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  "Yes, it worries me," said Colonel Huang. He turned off the television set and glanced out the porthole at the calm water extending out to the reddening horizon. There was nothing so secure as an American navy vessel on the high seas, to accomplish sensitive international arrangements without interruption.

  "It worries me," continued Colonel Huang, sitting down at the table with the other two colonels, "when undisciplined operatives can pull off a hijacking that efficiently."

  "He's right," said Colonel Anderson. "We didn't have an easy problem to begin with, Petrovich. We just may be up against something that is going to be impossible."

  "Worry, worry, worry, first of all, how do you know the operatives were undisciplined, as you say? When we entered Berlin, we had those problems too."

  "Not from your top troops. Your stragglers, Petrovich. Elite units don't rape or kill babies. Come on."

  "So. One isolated incident," said Colonel Petrovich testily. He threw up his hands as if it were nothing.

  "No, it's not," said Colonel Anderson. "It's a pattern. A splinter group of the IRA takes out an entire wing of British Army headquarters and stops to hold up a department store. A unit of the South American Tupemaros goes crazy in a girl's school, yet still manages to cut its way through a full, well-armoured division of the Venezuelan Army."

  "You know it was full armoured?" asked Colonel Huang.

  "Yes," Anderson said quickly, "I know. For a fact. Now the important thing is that the United Nations conference on terrorism is going to start next week. And we have to have our international agreements worked out by that time. Let's face it. We wouldn't be here at all, if our governments didn't feel it was in their own best interests to stop terrorism once and for all."

  The other two colonels nodded solemnly, then Petrovich said, "And we have done very well. We have worked out all kinds of technical problems in these last few weeks. Next week, our governments will jointly present our plan to eliminate terrorism, and all the other nations will go along because they will think they participated in the debate. So why do we worry now?"

  "Colonel," Anderson said stiffly, "we have worked out pretty-solid agreements here on arms, skyjacking, random violence, and political kidnapping. But this new wave of terrorism may contain a new ingredient that makes our work a waste of time."

  Colonel Huang nodded. Petrovich shrugged. Were they both going mad?

  "All our work has been built on the need to cut off terrorist groups from a base. We've presumed that they need training; they need financing; they need a country to work from. But what if they don't?"

  "Impossible," Petrovich said.

  "No, it's not," Anderson said.

  "He's right," said Huang. "That hijacking was pulled off slickly by people who obviously had no training or discipline. The British outpost was levelled by little more than street hoodlums. The guerrillas in Venezuela were common field hands out on a lark. Somehow, somewhere, in the last two weeks, the whole nature of terrorism has changed. Don't you see, Petrovich, it is no longer tied to a country? And if that is so, the agreements we work put here for the world are worthless." Huang sat back in his chair.

  Anderson nodded, then added: "Do you realize those skyjackers got their weapons past the very latest metal detection devices? And they took over the plane in thirty-seven seconds?"

  "Competence," said Colonel Petrovich. "Just competence."

  "Instant military competence for anyone," Huang corrected. "And that is what is so frightening."

  "And against that kind of competence," Anderson said, "sanctions are useless, because this new wave of terrorism does not need a host country to train in."

  "We can't be sure of that," Petrovich said. "All terrorists are cow dung at heart. I can't be sure that these incidents prove they have access to instant training."

  "Well, that is what I plan to report to my government," Anderson said. "And I would suggest that both of you report the same thing to your superiors: that we believe there is a new movement underway in terrorism and that the conference will be useless unless we can figure out what this new force is and how to handle it"

  Colonel Anderson felt sure that the American government would appreciate the soundness of him thinking. He had good lines right up to the top. It was a shock, therefore, when he heard the reaction to his report two days later in the Pentagon.

  "It is the policy of our government to proceed as if no new terrorist force exists," said the President's personal military advisor, Lt. Gen. Charles Whitmore.

  "C'mon, Chuck-are you out of your head?" asked Anderson.

  "The United States government, Colonel, will submit, in conjunction with China and the Soviet Union, a plan to control terrorism. This plan will be advanced next week. You and your two associates will continue working out the final details."

  Anderson rose from his seat "Are you people crazy, Chuck?" He slammed his fist down on the broad, highly polished desk that was bare, but for a flag with three stars. "That conference won't mean a spit in a windstorm unless we have some kind of good handle on this new force. All the talk you want, all the sanctions you want, they won't mean a goddam thing and we'll be right back where we started from. Even worse, 'cause the sanctions won't work, and we'll have a harder time getting them next time around."

  "Colonel, I don't know how much of your military etiquette you remember from the Point, but desk banging by a colonel on a lieutenant general's desk is not proper military protocol."

  "Protocol, my ass, Chuck. That's for the troops. We've got a problem and you're sticking your head in the sand."

  "Colonel, it may interest you to know that I relayed your message verbatim. It may possibly interest you to know that I yelled also. I may have yelled myself out of my career, but, Colonel, yell I did. And I was told, Colonel, by my superior that I should relay to you that we will proceed with the conference as if this new terrorist force does not exist. It was an order from my Commander in Chief. It was a direct order. To be followed, Colonel."

