Comandante Oscar Odio’s eyes went wide with surprise. Eagerly he turned to give the order to search the closet to his borrowed DFS unit.

  His mouth opened. His arm raised. The arm froze and his mouth locked, as a stiffened finger stabbed at the nape of his neck, shattering vertebrae like ice cubes. The disintegrating bone severed his spinal cord so swiftly that Comandante Oscar Odio had only time to exhale the first breathy consonant of his order. His brain died before his face hit the rug.

  The others failed to see the blow that felled him. They were too busy dying. The Master of Sinanju crushed a convenient kidney with one fist and jellied testicles with a high-kicking sandaled foot.

  Remo waded in to help, pitching one DFS agent out the shattered window and lifting another off his feet bodily. He threw that one toward the door, where the remaining DFS agents had Officer Mazatl in custody.

  “Duck!” Remo said quickly.

  “Qué?” they said in unison.

  “Too late,” Remo said as the flying body bowled Officer Lupe Mazatl and her captors out into the hall.

  Remo leapt after them, and quickly crushed the DFS men’s windpipes with the heel of one Italian loafer. He gave Officer Mazatl a hand, bringing her to her feet with a smooth retraction of his arm.

  “You killed them all,” Officer Lupe Mazatl said in a dazed voice.

  “And on our worst day, too,” Remo said. He plunged back into the room, where the Master of Sinanju was opening the closet. It was empty.

  “Too bad,” Remo said, looking in. “I had my hopes he’d have been stashed there.”

  “You killed five DFS officers with your bare hands,” Officer Mazatl said, her voice tight and sick.

  “They knew too much,” Remo said. “Come on. We’ve got to go to Plan B.”

  “What is Plan B?” Lupe wanted to know as she was pulled by one hand out the door and to the elevators.

  “Be prepared to improvise,” Remo said bitterly. “First we check the Vice-President. Maybe he has something on him that’ll help.”

  “Such as?”

  “A safe-deposit-box key or a bus-terminal-locker tag,” Remo growled unhappily. “I don’t know. Look, I just had the Vice-President of the United States attack me and then take a header out an open window. I’m having a terrible day.”

  “Do not worry,” Chiun put it. “I will vouch for you with Smith. None of this would have happened had Smith not sent us after ferocious geese.”

  “That’s going to mean a lot, if we don’t locate the President,” Remo said sourly.

  The elevator brought them to the lobby, where they were greeted by two DFS officers with drawn pistols.

  The officers said, “Alto!” and Remo returned their greeting by cracking their pelvises with a swift upkick to each man.

  He left them writhing on the floor, not exactly dead, but in no mood to celebrate life.

  The lobby was free of other human encumbrances. In fact, it was deserted.

  “It is not like one such as Odio not to have the lobby guarded by more men than those two,” Lupe said as they made for the main entrance.

  “I’m not complaining,” Remo growled.

  Out in the circular driveway, they discovered why the lobby was empty. Everyone was out there–DFS agents and Nikko employees alike–standing in the broken glass and staring at a body.

  Remo pushed through the crowds. A DFS officer pushed back. Without looking, Remo casually batted with the back of his hand. The agent’s head jumped off his shoulders with a report like a mushy cannon shot and struck a nearby bronze horse.

  That got the crowd’s attention. They backed off with gape-mouthed respect.

  Remo knelt beside the body. It was dressed in a blue DFS uniform. It was the one he had pitched out the window. “Damn!” he breathed.

  Jumping to his feet, Remo raced through the crowd. Everywhere he went, a path was cleared for him. A few people panicked and ran off. There were no other bodies.

  “I don’t see the V.P. !” Remo called to Chiun. “Where is he?”

  Officer Lupe Mazatl demanded the same question of the crowd. One of the DFS officers meekly replied, and she translated for Remo’s benefit.

  “He says there is only one body, that one.”

  “Well, I saw the Vice-President lying right here,” Remo snapped. “He didn’t just get up and walk away.”

  Lupe put the question to the DFS agent.

