“I am glad you trust me enough to do this,” Chiun said.

  “I trust you because of your actions. They tell me you have negotiated in good faith.”

  “And your words tell me that you are a blockhead,” said the Master of Sinanju as he set one sandaled foot to the serpent-twisted backside of the living statue of Coatlicue and exerted sudden force.

  Mr. Gordons, in the act of transferring his brain from his left arm to his left hemisphere, toppled over the pyramid’s side without a sound.

  Landing, he broke into eight irregular pieces, pulverizing the still-squirming body of Jorge Chingar, a.k.a. El Padrino.

  Remo came up the stairs like a rocket. He reached the shattered hulk that was Gordons. He looked up. “He’s not moving.”

  “His left serpent’s head is cracked in two,” Chiun said as he floated down to join Remo.

  “Yeah?” Remo said blankly.

  “That’s where his brain is,” Chiun said smugly.

  Remo looked at Coatlicue’s fractured face. “How do you know that?” he wondered.

  Chiun beamed like a wrinkled yellow angel. “The same way I know that it was I who killed Gordons last time, not you.”

  “How’s that?” Remo said suspiciously.

  “Because Gordon’s told me so.” And Chiun’s angelic smile broadened.

  “I don’t believe it,” Remo said as he knelt to examine the inert shattered hulk. Chiun kicked at it as if testing the tires on a used station wagon. Nothing happened. They separated the pieces, expecting a reaction. The statue of Coatlicue still didn’t stir.

  “See?” Chiun said happily. “Dong ding, the witch is dead.”

  “It’s ding dong, and there’s no sense in taking chances,” Remo muttered, lifting one knifelike hand over Coatlicue’s broken left facial hemisphere. “Let’s pulverize it into rock dust.” He brought the edge of his hand down hard.

  To Remo’s surprise, his hand bounced off, making a hairline crack.

  “Damn!” Remo said. “You try it.”

  The Master of Sinanju kicked at the stone, knocking a tiny chip loose.

  “It’s that bad Mexican air!” Remo growled. “We’re not up to speed.”

  Chiun frowned. “We cannot dawdle here, Remo. There is still the President to consider.”

  Remo hesitated, his eyes on the broken hulk.

  “Okay,” he said, getting to his feet. “The President first. But we’re coming back to finish the job.”

  They pelted down the pyramid’s side, stopping at the base, where Guadalupe Mazatl’s dead body lay sprawled.

  Remo knelt to close her brown eyes.

  They ran to their car without a backward glance.

  · · ·

  When the stifling gorilla head came off, the President of the United States was practically in tears. He blinked in the bright sun.

  “Who’s there?” he moaned. “I don’t have my glasses. I can’t see.”

  “Never mind,” Remo assured him. “You’re safe.”

  On the Banana boutique roof they pulled the plaster-and-fur King Kong apart, extracting the President. Carefully they lowered him to the artificial jungle floor.

  “Where am I?” the President asked in concern.

  “Just close your eyes,” Remo added. “We’re taking you to the U.S. embassy.”

  “Thank God you came back,” the President moaned.

  Then he passed out. His last breathy exhalation sounded like “Dan.”

  Remo looked to Chiun. “He thinks we’re–”

  “Hush,” said the Master of Sinanju as he folded the President’s arms over his chest in preparation to move him. “It may be better this way.”

  · · ·

  The Vice-President of the United States didn’t understand.

  One moment, he was getting ready to read his speech, when the envelope containing it was wrenched from his hands.

  “Never mind that,” his chief of staff said quickly. “Air Force Two is waiting. The President wants you by his side. Now.”

  They bundled him into a waiting limo and to the airport.

  Before he knew it, he was set down in Mexico City, where the President was ushered aboard by tense Secret Service agents.

  The President looked ragged, but he smiled wanly.

  “Dan,” he said effusively. “Great to see you again–really wonderful.” The Vice-President endured the firm two-handed handshake that seemed unending.

