All of this was unnoticed by the press.

  In the corridor, the President was met by his chief of staff.

  "What's this about the BioBubble?" he asked.

  "First reports are sketchy," said the chief of staff, following the President into the Oval Office.

  "They always are," growled the Chief Executive.

  "At an unknown hour this evening, the BioBubble was melted into slag, entombing everyone inside."

  "Sabotage?"

  "Too early to tell."

  "Accident?"

  "Think of the BioBubble as a gigantic Habitrail only with people and other animals inside. They don't use gas heat or electricity or anything that isn't natural. Unless the methane inside became combustible, we have to rule an accident out."

  "What's NASA saying?"

  "Nothing. This isn't their project."

  The President looked surprised. "I thought this was a NASA research station."

  "A common misconception. The BioBubble is privately funded. They talk up the experimental-Martian-colony angle for the publicity value. So far, NASA has shown no serious interest. Especially with all the gaffes and screwups surrounding the project."

  A full-dress Marine guard opened the door to the Oval Office, and the President strode in, his face concerned.

  "I gotta call around."

  THE DIRECTOR OF THE FBI was at first very helpful. "What can I do for you, Mr. President?"

  "The BioBubble just went bust. I want you people to look into it."

  "Do you have intelligence pointing to a militia group or interstate or foreign conspiracy?"

  "No, I don't," the President admitted.

  "Then this is out of our jurisdiction."

  "I'm asking you to look into this," the President pressed.

  The FBI director's voice became very hushed and anxious. "Mr. President. Sir. Think just a moment. It's a troubled project with communelike factors. It's very controversial. It's in a western state known as an antigovernment hotbed. And something burned it flat. Do you really want federal agents in blue FBI windbreakers traipsing about the smoldering ruins for national media consumption?"

  "I take your point," the President said unhappily.

  "I knew you would," responded the FBI director, who was polite enough to let the President say goodbye before hanging up in his slack-muscled face.

  Next the Chief Executive called the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

  "I have a preliminary report on my desk, Mr. President," the CIA director said crisply.

  "That was damn fast. What does it say?"

  "BioBubble burned to a crisp. Further details to follow."

  "That's no different than what I have!"

  "Then we're on the same page, as it were," the director said proudly.

  "What's your assessment?"

  "I have calls out. We're in touch with our assets in this area."

  "What area is that?"

  "I like to call it the cosmic area."

  "The CIA has a cosmic department?"

  "Yes, sir. We do. And as soon as we have something concrete to share, we'll get back to you."

  The President allowed his gratitude to shine through his worry. "Let me know soonest."

  Hanging up, he turned to his chief of staff. "At least somebody out there is on the ball."

  The chief of staff made a face. "I wouldn't believe that bullcrap about a cosmic department. They're so eager over at CIA to justify their post-Cold War existence they'll tell you they have a Kwanzaa department if you wanted it investigated."

  "Was that stuff about Kwanzaa being a sixties thing true?"

  "Search me. I never heard of Kwanzaa before the First Lady started talking it up two years back."

  "Me, neither." The President frowned with all of his puffy face, producing an effect like a cinnamon roll baking. "Get me a federal directory. There must be some agency we can turn to in a situation like this."

  "Are you sure we want to? The BioBubble is an orphaned private boondoggle. Nobody even knows the identity of the philanthropist who's backing it now."

  "How many people died?"

  "Maybe thirty."

  "And no one knows how or why?"

  "That's so far. But there's talk about a lightning strike."

  The President snapped his fingers suddenly. His baggy eyes lit up. "Get me the National Weather Service. Try for that hurricane expert who's always on TV. He looks like he knows this stuff."

  Twenty minutes later, Dr. Frank Nails of the National Weather Service was patiently explaining to the Chief Executive that a lighting bolt powerful enough to melt fifty tons of glass and steel and everything it housed would be, in his words, "a thunderbolt you'd have felt in the Oval Office."

  "You're saying it can't be lightning."

  "Not unless the BioBubble was filled with propane and natural gas before the hit."

  "It's all natural. No additives. No artificial colors. Or whatever."

  "And no lightning bolt."

  "People say they heard thunder."

  "They heard an explosion, is my guess. Or an atmospheric pressure wave they mistook for thunder."

  "You've been very helpful," said the President, hanging up and looking serious.

  Calling the CIA again, the President got the director.

  "I was just about to pick up the phone," the CIA director said. "Our intelligence source suggests natural causes."

  "What does that mean?"

  "An accident. Propane leak or something."

  "The BioBubble uses no harmful chemicals, any more than the rain forest does."

  "They also claim they don't eat pizza. But there's a lot of loose talk about catering trucks and midnight snacks coming out of Dodona."

  "Who's your source?"

  "Confidential. But we've used this person before with acceptable results."

  "What's acceptable?"

  "This was the source of our report on the Korean famine, Mr. President."

  "I had that warning weeks before CIA gave it to me. Korea was in the middle of a crop failure when the flooding started. Anyone could have predicted famine," the Chief Executive pointed out.

  "CIA makes no predictive claims. We confirmed the intelligence."