  Colonel Anderson sat back in his chair. He was quiet for a few long seconds, and then he grinned.

  "Okay, Chuck, what is it? The CIA?"

  "I don't know what you mean, Colonel."

  "Dammit, Chuck, don't be cute with me. I have to deal with Petrovich and Huang and I need answers. Look, the President's no fool. You've explained the whole thing to him. He says, business as usual. To me, that can mean only one thing. He thinks he's going to have this new terrorist force pinned down by next week. So, now I ask, is the CIA going to do it?"

  "Colonel, I assure you, I have no idea."

  "Have if your own way, Chuck," said Anderson, getting to his feet. "But I wish you'd pass along one message if you could. This new terrorist force is something special. I don't think the CIA's good enough to handle it. But that's the President's problem, not mine. Just, when you get involved in it, you tell whoever's in charge that they better work hard and make no mistakes. These people are good."

  "Thank you, Colonel," said General Whitmore, indicating the meeting was over. He stayed at him desk, staring at the door which closed behind Anderson. The President just had not seemed concerned about the new terrorist force, and when Whitmore had suggested the CIA, the President had jumped down him throat. "No CIA," he had said. "I'll handle this."

  The President had seemed almost cocky about it,, almost as if he had some kind of special force that Whitmore knew nothing about. The general bent over him desk and doodled on the blotter. He agreed with Anderson. These new terrorists were serious. The President's special force had better be something really special.

  CHAPTER TWO

  His name was Remo, and he did not feel very special.

  He felt incredibly ordinary that bright California morning, standing beside his sky-blue pool, just like any other pool, near any other luxury villa in this luxury community in a luxury county where everyone talked about his stock investments, or the movie he was making, or the bitch of an income tax.

  Did Remo fi
nd the new tax bill threatening? He was asked this often at the ordinary cocktail parties made ordinary by their repetition and the dull ordinariness of the people attending them who invariably felt, for some strange reason, that they were extraordinary.

  No, Remo did not find the new tax bill threatening.

  Would Remo care for a cocktail? A joint? A pill?

  No, Remo did not indulge.

  An hors d'oeuvre?

  No, it might have monosodium glutamate and Remo ate only once a day anyhow.

  Was Remo a health food addict?

  No, his body was.

  The face was familiar. Did Remo make a flick in Paris?

  No. Perhaps they just used the same plastic surgeon.

  Just what did Remo do for a living?

  Suffered fools gladly.

  Would Remo care to repeat that statement out on the terrace?

  Not really.

  Did Remo know he was speaking to the former amateur light heavyweight champion of California and a black belt holder, not to mention the heavy mob connections anyone owning a studio would have?

  Remo did not realize all that.

  Would Remo care to repeat that statement about fools?

  The fool had done it for him.

  How would Remo like an hors d'oeuvre in his face?

  That would be quite impossible because the silver hors d'oeuvre tray was going to be wrapped around the fool's head.

  Remo remembered that last cocktail party he had attended in Beverly Hills, how two servants had to hammer and chisel the tray from the movie mogul's head, how the movie mogul complained directly to Washington, even used his influence to get government agencies to check out Remo's background. They found nothing, of course. Not even a Social Security number. Which was natural. Dead men have neither Social Security numbers nor fingerprints on file.

  Remo stuck a toe into the too-blue water. Lukewarm. He glanced back at the house where the wide glass patio doors were open. He heard the morning soap operas grinding into their teary beginnings. Suddenly a voice cut through the television organ music.

  "Are you ready? I'll be listening," came a squeaky, Oriental voice from inside the house.

  "Not ready yet, little father," said Remo.

  "You should always be ready."

  "Yeah. Well, I'm not," yelled Remo.

  "A wonderful answer. A full explanation. A rational cause."

  "Well, I'm just not ready yet. That's all."

  ". . . for a white man," came the squeaky Oriental voice.

  "For a white man," hissed Remo testily under him breath.

  He tried the water with the other foot. Still lukewarm. There had been flack from headquarters over the hors d'oeuvre tray incident.

  Was Remo aware of the incredible jeopardy he had placed the agency in by attracting attention?

  Remo was aware.

  Did Remo know the effect on the nation if the existence of the agency should become known?

  Remo knew.

  Did Remo know the expense and risk the agency had gone to in establishing him as a man without living identity?

  If Dr. Harold W. Smith, head of CURE, was referring to framing a policeman named Remo Williams for murder, getting the policeman sentenced to the electric chair so that when the switch was pulled and the body pronounced dead? the prints would foe destroyed and the Social Security number removed, and the poor guy would no longer exist, if that's what Dr. Smith meant, yes, Remo remembered very well all the trouble CURE had gone to.

  And all the trouble with the never-ending training that had turned him into something other than a normal human being, Remo remembered well.

  He remembered a lot of things. Believing he was going to be executed and waking up in a hospital bed. Being told that the Constitution was in peril and a President had authorized an agency to have powers to fight crime beyond constitutional limits. A secret organization that would not exist. Only the President; Dr. Harold W. Smith, the head of the secret organization CURE; the recruiter; and Remo would ever know. And of course Remo was a dead man, having been executed the night before for murder.

