"That's better. Who sanctioned it?"

  "No one. I created it."

  The Master of Sinanju came up, his hazel eyes interested. "Why?"

  "To safeguard Mother Russia until Soviet rule is restored."

  "You could have a long wait," the American said dryly.

  "But it will be worth it," said Colonel Rushenko fervently.

  "Okay. Enough of Shield. We gotta get to the bottom of this thing."

  "I agree. I have operatives at Glavkosmos and Baikonur looking into this even as we squabble."

  "We will await these reports," said the Master of Sinanju.

  And Colonel Rushenko found himself sitting back in his red leather chair, into a gooey mess that he belatedly realized was a puddle of red caviar. He was relieved. He thought he had soiled his trousers.

  The old Korean sifted through the desk papers, reading classified telexes with a casual air before ripping them to shreds and wastebasketing them.

  "How did you find this place?" Rushenko asked at one point. "Kinga did not know its location."

  "We traced the e-mail back."

  "It has no listed address."

  "We got the street. After that, it was easy."

  "How so?"

  The American jerked a thumb at the preoccupied Korean. "He recognized the cover."

  "I have watched American television, too," said the old Korean blandly.

  "What show was that, by the way?" Remo asked.

  "Ask Uncle Vanya."

  Remo snapped his fingers. "I get it now. I never watched that one much. Too farfetched."

  While they waited for incoming reports, the American with the thick wrists passed the time by stacking the bodies of defunct Shield agents about the room.

  "What killed them?" Rushenko asked.

  "Sloppiness," sniffed the Master of Sinanju.

  And Colonel Rushenko understood. They were liquidated by the finest assassin of the modern world. It was no wonder his security levels were so ridiculously pregnable.

  The calls poured in over the next two hours.

  The American lifted the receiver to Colonel Rushenko's mouth each time, squeezing his neck threateningly with his free hand. Colonel Rushenko felt obliged to answer in his normal tone of voice.

  "Comrade Colonel, there is news out of America."

  "Yes?"

  "Our mole in the American CIA reports that SPACETRACK has isolated the orbital device responsible for the strange accidents in America."

  "Yes?"

  "It is dubbed Object 617 in their catalog of objects in the near cosmos."

  "Yes, yes."

  "It went into orbit a month ago. The orbit is polar."

  "Who launched this infernal thing?"

  "We did."

  "Again?"

  "It was the payload of Buran 2."

  "The Kremlin launched this thing?" Rushenko roared.

  "That is what the CIA believes."

  Colonel Rushenko looked to the dead-eyed American with his own eyes going sick. "The fools in the Kremlin have gone mad. There is no reason for this, no logic."

  "Tough. We got what we came for."

  "And you have served your purpose," added the Master of Sinanju.

  "If you kill me, I cannot help you," Rushenko said thickly.

  "Who says we need your help, Russian?" said the Master of Sinanju.

  "Your interests are my interests. I wish to get to the bottom of this affair, too."

  The two US. agents exchanged glances. The old Korean nodded, and the pressure of death left the throat of Colonel Rushenko, who understood that if he was to live, it wouldn't be for long.

  For the most deadly killers in all of humanity owned him like a dull puppet of wood and strings.

  Chapter 27

  The call took ninety minutes using the Moscow phone system.

  "It's the Russians," Remo told Harold Smith.

  "I have checked with SPACETRACK. The orbits do not coincide with Mir."

  "It's not Mir. It's something launched by the Russian shuttle. This is out of Shield."

  "Then there is such an organization."

  "Yeah. Unofficially. It's some kind of holdover from the Soviet period. The guy who runs it says the Kremlin doesn't even know it exists. Sound familiar, Smitty?"

  "Who gave you this information?" Smith pressed.

  "The guy who runs it. Say dos vedanya to-what's your name, by the way?"

  "Colonel Radomir Eduardovitch Rushenko," said the colonel, between sucks of his wounded thumb.

  "Better known as Uncle Vanya. Smitty, this info came by way of the CIA. Our CIA."

