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  "Since when is it our business to bail out the FBI?" Remo asked.

  Smith straightened his rimless glasses on his patrician nose. "It is not a question of bailing out anyone, Remo," he said. "Waco was a disaster, not merely because of FBI-ATF bungling, but because of the lack of leadership up the chain of command."

  "Shouldn't we blame the voters for that?"

  Smith sighed. "During the Waco incident there was a general misunderstanding among those in power of the proper use of force. In the end it was the posturing before and the denial after the fact that transformed Waco into a public-relations debacle. The Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation received largely undeserved media attention because of their lawful actions against the Branch Davidians."

  "Basically you're sending us in this time so the Justice Department can get better PR? No way, Smitty. It's not my job to make sure somebody else doesn't get a black eye from the press."

  "Remo, this is important," Smith insisted.

  "Well, I don't see the FBI getting us any positive ink."

  "Hear, hear," Chiun piped up.

  Smith removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He suddenly felt weary beyond belief. With a sigh that sounded like it could have wheezed from the rusted belly of an asthmatic furnace, Smith replaced the glasses and addressed Remo.

  "You both know that for our overall mission to succeed, the organization must remain anonymous," he said slowly. "Our charter absolutely precludes us from continuing to exist if the organization becomes

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  compromised. We do not court popular opinion and we must absolutely not actively seek approval in a public forum."

  "Dun, Smitty," Remo said. "Tell me something I don't know."

  "A little positive press never hurts, Emperor," Chiun said slyly. "If your enemies were to discover that Sinanju was guarding your throne, your regal head would rest easier. And the exposure would not necessarily be adverse for the House, either."

  "Remo, please," Smith said, urgently.

  "Okay, okay, we'll do the hit, Smith," Remo said. "But if Sinanju can get a few column inches out of it, ace reporter Remo Williams will be there with a byline and a ruler. What's this prophetess's name?"

  Smith furrowed his brow in confusion at the obscure reference, but did not question Remo further. More and more the ex-Marine and former beat cop was becoming as intractable as his Korean teacher.

  "Her name," Smith said, "is Esther Clear-Seer."

  Chapter Five

  Bonnie Sweetwater was the oldest child of an upper-middle-class family in Thermopolis, Wyoming.

  Bonnie was eighteen years old, bright, outgoing and, much to the chagrin of her contemporaries—both male and female—had neither "done it" nor intended to "do it" until her wedding night.

  Bonnie didn't consider herself particularly religious, but she was a girl with old-fashioned moral values and she had no problem sharing this view with others. She belonged to the local chapter of Marriage First, a national grassroots organization for morally like-minded young people. They met every Friday night in the old city-hall basement from 7:30 to 11:00 p.m., rain or shine. It was an opportunity for Bonnie and the other Marriage Firsters to socialize without the worries and pitfalls of a typical teenage night out.

  For most of the club's membership, the lack of pressure was a relief.

  On this, as on most Fridays, Bonnie had volunteered to clean up the hall with her friend Kathy Kirtley after the meeting, but as usual Kathy had come up with a lame excuse to take off early, leaving Bonnie holding the bag. Literally.

  Bonnie circled the hall methodically, scooping up

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  Pepsi-stained napkins and crumpled Dixie cups and dropping them into the large trash bag she lugged around behind her.

  Somebody mustn't have liked the carrot cake she had made, for there was a half-eaten piece on a paper plate sitting smack dab in the middle of one of the seats at the rear of the hall.

  Oh, well, she thought to herself, I'll try another recipe next week.

  At the door Bonnie paused to survey the hall.

  The place didn't look too bad. She'd come back in the morning to fold up the chairs and sweep the floor.

  She snapped off the lights as she left.

  Outside she deposited the trash bag in one of the large dented barrels that were lined up like tin soldiers at the rear of the former city-hall building and hiked up the small grassy embankment to the street.

