"You must control yourself, Remo."

  "It's not me who needs control."

  "If you knew the secret of harnessing your natural allures, you would not have this problem."

  Remo's dark eyes brightened. "Teach them to me?"

  Chiun shook his aged head. "You are too young. You have not yet given me a suitable heir."

  "There's gotta be another way to do this."

  "There is. My way."

  Having no other recourse, Remo decided to address the crowd. "Anyone here know a good way to fly without attracting a lot of attention?" he asked.

  "Are you a terrorist?" a bright-eyed fat man asked.

  "No. I'm just allergic to amorous flight attendants."

  "That Tourister is mine. Hand it over, and I'll make special arrangements for you."

  "It's a deal."

  Remo handed over the Tourister, and the bright-eyed fat man beckoned Remo to follow him out of the terminal. A reluctant Chiun trailed.

  After that, there was a mad rush for the carousel, followed by another mad rush for connecting flights and taxicabs.

  In back of a moving cab, Remo asked the bright-eyed fat man, "You a travel agent?"

  "In a way," he said happily.

  "In what way?" asked Chiun.

  "I ship people all over the world without a problem. But you'll have to rough it."

  "I can rough it," said Remo.

  "I will fly first class if you are roughing it," Chiun insisted.

  "You can accompany him. I'll arrange that, too," the fat man said in a pleasant voice. Too pleasant for someone who had had his luggage held hostage, Remo thought. But he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  "Sounds like half a plan," said Remo.

  He was more than a little surprised when the taxi let them off at a funeral home. The gilt sign said Popejoy Funeral Home. "You work here?" Remo asked the fat man.

  "I own this establishment," the fat man said proudly. "Bob Popejoy is the name."

  "Nice," said Remo in a tone that conveyed another impression entirely.

  Inside, Bob Popejoy led Remo to a showroom and said, "Pick any casket from this room."

  Then he took up the telephone, dialed a number and said, "Christine, this is Mr. Popejoy. I'd like a Jim Wilson fare."

  "Who's Jim Wilson?" asked Remo.

  Capping the mouthpiece, Popejoy whispered, "You are."

  Ten minutes later, as Remo climbed into a spiffy cherry-wood number with plush scarlet lining and a bottle of mineral water supplied compliments of the Popejoy Funeral Home, the undertaker was explaining, "A 'Jim Wilson' is slang for any cadaver traveling by air. We get a special discount fare, of course. It will be cold in the cargo hold, but with frequent landings, you should be fine. Assuming you don't object to being a dead man." He smiled like a pleasant little cherub.

  "I've been a dead man before," said Remo, climbing in as the Master of Sinanju dabbed at his eyes with a flapping sleeve.

  "My son," he said in a choked voice.

  "I'm not dead," Remo reminded.

  "I am merely practicing my grief for the long voyage," the Master of Sinanju said.

  THE FLIGHT WASN'T the most pleasant journey Remo had ever taken in his life, but when the casket was taken off the Aeroflot plane and loaded into a truck by workmen who sounded Russian to Remo's ears, he was happy to have arrived.

  Considering his destination was Moscow, Russia, this was amazing in itself.

  The baggage handlers were very considerate. They pried open the casket to let Remo out. One clutched a pair of pliers.

  When the baggage handler in what turned out to be Bucharest, Romania, opened the casket clutching pliers, Remo had assumed he was in Moscow and they were customs agents.

  Then he saw the gold teeth cupped in one man's hand and realized they were corpse robbers. Remo scared one dead when he sat up and slapped the man's jaw askew while the others fled into the night.

  Remo pulled the casket lid back.

  After a while, someone came along and loaded Remo's coffin in the transfer plane.

  The gold thieves in the true Moscow were made of sterner stuff. They looked shocked, then one pulled out a Luger and decided that if their victim wasn't completely dead, he would finish the job right here and now in the bowels of Moscow's Sheremetevo II Airport.

  Instead, Remo pinched his forefinger against his thumb, placed it a micrometer in front of the man's nose and let go. Ping.