  "They have a mole in the CIA!" Smith sputtered.

  "You act surprised. Lower Slobovia probably has moles in the CIA these days."

  Smith cleared his throat. "No intelligence coming out of the CIA is reliable these days," he said dismissively.

  "According to the mole, SPACETRACK has a fix on this thing."

  "If SPACETRACK has such a fix, why has this not been reported to the White House?" Smith countered.

  "Maybe SPACETRACK knows a hot potato when they smell it," Remo suggested.

  "Hold the line open."

  "Good idea. If we get disconnected, it could be Valentine's Day before we can reestablish contact."

  Harold Smith put them on hold, and Remo turned to Colonel Rushenko.

  "My boss says hi."

  Colonel Rushenko said nothing other than to grit his teeth. Then he remembered the mushy feeling in the seat of his pants.

  "I am sitting in caviar," he said.

  "Lucky you. Some people only fall into clover."

  "I do not mean this metaphorically. I am sitting on my lunch."

  "Enjoy it. Lots of Russians are starving these days."

  "Yes. Thanks to the corrosive poison of capitalism."

  "Your throwback opinion doesn't exactly count."

  "Thank you for bringing this to my attention," Colonel Rushenko said acidly.

  AT FOLCROFT SANITARIUM, Harold Smith called a major at SPACETRACK, representing himself as General Smith with the US. Space Command.

  "Yes, General?" said the major at SPACETRACK.

  "We have a rumor here that you people have something in inventory whose orbits coincide with the BioBubble and Reliant mishaps."

  The man on the other end of the line made a brief choking sound, as if a chicken bone had just been expelled from his throat.

  "I have nothing on that in this office, General Smith."

  "Connect me with an office that has this information," Smith said tartly, recognizing a bureaucratic shuffle when he heard one. "Just a sec."

  The line clicked, buzzed, then went dead. When Smith redialed, it was busy. The busy signal was angry and insistent in its way.

  Hanging up, Smith logged on to the SPACETRACK active data base, and got a real-time snapshot of what SPACETRACK had from its many ground-based radar stations. On his desktop monitor, the gigantic image was squeezed down too small to read. Smith blew up the different grids one by one until he found Object 617.

  Smith knew little about celestial navigation. He recognized that the object had a polar orbit. This meant it executed a continuous loop from the North Pole to the South Pole and back again every ninety minutes. Since the earth rotated under it, it passed over virtually every spot on earth at one point or another, and if maneuverable, could be made to overfly any point on the globe. Usually this was a certain signature of a spy satellite.

  Smith punched up the file on Object 617.

  What he saw made him gasp.

  It was logged in as having been inserted into orbit a month before, deployed by a Buran shuttle, classified by Space Command as a recon satellite of unknown purpose and marked for periodic observation.

  Optical images taken by GEODES-the Ground-based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance element of the Air Force Maui Optical Station-showed a dark ball framed by struts painted a stealth gray.

  If this was a spy satellite, it was of a configuration and purpose that baffled Harold Smith. For one thing, there were no observable lens apertures. Logging off, Smith picked up the blue contact phone that connected him to Remo in Moscow.

  "Remo, Object 617 exists. It's in the SPACETRACK inventory as a spy satellite. The Russian space shuttle did deploy it. That is confirmed."

  "So I guess we need to talk to the Russian shuttle people."

  "This will be difficult."

  "Oh, I don't know," Remo said airily. "Our good friend Colonel Rushenko here has offered his help."

  "Be certain to convert our new friend to a neutral posture at the end of this phase of the mission."

  "Already thought of that," said Remo, hanging up.

  "Thought of what?" Colonel Rushenko asked.

  "Our boss just sent his regards."

  "You cannot deceive me. I am to be liquidated because I know of you."

  "Hey, you'd do the same for us. In fact, you tried pretty hard."

  Rushenko made a fist with his fleshy face. "I have nothing more to say. Other than that, I have not finished my lunch and I am very hungry."

  "No time," said Remo, picking him up by the scruff of his thick neck.

  "There is candy in my desk."