  “Thank you, Mr. President,” he said, wincing. His hand hadn’t recovered from the morning’s “grips-and-grins” marathon.

  “Call me George,” said the President. He turned to a steward. “Okay, on to Bogotá.”

  The Vice-President blinked blankly. “Bogotá?”

  “We’re going together, my boy.” The President grinned. “From now on, we’re a team. Where I go, you go.”

  “That’s great,” said the Vice-President, grinning weakly under his dazed blue eyes. He wondered what the hell had gotten into the President. He decided not to press his luck. Sheer dumb luck had catapulted him to the vice-presidency. No point in rocking the boat now. And maybe he’d get a little respect at last.

  Although right now he would trade the vice-presidency for a bowl of hot Epsom salts for his aching hand. Why hadn’t anyone warned him the job would be so demanding?

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Remo and Chiun were relaxing in their air-conditioned room at the Hotel Krystal when the phone rang. Remo was on the bed. Chiun sat on the floor, poring over a book. Outside, it was raining again. Lightning lashed the skyline.

  Remo picked up the phone. “Smitty?”

  “It’s all settled, Remo,” Dr. Harold W. Smith said without preamble. “The President and Vice-President have arrived in Bogotá aboard Air Force Two.”

  “What about Air Force One?” Remo asked.

  “That story is about to break. The White House is playing it as an air accident caused by pilot failure. The official NTSB report will attribute it to ‘circadian desynchronosis.’”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “Jet lag.”

  “But Mexico City is only an hour behind Washington time,” Remo pointed out.

  “Nevertheless, that is the official story. We have to account for the dead.”

  Remo shrugged. “How’s the President doing?”

  Smith cleared his throat uncomfortably. “He believes the Vice-President is a latter-day Conan the Barbarian. He will be allowed to go on thinking that. The Vice-President has been told by his handlers that the President is not quite himself as a result of surviving the crash landing, and to nod and smile at everything he says, no matter how puzzling.”

  “He’s good at that, at least,” Remo said dryly. “I suppose it’s on to Colombia and killing a few loose ends for us?”

  “No,” said Smith. “One of the bodies discovered on the Pyramid of the Sun was Jorge Chingar, El Padrino–the man who had the contract on the President’s life.”

  “No kidding,” Remo said with pleasure. “I didn’t want to go to Colombia anyway. All that’s left is finishing with Gordons, which we’ll do when we get back up to speed.”

  “Too late.”

  Remo’s hand tightened on the receiver. “What do you mean?”

  “The Mexican authorities have discovered the shattered Coatlicue statue. It’s even now being crated for return to the Museum of Anthropology.”

  “No sweat,” Remo said casually. “We’ll hit it there.”

  “No, Remo. Better to let sleeping dogs lie.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s an expression. It means–”

  “I know that!” Remo snapped. “But what does that have to do with Gordons?”

  “That idol, Remo, is a very important national Mexican symbol,” Smith said levelly. “It was found on the site of Tenochtitlan, the ruined Aztec capital on which modern-day Mexico City has been built. Let the Mexicans put it together if they can, and restore it to its proper place in the museum.”

  “What if Gordons isn’t dead?” Remo wanted to know.

  “I think he is this time,” Smith replied. “And if not, he will be well taken care of by the museum staff. Perhaps Gordons might grow to enjoy being a museum piece. No one will threaten his survival ever again.”

  “We’re taking an awful chance,” Remo warned.

  “Our job is done. Return on the next flight.”

  “How about a ‘Well done’?” Remo suggested.

  The line went dead.

  Remo stared at the receiver in his hand.

  “How do you like that Smith?” he complained to the Master of Sinanju. “Not even a thank-you.”

  “Assassins are never appreciated in any age,” Chiun said absently. He was paging through an oversize book entitled The Aztecs.

  Remo put down the phone, smiling.

  “Yearning for the glory days, Little Father?” he asked.

