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  "A negative positive," said Smith.

  "Of course," said Van Riker.

  "Of course," said Chiun.

  Remo looked at him quizzically.

  "Let me handle this one, my son. He might prove some trouble," said Chiun in basic Korean.

  "I still don't understand," Remo told Van Riker.

  There was a new jet waiting with a new pilot. Over Arkansas, Van Riker explained to Remo how CURE had discovered Cassandra. What it sounded like he said was that many people reporting on materials and people movement could be simplified in computers to show what they were doing just by what they pretended not to be doing.

  "I still don't understand," said Remo.

  "You don't have to," said Van Riker.

  "Pay attention," said Chiun to Remo. "You might learn something." And behind Van Riker's back he gave Remo a big wink, then rolled his eyes back in his head, indicating that he thought the white-haired man was a lunatic.

  Over Wounded Elk the plane shuddered. Van Riker's tan whitened. In a few moments he said shakily, "Thank God. It was only an air pocket."

  CHAPTER THREE

  The plan Smith had outlined was simple in concept. First, protect the bronze nuclear cap under the monument so that midwestern America did not become a cinder. Then make sure to protect the continuing secrecy of the Cassandra, whose exposure could set up a dangerous nuclear imbalance.

  But there was a flaw in the plan.

  The flaw was ABC, CBS, NBC, the New York Times, the New York Globe, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, the London Daily Mail, Time, Newsweek, Esquire, Paris-Match, the Asahi Shimbun, United Press International, Associated Press, Reuters, Pravda, and several hundred other representatives of the media, all stretched out like an undulating picket line along the flat Montana prairie, made dust-brown by a hot summer and a long drought.

  Half a mile away, atop a flat mesa, was the town of Wounded Elk. It had been set up ten years before by Apowa tribesmen who had left the reservation, trudged along the now paved road, and began to build the good life for themselves. However, the press of the world was not interested in the two thousand Indians who lived in the town. They were interested instead in the forty Indians from Chicago, Harlem, Hollywood, and Harvard, who had seized the monument and the church along the paved road leading to the new town of Wounded Elk.

  Federal marshals still formed a large loose ring around the Indian invaders, but they were under orders from Washington not to try to evict the protestors, lest anyone think it was a repressive act. At first the marshals had tried to keep the press away from the protesters, but it had turned out to be too much work and now they weren't trying too hard.

  As Remo watched, he saw a blue flag being carried by someone from the church to the monument. The cameramen readied themselves. The man dropped the flag, raised a Russian Kalashnikov rifle above his head, jumped onto the marble monument, he did a war dance then jumped back down.

  "We didn't get that one. We didn't get that one," Remo heard one cameraman say. "Wave to them or something."

  There was waving from the front line of the newsmen, and then a voice bellowed through a megaphone from near the monument, "Whatsa matter with you shits? You had the blue flag on that one."

  "Some of us missed it, sir," yelled back one reporter.

  "All right," bellowed the voice. "But this is it. No more for today."

  The man with braided black hair again jumped up on top of the marble monument, did his war dance, waving his rifle, then jumped back down and strolled back to the church.

  The cameraman then turned his camera to his announcer, who began to intone what sounded like a conclusion to a television news show.

  "So, surrounded by armed federal marshals, the Revolutionary Indian Party vows to fight to the death or until, as they say, full and just rights are returned to their people. This is…"

  The announcer was interrupted by a young blonde girl wearing Indian beads and screaming, "The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!"

  Remo grabbed the hysterical girl by the arm and dragged her off to the edge of the crowd, where federal marshals had cordoned off a huge parking lot for the media. Twice the size of a football field, the area was so tangled with electrical cords from the television vans that it looked like a field of black spaghetti.

  "Where are you taking me, you bastard?" yelled the girl. "Oppressive male chauvinist pig."

  "I want you to do something for me."

  "Pig bastard."

  "Please don't yell. The whole world is watching," said Remo as they approached a black limousine.