  “He says that they heard a crash of glass,” she said, translating the man’s voluble Spanish. “They came out and saw nothing but a man with a golf bag walking away.”

  Remo blinked. “Then what?”

  “Then the DFS officer fell from the sky.”

  Remo looked to Chiun. “Is she translating it right?” he wanted to know.

  The Master of Sinanju nodded. “The President of Vice got up and walked away. But it is not possible.”

  “Not possible?” Remo snorted. “It’s ridiculous.”

  Officer Mazatl put in her two cents. “I have read that it is a great puzzle why your presidente picked that man to be his second.”

  “Yeah?” Remo said slowly.

  “A man who can fall sixteen stories and walk away is a man. What we call mucho hombre. It is no wonder he was chosen.”

  Remo blinked some more. “That almost makes sense,” he said.

  “Enough,” Chiun snapped. He turned to the DFS agent and rattled off a string of Spanish questions.

  “He says our quarry walked in that direction, toward Chapultepec Park,” Chiun translated.

  Remo looked across the Paseo de la Reforma, where the thick green of the park shivered in the passing hurricane of traffic.

  “Then we start our search there!” Remo said. “Come on!”

  No one got in their way as they ran for the side street, Calzada Arquimedes, and to the Reforma.

  They stood on the corner of Arquimedes and the Reforma, beside the glowering statue of Winston Churchill, who looked as if he were emerging from a mud slide. Comandante Odio’s helicopter sat on a nearby traffic island, its rotors drooped.

  The traffic was like a fast-moving wall that spewed noxious fumes in their faces.

  Almost immediately, Remo became aware of the tight band encircling his head.

  He looked to the Master of Sinanju.

  “Oh-oh, I’m starting to feel woozy again,” he said.

  “I too,” said Chiun.

  “It is because you have been exerting yourselves,” Lupe told them. “You must not run.”

  “We gotta,” Remo said. “Finding the Vice-President is our responsibility. He’s our only lead to the President.”

  “If you faint, then, do not blame me,” Lupe said flatly.

  “Little Father?” Remo said.

  Chiun lifted a wise finger. “We will not run,” he announced. “But we will walk very fast.”

  “Maybe we’d better split up?” Remo suggested.

  “Yes. We will take opposite sides of the street,” Chiun said. “I will allow you to cross the traffic,” he added.

  “Thanks,” Remo said dryly. “Let’s try to maintain eye contact until one of us spots something. It’s gonna take both of us to catch the Vice-President–especially in our present condition.” Remo turned to Lupe. “Mind staying with him?”

  “Of course not, I prefer it,” Lupe said tartly.

  Remo looked back and saw the orange-pipe footbridge. He used it to reach the other side of the Reforma.

  Once there, Remo walked along the broad shady sidewalk, keeping pace with Chiun and Guadalupe on the other side.

  On his side, Chapultepec Park was bound by an iron fence. As Remo walked, he noticed bushes sculptured into the shapes of animals–a ram, a llama, and a particularly joyful-looking hippopotamus–on the other side of the fence. A little farther on, he spied a miniature railroad through the thick foliage. Probably the children’s section of the park, he concluded.

  Through the trees beyond, Remo saw no sign of the Vice-President, who by all accounts should be lying in a pool of blood and glass back in front of the hotel.

  He couldn’t figure it out. What was the deal here? Like many Americans, Remo had been mystified by the selection of an obscure Hoosier senator to be elevated to the vice-presidency. There was obviously more to the man than anyone had thought, if today’s events meant anything.

  Maybe that was it, Remo thought. Maybe he was the President’s secret weapon. This President had once considered shutting down CURE. But if that was the case, why, after rescuing him, had the Vice-President hidden the President?

  Across the Reforma, the Master of Sinanju crossed a side street to a brick-paved park dominated by a tall bronze statue of a man in military uniform. Probably some Mexican general, Remo thought. He walked on.

  He came to a huge wrought-iron gate. It was closed. Remo looked back to the other side of the Reforma, saw the Master of Sinanju stopped before the bronze statue, head cocked inquisitively, and waved. Chiun did not look in his direction. He seemed fascinated by the statue for some reason. Probably Lupe was explaining its historical importance.

