“Will Bobbin,” she answered. “Well, he didn’t exactly hire me but he paid my way out here and he promised me a screen test.”

  “If you run now, you’ll blow the screen test,” said Remo.

  “It’s all right. I’m getting two pages in the National Star. That’ll get me all the screen tests I want,” Flamma said. “Anyway, where the hell is Bobbin when I need him? I need protection,” she said.

  “Why?” asked Remo. “Somebody after you?”

  “Who the fuck knows?” she said. Without any seeming regard for Remo’s presence, she took off her red satin top and, barebreasted, began to root in a drawer for a thin halter top that she began to put on.

  “Who the hell was after Muckley, that twerp?” she asked. “If Wesley’s involved, I don’t know. That man just may go crazy. He may want us all killed and that dyke with him is just the bitch to do it.”

  “Theodosia?” asked Remo.

  “Right. Theodore,” said Flamma.

  She had her top on and now she peeled off her red satin G-string. Bottomless and blase, she rooted around in the drawer for slacks to wear.

  She found a pair and began to slip them on.

  Remo said, “Maybe Bobbin. But why would Bobbin want to have Muckley killed?”

  She pulled her trousers up. “Beats me,” she said. “Bobbin put me on to Muckley though. I kind of thought they were working together.” She shrugged, an ample movement that earthquaked the mountains of her breasts and let them drop. “Some kind of falling out?” she suggested.

  “Maybe.” Remo got up from the bed. He stood behind Flamma who was tossing her makeup from a dresser drawer into the small bag.

  He touched her on the shoulders, then let his fingers move over to one of the long tendons in her neck and began slowly rotating around the skin at the joint of her neck and shoulder.

  She lolled her head to one side, like a child being tickled. “Ummmmmm,” she said contentedly.

  “Where’s Will Bobbin now?” Remo asked.

  “I don’t know. Don’t stop that. It feels good. Do all you government men do this?”

  “When’d you see him last?” Remo changed his attention to a spot in the center of Flamma’s bare back. She arched like a kitten.

  “Bobbin? After the press conference,” she said.

  “Where?”

  “A cocktail lounge in town. I was with a reporter and Bobbin was in the bar and he made me promise not to tell the guy who he was. Make bigger circles. I asked him where he was going.”

  Remo made bigger circles. Flamma reached behind her and pulled Remo’s hips closer to her.

  “What’d he say?” Remo asked.

  “He said he was going to hang around town until Wesley left. He wanted to be sure.” She turned and ground her body against Remo.

  “You really have to go?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Did you forget your plane?”

  “I wouldn’t mind missing it if you’re going to hang around,” Flamma said.

  “Did you ever see Bobbin with a small Oriental?” Remo asked.

  She shook her head and then narrowed her eyes, looking at Remo suspiciously. “What has all this got to do with you?” she asked. “With natural resources?”

  “Flamma,” said Remo, “you’re one of our country’s greatest natural resources.”

  “You’re right. Even better than oil, ’cause I don’t run dry.”

  She lifted her mouth to be kissed. Remo pressed his lips against her neck and felt her shudder.

  He waited until she was finished packing and put her in a taxicab for the airport. As he watched her drive away, he realized he was no closer to the assassin, and who hired him, than he had been before. But there was a feeling, too, in his stomach that that problem would soon be resolved.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHIUN WAS IN WESLEY Pruiss’s room. Pruiss had his face buried in the pillow as if to stifle some heartrending personal agony and to prevent the world from seeing his tears. Chiun was reciting the same Ung epic. Remo could tell that, as he came into the room, because Chiun was still making the same hand motions to depict a bee and a flower.

  Chiun silenced Remo with an index finger upraised in warning. He had just gotten to the big dramatic part of the epic where the flower opens to greet the morning sun and the bee swoops in.

  Remo waited in the doorway but Pruiss saw him and his face grew alive and animated.

  “Hey, you,” he called. Chiun kept talking. Remo stood as if rooted.

