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  "Look at that," she hissed to her trembling cameraman. "Those sluts. Trying to steal my thunder. Why can't they be teachers, or work in restaurants, like the rest of their kind?"

  The cameraman said a discreet nothing. He lugged his minicam out of the back of the van, saying, "Looks like we got here too late for a choice position."

  "I'll fix that," Cheeta hissed, storming ahead.

  Her red nails flashing in the California sun, Cheeta Ching waded into the crowd. She yanked cords from belt battery packs and hit fast-forward buttons where she could.

  Instantly, cameramen began to curse and check their equipment for malfunctions.

  Cheeta turned and waved to her cameraman to follow. The man dashed through the path Cheeta's sabotage had opened up. He made excellent time. He had been told his predecessor had been demoted to the mail room for being too slow.

  By the time they reached the front of the pack, Cheeta had staked out a prominent position. From her handbag, she pulled out a tiny can of hair varnish and began applying it liberally to her crowning glory, turning so that stray bursts got into the eyes of selected rivals. That cleared even more space.

  Her timing was perfect. The white Mercedes came around a corner while rival newscasters were still dabbing water into their smarting eyes.

  It came slowly. Ahead, behind, and on either side of it was a mass of strutting teenagers. They wore the blue bandannas of the Crips and the red of the Blood, plus the caps of the Chicano gang known as Los Aranas Espana.

  Gasps came from the reporters.

  "What? What is it?" Cheeta demanded, craning her long neck to see over their heads.

  The cameraman was just tall enough to manage this feat.

  "It's Esperanza's car," he reported. "And it's surrounded by gang-bangers."

  "They've captured him!"

  "Looks like they're escorting him, if you want my opinion."

  "I don't. Turn that camera on me."

  The cameraman obeyed.

  Picking up a mike, Cheeta screamed, "I'm broadcasting live from South Central L.A., one of the most crime-ridden areas of the city, where vicious teenage gangsters have surrounded the Hispanic candidate for governor, Enrique Espiritu Esperanza!"

  Just then, voices rose: "Esperanza! Esperanza! Esperanza!"

  "They're calling for his death!" Cheeta cried.

  "I don't think so," the cameraman put in.

  "Stay out of this!" Cheeta flared. "Cameramen shouldn't be seen or heard!"

  "Esperanza! Esperanza!"

  "What are they doing now?"

  The cameraman said, "Looks to me like they're sticking their hands into the car windows."

  "They're trying to drag him out!" she said, licking her lips. "A political assassination, and we're covering it live!"

  "No," the cameraman corrected, "they're accepting cookies."

  Cheeta Ching's pencil-thin eyebrows went for each other like vicious vipers. "Cookies?"

  "They look like Oreos."

  "Let me see," Cheeta said, jumping up and down.

  "How?"

  "On your knees, buster."

  The cameraman obliged. He got down on all fours and grunted manfully as Cheeta Ching impaled his broad back with stiletto heels, designed to make her stand taller than any interviewee under six feet.

  Over the bobbing heads of the crowd, Cheeta beheld a remarkable sight.

  The white Mercedes coasted up to the church steps. Gang members were walking along either side. Out of a rear window, a brown hand was passing out dark Oreo cookies.

  The smiling gang members accepted these eagerly and passed them around. A few shot clenched fists into the air.

  "Esperanza's our main man! Esperanza's our main man!"

  Presently, the Mercedes rolled to a halt. The gang members lined up in two protective rows between the rear door and the podium that had been erected for the speech.

  Enrique Espiritu Esperanza emerged, smiling. He walked down the path made for him, as the media surged toward the spectacle.

  Cheeta leaped off the cameraman's back, crying, "Get off your knees, you idiot! We're missing the shot of our careers!"

  By the time they reached the car, Enrique Esperanza had made it to the podium. He wore white.

  He began speaking.

  "I have come here to make a speech," Enrique Esperanza began.

  A hush fell over the crowd.

  "But I will not make a speech," Esperanza said.

  A murmur went through the crowd.

  "Instead, I will have the fine young men of South Central speak for me."

  Enrique Esperanza waved to his honor guard. A black youth in Blood colors took the podium.