  “Great,” he muttered. “We’re only trying to rescue the President, and those two are playing tourist and native guide.”

  Remo hesitated. The thrum of traffic was like a wall of sound. No point in trying to yell. He decided to go over the fence, knowing that if the Vice-President had entered the park, every minute counted.

  · · ·

  The Master of Sinanju walked slowly, deliberately. His magnificent lungs drew in empowering oxygen. The trouble was, it tasted like nitrogen coming in, and with each exhalation, Chiun felt as if he were venting precious life-giving oxygen.

  “This is a dirty place,” he said, giving his opinion of Mexico City to the Mexican woman named Guadalupe. “It is no wonder that my ancestors had nothing to do with the Aztecs.”

  “Were I in your country, I would not criticize it,” Guadalupe said sullenly.

  “You would not like my country. The air is breathable.”

  They came to a red-brick park on the corner of Reforma and Calzada Mahatma Gandhi. There stood a more-than-lifesize bronze statue of a man, hands clasped behind his back, on a dais. The edge of the dais bore a name: JOSIP BROZ TITO.

  Chiun walked past the statue of the unimportant non-Korean and through the park, where stylized grasshoppers perched on stone hieroglyphs.

  Something silvery gleamed in the bushes directly behind the bronze statue. The Master of Sinanju abruptly swerved toward that unexpected gleam.

  “What are you doing?” Guadalupe asked as the Master of Sinanju bent at the waist and reached into the bushes.

  He stood up, frowning at the sand wedge in his hand.

  “What?” Lupe gasped.

  “The bag and remaining clubs are also here,” Chiun said solemnly.

  Guadalupe joined him. “He must have cast them aside,” she ventured.

  Ignoring her, Chiun looked around the park.

  “His clothes are also here,” Guadalupe said. “Why would he discard his clothes?” she asked in puzzlement, holding up a brown jacket by its collar.

  The Master of Sinanju did not reply. He had found the shoes and socks that had been discarded behind a tree. Shoes did not always leave imprints, but bare feet did–even on brick, the outline of perspiration could be seen by eyes that had been sharpened by Sinanju training.

  The Master of Sinanju did not find any perspiration imprints when he examined the brick sidewalk, however. He floated back to the bushes, where the Mexican woman stood, a befuddled expression on her impassive brown face.

  There were heavy footprints in the soft dirt, he saw. They led directly to the statue’s austere dark bronze back.

  His facial wrinkles multiplying in thought, Chiun went around to the front. He looked up. His eyes narrowed. It was merely a statue, its eyes lifted skyward.

  Chiun looked down. Flecks of dirt collected at the statue’s booted feet. No crumbs of soil lay outside the circumference of the dais, however. And no perspiration imprints were visible on it.

  Guadalupe joined him, regarding the statue. They stood in silence for many moments, Chiun’s hands withdrawing into his sleeves, which joined over his stomach.

  Finally the Master of Sinanju put a question to her.

  “How long has this statue been at this spot?” he asked softly, not taking his eyes off its metallic face.

  “I do not know,” Lupe admitted. “I am in Mexico City only from time to time. Why?”

  “Have you seen it here before?”

  “Sí. It has been here several years, in recognition of the close ties between my government and this man, who formerly headed Yugoslavia.”

  Chiun stepped up to the dais. One fingernail lifted cautiously. He tapped the bronze once. It rang faintly–a solidly metallic ring. The true and correct ring of bronze.

  “What do you do?” Guadalupe asked slowly.

  “Hush,” Chiun admonished. He brushed a cloud of hair away from one delicate ear and placed it to the statue’s stomach, the highest point he could monitor without lifting up on tiptoe.

  Guadalupe watched him with growing concern. She had heard of tourists fainting in the thin air, who had to be hospitalized during the winter months, when the natural bowl that was Mexico City trapped inversions along with the terrible pollution.

  But she had never before heard of a gringo who had become crazed by the bad air. And this old one was not even, strictly speaking, a gringo.