  “Come here, will you?” Pruiss said.

  Chiun looked at Pruiss, then at Remo, then nodded toward Remo who came forward. As he passed Chiun, the old Korean shook his head sadly: “I think I’ve lost him somehow.”

  “You know what they say about casting pearls before swine, Little Father,” said Remo.

  Chiun went to the window and looked out as Remo stood at Pruiss’s bedside. The publisher whispered to him, agonizedly, “Doesn’t he ever stop?” He nodded toward Chiun.

  “The only way to stop him to is make him mad at you. Tell him you like Chinese poetry better or something. That might work. It’s got one drawback though.”

  “What’s that?” Pruiss asked.

  “If you make him too mad, he might just fillet you like a flounder. Where’s Theodosia?”

  “I don’t know. I told her to reorder all those solar energy supplies. I heard about Muckley. Was it the same guy who got me?”

  Remo nodded. “And the three bodyguards,” he said.

  “The oil companies are bastards,” Pruiss said. “I never knew I was getting into this.”

  “Theo finally convinced you,” Remo said.

  “Yeah. Well, if they think they’re going to frighten me, they got another think coming. I got them by the short hairs,” Pruiss said.

  “How?”

  “I signed some papers a little while ago. If I die, everything goes over to Theodosia. And I told her to tell the press that. That’ll let the bastards know we’re not going to be scared off. And if that sucker with the knives gets me, then Theo takes over and the energy project goes on anyway. That should make them think twice before coming after me again, right?”

  “Dope,” Remo said. He shook his head.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They killed all this many people,” Remo said. “What makes you think they’re going to worry about just one more? All you’ve done is add Theo to the target list. Where the hell is she?”

  The impact of what he had done finally sank in on Pruiss. His beefy face looked strained and there were tension lines around his mouth. “It was her idea,” he sputtered.

  “Swell,” said Remo in disgust. He wheeled away from Pruiss and went down the hall to look for Theodosia. But her room and Baya Bam’s were empty. He searched the woman’s room; his motel room key was gone.

  “Chiun, I’m going to look for Theo. I think she might be next.”

  “I will stay here,” Chiun said. “This one has not yet heard the ending of my poem.”

  “Go,” Pruiss said in desperation. “Save Theo,” he told Chiun.

  “A loving heart is the mark of all good men,” Chiun said. “But I will stay here nevertheless. You go, Remo. My place is here.”

  The only vehicle parked downstairs was the Pruiss ambulance and Remo hopped into it and sped from the driveway.

  From a vantage point in the trees across from the house, the assassin watched him go. And hoped he would return soon.

  Remo pulled the ambulance into the motel parking lot and ran toward the two rooms he and Chiun had shared when they first reached town.

  The door to Chiun’s room was unlocked and Remo stepped inside. The room was empty.

  He turned to leave and then stopped as he heard voices from the adjoining room. He stepped to the connecting door between the rooms.

  He heard a telephone being replaced on the receiver.

  Then he heard Baya Bam’s voice. “Now we can leave,” Rachmed said. “And start our new lives together.”

  “Yeah, sure,” come Theodosia’s voice in answer. Her voice was surly and bitter.

  “What is it, sweet missssss?” asked Baya Bam. “What troubles you?”

  “Look, Rachmed,” she said, very briskly. “Our business deal is over. You were supposed to con Wesley into going ahead with the sun energy project. You did it. That’s it. Cold cash. Nothing else.”

  There was a sinking feeling in Remo’s stomach as he listened, and then the feeling seemed to swell back up and turn into a bitter burning anger.

  “But our love?” Rachmed said. Remo heard Theodosia laugh. Suddenly everything had become very clear.

  “Love?” Theodosia said. “Come off it.”

  Remo slammed the heel of his hand against the door. It shuddered on its hinges, then swung back into the next room.

  “That’s right, Rachmed,” Remo said as he stepped inside. Theodosia turned to him, her face startled. “She never loved you. You’re not her type. No man is. Isn’t that right, Theodore?”