  The Russian stumbled back howling. The Moscow coroner cited the official cause of death as severe nosebleed. It would have made the newspapers except the dead man was found piled atop three others who died of acute undescended testicles, a condition that usually meant the testes had not dropped into the scrotum from the abdominal sac after birth. In this case, the testicles were kicked deep into the body cavities of their owners as if they were musket balls, not the other kind. But as this was physiologically improbable, not to mention a medically unrecognized condition, the Russian coroner fell back on a familiar term to mask the inexplicable.

  Remo found the Master of Sinanju waiting for him in the Sheremetevo II Airport terminal. This time Chiun wasn't hovering over the luggage dump. He was realigning the fingers of a would-be pickpocket.

  The man was on his knees howling as Chiun held his left wrist with his right hand while using his right hand to stretch the felon's fingers as far as the connecting cartilage would allow. Which was an extra inch on the long fingers and a quarter on the pinky. With a flourish, he popped the man's thumb out of its socket and left him clutching the broken ball of pain that was his fist.

  "Russia was never like this," Chiun muttered as they claimed a battered green Zhiguli car whose checkerboard stripe denoted it as a local taxicab.

  "There's a lot of crime in Russia these days," Remo admitted.

  "The Russians need a good czar. Otherwise, they behave like children who do not get along with themselves or others."

  En route to the heart of the city, they witnessed two broad-daylight knifings, as well as a man being methodically run over by a Mercedes SL. The man was being held down on the sidewalk by four other men as a fifth backed the car across his chest. Each time it passed over his chest, he expelled a whoof! and spasmed.

  Remo asked the cab driver to stop, then sauntered over to assist. He assisted the four assailants out of the suddenly shattered, unworking sacks of bonemeal their healthy bodies had become. It was too late to save their victim, but it was better than nothing.

  "What's happened to this place?" asked Remo as the taxi moved on through the gray streets that were choked with the filthy snow mounds of a recent storm.

  "Democracy," the driver said. "Is it not wonderful?"

  They saw American billboards emblazoned with Cyrillic logos. Remo quickly learned how to spell a wide variety of familiar US. products in the Russian alphabet by guessing what the letters meant.

  Snow was piled as high as the second floors of buildings in some spots, and in contrast to his previous visits to the dreary city on the banks of the Moscow River, not a policeman or soldier walked the streets.

  "Where's the law in this town?" Remo asked.

  "The law of the jungle is the law now. It is wonderful. I make six times the rubles I made before the Soviet system went pfui. "

  "Good for you. Just get us to Gorky Street."

  "It is coming up. But it is called Tverskaya Street now. What is your exact destination?"

  "I don't have one."

  "In that case, you will pay double the fare."

  "Robber!" flared Chiun.

  "Why is it double the fare?" asked Remo.

  "I charge for unnecessary directing to a nonspecified destination," the cabbie said amiably.

  "Well, it's only kopecks," said Remo.

  The cabbie snorted. "Kopecks are valueless. Rubles rule Russia now."

  They turned onto a long thoroughfare near a snow-burdened park where the familiar arches of McDonald's were a bright spot of color in an otherwise drab area. There was a line that stretched around the block to get into the fastfood restaurant.

  "Gypsies buy Beeg Meks to resell in the park," the driver volunteered. "Is the new Russia not great?"

  "It is not," snapped Chiun.

  The driver lost his smile. "State your destination."

  "Anywhere around here," said Remo.

  "Oops. I now charge you triple."

  "Triple? Why?"

  "Imprecise directing of driver. It eats into my efficiency. Time is rubles. You are costing me rubles."

  "Fine. See that gray stone building? Drop us in front."

  The cabbie obliged by U-turning through blaring traffic and bumping up on the slushy sidewalk without regard for scattering pedestrians.

  Turning in his seat, he began counting up the fare with the aid of his fingers.

  "Let me see, fifty rubles for basic transportation. Double for misdirection and inefficiency, and a surcharge of ten percent for friendly conversation. Tip is extra, of course."