  As she watched, the Master of Sinanju’s brow crinkled. His parchment face gathered like drying papier-mâché. His tiny mouth popped open suddenly.

  He stepped back abruptly. “I hear sounds,” he whispered in a surprised voice.

  “What kind of sounds?”

  “Metal sounds.”

  “It is made of bronce,” Lupe said reasonably. “Of course you would hear metal sounds.”

  “Not like these,” Chiun said, regarding the statue with suspicious eyes. “These are clicks and hums, the sounds of gears and other machine workings.”

  “But it is a statue. It is hollow.”

  “It is not hollow, although it may be a statue.”

  At the sound of those words, the statue, whose head had been tilted slightly upward toward the brownish sky, suddenly looked down. Its bronze neck creaked with the impossible movement.

  “Diós!” Guadalupe gasped. She stepped back without thinking, her hand reaching for her pistol.

  The eyes of the statue, with its hollow shadowed pupils, moved, showing a sudden dark gleam, like obsidian lenses. And the sculptured mouth dropped open.

  The statue spoke, evoking a shriek from Guadalupe Mazatl.

  “Why do you pursue me?” Josip Broz Tito asked, his voice a conglomeration of raspy metallic vowels and consonants, like dozens of hasps and files sawing one another, trying to make articulate music.

  “It speaks!” Lupe gasped. “The statue is speaking!”

  “Because you are the Vice-President, statue,” the Master of Sinanju said in a reasonable tone. He did not understand what would possess a statue to talk, but he knew that when faced with the unknown, a wise assassin did not show fear. He repressed it.

  “I am not the Vice-President now,” the statue of Josip Broz Tito said through gnashing teeth.

  “True,” returned the Master of Sinanju carefully. His eyes narrowed. There was something familiar about the way this statue spoke. Not the tortured metallic voice, but the too-simple manner of phrasing. He pressed on.

  “There is another reason I pursue you,” Chiun added firmly.

  “I would like to know that reason.”

  “Why?”

  “It is important to me.”

  “Why is it important to you, O Statue?” the Master of Sinanju asked carefully.

  “It is important to my survival.”

  “Ahhh,” said the Master of Sinanju, and he knew what the statue truly was.

  But knowing the truth and admitting it were different matters. The Master of Sinanju preferred not to let the statue know that he knew what he knew.

  “It is important to me to know that the President is safe,” Chiun said simply.

  “He is safe,” the statue said.

  “How do I know this?”

  “Because I am not lying,” said the statue with invincible logic.

  “I see,” mused the Master of Sinanju. “It is also important that I see this for myself. It is my responsibility to see that the President is returned to his own country in safety. He has many enemies in this land.”

  “This is important to me as well, meat machine.”

  The Master of Sinanju let the odd description pass. It only confirmed what he already knew.

  “Perhaps we can assist each other in our mutual goal, O Strange Statue.”

  “Explain.”

  “Take me to the President, and I will conduct him to his home. He will be safe with me, and you will be relieved of your burden.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I must accompany the President wherever he goes.”

  “Why is this necessary if I give you my word that he will be safe?”

  “Because I do not trust your word. And I must be with the President at all times.”

  “Why?”

  “I am safe with him. He is well-protected. The meat machines work very hard to ensure his survival. All persons and machines around him are ensured of their survival. My survival will therefore be assured so long as we are inseparable.”

  “Well-spoken,” said Chiun. “But you are not with him now.”

  “This is a temporary necessity,” Josip Broz Tito grated. “Evil meat machines are attempting to terminate him. Until I have devised a safe method to return him to his habitation, I have placed him in a secure place.”

  “Where, O Statue?”

  “I will not tell you. You may mean harm to him. I cannot allow that, for it threatens my survival.”

  “I understand perfectly, O Mysterious Statue whose true nature is unknown to me,” Chiun said broadly. “Perhaps I can help you in your plight.”

  “Explain.”

  “What are you doing?” Lupe demanded. “You cannot bargain with a statue. It does not live.”

  “I will offer you safe passage back to America,” Chiun went on, ignoring the outburst, “you and the true President, where you will be safe.”