  Kathy had driven Bonnie, as well as two other friends, to the meeting that night. Kathy being Kathy, it was not unusual for Bonnie to be hiking home at 11:45 p.m. She didn't really mind. The streets were quiet, the April night air was warm and she liked to have a little think time to herself.

  She had barely stepped out on the sidewalk when she heard a car engine start.

  For a minute Bonnie thought Kathy had waited for her after all. She turned to look, but the car that pulled away from the curb was boxy and blue—not the fiery red Camaro Kathy's father bought her as a reward for passing her senior year at Custer High. Oh, well.

  Bonnie continued down the sidewalk.

  She walked a few more steps, but the car never passed by. The engine continued to rumble, and

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  Bonnie slowly became aware that it had moved up directly behind her, keeping pace like a stalking animal.

  Bonnie felt her heart quicken. Could someone really be following her?

  Her feet suddenly felt like lead, and she forced them to move faster down the sidewalk.

  The car kept moving behind her. It was running with its lights dim.

  Bonnie's ears were ringing as she broke into a run, and the blood pounded faster in her head.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she glanced left. She could just make out the hood of the car. One headlight stared at her like an angry yellow eye. Bonnie sucked in a nervous gulp of air, and turned her eyes straight ahead.

  It was like a dream. Her head swam.

  She couldn't look.

  She had to look.

  Bonnie stopped all at once and spun on the stalking car.

  She recognized the woman behind the wheel. It was the nutcase who ran that religious camp on the outskirts of town. Esther something.

  When Bonnie turned, the woman hunched down farther in her seat and slammed on the gas. The car lunged ahead—and Bonnie felt a wave of sheer relief as she watched the car take the next right turn and race off into the night.

  Bonnie stood on the sidewalk for a few long seconds after the car had gone. As her body relaxed, she felt an uncontrollable shudder, as if someone had just dropped an ice cube down her bare back.

  It was probably all perfectly innocent, she thought

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  hopefully. The woman had likely mistaken her for one of her followers, out for a night stroll. They had strict curfews up there, Bonnie had heard.

  By the time she reached the next intersection, she had convinced herself that it was all just a case of mistaken identity. She was about to cross the street when a figure stepped out from behind a high row of hedges at the corner lot and touched her arm.

  Bonnie all but jumped out of her freckled skin.

  It was that woman. Esther Clear-Seer. That was her name. The blue car sat silently a few house-lengths up the side street, its lights off.

  Bonnie's heart pumped wildly.

  "I'm sorry," Esther Clear-Seer said. She tapped her forehead with the palm of her hand and rolled her eyes heavenward as if she was the flakiest thing ever to come down the boulevard. "I think I probably scared you back there, and I'm really, really sorry. I just need directions, and usually I like to ask a man this late at night, but there's no one out around here for miles and, well, I saw you coming out of your little meeting..." She shrugged like a helpless sitcom housewife.

  To Bonnie, the woman, who had been alternately laughed at and demonized by the local press, suddenly seemed more human.

  She wa
s friendly and scatterbrained and she continued apologizing profusely as she asked for directions to the police station.

  Any concern Bonnie had immediately abated. After all, how dangerous could someone be if she was asking the way to the police station?

  Bonnie pointed down Maiden Lane into the washed-out light cast by thirty-year old streetlamps...

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  A hand snaked out, unseen, from under Esther Clear-Seer's jacket.

  Bonnie's was just explaining the sharp left on West Street when the metal tire iron collided with the bar-rette at the back of her head. She crumpled like an aluminum can. Strong hands reached under her armpits.

  A moment later the blue car was gone and there was no sign of Bonnie Sweetwater.

  Virgin number one.

  Chapter Six

  Remo and Chiun rented a car at the airport in Worland, Wyoming, and headed south along Route 789 in the direction of Hot Springs State Park.

  According to Smith, the ranch belonging to the Church of the Absolute and Incontrovertible Truth was located in the northwest corner of Wyoming, on the southern edge of the Hot Springs State Park, near the town called Thermopolis. The church owned several hundred acres of real estate in the area west of town.