  "You charge for conversation!" Remo exploded.

  The cabbie beamed. "It is the American way, is it not?"

  "No, it is not. U.S. cabbies don't charge for conversation."

  "In this, I am mistaken. It is the Russian way."

  "Let me show you the American way," offered Remo. "Here's your money, and here's a reminder of the old adage that says 'Be nice to tourists.'"

  And reaching forward, Remo handed the man his steering wheel, which came off its column with a brittle snap.

  They left the cabbie bellowing about the exorbitant price of spare parts in capitalist Russia.

  Walking the slushy length of Tverskaya Street, Remo told Chiun, "See anything that looks suspicious to you?"

  "Yes," said Chiun.

  "Where?"

  "That place," said the Master of Sinanju, pointing to a basement place of business with a faded-gilt sign over the glass door that said Iz Tsvetoka.

  "What's that mean in English?"

  "'From the little flowers.'"

  "What's so funny about that?"

  "In Italian it would be 'Del Floria.'"

  Remo frowned. "Sounds familiar. But I don't see the connection."

  "You will," said Chiun, turning abruptly to pad down the stone steps. The door chime tinkled when he padded in, Remo a half step behind him.

  Pausing, Remo saw that it was a tailor shop. A frazzle-haired old man was bent over the steaming 1950s-style pants presser. He looked up querulously and said, "Do'bree den."

  Chiun replied in a volley of fluent Russian, and the frazzle-haired old man suddenly pulled a pistol and tried to kill them.

  Chiun ducked the first bullet and let Remo handle the second. Remo sidestepped it easily, flying across the scarred counter, disarming the old man with a casual slap that left the attacker clutching a hand seemingly turning scarlet from sunburn but which was actually hemorrhaging at every capillary.

  "Sukin syn! Sukin syn!" the old man screamed. "He is calling you an offspring of a female dog," Chiun said.

  "I get the idea," Remo responded, rendering the old man unconscious with a neck squeeze. "Why the hell did he try to kill you?"

  "Because I commanded him to take me to his leader."

  "Leader. As in Martian?"

  "As in the organization for which he maintains this flimsy blind."

  "How do you know this is a blind? It looks like a regular tailor shop."

  "Look around you. Is it not familiar, Remo?"

  Remo glanced about. It was small, cluttered and smelled of steam and starch. In the back was a fitting room closed off by a red curtain. The curtain was the only splash of color in the dank little shop.

  "Yeah. Now that you ask, it is."

  "Unless I am mistaken, you will find a button concealed on the steaming device. Press it."

  Remo checked out the pants presser. "I don't see anything..."

  "Make steam," suggested the Master of Sinanju.

  Reaching for the wooden knob atop the machine, Remo depressed it. The machine squeezed a pair of blue serge trousers and spurted steam. When he looked up, the Master of Sinanju was pushing the back wall of the fitting room around on a pivot as the red curtain finished falling back in place.

  "Wait for me."

  The steel panel clicked shut in Remo's face before he got to it. It resisted his touch, so Remo smacked it with a palm, and something snapped. After that, a fingertip sent the panel spinning freely.

  Slipping through, Remo found himself in a reception area where a blonde in a maroon shirt and red turtleneck was bunkered down with an AK-47. She began spraying rounds in Remo's direction while flashing red wall lights and a warbling electric horn filled the area with noise and sensory confusion.

  "She is yours," said Chiun, stepping out of the way so the bullet stream directed at his balding head snapped at Remo instead.

  "Why is she mine?" Remo demanded.

  "She is Russian, and you yearn for romance."

  Chapter 24

  Harold W Smith was trying to reassure the President of the United States in a calm voice.

  It wasn't easy. The President seemed to be pulling in three directions at once.

  "CIA is telling me they're checking with their cosmic bureau."

  "Their psychics, you mean," Smith said dryly.

  "The National Reconnaissance Office is trying to reconstruct the orbital situation over Cape Canaveral when the Reliant melted down. And the National Security Agency has just handed me a classified document assuring me that the letters in that damn photograph are Russian for 'Peace.'"