  Shrugging, the American rifled through the contents of the cherry-wood desk until he pulled out a brown wrapper. "This looks familiar," he said.

  "It is a candy bar."

  Remo showed the wrapper to the Master of Sinanju. Chiun squeezed his eyes at the red letters that spelled "Mapc."

  "What's this say?" asked Remo.

  "Where did you find this!" Chiun hissed.

  "Belongs to Colonel Klink here."

  "The word is the same as your 'Mars.'"

  "No kidding." Remo looked to Colonel Rushenko. "This is a Russian Mars bar?"

  "I normally detest American products, but Russian chocolate has seriously deteriorated since the collapse."

  Remo stripped the wrapper, pocketed it as a souvenir and trashed the rest.

  "I desired that," Colonel Rushenko protested.

  "Might have been poison."

  "Who would poison good chocolate?"

  "The same manner of cretin who would consume fish while they are but eggs," said the Master of Sinanju in a distasteful tone.

  And steely constricting fingers brought unwelcome unconsciousness to Colonel Rushenko's unhappy brain.

  Not to mention his growling stomach.

  Chapter 28

  Bartholomew Meech watched the computer screen in his sprawling lab where monitoring systems pulsed and beeped and the incessant rain made the windows swim, blocking out the oyster gray world beyond them.

  He drained a cup of heavily sugared Starbucks black coffee and hoped the screen wouldn't beep. But he knew it would. Then it did, and flashed, "You have mail!"

  Meech brought it up.

  To: R From: RM@qnm.com Subject: I'm back Just blew back into town. What's the latest?

  Meech composed his reply with caffeine-shaky fingers.

  To: RM@qnm.com From: R Subject: . . . . I killed a man. The NASA crawler driver.

  The reply hit the screen a moment later:

  Not your problem. You're only a cog in the corporate machine. Go to confession on your own time. On company time, you do what the firm requires. What's Pagan saying now?

  Meech replied:

  He's talking up asteroids again. And ozone holes. But it's not what Pagan is saying. It's what the press is saying. They're blaming Russia now. We've ignited a global incident.

  The response:

  Great! We need to throw up more smoke, keep the Russians from figuring things out and throw the blame back on the Martians. Hit Baikonur. Hit it hard.

  Bartholomew Meech shook and shook as he read the green glowing words. Then he composed his reply: "What about Russian casualties?"

  He knew what the reply would be before it appeared: "They're only vodka-swilling peasants. This is our jobs. Go to it."

  Bartholomew Meech came out of his chair heavily and prepared to fulfill his responsibilities to his employer. His glasses were as steamy as the windows that looked out over a fog in which a gigantic, saucer-shaped object ringed with illuminated windows seemed to float disembodied in a gray drizzle like the advance guard from another world.

  Chapter 29

  For the head of Russia's most secret counterintelligence agency, Colonel Radomir Rushenko was very open.

  "I myself did not prefer to call my modest ministry Shield," he was saying.

  "We do not care," said Chiun as the Yak-90 airliner droned over Soviet central Asia en route to Kazakhstan.

  "I wished to call it Rodina, which means 'Motherland.'"

  Remo yawned elaborately.

  "But there was already a television program by that name. I did not wish confusion. Nor did I like the program. In fact, I do not much like Russian programming these days."

  "Let me guess," said Remo. "Too many American imports?"

  "Yes. How did you know that?"

  "It's the same thing the French and Canadians keep complaining about."

  "They are quite correct in their complaints."

  "Didn't stop you from ripping off 'The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,'" Remo contended.

  "It was a very clever cover."

  "Chiun caught on right off."

  "Did you?" Rushenko asked Remo pointedly.

  Remo changed the subject. "What's the real purpose of Shield?" he asked.

  "As I have said, to preserve the union."

  Remo blinked. "Union? What union?"

  "The Soviet Union. What other union is of historical consequence?"

  "We have a union in America, too, you know."

  "Then you sympathize with the aims of Shield."

  "Not really."

  "But now we are on the same team. Like Solo and Kuryakin, da?"

