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  "May he rot in peace," Remo said. "The only time I've ever beaten my own time." But he was glad he would not again enjoy Maggie. With his identity had come back his disciplines. Sex was one of them.

  Both planes ate up the distance to Scambia but Remo's craft took bigger bites. It was only a minute behind Nemeroff now and up ahead they saw the island of Scambia, down in the cool blue waters of Mozambique. Nemeroff's helicopter began to lose altitude. Maggie followed suit.

  They were over Scambia now, a drab little island, its monotonous landscape relieved only by nature with rocks and not by man with buildings. Ahead, they could see the only large building on the island, a blue stone structure, surrounded by mazes of gardens and pools. Nemeroff's helicopter was heading down for it. They could see it touch down on the grounds. Two. No, three men scurried from it, and began running.

  Maggie increased her speed, barrelling the helicopter down, and she touched down alongside the other craft only forty-five seconds after it had landed.

  "Good show," Remo said. "Pip, pip and all that. If you Britishers weren't frigid, I think I could love you." A glance showed that Nemeroff's helicopter was empty. "Chiun," Remo said. "Get in and protect the president. The vice president is going to try to kill him. Maggie and I will go for the gold, to stop Nemeroff from getting it."

  Before he finished speaking, Chiun was out on the grassy field, moving toward the front of the palace.

  There, two uniformed guards stood at attention, their eyes carefully watching the helicopters, watching the people who had climbed from the two aircraft, now watching this old Oriental come skittering across the deep green grass at them. They had been given orders to let no one into the palace. Extreme security precautions, Vice President Asiphar himself had just told them.

  Then Chiun was in front of them. They were moving to block him with their rifles and then he was not there. One guard turned to the other and said: "What happened to that old man?"

  "I don't know," the other guard said. "Did you hear someone say 'excuse me'?"

  "No, it couldn't be," said the first guard, and they watched again across the field as Remo and the girl headed for the east wing of the palace.

  There was another guard inside on the first floor of the palace's central wing. He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to see an old Oriental standing there. "The president. Where is he?" Chiun asked.

  "What are you doing here?" the guard asked, which was the wrong thing to ask. A hand grabbed his waist, and ringers like knives poked their ways into clusters of nerves; the pain was agonizing.

  "Fool. Where is your president?"

  "At the head of the stairs," the man managed to gasp through his pain, and then he lapsed into unconsciousness.

  Chiun glided up the stairs, his feet seeming not to move under the heavy robe. There were no guards outside the heavy double doors that obviously led to the president's office. Chiun pushed open the doors and stepped inside.

  Across the room, President Dashiti worked at his desk, and he looked up as Chiun entered his field of vision. For a moment he was startled, then he said: "Forgive my staring. One is not always surprised at one's desk by Oriental's in robes."

  "In this world," Chiun said, "one should be surprised at nothing."

  "True enough," the president said, his hand straying toward the signal button on his desk, to call the guards to escort this old lunatic out.

  Chiun wagged a finger at him, naughty-naughty.

  "I beg your indulgence, Mr. President. Men are coming to assassinate you."

  Yes. Obviously a lunatic. But how did he get past the guards outside?

  "I must ask you to leave," Dashiti said.

  "Ask all you wish," Chiun said. "But I will stay and save you, even though you do not wish saving."

  The President's finger moved closer to the alarm button.

  Down the hall, Asiphar spoke to two men who stood in his small office.

  "It is time," he said, "the baron has arrived." He turned from his window and looked at the men, both tall and European-looking.

  "I have removed the guards. Just walk into his office and shoot him. I will follow at the sound of the shots and will confirm your story that others shot him and you attempted to stop them."

  The two men smiled, the knowing smile of one professional to another.

  "Now, go quickly. The guards may soon return."

  The two men nodded and went out into the hall. Quickly they walked to the president's door. Asiphar stood in the doorway of his own office, watched them push back the heavy door and enter Dashiti's inner sanctum. Now to wait for the shots. Oh, yes. He would help them get away. Right to their final resting place. When he heard the shots, he would race into Dashiti's office. And what else could a loyal vice president do, except kill the men who had killed his president? What better way to gain for himself public support and approval?

  He waited, and as the door closed behind the two assassins, he lifted the safety on his pistol.

  Baron Isaac Nemeroff had not entered the castle. Instead, he had run to the outside wall of the east wing, where the sewer crew had been working for the last month.

  The sewer foreman saw Nemeroff racing toward him across the open field in front of the palace and snapped to attention.

  "Come," Nemeroff said, "we must proceed quickly."