  Chiun had remained silent for most of the plane trip, stirring from his strange quiescence only long enough to shoo away the bevy of buxom stewardesses that had flocked around. They were ignoring Remo and fussing over the Master of Sinanju, who sometimes brought out the maternal instincts in women who generally looked as maternal as Anna Nicole Smith in crotchless panties.

  It looked as though the car trip wasn't going to be any better.

  There were times when Remo would have invited Chiun to clam up, but that was when the Master of Sinanju was haranguing him about some niggling little peeve. As far as Remo knew, this time he hadn't done anything whatsoever to tick off Chiun.

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  "You didn't have to come, Little Father," Remo said when he could no longer bear the silence. He glanced at the Master of Sinanju, who was watching the aspens and cottonwood trees zip by in blurs of brilliant green.

  "I did not have to sit at home, either," Chiun replied.

  "You got me there," Remo admitted.

  They rode on in silence for a few minutes longer before the Master of Sinanju spoke again.

  "Remo?"

  "I'm still here."

  "Perhaps it is time we sought another client for our services."

  Remo arched an eyebrow. "What, did you and Smith have a fight?"

  Chiun's hazel eyes leveled on Remo. "If we did, he would not have breath to order you hither and yon."

  "Then what gives? I thought you were happy with the current contract—all the gold you can carry and all the fish you can eat."

  Chiun glanced thinly out the window. "Riches are not always the sole consideration of a Master of Sinanju," he said softly.

  Remo nearly drove the car off the road. Almost before Chiun had started training him in the earliest Sinanju breathing techniques, long before Remo had mastered the subtle feats of dodging bullets and scaling sheer rock faces, Chiun had instilled in him the one eternal, transcendent tenet of all previous Sinanju Masters: cash only, always up front. And although a lot of haggling went on between Smith and Chiun, in

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  the end Chiun was always secretly satisfied when their

  contract was renewed.

  lor Chiun to say that gold didn't matter was akin to O. J. Simpson pleading guilty, George Washington apologizing for the Revolutionary War and Santa Claus saying Christmas was a commercial scam—all rolled into one.

  ' 'Why would you want to just up and quit?'' Remo asked.

  Chiun's parchment features grew impatient. "I do not 'up and' anything. This is not a decision to be reached lightly. Smith always paid on time and therefore will be remembered as a great and wise ruler in the scrolls of Sinanju, though the glossary will doubtless define him as a raving lunatic with pounded rice paste between his fat white ears."

  "All historical inaccuracies aside, why now?" "Have you not noticed how his entire body creaks and groans? It is an effort for the man to stand straight. The vitality of Smith as emperor of America ebbs with each passing day." Chiun nodded at the wisdom of his own words. "It might not be long, Remo, ere we find ourselves without employment."

  "We can cross that bridge when it falls," Remo said.

  "We could send out feelers," Chiun suggested slyly, using a word he had picked up from television the previous day. "Smith need not know of our discreet, private inquiries."

  "Look, I'm not ready to leave Smith in a lurch," Remo said. "Case closed." He gripped the steering wheel more tightly. "Why don't you check the map?"

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  he added, eager to change the subject. "See if we're anywhere near Thermopolis."

  "I am an assassin, not a cartographer," Chiun announced haughtily. "And as the designated and sanctified chauffeur to the Master of Sinanju, it is your responsibility to find it for yourself." And with that he returned his gaze to the passing trees.

  They rode the rest of the way to Thermopolis in silence.

  The first thing Remo and Chiun discovered when they arrived in town was that there was a campaign

  going on.

  Of course, there had been indications of political activity along the highway—a road sign here, a bumper sticker there—but downtown Thermopolis looked like the epicenter of a political earthquake.

  Bumper stickers were slathered haphazardly on cars, windows and telephone poles, colored flags flapped gaily between buildings and giant billboards squatted like primordial birds atop seemingly abandoned flatbed trailers.

  "Remo, did not this unstable land just have a time for this buffoonery?" Chiun clucked disapprovingly as they drove past lawn after lawn decorated with red, white and blue placards announcing the political leanings of the home owners. Most seemed to favor the reelection of Senator Jackson Cole.