  "We are on the same team, nyet," said Remo.

  "Which organization do you belong to?" asked Rushenko.

  "Who says we belong to anyone?" Remo retorted.

  "It is obvious you are not CIA."

  "Why is it obvious?"

  This time Colonel Rushenko smiled elaborately. "Because if the CIA employed the House of Sinanju, FSK would know this. And what FSK knows, Shield knows, too."

  "Who put those moles in the CIA?"

  "I refuse to say categorically. But I will admit to having moles in the FSK."

  Remo reached forward and took Colonel Rushenko by the back of his thick, black-stubbled neck.

  "Let's try answering this question again, shall we?" he prompted.

  "Yes, of course."

  "Name names."

  "I do not know these names."

  Remo made a buzzer sound. "Wrong answer. Prepare to be defenestrated at thirty thousand feet."

  And Remo jammed the Russian's face against a window so he could get a clear view of every foot of the deadly drop.

  "I know code names," Rushenko sputtered. "For these moles were KGB moles we acquired. It was decided not to pry into personalities. Just accept intelligence reports."

  "How do you know they weren't CIA double agents? Or FSK turncoats feeding you false information?"

  "All information coming from the CIA is assumed to be false or unreliable," said Colonel Rushenko.

  "Why's that?"

  "They persist in using psychics."

  "So why gather it?"

  "It is useful to know what the CIA thinks it knows. As useful as knowing what it correctly knows."

  "You know, I'm glad I'm just an assassin. This spy stuff sounds confusing."

  "It is a man's game," Colonel Rushenko said with dignified satisfaction.

  "It is foolishness," Chiun broke in. "Information does not matter. Only who rules, who lives and who dies."

  Rushenko nodded heavily. "That, too, is important. But who rules in the modern world often depends upon intelligence."

  "There has never been an intelligent Russian ruler," Chiun said pointedly as he watched the wing for signs of structural flaw. "Otherwise, Russia would never have fallen into such ruinous chaos time and time again."

  "This democratic experiment will end soon. There will be a new regime. Just like the good old days."

  "A czar will emerge if a strong man with Romanov blood can be located," Chiun countered.

  "We are not speaking the same language," Colonel Rushenko said, deciding that it would be impossible to pry secrets from these two.

  The copilot came back to announce that they were nearing their destination. "Leninsk is but twenty minutes away," he said in English because Remo had insisted all conversation take place in English so there would be no misunderstanding.

  It had been like this since they had taken Colonel Rushenko to the Sheremetevo II Airport, woke him up and told him to use whatever pull he had to get them to Baikonur Cosmodrome.

  Colonel Rushenko was so pleased to find himself still among the living that he complied by whistling up a Yak-90 by telephone. This was the third leg of their trek, and at every refueling stop the Shield colonel seemed to have ready agents willing to do his bidding.

  They tightened their seat belts, which were simple hemp ropes.

  Once again Colonel Rushenko apologized for this embarrassment but such was the state of post-Soviet Russia, or as he called it, "this regrettable interlude."

  Below, the snow-dusted steppes of central Asia rose up to meet them and Colonel Rushenko once again waxed expansive. "I will give you a good example of disinformation. The copilot has told you we are approaching Leninsk."

  "Yeah?" said Remo.

  "But Leninsk is three hundred kilometers from Baikonur."

  A slim nail touched Colonel Rushenko's carotid artery.

  "Choose your next words with care," Chiun warned.

  The colonel instantly broke out in a cold sweat. He found his voice after two swallows. "You misunderstand. This is no trap. I am merely making a point."

  "Make it," suggested Remo.

  "When Gagarin became the first man in space, TASS informed the world of the proud fact that he was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome. This is what credulous Western media picked up. Ever since, the West has referred to the launch point as Baikonur Cosmodrome, but it is not in Baikonur at all, but near Leninsk, another place entirely."

  "So?"

  "This was never corrected. Which proves the West are a pack of fools."

  "Spoken like a man clinging to a broken fantasy," said Remo.

  "The Soviet Union will rise again."