  Theodosia ran toward him. “Oh, Remo,” she said. “I’ve been so worried.” He could almost hear her mind clicking as she thought of what story might work. “We heard the assassin had been seen over here and we…”

  “Nice try,” Remo said. He pushed her away, hard, and she fell back onto the bed.

  “Ssssir, you are no gentleman,” Rachmed hissed.

  “Quiet, pimp. You’re so dumb you don’t even know this bull dyke conned you.”

  Rachmed looked stupidly confused.

  “That’s right,” said Remo. “Conned. She used you to keep Pruiss involved in the solar energy thing. Then she kept telling him the oil people were after him, and when she got him fired up enough, he signed a paper she gave him that turned everything over to her if anything happens to him. Isn’t that right, Theo?”

  She looked up at Remo and a hard glint came into her deep brown eyes. She nodded.

  “But our love?” Baya Bam pleaded to her.

  “Where’d you get him?” Remo asked. “He’s got a loose upper-plate.”

  “He comes cheap,” Theodosia said. “You don’t. But you don’t have any more brains than he’s got. When did you catch on?”

  “I didn’t,” Remo said. “When you were cold during sex, I should have gotten a clue about you. But I didn’t. It was only today. Flamma said something about the lesbian around Pruiss. She called you ‘Theodore.’ It didn’t register. You know I came here to save you? I still didn’t know until I heard you two talking.”

  The woman glanced at her thin gold wristwatch.

  “Waiting for someone?” Remo asked. “Maybe your assassin?”

  Theodosia shook her head, a vicious smile spreading her lips wide.

  “No,” she said slowly. “He’s not coming here. Right now, he should be walking into Wesley’s house to do the job right this time. No near-misses like I contracted for the first time. In about five minutes, I give or take a couple, Wesley should be dead.”

  Remo smiled back at her. “Fat chance,” he said. “He’s got to get past Chiun first. He’s got as much chance to swim the Pacific.”

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Theodosia said. “Chiun is on his way here. I just talked to him on the telephone, and told him we had spotted the assassin here. He was worried you might get hurt so he said he’d be right over.”

  Conned. Even before she spit out the awful cold truth, Remo knew. He had been suckered into leaving Pruiss alone, suckered because he had trusted woman and feared for her safety.

  He turned and ran from the room. There was no time to spend expending his anger. Judgment would have to wait.

  Behind him, he heard Theodosia laughing. “Too late,” she called. “Too late.”

  Remo floored the gas pedal of the ambulance as he raced back toward the Pruiss mansion. He realized just how much he was the son of Sinanju now, because he had no feeling for Pruiss, he did not care if the publisher lived or died, but his job was to keep him alive and like Masters of Sinanju for uncounted centuries, he just wanted to do his job.

  The puzzle sorted itself out in his mind as he drove. Theodosia had hired the assassin, not to kill Pruiss, but to injure him and frighten him. She had hired the bodyguards just to make it look good and when Remo and Chiun had arrived, she had been forced to hire them too. Rachmed’s faith healing was supposed to keep Pruiss interested in solar energy, because Theodosia needed that to justify the story she was peddling Pruiss—that the oil interests were after him. And she hammered that story and hammered it and hammered it, until finally she convinced Pruiss and in anger, he turned everything over to her if he should die, with orders to make sure solar energy went through.

  If he should die. Right now, that assassin was supposed to be changing “if” to “when.”

  Only another mile. Almost there.

  Chiun had walked from the front door of the house and down the driveway. The assassin had watched him go. The old Oriental had looked both ways, then turned and began to walk rapidly in the direction of the town.

  The Wa assassin allowed himself to wonder. Who was this old Oriental? Did he too have some knowledge of Sinanju? What was his relationship with the young, big-mouthed American? As Chiun walked away, the assassin shrugged. His job was to get rid of Wesley Pruiss. But then he would stay around. As a bonus, not for pay but for pleasure, that American would go too. And, if he got in the way, the old Oriental also.