  "If you mean did we just have an election, yes," said Remo. "But that was for President. This guy Cole is running for the senate."

  Chiun was confused. ' 'Were not the senators elected at the same time as the President? I remember talk of

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  his garment hems failing to sweep others into office in his wake."

  "You mean coattails," said Remo. "Some of the Senate was up for reelection during the presidential campaign. And all of the House, I think. But the Senate races are staggered so that everyone isn't up for reelection at the same time."

  "Why is this so?" Chiun asked, puzzled.

  And lest Remo find himself explaining a process he didn't fully understand himself, he parked their rental car on a side street and got out to ask for directions.

  The main thoroughfares of Thermopolis were lined with hundreds of cars, all abandoned. In fact, the entire town looked abandoned.

  "Where the hell is everybody?" Remo wondered aloud.

  Chiun thrust his button nose in the air and sniffed delicately, like a foxhound on the trail of his elusive prey. His face immediately scrunched up in disgust.

  "Pah! Is every corner of this land befouled by vile odors?"

  Remo, too, caught the scent on the wafting breeze. "Popcorn," he said. All at once they heard a loud cheer from somewhere beyond the highest buildings, toward the center of town. "Must be some kind of rally, judging from all the signs," Remo guessed. "They start earlier and earlier every campaign season." He sniffed again, this time detecting the distinct odors of warming pretzels and syrupy soft drinks.

  Chiun was waving his kimono sleeve before his face. "What this nation needs is one of those devices that is affixed to the sides of commodes to dull the effect of your foul white smells. And it should be built

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  in this state." Chiun gathered up the hems of his brilliant canary yellow kimono. "I will investigate the source of these noxious fumes, Remo, while you attempt to find someone who can make sense of your country's incom
prehensible electoral process."

  And with that the Master of Sinanju padded off in the direction of the commotion.

  Remo headed off in the opposite direction, looking for someone who knew the way to Ranch Ragnarok, and didn't want his vote.

  On the sidewalk in front of a hardware store, Remo cornered a man in a plastic foam hat and a bright blue blazer festooned with all manner of pins and buttons and insignia declaring his commitment to Jackson Cole. Even the T-shirt he wore sported a likeness of the popular senator, but Cole's silkscreened face was drawn so tightly across the man's protruding belly it made the senator's gaunt features look broad and vaguely piggish.

  "Hey, Lester," Remo said, reading a name off a square of masking tape over the man's breast pocket. When the man looked his way, Remo figured he'd gotten the name right. "Which way is Ranch Ragnarok?"

  Bloodshot eyes rolled in sockets that were rimmed by yellow fatty deposits. "What do you want to go out there for?" Lester asked.

  Remo shrugged. He wasn't used to having his motives questioned when he asked simple directions. "Enlightenment?"

  "You'll get more enlightenment out of a fortune cookie," Lester said. "Those Truth Church nuts are dangerous." He sized up Remo's lean frame. "You

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  don't look like you could handle the kind of trouble they dish out."

  Remo was suddenly interested. "What sort of trouble?"

  "Talk is they murdered a guy recently," Lester confided in a whisper louder than most people's normal speaking voices. "Some kids were out snooping by the ranch one night a couple of months ago—you know how kids are. Anyway, they saw some of them Truth Church psychos gun this guy down in cold blood. At least that's what / heard."

  Remo thought of the missing FBI agent.

  "Why didn't the police check it out?"

  "You've obviously never seen the place," the man snorted. "They've got guns up the wazoo. That Clear-Seer battle-ax runs a tighter ship than the U.S. Navy. No one leaves unless there's at least three of them together, and that's just to buy supplies. Ask old Harvey in here—" he jerked a dimpled thumb toward the hardware store window behind him "—those nuts have bought enough concrete to build a hundred Moscow tenements. They've got bunkers filled with ammo and explosives. Is that what you want to get yourself into?"