  “It is a shame,” said the Master of Sinanju. “These Aztecs were the Egyptians of their time. They had worthy kings, princes, and even slaves. Perhaps they may rise again.”

  “Count me out if they do,” Remo said.

  “We would have served true emperors, not temporary presidents and disposable presidents of vice,” Chiun lamented. “We would have fitted in perfectly.”

  “Only if we wore oxygen masks,” said Remo. And when he laughed, his lungs hurt.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Standing before the expectant crowd, which included the President of Mexico and other dignitaries, Mexican Museum of Anthropology curator Rodrigo Lujan waited nervously as the last guest speaker finished introducing him. Behind him, perched on her basalt dais and bathed in multicolored spotlights, towered the massive tarpaulin-draped figure of Coatlicue.

  It had taken a week of hard work by museum specialists to put the sundered pieces of Coatlicue together. They fitted remarkably well. The museum specialists had carefully restored her, using a special concrete paste to repair the bullet holes and knit the sections together. Steel bolts had been necessary to hold the bicephalic head together, but when Coatlicue was carefully raised to her clawed feet, she was whole.

  A creditable job of restoration, but the hairline cracks were as if Coatlicue had been scored by stonecutting machetes. It was sad. She would never again be the same.

  The speaker finished. Rodrigo bowed at the mention of his name. With a sad heart, he pulled the tarpaulin free of the idol, revealing the brutal elemental beauty of the restored Coatlicue. A gasp of astonishment came from the assembled audience. Cries of “Bravo!” resounded. Rodrigo looked behind him. He gasped too.

  For not a crack was visible on Coatlicue’s ornate skin. Even the filled-in bullet holes were invisible. It was miraculous, as if the spirit of Coatlicue herself had taken hold of the stone, healing it until the idol was once again whole.

  Rodrigo Lujan bowed in acknowledgment of the applause that washed over him like thunder. But in his heart he gave silent thanks to Mother Coatlicue, whose ophidian eyes he felt on him.

  For he was, above all things, Zapotec.

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  Skull Duggery

  His name was Remo and he really, really knew his rice.

  “Let me have a bag of that long white, and some brown,” he told the blonde at the health-food store. “Got any Blue Rose?”

  “I never heard of Blue Rose,” the blonde admitted. She was tall and willowy. Her long straight hair looked as if it had been ironed. Remo didn’t think anyone ironed her hair anymore. Not since Janis Joplin.

  “Grows only in Thailand,” Remo told her. “Has kind of a nutty taste.”

  “Really?” the blonde said, her deep brown eyes growing limpid. “Maybe I can special-order some.”

  “In that case, put me down for as much as you can get.”

  “You must like it a lot.”

  “I eat a lot of rice. A lot of rice. When you eat as much rice as I do, variety is important.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “In fact it’s critical,” Remo went on. “If I had to go on just domestic Carolina, I’m not sure my sanity would survive.”

  “Sounds trés New Age,” the blonde prompted.

  “It’s not,” Remo said flatly. “How about Patna? Got any of that?”

  “That’s another one I never heard of,” she admitted. “Are you some kind of rice connoisseur?”

  “I didn’t start out that way,” Remo admitted glumly, his eyes scanning the shelves of glass containers with their heaps of hard rice grains. Most of them contained the usual boring domestic lowlands, California Carolo’s and Louisiana Rexoro’s and Nato’s. “Let’s see… ”

  “How about wild rice?”

  Remo frowned. “Not really.” He was going to say that wild rice was no more rice than white chocolate was true chocolate. But why bother? Only another rice connoisseur would appreciate the distinction.

  “Guess I’ll take some short-grain white,” Remo said. He pointed at one container and said, “Let me see that one.”

  The container came down off the shelf and Remo lifted the lid. As the blonde watched, he took a pinch of grain to his lips and tasted it carefully.

  “Pearl,” he pronounced with the authority of a wine taster. “Grown in Java.”