  "My name is Jambo Jambone X, and until this morning I never heard of Mr. Esperanza. But now that I have met the dude, I see that I got hope. No more gangbanging for me. No more crack. From now on I eat Oreo cookies and go to school. Oreos taste better than crack, anyway."

  Nervous applause rippled through the crowd.

  The next to take the microphone was the leader of the Crips. He took credit for cleaning up South Central. And quickly added that his brothers from the Blood and Los Aranas had pitched in.

  "Mr. Esperanza showed me my pride. I say down with crimes. Anybody doing crimes in my neighborhood had better watch out. I see any more crimes going down, and I drop a dime on his crown."

  The leader of Los Aranas Espana came next. His speech was shorter and more to the point.

  "I say, 'Esperanza mucho hombre.' "

  Wild applause greeted this. The Aranas leader rejoined the honor guard behind the podium.

  Then a smiling Enrique Espiritu Esperanza returned to the mike.

  "I thank my black and brown friends for their kind words in my behalf," he said magnanimously. "They have seen their future. The multicultural future that is uniquely Californian. When I am elected, all Californians, regardless of skin color or ethnic background, will be able to coexist as friends. No more fear. No more hate. No more trouble. This, Enrique Espiritu Esperanza promises you."

  From a dozen places in the crowd, placards rose. They read ESPERANZA MEANS HOPE In three languages.

  The cameraman, his minicam capturing the most sensational sight in South Central since the last monthly riot, said, "Isn't this something?"

  As the crowd roared its approval, Cheeta Ching looked around distractedly.

  "See anything of a dreamboat named Ramiro?" she asked hopefully.

  Remo Williams was in hiding.

  He lay on his stomach, peering over the crumbling edge of an apartment house roof, his eyes guarded.

  "Is she still there?" he asked.

  "She is looking about with her magnificent feline eyes," replied the Master of Sinanju in a chill voice.

  Remo scuttled away. "Get back. We don't want her to spot us."

  "Speak for yourself, white," sniffed Chiun. "I only stand on this dirty roof because I know it would anger Emperor Smith were I to appear on the television."

  "I'm glad you're being sensible."

  "I am willing to wait until I am Exalted Treasurer of California before stepping into the lemonlight," he said.

  "That's limelight, and if you get the urge to step into it, remember what happened to me the last time I got my face on TV."

  Chiun retreated with alacrity, saying, "Emperor Smith would not dare to require that a Master of Sinanju submit to surgeons of plastic, as you have."

  "My face still hurts from that last facelift."

  Chiun stepped back even further. His nose wrinkled.

  "All glory comes to him who is patient," he said quietly.

  "What do you see in that witch, anyway?" asked Remo, climbing to his feet.

  The Master of Sinanju turned his face toward the snowy peaks of the San Gabriel Mountains to the east. His long nails touched one another, his bony fingers splayed.

  "Once," he intoned, "I was a young man."

  "You and about half the human race," Remo returned.

  A
hand lifted. "Hush!" Chiun said sharply. "You have asked a question, and now you will hear the answer."

  "I guess I asked for it . . . ."

  "I was young, and the world was wide," Chiun murmured. "It was in the days when I was still a Master-in-training. Now a Master-in-training must perform many feats. Endure many hardships. Suffer much pain. One day, my father, the Master who began my training, called me into his presence and said unto me, 'My son, you must now face your severest test.'"

  "I trembled, for before this I had endured much. I could not imagine what my father had in store for me. And he said, 'You must go to the city of which you have heard, many leagues from this fishing village of ours, and dwell there for one month.'"

  Remo grunted. "Horrors."

  "My father said that many young men before me had gone to the city and never come back," Chiun continued in an arid voice. "I asked him what dangers awaited me, and he said, 'You will not know their face until they have inflicted grievous wounds upon your soul.' And hearing these portentous words I trembled anew, for I did not comprehend this riddle.

  "And so I walked to the city of Pyongyang, which is now in North Korea, but in those days was merely a city in the north of an undivided land. I went on foot, with a few coins in my pocket and only the kimono on my back."

  The Master of Sinanju lifted his tiny chin, his hazel eyes going opaque with memories.