  The supervisor jumped down into the deep sewer trench that ran for fifty feet parallel to the east wall of the palace. Workers scattered to move out of the way as Nemeroff followed.

  The supervisor pointed. At right angles from the trench, heading straight toward the palace wall was a tunnel, tall enough for a man to move through, while standing up. It stopped at the palace wall. The supervisor flashed a light at the wall. Nemeroff could see the crew's handiwork. During the last four weeks, they had quietly drilled into and removed the mortar holding the stones of the wall together.

  "All it takes now," the supervisor said, "is a jolt with a jackhammer. The whole wall will open up."

  "Then do it," Nemeroff said. "Timing is all, now." He waved to one of the men to back their truck to the edge of the trench. In minutes, Asiphar would be President. The president of a country without a dime; the world's pauper. There would be no other game in town, except Nemeroff.

  The supervisor grabbed a jackhammer and went into the dark tunnel. After a moment, there came the terrific thump, thump, thump, so fast it was not a series of separate sounds but flooded the small tunnel with overpowering noise.

  Then it stopped. Nemeroff heard the thump of stones falling onto a stone floor and rolling to a halt.

  The supervisor came out of the dark to the trench-end of the tunnel where Nemeroff waited.

  "It is done," he said.

  Nemeroff brushed by him and went to the wall of the palace treasury room. The stones had been splintered and cracked. Some had fallen out. He pressed a hand against another stone. It fell easily, thumping on the floor of the dark room inside. Nemeroff began to push the stones free from the wall; they came loose like children's styrofoam building blocks.

  He pushed and pulled stones away until he had made a hole big enough to step through easily, then clambered inside.

  It was a small room, perhaps only twenty feet square, but it was dark and it took Nemeroff's sun-squinted eyes moments to adjust to the darkness. Gradually, the room came into focus. At the far end was a heavy steel door, which he knew was electrified and on the other side of which stood a squad of guards.

  And on pallets, all around the outside walls of the room, were stacked gold bullion, bar after bar, one-hundred million dollars worth, the total wealth of the nation of Scambia.

  Nemeroff giggled. Asiphar was in for a surprise. Talk about a president's hundred days. There would be Asiphar's hundred minutes. He would become president and the country would instantly become bankrupt. So? What was wrong with that? It happened to all African countries eventually. Nemeroff was just speeding up the process.

  And soon-despite that Remo Williams
and that Oriental and that woman-despite all them, the crime families of the world would have new leaders and they would listen when Nemeroff spoke. Scambia would still be under crime's flag.

  And someday, the Russians and the Americans might want missile bases here. What if they were willing to pour the wealth of their lands into this godforsaken island? This room could be filled with gold again and again, and again and again Nemeroff could drain it.

  He turned and called to his men. "Set up a line," he said. "Begin to pass out these bars. You, get in there and start," he called to the supervisor.

  Still trailing the jackhammer behind him, the man came into the small treasury room-into its darkness-and then it was dark no longer. Suddenly the overhead lights glared and glinted sharply off the gold, bathing the room almost in sunlight. Nemeroff blinked sharply, squeezing his eyelids together. When he opened them, at the end of the room, sitting on a stack of bullion, was the British woman and the man he had known as PJ Kenny.

  The two gunmen entered the presidential office. The president's blue leather chair was turned away from them, facing the window. It rocked gently back and forth.

  Both men held guns in their hands and one raised his, but the second man raised a hand in caution. Not at this distance. Wait.

  They walked softly across the heavily-padded carpet to the President's desk.

  They smiled at each other. A breeze. Walk up to him, one from each side. Two bullets in the head. No sweat.

  They drew near the presidential chair. Their guns came up. The chair slowly swung around and smiling at them, looking from face to face, was not the President, but the wizened parchment face of an ancient Oriental.

  In the corridor Asiphar waited. Then he heard two shots.

  He unsnapped his holster and ran toward the President's office.

  Inside the door, he stopped. The two gunmen stood alongside the President's chair, but their bodies were contorted and twisted. In the chair sat an aged Oriental in blue flowing robes, who looked at Asiphar as if he recognized him. He raised his hands toward Asiphar across the room, and as he released the two gunmen, they fell to the floor softly.

  The old Oriental stood up. His eyes burned into Asiphar's. The vice president looked at the two dead men on the floor, first in horror, then in puzzlement. He looked up again at the old man, as if he would find an answer in the Oriental's face.

  He reached for his pistol.

  The old man said, "They missed," and then he was over the top of the desk, in the air, coming toward Asiphar, and the last words Asiphar heard in the world were: "But the Master of Sinanju does not miss."

  He never got his gun from his holster. His heavy body hit the carpeted floor with no more sound than suet falling on a mattress.