  He walked across the practice green toward the front door of the house, where Pruiss now lay, alone. It was not true, the Wa knew. The American had said he struck only from behind, but that was not true. The Wa worked from behind when he had to, for silence, but he would rather work face to face.

  He liked to see the faces of his victims, see the shock and horror when they saw him, watch it change to pain and the dumb look of death when the knife struck home. The face and eyes always looked dumb, puzzled, just before death came. That is what he wanted to see now.

  He hoped Wesley Pruiss was sitting up in bed so he could see the Wa enter the room. Then the Wa could watch the growing terror as he spoke the words, “I have waited for you,” and then the fright and shock as he drew his knife, and Pruiss’s desperate crippled efforts to escape, or to plead for his life, and then the whir as the knife flashed across empty space toward the bed and the satisfying thunk as it bit deeply into the throat, crushing Adam’s Apple, severing nerves. Then the look of dumb stupidity on the face as death arrived.

  And then there would be time for the American who said he was from Sinanju. Sinanju. What was it anyway but a foolish legend?

  The Wa moved silently up the stairway of the empty house, his light footfalls making no sound on the thick carpeting. He walked down the center of the hall. His belt of knives was slung low around his hips, in the way Wa assassins had carried their weapons from the time of the very first Wa.

  He paused in the center of the hallway. He heard only one sound, that of Wesley Pruiss breathing. It was a soft low sipping of air, the kind of mouth breathing most Americans inflicted on their bodies.

  There were no other sounds in the building. He continued walking down the hall, then paused. The door to Wesley Pruiss’s room was open.

  He reached behind him and took one of the red-handled knives from his leather belt. He held it at his side, then stepped forward, and took two steps into the room.

  Wesley Pruiss was propped up on pillows, looking toward the door. His eyes were confused, frightened. The Wa smiled. He extended the knife before him.

  He opened his mouth to speak.

  And then a voice echoed through the room.

  “I have waited for you,” said the voice, a strong voice, deep as rolling thunder, and it sent a chill down the spine of the assassin.

  He looked toward the right side of the room. Stepping from behind a large wardrobe chest was the aged Oriental, his powder blue robe swirling about him, a thin smile on his parchment face.

  He stared at the Wa and the power of those eyes seemed to burn into the assassin’s skull. The Wa blinked once, as if to release the bond that connected them, then wheeled toward the aged intruder.

  “It is all right, old man,” he said. “Now my knives will have two instead of one.”

  “Fool,” intoned Chiun. “I am the Master of Sinanju. My ancestors banished you to far-away lands, and now I banish you to death.”

  The Wa reached behind him with his left hand to withdraw another knife. Even as he was reaching, his right hand raised up over his head, and the knife flashed across the room toward the open, inviting throat of Wesley Pruiss.

  But then, as quick as a spark, the old Oriental flashed across the room. His open fingertips touched the blade of the knife, just a split second before it opened Pruiss’s throat, and the knife fell to the floor. The Oriental lay across Pruiss’s body, and the Wa saw this was his chance. His left hand came above his head and then down, with all the power in his slim, conditioned body. The knife flew toward Chiun.

  It made one slow half-turn and then the point reached the old man’s chest. And then, as the Wa watched in horror, the old man’s right hand moved down with a speed so blurring it was beyond speed, and he caught the tip of the knife between his fingers, short of its target. He rose to his feet, still holding the spent weapon by its point, and with a smile, extended it toward the assassin. Then he took a step toward the slim young man.

  The country club looked quiet and peaceful as Remo rolled the ambulance up to the front of the building. He was out of the vehicle before it finished rocking on its springs. The house looked peaceful but death, he knew, was a peaceful thing. Only amateurs made noise.

  As Remo started up the steps of the house, the front door flew open and the Wa assassin raced out. He saw Remo and vaulted the small railing alongside the porch and ran around behind the ambulance to the practice putting green.