"The engraving is adequate." Chiun frowned unhappily. "Although there are many errors, most white eyes would be blind to them. It is the color. These ugly paper things are supposed to be green."
"I think he knows that," Remo said impatiently. Petito nodded. "I was just testing them," he explained.
Chiun's eyes narrowed slyly. "You can make them in the proper color?"
"It's not easy nowadays, but it's doable," Petito said.
Chiun folded his arms imperiously over his chest. In the process, the bills somehow disappeared inside his kimono.
"Do it," he commanded.
"Knock it off, Chiun," Remo said. "We're not helping this nit screw the United States government."
Chiun's hooded eyes were flat. "What has the government done for me lately?" he queried.
"Pay you a king's ransom in gold every year, for one."
Chiun erased Remo's words from the air with one flapping hand. "There is no reason why the one should have anything to do with the other," he dismissed. "If you hope your future Masterhood to be anything more than a footnote in the annals of Sinanju, you must be aware of opportunities when they present themselves."
"Chiun, I am not shackling this numbnut to the furnace back home, and I'm sure as hell not hauling all this crap out into the car."
"Not even if I make it worth your while?" Chiun asked craftily. A pair of blue ten-dollar bills appeared from the folds of his kimono. Thinking better, he pocketed one and offered Remo the other.
Remo shook his head wearily. Turning from the Master of Sinanju, he focused his attention back on Paul Petito.
"Before he's got you stashed in the hold of some freighter bound for North Korea, that's everything you know?"
The counterfeiter racked his brain. While there was certainly more, he couldn't seem to get it out in time.
"Uh, oh, um..." he began.
"Time's up, Gutenberg," Remo pronounced. Hand moving in a blur too fast for Paul Petito's eyes to even follow, Remo sank a single hardened index finger into the man's ink-soaked occipital lobe.
Petito's mouth formed a blue circle. He slipped from Remo's receding finger and toppled onto the stained floor.
When Remo turned back to the Master of Sinanju, the old man wore an angry scowl.
"You are a hateful man, Remo Williams," he accused.
"Just keeping you honest," Remo said. "Besides, the golden rule of Sinanju says paper is just the promise of real money. I've gotta call Smith." He headed for the stairs.
"Do not lecture me on the rules of our House, engraver killer," Chiun said, following unhappily.
"I did us all a favor," Remo said absently. He had suddenly noted a sound upstairs. "Sure, you wanted to bring him home today, but I know who'd end up having to feed him and walk him." His eyes were trained upward.
Chiun aimed a stern finger at his pupil. "You can explain to my grandchildren why they will not be receiving birthday gifts this year."
Bullying past his pupil, he had placed but one sandal on the bottom cellar stair when the darkened figure appeared at the top of the staircase.
Both of them had been aware of the man skulking across the floor above them, but Remo hadn't prepared himself for what the latest arrival would be wearing. Head to toe, he was dressed in the same commando outfit as the two men who had attacked him on the street in New York. The white button with its circle-in-parentheses design was affixed to his camouflage jacket. Through the holes of his ski mask, his eyes peered down the stairwell.
"What the hell?" was all Remo had time to ask before the man let a small object slip from his fingers.
A hand grenade clunked down the cellar stairs. Above, the masked man darted away.
With a puff of impatience, Remo scooped up the grenade, slapping both hands around it. When the grenade went off an instant later, Remo had softened his hands to relax his muscles, meeting the explosive force with an equal containing force. The grenade made a little clicking noise and died.
Remo tossed the still intact but now useless hand grenade to the floor.
"Let's see what's what with the khaki downhill set," Remo announced.
He and Chiun flew upstairs, racing out into the backyard where they'd heard the commando's boots clomp. The man was crouching in the snow near a squat brick wall, his index fingers tucking mask material into his ears to ward off the sound of the expected explosion. When he saw Remo and Chiun exit into the yard, his mouth and eyes widened in his mask.
"Okay, lodge bunny," Remo announced as they crossed over to him, "who are you guys and why are you trying to kill me?"