  From inside a closet door stepped President Dashiti. He looked at the two dead gunmen. At dead Asiphar. And then at Chiun.

  "How may I repay you?" he said softly.

  "By giving me some method of transportation home besides a helicopter."

  Far away, as if from miles away, came the sound of tiny cracks. Chiun heard them; recognized them as shots. Wordlessly, he was gone from the President's office.

  "Get him," Nemeroff shouted. He stood aside and men poured through the tunnel into the treasury room.

  Remo sat unconcernedly on the gold bars, humming.

  Three men-four, then five-poured into the small room. They stood, waiting, as their supervisor, holding the jackhammer under his arm as if it were a rifle, advanced toward Remo and Maggie, his lips twisted in a thin smile.

  Remo waited, then reached up a hand and flipped the switch, plunging the room into darkness again.

  Nemeroff tried to see into the darkness, but could not.

  Then the room was filled with the awful roar of a jackhammer, but as quickly as it started, it stopped. Then it started again, and there was a scream.

  "Did you get him?" Nemeroff called.

  "No Baron, he missed. My turn now." It was the voice of the American.

  The dark room was illuminated briefly by the flashes of gunfire. In the stroboscopic pulses of light. Nemeroff watched an eerie tableau of death. The American held the jackhammer under his arm. Nemeroff's men fired at him. But he was never there. More shots. And then fewer. In the flashes of light, he saw that men were falling, screaming, struggling as they were impaled on the jackhammer like bugs.

  Nemeroff fled.

  He ran along the tunnel toward the sunlight. He jumped up out of the trench and broke in a dead run for the field, where his pilot had already begun to warm up the helicopter's engines.

  In the treasury room, Remo dropped the jackhammer. There was no one left.

  Through the dark, his cat's eyes looked toward Maggie, who still sat motionless, atop the pallet .of gold.

  "Maggie. You all right?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm going after Nemeroff." He headed toward the sunlight. Maggie got to her feet and followed him, trailing at her side the .45 calibre automatic she still had not fired.

  Nemeroff was already in the helicopter and it was lifting from the ground when Remo came out into the sunlight. He heard Maggie stumble behind him and turned to help her.

  Behind him, the helicopter rose, and then swooped toward them. Remo pulled Maggie up onto the street next to the sewer trench, then turned. Overhead, roaring at them came the helicopter.

  Dammit, he thought, Smith'll bust my balls if I let him get away.

  Then shots came from the helicopter, plinking the pavement around Remo, and he heard one thump softly next to him. As he turned, Maggie fell onto the roadway. Blood poured from a wound in her chest. The .45 dropped from her hand.

  The helicopter hovered overhead, thirty feet off the ground, and shots rained from it, showering the ground with lead, as Nemeroff fired at Remo.

  Remo ignored him and looked at Maggie. She smiled once and died.

  He picked up the .45, wheeled and fired. He missed. Nemeroff, seeing the weapon in Remo's hands, remembering his marksmanship told his pilot to fly off.

  The bird hovered, then its motor changed pitch, as it began to pull away.

  Chiun came around the corner of the palace. He saw Remo, holding the .45 with both hands at arm's length, squeezing a shot at the helicopter which was moving away.

  It was out of .45 range now.

  Chiun ran up and took the pistol from Remo's hands.

  "The Jesus nut," Remo shouted. "It holds the rotor blades on. Got to get it."

  Chiun shook his head sadly. "You will never learn," he said. "The target that lives is the target that gives itself to the marksman."

  Almost casually, he aimed the automatic in the direction of the fleeing helicopter. He extended his right arm, holding the .45 and gently the barrel of the gun transcribed a circle in air, and then a smaller circle, and yet a smaller circle.

  "Shoot, for Christ's sake. They'll be in Paris," Remo said. The helicopter was two-hundred yards away now, hopelessly out of range.

  And still Chiun's arm rotated the .45 in ever-tightening concentric circles, zoning in, and then he squeezed the trigger. Once.

  He dropped the gun, turned his back on the helicopter, and knelt alongside the girl.

  He had missed. He must have missed. The range was too far; the target too small. Then, as Remo watched, the helicopter pitched forward, and then it dropped, plummeting, like a rock, and there was a flash of light, and a split-second later an explosion as the aircraft crashed into the rocky soil of Scambia.

  Chiun stood up. "She is dead, my son," he said.

  "I know," Remo said. "You got the pilot."

  "I know," Chiun said. "Did you doubt I would?"

  "Not for a moment," Remo said. "Let's go. Smith owes us a vacation. I need to rest."

  "You need to practice the back elbow thrust," Chiun said.

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