  "I have confirmation that the Russian space station was nowhere over the Reliant or the BioBubble when they were destroyed," Smith said.

  "So it's not the Russians."

  "My people are looking into that angle."

  "Then it is the Russians."

  "I have no facts. I am following leads."

  "I need results. What's next? This thing could hit the White House-or Congress." The President hesitated. "Actually that wouldn't be so bad. Melt it down and start over again."

  "Mr. President," Smith said, clearing his throat.

  "Just kidding," the President said sheepishly.

  "I am tied into the U.S. Space Command's SPACETRACK system."

  "What's that?"

  "SPACETRACK tracks orbiting satellites and debris. It is part of the early-warning system against enemy ICBMs and performs the added function of safeguarding our shuttle fleet from orbital collision."

  "There's a lot of space junk up there. Have they got anything new?"

  "No, Mr. President. But their system shows conclusively that the Mir space station was not in a position to inflict the destruction we have witnessed thus far."

  "So it's not the Russians."

  "I am not saying that," Smith said carefully.

  "Then what are you saying?" the President said, his hoarse voice exasperated.

  "I am saying that we cannot and should not jump to any conclusions until we have sufficient facts."

  "What happens if this thing strikes again?"

  "If it is the intention of this unknown agency to strike again, we have no defense against it. But there is an upside."

  "What's that?"

  "A third strike will show us the pattern, if there is one."

  "Someone's hammering our space program, Smith."

  "Theory. And a theory is not a fact," Smith reminded him.

  "Keep me informed."

  "I suspect if there is another strike, you will know before I do," said Harold Smith.

  "In that case," the President of the United States sighed, "I guess we have no choice but to keep watching the skies."

  Chapter 25

  The chattering stream of bullets came at Remo Williams-like a smoking, slow-motion squirt of water, but in reality the rounds were moving at supersonic speed. Remo's highly trained eyes read them in slow motion.

  The first gleaming bullet floated toward his face. Smoking, its tip looked as smooth as a tiny lead skull.

  Dropping under the stream, Remo allowed the rounds to flatten against the pivoting panel at his back. Under the hammering lead, it spun madly right, then left, then right again as the cursing receptionist swung her stuttering weapon from side to side.

  There were many Sinanju techniques for dealing with hot lead. Chiun had taught Remo the basics, which had not changed since the days of the old Chinese muzzle-loaders. In response to the proliferation of automatic weapons, Remo had come up with a few innovations of his own.

  The AK-47 carried thirty rounds in a clip, with another thirty in the backup clip duct-taped to the one in the receiver.

  Remo counted the shots, and when the last one smacked into the jerking panel, the AK ran silent. The receptionist yanked out the old clip. She never got to flip it around and jam its mate in.

  Remo was unexpectedly towering over her as he brought his palms together over the smoking muzzle.

  The clap made the Russian girl blink. In that blink, Remo sidestepped so swiftly he seemed to vanish from sight.

  She would have sought him out except that the AK was for some reason jittering in her hands as if attached to a working vibrator. She shook with it. Then, before her shaking eyes, the muzzle disintegrated.

  She swore in venomous Russian.

  Remo put her out of action with a tap to her forehead that made her brain bounce around the inside of her skull so hard it stopped functioning, a bruised, bloody sponge.

  Reinforcements showed up in the form of a trio of Russians wearing dark suits enlivened by bright red ties.

  "Cron!" one shouted.

  Over the years, Remo had been attacked by enough Soviet agents that the Russian word for "stop" was as familiar to him as the English. He pretended to raise his hands in surrender.

  "Anybody here speak English?" he asked.

  No one volunteered that he did. Instead, they stepped forward with their Makarov and Tokarev pistols trained on his stomach. Remo decided the hell with it and jumped them.

  His knees bent so imperceptibly there was no warning until his feet left the floor as if on springs.

  Remo cleared the twenty feet between the reception desk and the trio of Russian agents before they could process the sensory information that they were under attack.