For a moment, the commando didn't seem certain what he should do. But as Remo and Chiun continued to walk toward him, he seemed to reach some inner conclusion.
Pulling another grenade from the pocket of his camouflage jacket, he wrenched the pin loose. Remo fully expected him to lob it at them, but the man did something completely unexpected. With a grunt, he thrust the grenade up under his own ski mask. For a moment, it looked as if his head had sprouted a particularly grotesque tumor. Then he was gone.
The commando flipped over the brick backyard wall. There was an explosion from the other side, and the sky began to rain little flecks of red-streaked slush.
"Dammit," Remo growled, "not again."
When they looked over the wall, they found a corpse with a crater where a head used to be. The little white button was streaked with black.
"And I am not very fond of the type of boys you are playing with these days," Chiun sniffed beside him.
Twirling, he marched back through the snow toward the house.
WHEN THE PHONE RANG, Smith was dozing in his chair, the dull light of his desk lamp the only illumination in his shadowy office. Blinking sleep from his eyes, he picked up.
"I'll give you three guesses who was just attacked by another button-wearing commando," Remo announced.
Smith's brain snapped instantly alert. "Like the ones in New York?" he asked worriedly.
"Right down to the suicide-before-capture work ethic. Looks like I was right. They work for Raffair."
Smith was still trying to absorb the information. "No," he said. "It does not add up. You were not a risk when they went after you in New York. I have been thinking that they could be associated with MIR."
"The Puerto Rican terrorists?" Remo asked. "No way, Smitty. They'd have no way to find me unless they followed me from San Juan. And I didn't sense any beady little revolutionary eyes watching me on the plane home. Anyway, I've gotta keep this short, seeing as how I'm using that counterfeiter's phone and right now there's a blown-up commando sleeping in his neighbor's petunia bed. The guy's boss is named Sweet. No front name, but he's in New York."
Smith adjusted his rimless glasses. "That limits the search parameters. Anything else?"
"There was more than just the one guy Chiun kacked back at the office. Sounds like there's a whole goon squad out looking for us right now."
Smith's lips thinned. "I was afraid of that."
"Still no bigee," Remo assured him. "They've got a needle in a haystack's chance of tracking us down. And you don't have to worry about us ending up on 'Bloopers, Boners and Beheadings.' This is where the video was fed. That Sweet guy got the only other copy, so it looks okay on that front." In Boston, Remo glanced at the floor from where he sat at the edge of Paul Petito's bed. Spools of videotape coiled like silvery serpents on the worn carpet.
"Very good," Smith said. "I will commence the search for Sweet. In the meantime, the two of you may return home. I will contact you when I learn more."
"Check," Remo said. "But don't call for a while. We're going out to eat first."
When he glanced at the Master of Sinanju, he saw that the old Korean was standing just inside the bedroom door. He was once more examining one of his blue ten-dollar bills.
"I'm paying," Remo added firmly as he hung up the phone.
Chapter 16
The information was damning enough to topple the United States
government.
Mark Howard hunched behind his desk in the bowels of CIA headquarters. Although he stared at the swirling screen saver on his computer monitor, his thoughts were miles away.
All was quiet save the soft background hum of equipment. The murmuring voices were gone for the day. Few people haunted this part of the building so late at night.
The overhead lights had been dimmed. They'd been encouraging such penny-saving measures at the CIA for much of the past decade. The money saved could be redirected to buying field agents actual bullets for their guns.
In the shadows of his cubicle, Mark had read the report out of Boston twenty minutes before. Even though he'd been looking specifically for it, he hadn't expected to see it.
The feeling again.
Paul Petito was dead. Local authorities had found him on the floor of his basement. At first, they'd said the counterfeiter had died from a single gunshot wound to the head. That had soon been amended. Now they were saying his skull had been pierced by an object unknown.
To Mark, the details of Petito's death were irrelevant.