  "The whole world is watching. The whole world is watching!" shrieked the girl vengefully. "The whole word is watching!"

  With one hand Remo opened the rear door of the car, and with the other, he shoved the shrieking head into the back seat.

  "The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!" the girl continued. Remo held her up to Van Riker's face, and when the general nodded that he had had enough, Remo threw the girl, spinning, several cars away. She cracked into a hood ornament and was quiet.

  "That," said Remo, "is the minor flaw in your plan. It is very hard to be inconspicuous when the whole world is watching."

  "Hmmmm," said Van Riker.

  "Any other bright ideas?"

  "The very negativeness of it is positive," said Chiun, and only Remo knew he was ridiculing.

  "Of course," said Van Riker. "But how do we use it?"

  "Look," said Remo, "I will stay at the monument and protect the shield. You go do what you want to do. Maybe you and Smitty can play code or something. Chiun will stay with you."

  "What are you going to do? How are you going to do it?"

  "You're the greatest single disaster to hit this country since the Civil War, and you're asking me my plans. My plan is this: try to undo some of the disaster out there. How does that sound?"

  "Don't get snotty with me, son. The only reason I want you is that a division of armor would give us away. There is some delicacy involved in this thing. We need secrecy."

  "We're not exactly a public organization, either, Van Riker," said Remo.

  "Let me speak to him," Chiun said to Van Riker. "I will teach him respect for authority."

  Chiun left the car with Remo, and once they were away from Van Riker's hearing, asked if it were true that America faced a holocaust of fire. Remo said this was what Smith had said and Van Riker had verified.

  "And is it true that America would be but a shell of a country if this happened?"

  "Probably, Little Father."

  "Then our course is clear. We must seek employment elsewhere. Persia during the summer, my son, is a most delicious place for an assassin. There is a melon that ripens just before dawn…"

  "Forget it. I'm not going," said Remo, and he headed toward the first ring of newsmen with Chiun's recriminations in his ears. He knew the whole speech by heart: how Chiun had found an inadequate piece of a pale pig's ear and given it the wisdom of the House of Sinanju and how this ingrate cast aside this great wisdom and risked his life wantonly in the service of foolish causes—this, after the master of Sinanju had devoted some of the best years of his life to Remo's training. Was Remo aware how much of the master's time would have been wasted if his pupil got himself killed? And for what? A two-hundred-year-old country? The House of Sinanju was ages older than that, but then again, being white, Remo probably could not count very well, either.

  Chiun returned to Van Riker's car, mumbling. Within twenty-five feet two networks and a newspaper approached him for interviews, asking if he were someone.

  "Are you supporting Third World liberation, sir?" asked a deep-voice newsman. Chiun saw the camera. He saw the makeup on the man's face.

  "Third World is what?" asked the master of Sinanju.

  "All browns, blacks, yellows, and Latin Americans."

  "Yes, I support totally Third World liberation—with
some minor exceptions, which include browns, blacks, Latins, the Chinese, Thais, Japanese, Filipinos, Burmese and Vietnamese."

  "That doesn't leave too much, sir."

  "That leaves all one needs. That leaves the Koreans," said Chiun, raising a wizened hand with long fingernails. And lest the newsman spread improper thoughts, he explained that not even all Koreans were worthy of liberations. The southerners were lazy, and Yalu villages were dirty, and Pyong Yang was really a whorehouse in disguise. But the village of Sinanju—that was worthy of liberation, except of course the four houses by the bay, the fishermen's wharf, the weaver's house. And naturally, one would not consider the farmers part of the village, since they never raised enough to feed anyone, anyhow.

  "What do you like about the Third World then?"

  "No whites," said Chiun.

  Seeing the Oriental giving an interview, another television reporter joined in to ask him what was going to happen at Wounded Elk, where the Indian movement was going, and how the government could best relate to the Indians.

