standard Bleem, and Bleem Limited. What happened here?"

  "How come your car runs?" asked Remo. "Is it some special car?"

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  "Yes, it's a special car. It's a Gaylord. Special Interest Autos magazine featured it. Special Interest Autos is the best car magazine in the world."

  "How does it run? Gasoline doesn't survive on this island."