He'd couriered his Raffair dossier to the President this morning, after a personal phone call from the chief executive. In those documents was a fresh printout with Paul Petito's name. To replace the one Mark had doodled on.
Death. That's what he'd written next to Petito's name. And Petito was now dead. A secret arm of the executive branch, sanctioned to kill.
Anyone who knew about this was at risk. And now Mark Howard knew. Knew for certain.
For some reason, the President was involving him in this. Though he had tried to figure out why, no feelings came to him. The sense of dread swamped all else.
For a long time, Mark merely sat. A shadow among shadows. At long last, a leaden hand reached out and shut off his computer. The internal fan hummed to silence.
He thought of Petito. A hole pierced in his skull. Of Smith and his unknown agents.
His cubicle was eerily quiet. The dark walls, close.
He wouldn't be trapped. Couldn't allow thoughts of defeat. Fate was coming for him. He had to be ready when it arrived.
As he rose to his feet, the first hint of determination clenched his jaw. Mark Howard gathered up his topcoat. It was winter, after all. He didn't want to catch a cold on the way to meet his destiny.
Chapter 17
Johnny Fungillo knew enough to be scared. The others hadn't a clue. They had only seen the old one in action, and even so, they still thought he'd used some simple sleight of hand to take down Bear DiCrrotti. But Johnny Books alone had seen the young one up close and personal. Twice.
In East Africa, he'd managed to take down two of Johnny's oldest and dearest friends in the blink of an eye. If Johnny's guess was right, he was even faster than the old man. The second time he'd met the skinny guy with the thick wrists had been a complete shock.
Back in Africa, most of New Jersey's Renaldi Family had been wiped out by a bunch of crazy natives with spears. Johnny had been forced to scrape up this current gig from Sol Sweet, attorney to the wrongly incarcerated Don Anselmo Scubisci. He had been absolutely stunned when on the plane ride up to Boston he'd found himself staring into those dark, dead eyes again.
He couldn't move fast enough to avoid the man's darting hand. Before he knew it, the guy's finger was pressing his forehead.
That simple touch had completely paralyzed Johnny. While he wanted to scream at the doctors who stared down at him after he'd been transferred by ambulance to Boston's St. Eligius Hospital, Johnny couldn't budge an inch. Some were saying that he'd be stuck like this for the rest of his life. And he might have been, if not for a fluke.
His first and only night in the hospital, the nurses on his floor had ordered ice-cream takeout from Friendly's. The portly RN who was checking in on Johnny had been in a hurry to get out to her melting cookies-'n'-cream sundae. While struggling to reset his IV with one hand, the impatient woman had banged him on the forehead with the full bedpan she'd been clutching in her other hand.
It was a one-in-a-billion shot, but apparently the edge of the bedpan had hit him just right. The woman almost had heart failure when Johnny sat bolt upright in bed and demanded his pants.
When Johnny had showed up at Paul Petito's house twelve hours late and with a big swelling bruise on his head, no one had even bothered to ask what had happened to him. Such was the nature of their business. And Johnny Fungillo would have been happy to never, ever mention that skinny, dead-eyed stranger with the lightning-fast hands-if not for the damn surveillance pictures.
Johnny was new to the Scubisci Family. He couldn't risk not telling when he saw that face again.
Yet even when he and the others had set off in search of the young guy and the old Chinaman, Johnny had kept a low profile. He'd stayed in the car at Logan while the others circulated the pictures they'd gotten from the video; he'd hunkered down in the back seat after they'd learned their quarry had gotten a cab to Quincy; and he had said a silent prayer to the Madonna when the angry neighbor with the crying baby had pointed out the big ugly stone church on the corner.
Luckily, the occupants of the building weren't home. When the two men he had driven with came out to collect him from the floor of the car, Johnny had to first thank the Virgin Mary for not dropping him in the path of his antagonist again. He doubted he would have survived a third encounter.
Inside looked like a bunch of small apartment units that had never been used. Only a few of the rooms in the whole complex looked lived-in.