  "Find other sources."

  "Yes, sir."

  "I don't think these people know what they're doing," the President said after hanging up.

  "You're not the first Commander in Chief to come to that conclusion," the chief of staff said ruefully.

  The President sat down at his desk, his unhappy head hovering between the brazen busts of Lincoln and Kennedy on the shelf behind him. Outside the imperfect window glass, more than a century old, Andrew Jackson's hickory tree groaned under its burden of pristine snow.

  "Let's see what the media says."

  Picking up a remote, the chief of staff clicked on the Oval Office TV set, nestled in a mahogany cabinet. "At least this should knock the Kwanzaa story out of the lead," he sighed.

  "If not off the newscasts entirely," the President said with ill-disguised relief, forgetting there were four more days to go.

  The President frowned as a face and voice familiar to many Americans resolved on the screen that showed the CNN bug on the lower right-hand corner.

  "With me is renowned astronomer Dr. Cosmo Pagan of the University of Arizona's Center for Exobiological Research."

  The President of the U.S. looked to his chief of staff. "Exo-?"

  "I think it means life outside the planet."

  "Oh."

  The reporter shoved his CNN mike into Dr. Pagan's studious face and asked, "Dr. Pagan, what does the BioBubble disaster mean for the space program?"

  "It may mean that someone up there doesn't want us up there," said Dr. Cosmo Pagan in his chipper, singsongy voice.

  And the President groaned like a wounded reindeer.

  "Are you suggesting an attack from space?"

  Dr. Pagan smiled as if the idea of an attack from space would be a wonderful thing and a boon to his career.

  "No one can say what kind of life-forms exist in the vast vastness of interstellar spaces. But think of it-billions and billions of stars each, in all probability, orbited by planets-trillions upon trillions of worlds very much like ours. If there is life up there, and they have chosen to make their presence known in this dramatic fashion, it will once and for all answer that age-old question. Is there intelligent life in the cosmos?" Dr. Cosmo Pagan smiled so broadly his onyx eyes twinkled like black holes. "I, for one, find this development very life affirming. And can only hope they'll strike again."

  The President sputtered, "Is he nuts?"

  "We've got to put a stop to this kind of scare talk," the chief of staff said worriedly. "Remember Orson Welles's 'War of the Worlds' radio broadcast?"

  The President looked thoughtfully confused. "You mean H. G. Wells's movie, don't you?"

  "It was a book, then a radio program, then a movie. The radio program pretended that the Martians had landed and were frying ass all over New Jersey."

  "We've got to find out if any of this is real," decided the President, leaping to his feet.

  "Sir?"

  "If Martians are out to fry the space program, we've got to take countermeasures."

  "What kind of countermeasures could-?"

  But the question hung unfinished and unanswered in the empty air. The President of the U.S. had abruptly left the Oval Office, his destination unknown.

  UPSTAIRS in the Lincoln Bedroom, the President plopped down on the rosewood bed in the rose red bedroom and removed a cherry red telephone from the cherry-wood nightstand.

  It was a standard AT el, its face as smooth as its red plastic molding. There was no dial or keypad. Just the shiny red receiver attached by a gleaming red coil of insulated wire.

  Placing the fiery telephone on his lap, the President picked up the receiver and lifted it to his concerned face. His eyes were grim. He turned on the nightstand radio and tuned it to an oldies station.

  The phone began ringing at the opposite end, and instantly a parched, lemony voice said, "Yes, Mr. President?"

  "The BioBubble disaster. I want you to look into it."

  "Do you have reason to believe its destruction is a national-security issue?" "All I know is that a major scientific project is dead, and the FBI won't touch it, the CIA is citing unnamed sources and the National Weather Service says it can't be lightning."

  "The lightning explanation is preposterous, I admit," said the lemony voice of the man the President knew only as Dr. Smith.

  "So you'll take the assignment?"

  "No, I will look into it. What is the source of the CIA assessment?"

  "I just talked to the director a few minutes ago. He called it natural causes-whatever that means."

  "One moment."

  The silence of the line was perfect. No buzzes, clicks or humming. That was because it was a dedicated line. A buried cable ran from the White House to some unknown point where the director of CURE held forth in secret. The President had no idea where. Sometimes he imagined a basement off in a forgotten Cold War fallout shelter. Other times he envisioned the shadowy thirteenth floor of some massive skyscraper that wasn't supposed to have a thirteenth floor.

  The lemony voice came back and it sounded peeved. "The preponderance of telephone-message traffic in and out of Langley is to various commercial hot lines."

  "Hot lines?"

  "The Prophet's Hot Line. Psychic Buddies Network."

  "The CIA is consulting psychics!" the President blurted.

  "They have been doing it for years," Smith said dryly, as if nothing the CIA did would ever surprise him again.

  "I thought they put that Stargate stuff behind them."

  "Evidently not. I would not accept any of their reports at face value."

  "Look into this, Smith. Dr. Pagan is talking of death rays from outer space. I don't think people will buy it, but after Independence Day and Mars Attacks you never know."