  "The way was long, and my heart was tight with many emotions," he said. "Would I return alive? Would I be swallowed by the harlot guile of the city-dwellers, tales of which I had heard since childhood?

  "After two days, I came to the outskirts of Pyongyang. It was much bigger than I had ever dreamed. Its towers rose to the very sky. Its people were more numerous than I had imagined. There were sights undreamed of. Foods whose names I did not know. There were also people of foreign birth: Japanese, Chinese, and even bignosed whites. But the astounding thing was the Koreans I encountered. At first, I did not understand that they were Koreans. For their faces were quite different from those of the village of Sinanju. And they had taken Japanese names."

  "Really?" Remo asked.

  "Yes. It is unbelievable, but true. For these were the days when Korea was a vassal of Japan." Chiun frowned at the memory. "As I walked among these Koreans-who-were-not, I marveled at the women I encountered along the way. They, too, looked unlike Sinanju women. For they wore fine clothes and painted their faces and lips in most unusual and artful ways. I had not gone very far when it came to me that this Pyongyang would be a pleasant place to spend my days." Chiun bowed his bald head sadly.

  "No!" Remo said, voice mock-serious.

  "Yes," Chiun admitted.

  Remo grinned. "Well, you know what they say: 'Can't keep 'em down on the farm once they've seen gay Pyongyang.' "

  Chiun's stern face wrinkled. "I do not understand."

  "Never mind. What happened next?"

  "I came upon a painted-faced maiden who caught my fancy."

  "This isn't going to be one of those unrequited love things, is it?" Remo asked. "Because if it is, I'd just as soon throw myself into the arms of Cheeta Ching and end the misery right now."

  "It is nothing of the kind," Chiun sniffed. "Of course, it was love at first sight."

  Remo suppressed a smile. "Of course." "The maiden, beholding my manly splendor, was instantly smitten with Chiun the Younger, which is what I was called in those long-ago days."

  "Chiun the Younger?"

  "Not that I am now old," Chiun said hastily.

  "Course not."

  "As I was saying, this maiden, whose name was Ch'amnari, was smitten with the young man that I was. She employed all manner of enticements and other blandishments to lure me into her womanly snares, but I kept the warning of my father, Chiun the Elder, in mind, and passed her by."

  "Junks in the night," Remo said with a sober face.

  "That night, this maiden haunted my sleep. Her painted face swam before my dream-eye, and troubled my slumber deeply. Remo, it was true love."

  "Sounds like hormones to me."

  "Philistine!"

  "Okay, okay, it was love. Let's cut to the chase. Did you bed her, or what?"

  The Master of Sinanju's tiny face stiffened. His hands, nails touching, separated and found concealment in the closing sleeves of his elaborate kimono.

  "I refuse to say." "You didn't."

  "I did!" Chiun snapped.

  "Okay, you did. You obviously practiced safe sex, too. So what happened then?"

  Chiun looked off toward the mountains. "When I awoke, Remo, she was gone."

  "So much for true love."

  "And with her had gone my meager allotment of gold coins, which I had carried in a purse at my waist."

  "Ah-ha, I'll bet you jingled when you walked, and it was your jingle, not your jangle, that gave her the hots for you."

  "It was my splendid strong body!" Chiun flared. "Keep it down," Remo cautioned, looking over his shoulder. "We don't want Cheeta climbing the building with a mike clenched in her teeth."

  "Speak for yourself," Chiun sniffed. Then, his voice going low, he added, "For you see, Cheeta is the image of the maiden I have told you about, Remo."

  "You fell for her? Ch'amnari, I mean."

  Chiun nodded. "Even though she was a thief. For you see, she had what was called in the village a 'city face' fine-featured and delicate. The women of Sinanju are country-faced. The woman I later married was country-faced. Yet I never forgot the city-faced Ch'amnari, and our rapturous night together."

  "That good, huh?"

  "She was lavish in her compliments," Chiun added crisply.

  "Ever get your money back?"

  "Yes. With interest."

  "Interest?"

  "I searched Pyongyang for this Ch'amnari, eventually finding her in the company of a Japanese colonel. Ito. An oppressor."

  "Uh-oh . . ."

  "He sneered at me. Called me a barbarian. And when I demanded justice, he told me to be gone."