  Since everyone liked money, Chiun said, the government ought to give the Indians more money, under the assumption that if the government gave them dried fish, they might not like it. Chiun had found through bitter experience that many people didn't like dried fish, especially Westerners. So money was nicer.

  This was immediately translated to national television as a "non-negotiable demand by a militant Third World spokesman."

  "Will you fight to the death, sir?"

  "Yours, yes—mine, no," said Chiun, summing up the essence of Sinanju training.

  The newspaper reporter was with a photographer, and when Chiun entered the car with Van Riker, his picture was taken, Van Riker tried to shield his face, and that was a mistake, because it triggered a flurry of shots as he drove away angrily over television cables and past federal marshals, mumbling to the Oriental, who seemed incredibly placid.

  "Do your instruments need protection?" asked Chiun.

  "No. I don't have them with me," said Van Riker. "We're going to them."

  Van Riker parked the car at a nearby highway motel that looked as if it were made of beaverboard and staples. He did not bother going to the office but went directly to a tacky room door and opened it with a key from his pocket. He saw the Oriental shuffle to an Apowa Indian in dungarees, leaning against the office door. The Apowa followed the Oriental to the car and removed the one trunk the Oriental had brought with him.

  Inside the room the Oriental told the Apowa that "the young man" would take care of it, and Van Riker tipped the Indian a dollar, then nodded him out of the room.

  From a closet Van Riker took a cleaning man's gray uniform and a brush with a long handle that looked something like a broom.

  "These are all I need," said Van Riker. "I'll need room, however, to work on some diagrams.

  Chiun heard the remark, thought a moment, and then realized the white man could not mean what he said. So he ignored him.

  Van Riker was amazed at how quickly the old Oriental had arranged the room. Where Van Riker wanted his map and diagram of Wounded Elk and the wiring charts of the monument, the Oriental had a television set rigged with a taping device so that, Van Riker could tell, the set was taping two other channels while the Oriental was watching the third.

  "Excuse me," said Van Riker, "I do not wish to be insulting, but the future of the United States depends on the accuracy of my calculations. I would very much appreciate your moving your television set so that I could set up my charts."

  "Use the bathroom," said Chiun.

  "I don't think you realize how vitally important this is."

  "This is the second time you have interrupted my daytime dramas of beauty. Most do not survive the first. But let it not be said that the House of Sinanju is not willing to sacrifice to a larger good."

  "Thank you," said Van Riker.

  "You may live," said Chiun. "Go to the bathroom and save your country."

  Meanwhile, Remo was approaching the line of federal marshals. They waved him back, but he continued on. One marshal raised a rifle to his shoulder and threatened to shoot. Remo saw the safety was on and continued up to the line.

  "Where are you going, buddy?" asked one marshal, a chubby oily-faced man with a pencil mustache.

  Remo clapped his on the marshal's shoulder in an affectionate display of camaraderie. "I'm one of you," said Remo, sliding his hand off the man's shoulder. "Just been assigned here from Washington to check things out. Keep up the good work."

  Remo walked away from the man and casually pocketed the badge he had taken from the man's breast pocket. He flashed it at another marshal a hundred yards down, passed through the line, and started walking toward the church and monument.

  As he approached a trench beside the road that passed the monument and church, a woman in deerskin with surprisingly white skin for an Indian rose from the trench. She pointed a pistol at Remo's belly.

  "Who are you?" she demanded.

  "George Armstrong Custer," said Remo, who saw that the safety was on.

  "You're now a prisoner of the Revolutionary Indian Party, Mr. Custer."

  "C'mon, c'mon, I got a deal for your leader. My name's Remo."

  She ushered him past the trench toward the church. Two men were sitting on the church steps, playing pinochle, shotguns resting in their laps, passing a bottle of Corby's Whiskey back and forth between them.

  As far as Remo could tell, one owed the other $23.50 and would pay it just as soon as they liberated another town from white oppression.

  They looked up as Remo and the woman approached.

  "One of the reporters sneaking through. And without our summoning him," said the woman.