  Still, there had been a little problem when the recruiter got injured and lay drugged in a hospital bed, perhaps ready in his narcotic fog to talk about CURE. But that little matter was easily taken care of. Remo, the dead policeman, was ordered to kill him and then there were only three people who knew of CURE.

  Why only one man for the enforcement arm of CURE? the ex-Remo Williams had asked.

  Less chance of CURE becoming a threat to the government. Of course, the one man would get special training.

  And he did-training from the Master of the House of Sinanju, training so extreme at times that even a real death seemed preferable.

  Yes, Remo remembered all the trouble CURE had gone to for him, and if wrapping a tray around a fool's head endangered all that work, well, that was the business, sweetheart

  "Is that all you can say, Remo? That's the biz?" Dr. Smith had said in one of those rare face-to-face meetings.

  "That's all I can say."

  "Well, it's done," said the lemon-faced Dr. Smith. "Now to the business at hand. What do you know about terrorists?" Then followed an afternoon briefing on terrorists, a preamble to a mission.

  Remo bent over and tinkled a hand in the pool like everyone else's pool in this luxury community.

  "I do not hear a body move through the water," came the Oriental voice.

  "I do not hear a body move through the water," Remo mimicked under him breath. He stood in boxer bathing trunks, an apparently normally built man in his early thirties with sharp features and deep dark eyes. Only his thick wrists would give any indication that this was more than an ordinary man, for the real deadliness was where it always is with man, in his mind.

  "I do not hear a body move through the water," came the voice again.

  Remo went into the pool. Not in a dive or a splashing jump, but instead, the way he had been taught, like the essence of gravity returning toward the center of the earth. Even a novice in the martial arts knew that collapsing was actually the fastest way of getting down. This was an extension of it. One moment, Remo was standing on the side of the pool, and the next, the lukewarm water surrounded him, above him, and around him, and him feet were on tile. To someone watching, it would appear as if the pool just sucked him in.

  He waited, letting his eyes adjust to the stinging chlorinated water, letting him restricted use of oxygen adjust his body, letting the arms float while the mind concentrated the focus of the weight at his feet and legs to keep him steady underwater,

  He was in a world of warm blue jade and he adjusted to become part of it, not fight it. When he had first learned moving through water, he had tried harder and harder, and succeeded less and less. The Master of Sinanju, Chiun, had said that when he stopped trying he would learn to move through water, and that it was Remo's arrogance that made him believe he could overpower it, instead of submitting to it.

  "By submission, you conquer," Chiun had said, and then demonstrated.

  The wisp of an aged Oriental had entered the water properly, leaving a trail of only three small bubbles following the descent of his body, as if a small rock had been placed gently, not dropped, into the water. Without seeming propulsion, the body suddenly was moving through the water much as Remo had seen a tiger shark do in a city aquarium back east. No flailing. No straining. Swish. Swish. Swish. And Chiun was at the other end of the pool and out of the water as though vacuumed out. It was the training of the House of Sinanju that made its masters appear not to push themselves but to be pulled.

  Remo had tried. Failed. Tried again. Failed. Until one tired afternoon, following three failures in which he had moved no better than an ordinary swimmer, he felt the tuning of his body.

  him body in conjunction with the water made the forward movement. It was too easy to believe. And then, trying it again, he found he could not do it again.

  Chiun had leaned over the pool and taken Remo's
hand. He pushed it against the water. Remo felt force. Then he pulled Remo's hand through the water. The hand moved swiftly, without effort. The water accepted the hand.

  That was the key.

  "Why didn't you show me this the first tune?" Remo had asked.

  "Because you did not know what you did not know. You had to begin at ignorance."

  "Little father," Remo had said, "you're as clear as scripture."

  "But your testaments are not clear at all," Chiun had said. "And I am very clear. Unfortunately, a light to a blind man is always inadequate. You now know how. to move through water."

  And Chiun was right. Remo never failed again. Now, as he un-weighted his feet, he understood the water, its very nature, and he too moved, not cutting through but blending the weight thrusts of his body with the mass of the water to pull himself forward. Swish. Swish. Swish. Up and out of the pool, then stroll back, leaving wet footprints on the yellow outdoor rag. It was not exercise, because exercise meant straining the body. This was practice.

  Once more, down into the pool and off-swish, swish, swish. Then up and out and pad back to the beginning. On the third time, Remo glanced quickly back to the house. Competence had already brought him to the point of boredom. To hell with it. He slapped the water once at one end, dashed to the other and slapped It again.

  "Perfect," came the Oriental voice. "Perfect. The first time you have achieved perfection. For a white man, that is."

  It was only that evening when Chiun's television shows were over, and Remo continued to maintain a happy little secret smile, that Chiun looked quizzically at him pupil and said:

  "That third moving through the water was false."

  "What, little father?"

  "False. You cheated."

  "Would I do that?" asked Remo indignantly.

  "Would the spring rice swallow the dew of the Yacca bird?"

  "Would it? I don't know," Remo said. "I never heard of a Yacca bird."