  "So you wasted him?" Remo said.

  "I laid his yapping head at the feet of Ch'amnari, who with trembling hands surrendered my purse of gold coins, and others beside. Then I gave her the coldness of my retreating back and never saw her again. Although I have carried her beauteous image within me down to this very day. I returned to my village a sadder man, Remo. When my father saw the expression on my face, he said nothing. But I could see in his eyes that he knew I had learned the hard lesson he had hoped I would come to understand."

  "You're serious about this? You really want that barracu- Cheeta?"

  Chiun shrugged carelessly. "Her beauty pleases me. She is worthy to bear the child my country-faced wife never bestowed upon me-and the male heir you have yet to produce."

  "Ah-ha!" Remo said, holding his arms stubbornly. "Now the real stuff comes out. Correct me if I'm wrong, Little Father, but quite a few years ago you got zapped by microwaves. You said you'd been sterilized."

  "That was, as you say, years ago," Chiun said, with a dismissive flap of a kimono sleeve. "It may be that my inner essence has come to life again."

  "You saying you're horny?" Remo demanded.

  Chiun whirled, his eyes cold fire. "Pale piece of pig's ear! I am speaking of possibilities. Cheeta and Chiun. Chiun and Cheeta. And the offspring that may blossom from our perfect union."

  Remo shook his head slowly. "I don't know, Little Father. I just can't see it."

  Chiun snorted. "You have the imagination of a flea."

  "Okay, never mind that. What do you propose doing about this Cheeta problem?"

  "She likes you."

  "That depends. If she figured out I palmed her tape, she may want to strangle me with piano wire."

  "I wish you to arrange a tryst for Cheeta. A romantic encounter. She will heed your request. But I will go in your stead."

  "Sorry, John Alden."

  "Why not?"

  "One, you'll be made a fool of. Her name may be Cheeta, but it might as well be Ch'
amnari."

  "Please."

  Remo frowned. Behind him, the crowd roared the name "Esperanza." The speech was ending.

  "I'll think about it," he said. "First, I want you to drop this 'treasurer' crap."

  Chiun stiffened. "Is this the boon you wish to invoke?"

  Remo thought about that. "No. At least not yet. Smitty wants you to watch over Esperanza. But that's as far as it goes."

  "Then you will not speak to Cheeta on my behalf?" Chiun inquired.

  "Little Father," Remo said wearily, "I sincerely hope to avoid Cheeta Ching for the rest of my natural life."

  "That is your final word?"

  "No. Let me think about it. Okay?"

  "I will accept that. But not for long."

  "We friends again?"

  "For now."

  Remo smiled. Chiun's face remained set. "I must return to the side of my patron, Esperanza," he said.

  "You know, he might be another Ch'amnari, too."

  "What makes you say that?" Chiun said thinly.

  "He offered you the treasurer's post. Just like that. Sounds too good to be true."

  "I have delivered to him Koreatown, and all the votes that come with it," Chiun said loftily. "This is how empires are built."

  "Just watch your step."

  "That lesson," Chiun said loftily, "I learned long ago in old Pyongyang." The Master of Sinanju turned and padded toward the roof trap, disappearing down and out of sight.

  Remo Williams watched his Master go.

  "Great," he muttered. "I'm stuck in the middle of a love triangle between the Wicked Witch of the East and the only person I care about."

  And down below the roaring crowd cried, "Esperanza!"

  Chapter 16

  By the next morning, the name Enrique Espiritu Esperanza was on the lips of every man, woman, and child in California. And beyond.

  "We're hot! Oh, we're so hot!" Harmon Cashman said enthusiastically. He had arrayed three rows of Oreo cookies on the breakfast nook table, and was separating them with a butter knife so that the creme centers were exposed, like cataracted whale eyes. "The numbers are starting to move our way! I am so amped!"

  "It is time to widen our campaign," Enrique Esperanza decided.

  Harmon Cashman began scraping the dry creme filling onto a bread dish, making a gooey little pile.

  "We got L.A. County practically sewed up," he agreed. "The white-I mean blanco-campaign offices are reporting a flood of new volunteers and contributions. You got the white people thinking you're California's savior."