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the way, Smith might have some prearranged plan to reclaim Remo for the
organization. Smith was no fool. He had long ago come to understand that Remo
belonged equally to the village of Sinanju.
Suppose Smith decided to reprogram Remo? The cold bastard had tried it once
before. Only Chiun had rescued Remo's sorry ass that time.
"What the hell do I do with the rest of my life?" he asked the stars. "Where
do I belong? Who do I turn to?"
The stars poured down cold twinkling light that had no answer.
Remo sat up. Draining the last of his water, he tossed the empty bottle
straight up. It ascended seventy feet, poised as if frozen by a snapshot, then
began its tumbling return to earth.
Remo leapt up and snapped out with the heel of his foot. Pop! The glass
shattered into a thousand gritlike pieces that sprinkled the roof with no more
sound than hail falling.
Remo walked to the roof's edge, thinking how he always seemed to be drawn back
to his old neighborhood in times like these. There was nothing for him here
anymore. St. Theresa's Orphanage had been razed long ago. The neighborhood had
fallen victim to the junkies and the pushers and the inexorable eroding of the
American inner city. It was a lawless wasteland-the very thing Remo Williams
had been erased from all records to prevent.
Now, lower Broad Street looked like Inner City Nowhere. A tight-skirted hooker
lounged against a dirty brick wall. The needle tracks on her arms were like a
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connect-the-dots Amazon River. Two men passed sandwich-bag packets between
them. Drugs. A battered pickup drew up to a red light. A man came out of an
alley carrying a VCR still in its cardboard box. He dropped it into the bed of
the truck and accepted a roll of bills from the driver. The transaction was
accomplished without a word spoken.
"Ah, the hell with it," Remo growled.
He had made his decision. He stepped off the parapet edge.
Using the bricks for steps, Remo walked down the side of the building. His
heels stepped from brick to brick, taking tiny jerking steps. Upright, his
balance perfect, his bleak dark eyes looking out over the Newark skyline, he
might have been descending a steep art-deco staircase.
No one noticed his impossible descent. And no one accosted him as he stepped
onto the sidewalk and made his way out of the place he had sprung from and
which was now as alien to him as the mud flats and fishing shacks of Sinanju,
half a planet away.
Harold Smith picked up the dialless red desk telephone on the first ring.
"Yes, Mr. President?" he said crisply, no trace of fear in his voice. In fact,
he was quite scared.
"The FBI aren't cutting it," the President said in a careworn voice that muted
his vaguely New England twang. "I am turning to you."
"I presume you are referring to the missing Iraiti ambassador?" Harold Smith
asked.
"Abominadad is claiming we've taken him hostage," the President snapped, "and
we can't prove otherwise. Personally, I wouldn't mind if the smug son of a gun
were found floating facedown in the Potomac, but I'm trying to avoid a war
here. This kind of escalation could trigger it. I know you've lost the old
one-what was his name?"
"Chiun," Smith said stiffly. "His name was Chiun."
"Right. But you still have your special guy, the Causcasian. Can he cut it
alone?"
Harold Smith cleared his throat noisily as he mentally framed the news he had
been keeping from the chief executive.
"Mr. President-" he began.
Then another phone rang. The blue one. It was the line through which Remo
reported.
"One moment," Smith said quickly, cupping the mouthpiece to his gray vest. He
grabbed the other phone like a life preserver. He spoke into it.
"Remo," Smith said harshly. "The President has a critical assignment for you.
Will you take it? I must have your answer. Now."
"Assignment?" Remo asked in a taken-aback voice. "What kind?"
"The Iraiti ambassador is missing."
"Why should we care?" Remo demanded.
"Because the President does. Will you accept this assignment?"
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