  "Well, leave him here and get the hell out. And what's for dinner?" asked one of the men with a meld.

  "You can't talk to me like that. This is the liberation movement. I'm sharing your struggle to free our people from oppression."

  "My apologies, comrade. What's for super.?"

  "Buffalo."

  "Buffalo? There are no buffalo here."

  "The new buffalo," said the young woman.

  "You mean the cow behind the church?"

  "The cow and all the other buffalo—the buffalo that roam department stores resting on our land, the buffalo that fill the supermarkets with food grown on our land, and the buffalo in the jewelry stores full of jewels purchased with what was stolen from us. Our buffalo. We are a race of hunters."

  "They're still shooting the cow," said the man, melding a flush and a hundred aces and rewarding himself with another long draft from the bottle.

  "It will be dead by supper, at least," said the girl.

  "Then it has to be skinned."

  "Then we must liberate the food from the stores," she said.

  "The only stores are up in the Apowa village," the man said, taking a trick. "I don't think they'd like us liberating their food."

  "Our food, our food," the girl shrieked shrilly. "It's not their food. It's our food. Our blood has bought this land for us."

  "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah," said the man. "Shuffle."

  "Take me to your leader," said Remo. "I wish to support his valiant struggle against oppressive white racism. I want to be one of you. I am one of you. I am Indian."

  "I've never seen you in Chicago," said the man looking up. "Where do you live in Chicago?"

  "Since when do you have to be from Chicago to join the Revolutionary Indian Party?" asked Remo.

  "You don't. Not technically. It's just that with all our members in Chicago, we don't have to spend a lot of money on mailing things around the country. I'll tell you what. You can give us moral support. How much moral support you got in your pockets?"

  "Couple of hundred," said Remo and threw some bills on the steps.

  "I accept your support, brother. Now get the hell out of here. You like Indians? Go visit the Apowa village."

  "I know where you can get food. Luscious sirloins and fried chicken, crisp on the
outside and oozy-juicy tender on the inside," Remo said.

  "Don't weaken, brothers. We will hunt the buffalo and be free," the woman said.

  "Strawberry ice cream on blueberry pie, hot pastrami and lager beer, sausage pizza and roast stuffed goose," Remo continued.

  "He lies. The truth is not in him," said the girl.

  "Shut up, Cosgrove," said the man. "You want to see Dennis Petty, right?"

  "If he's the leader, yes," said Remo.

  "When does the food come?"

  "I can get it to you tonight."

  "I haven't had a good lasagna since I don't know when. Could you get lasagna? I mean, not the packaged crap the Episcopalians are shipping in, but really good lasagne."

  "Lasagne like your mother made?"

  "My mother didn't make lasagne. She was half-Catawba and half-Irish."

  "But her soul was all Catawba," said the girl named Cosgrove.

  "Shut up, Cosgrove."

  "Is that Lynn Cosgrove, who wrote My Soul Rises from Wounded Elk?" asked Remo.

  "And as unwrapped as confetti," said the man.

  "I am not Lynn Cosgrove. I am Burning Star."

  "She's really buggy on this," said the man, putting down his pinochle hand. "I'm Jerry Lupin. This is Bart Thompson."

  "They're Wild Pony and Running Bear," said Burning Star.

  "Didn't I see her somewhere?" Remo asked Lupin.

  "Yeah. The Academy Awards. Ruined the whole show. Debbie Reynolds was supposed to sing. And this one had to get her rocks off about RIP. It's nuts like her that ruin everything. C'mon, I'll take you to Petty."

  "He's in war council. Do not let the white oppressor into our sacred councils of war," cried Burning Star.

  "Cosgrove," said Lupin, making a fist. "You shut your mouth or you'll be wearing pontoons for a smile."

  Remo saw her raise the large pistol shakily and point it at his head.

  "I will see tomorrow free or I will bathe this sacred soil in white blood. White blood is the only blood that can cleanse this continent. Rivers of white blood, Oceans of white blood," chanted Burning Star.