After a silent minute the gaunt shadow returned to the room. He wore gray. His hair was white.

"Your will has been done, Emperor Smith," said the owner of the squeaky voice. He bowed slightly, and a slice of light captured a flash of orange silk whose pattern resembled the stripes of a Bengal tiger.

"Good. Please dispose of the body."

"Where?"

"The coal furnace. Place him inside,"

"If it is your will."

"I would help, but I must get rid of the truck."

A gnarled yellow claw with fingernails like ivory blades gestured toward the array of mainframes and jukeboxes. "All has been accomplished to your satisfaction?"

"Yes," said Harold W. Smith. "CURE is now ready to enter the twenty-first century."

"And once you have returned, you and I will be ready to enter negotiations for further service between your house and mine," returned Chiun, Reigning Master of Sinanju.

Chapter 2

His name was Remo, and he was whistling into the teeth of the hurricane.

The winds had been clocked at seventy-five miles per hour, and Remo was walking against them. He was whistling "The Wayward Wind," and he could hear every note over the growing roar.

The waters off Wilmington, North Carolina, were flat and oily in anticipation of Hurricane Elvis making landfall as Remo walked along the Wrightville Beach beachfront, where plywood sheets covered the windows of upscale summer homes and cottages. People had spray-painted messages to Elvis on the plywood.

"Elvis Go Home!"

"Elvis, You're All Wet!"

"Go Back Where You Came From!"

As if hurricanes cared.

There was a mandatory evacuation along the beachfront, and almost everyone had left. Except Roger Sherman Coe.

Roger Sherman Coe had elected to ride out the storm in his beachfront home. That was just like Roger Sherman Coe. The law meant nothing to him. The hurricane warning had been posted while Remo was enroute to his rendezvous with Roger Sherman Coe. Remo had put a call to the man from his first-class seat on Flight 334.