  The blonde’s eyes widened in surprise. “You can tell that by tasting?”

  “Sure. It has that iron tang. Goes away in the cooking—unless you undercook it, of course.”

  “I’ll bet your wife never, ever undercooks your rice.”

  “Absolutely correct,” Remo said, disposing of the tasted grain in a wicker wastebasket.

  The blonde acquired a slightly sad pout.

  “Since I don’t have a wife,” Remo finished.

  The pout jumped back into her mouth and her lips curved into a smile.

  Her reaction was not lost on Remo Williams. He pretended not to notice it as the blonde busied herself scooping quantities of rice into clear plastic bags, tying them with twister seals and making small talk.

  “Hope you’re not planning to carry all these home on foot,” she quipped.

  Remo jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “That’s my car out front.”

  The blonde looked up, her brown eyes curious to see what kind of car a rice authority would drive. Her curiosity froze.

  “What car?” she asked.

  “The blue one,” Remo said absently, scanning rice labels.

  “Shouldn’t it be waiting for you?”

  Remo turned. There was no blue car parked out front.

  Came a screeching of tires and a blue Buick Regal suddenly jumped into view, going in the opposite direction it had been pointing when Remo had parked it minutes before.

  Hunched behind the wheel was a black man Remo had never seen before.

  “Damn!” he bit out. Remo raced for the door as the car picked up speed. The blonde followed.

  “Should I call 911?” she gasped, her eyes fever-bright.

  “No,” Remo said grimly. “I’ll handle it.”

  “You will?”

  Remo Williams began running. He started off with an easy, joggerlike pace, his bare forearms up, fists not loose-fingered, but tight. His thin, just-this-side-of-cruel mouth was grim.

  He hit his stride at forty-five miles an hour, his mouth slightly parted. If he was exerting himself, there was no sign of strain on his high-cheekboned face. Only tight determination showed in his deep-set brown eyes.

  He caught up to the Buick at a stoplight.

  The driver wore a pea jacket and his hair was razored close at the temples. The name “Shariff” was shaved in bare scalp. He pretended not to notice Remo tapping on his window, so Remo planted his feet the way he had been taught and grasped the door handle firmly, waiting for the red light to change.

  The driver—he looked about twenty-two—continued to ignore him as he fiddled with Remo’s radio. The arrogance of the youth’s nonchalance made Remo’s blood boil. He calmed himself, thinking that he was not going to be ignored much longer.

  The light turned green.

  The driver hit the accelerator.

  The rear tires spun, throwing off rubbery clouds of smoke.

  The Buick stayed in place. A station wagon directly behind started to honk. With his free hand, Remo waved the car to go around him. His other hand held on to the driver’s-side door handle, his feet rooted on the asphalt street as if by Super-Glue.

  Remo waited patiently for Shariff to notice him. It was taking a while. The guy jammed the accelerator to the floor. The rear tires spun faster, shaving hot rubber off his treads. They were winter tires, so Remo didn’t sweat the loss of tread. Besides which, he’d get satisfaction from the car thief soon enough.

  Finally the driver released the gas. He put his nose to the glass and looked up at Remo.

  Evidently he was not frightened by what he saw, a skinny dude of indeterminate age wearing—despite the winter chill—a black T-shirt and black chinos, because he rolled down the window.

  “You mind?” he said.

  “Yes, I do mind,” Remo said pleasantly. “You are sitting behind the wheel of my car.”

  “This?”

  “Do you see any other wheel you’re sitting behind?”

  “This your car?”

  “I answered that. Now, you answer this: Why are you driving my car?”

  “You weren’t using it.”

  “So you just felt free to steal it, is that it?”

  “I ain’t stealin’ it! Get outta my face with that shit!”

  Remo leaned down. He bestowed a friendly disarming smile on the tough’s scowling face. “Correct me if I’m mistaken, Shariff, but isn’t that a screwdriver where my ignition used to be?”