"Should we wait for them?" one of the Scubisci regulars had asked once the three of them had done another sweep and had turned up empty.
They were in one of the ground-floor kitchens. It looked to be the only one used in the whole building. A table that was set so close to the floor it looked as if someone had stolen the legs was pushed neatly against one of the walls.
"No way," Johnny Books insisted. He was sweating near the door. "Didja see all those fish tanks downstairs? These guys are heavy-duty weird. Can't we just-I don't know-leave them a nasty note or something?" He gave a hopeful, lopsided smile.
"That old guy was pretty fast," agreed the first man who'd spoken.
The third man in their party, Mikey Skunks, considered. Although he would never admit it, he was a little concerned about the old codger, too.
"Sweet never told us what to do 'xactly," he mused. "Maybe we just gotsta show 'em not to mess wit us no more."
Johnny felt a weight lift from his shoulders. "I'll look for a pen and paper," he enthused. He spotted some on a shelf near the phone and jumped on them.
"No," Skunks insisted as Johnny grabbed up the notebook. Skunks Falcone was examining the gas stove. "It's gotta be a stronger message."
When they finished their work ten minutes later, Johnny Fungillo was still wishing that they'd opted to leave a note. Something with a lot of very cross underlines and angry exclamation points. He was thinking this even as he ran with the others through the downstairs hall of the old church.
All three men were breathing through the tails of their untucked shirts. They passed through the main kitchen and hurried out the side door. The stove in the main kitchen hissed ominously as they ran by.
While Johnny and the other man caught their breath in the parking lot, Skunks went to the trunk of the car. He returned a minute later clutching a Coke can in his big paw. A gasoline-soaked rag hung from the open end.
The two others were climbing in the car even as Mikey Skunks was hauling back. He heaved the gasfilled can through the open door of the kitchen. When flame met hissing gas, the explosion was instantaneous. With a rumbling burst, the entire kitchen erupted in a ball of brilliant fire.
Windows exploded into the parking lot, spraying sparkling shards across their parked car. A wave of heat and flame belched through the open door even as Skunks was jumping into the front seat.
Shocks sank in protest to his weight. Another explosion sounded from deeper inside the church. More
breaking windows. Up the short flight of stairs, flames curled up from the open door.
The fire ate a voracious path through the big building. When Skunks slammed his door, the entire first floor was already engulfed in flame.
"Dat's a message." Mikey Skunks nodded surely. His face was cast in weird shadows by the dancing flames.
In the back seat, Johnny Fungillo felt his stomach liquify. Even as the car backed up to turn, he was wishing they'd left a simple note.
Reflected on the back window pane of the accelerating car, lethal licking fingers of flame sought the cold second story of Castle Sinanju.
ONE MINUTE BEFORE Mikey Skunks lobbed his fatal soda can, Remo and Chiun were driving up the long road home.
"You're lucky they didn't call the cops," Remo was complaining.
In the passenger seat, Chiun's face was blandly innocent. "Is generosity now a crime?"
"It is when you try to tip the waitress with blue counterfeit bills."
"I fail to see the difference between my currency and the scraps of green you use," Chiun sniffed. "In fact, mine are superior, for as art they are worth much more than their face value. And by killing their creator, you have made them collector's items."
"You would've had a better time bartering with a six-pack of Billy Beer or an Action Comics number one, Little Father," Remo said. "Next time just leave the check to me."
The old Korean's face was a dark scowl of incomprehension. He was thinking unpleasant thoughts about what constituted art in the Western world when the first small rumble reached their car.
An explosion. Amplified to their highly tuned senses through the compressed air of the moving car's tires.
"You think the city's working on the roads this late at night?" Remo asked, puzzled.
Morose on the seat beside him, Chiun shook his bald head. "Do not ask me," he replied. "I am but a visitor to this backward land."
A succession of soft booms. All from a very specific direction. Behind the wheel, Remo began to feel the first soft knot of concern form deep in his belly.
He saw the reflection of orange flame on the snow-lined street before they'd even reached the corner.
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