  "Otherwise intelligent people accepted as fact the 'War of the Worlds' radio broadcast when I was younger. And according to polls, a clear majority of Americans believe in the existence of flying saucers. We have to assume the worst where US. public opinion is concerned."

  "I already do," the President said ruefully.

  And the line went dead.

  Chapter 4

  Everything looked good for the return flight to Boston until Remo Williams had to use the terminal rest room and accidentally flushed his fly-padlock key down the john.

  No problem, he thought, snapping the tiny padlock shut. I have a backup.

  For some reason, the airport magnometer went beep when Remo walked through the stainless-steel frame.

  "Empty your pockets," said a brown-eyed, auburn-haired airline security woman in a smart blue Wackenhut security uniform.

  Remo dutifully placed two quarters and a subway token along with his billfold into the tray receptacle. He wore a white T-shirt and tan chinos, so there was no question of concealed weapons.

  The magnometer beeped on his second try. The security agent blocked his path. Her voice became gravelly. A smoker.

  "Excuse me, sir. I need to frisk you."

  "Like hell," said Remo, picking up his left-hand loafer and shaking the tiny padlock key out into the receptacle. "It's only this thing," he said, going around for a third try.

  But the beeper sounded a third time, and the auburn-haired woman said, "Airline rules say I get to frisk you."

  "Have to frisk me, you mean."

  "Want to frisk you," the auburn-haired woman said. "Frisk you friskily," she added.

  "Maybe it's my zipper," suggested Remo.

  "Zippers don't register. Otherwise, hunks like you would trip the alarm every time."

  "It's got to be this frigging padlock."

  "What padlock?"

  And Remo lifted his zipper tongue with a fingertip to show her. She bent over, squinting. Remo made the padlock wiggle in the overhead lights.

  "Why do you have your fly padlocked?" the security agent wondered aloud, reaching out to help Remo with his wriggling.

  "It's a long story," said Remo, stepping back ahead of her exploring fingers.

  She pointed to a room marked Security.

  "Tell me as I'm frisking you up and down. Now march."

  "Look, it's the padlock. Here, it's yours."

  And Remo yanked the padlock loose so hard his zipper came tearing out. Both landed in the tray.

  "Airline rules require me to peek into your drawers."

  "No chance."

  "Padlocked zipper. You may be smuggling something in there."

  "There's nothing there," Remo protested.

  The redhead assumed a disappointed expression, her fists resting on her trim hips.

  "That shouldn't be," Remo amended.

  The redhead brightened.

  That was when Remo remembered he carried in his billfold a useful ID that covered just these situations.

  "I'm with the FAA. Let me whip out my ID."

  "Whip everything out and let me see it in the light."

  Remo started with the ID and announced, "You just passed a random security check with flying colors. Congratulations."

  "I still have to frisk you."

  "Not in this lifetime."

  The redhead shifted gears as smoothly as a highperformance racing car. "How about a date, then?"

  "What?"

  The redhead drew near, her perfume filling Remo's nostrils like a feathery lavender cloud, her voice growing husky. "A date. You and me. Maybe a hotel room if I get lucky."

  Perhaps it was the absurdity of the moment. Or maybe the concept of a date hadn't occurred to Remo in a very long time, because he hesitated a moment before saying, "Can't. Against agency rules."

  "I'll quit," the redhead said without skipping a beat.

  "I don't date the unemployed," Remo said, collecting his stuff and hurrying to his gate.

  The redhead tried to follow. Remo ducked into a men's room, balanced on a stall toilet and slipped out while she was on her hands and knees peeking up into the adjoining stall.

  On board, Remo sat with a magazine open in his lap and thought long and hard.

  He couldn't remember the last time he had gone out on a certifiable date. He couldn't recall the name or face of his last actual date. Dating was not something Remo normally did. He had affairs. Sometimes he slept with women as part of a cover personality. But he never dated.

  As luck would have it, his flight was staffed with male flight attendants. Although one kept looking at him hungrily, he made no pass. Especially after Remo caught him staring at his lap and made a throat-cutting gesture.

  Beyond that, he was not fighting off stewardesses.

  It gave him time to think.

  Remo did not date because the agency that employed him did not exist. Any more than Remo, once a Newark patrolman, was supposed to exist since that cold day years before when they strapped him into the electric chair at Trenton State Prison and yanked the switch.

  Declared dead, Remo Williams became the lone killer arm of that agency, called CURE. Neither the man nor the organization was supposed to exist, because both operated outside the law, breaking the laws of America so that criminals who flouted the Constitution, perverting its letter and spirit to serve their own evil ends, would not escape through the loopholes of the US. justice system.

  CURE was the brainchild of a President-long ago cut down by an assassin's bullet-who realized something drastic was required to preserve the nation. That drastic something was Remo Williams, trained by his mentor, Chiun, in the ancient martial discipline of Sinanju until he became a one-man strike force, anonymous and unstoppable. And therefore not likely to be captured or killed, which would betray CURE and force America to admit publicly that its constitutional government did not work. Only Smith-who had framed patrolman Remo Williams for a crime he never committed-Remo himself and each successive president were supposed to know about CURE, and none of them was allowed to be linked to the others in public.