"As you say, it will be done, Omay sin-Khalam."

"When do you depart?"

"This very hour. I arrive in the belly of the beast tomorrow."

Sultan Omay sin-Khalam smiled broadly. "Then tomorrow the ulema will begin writing a new, glorious chapter in Islamic history."

"And the streets of the infidel West will flow thick with blood," intoned Assola al Khobar. A rotten-toothed smile cracked the face of the renegade Saudi multimillionaire who had once been called the "most dangerous nonstate terrorist in the world" by U.S. national-security experts.

Across the room the VCR spat out Assola's bootleg copy of The Wild Wild West.

Chapter 2

His name was Remo and he was happy.

It had taken a long time for him to isolate and identify the emotion. After all, happiness wasn't something he was used to grappling with.

As a professional assassin in the employ of CURE, the most secret agency in the United States government, his mood had long ago found root in the darker end of the emotional spectrum. And there it festered. Throughout his adult life he had been by and large a dour person with flashes of annoyance colored by shades of bile.

But not anymore. At least not right now.

Only a few months before he had brought to an end one of the most miserable years of his life. During that time duty had skipped Remo Williams across the globe like a flat stone hurled across the water's surface. He had gone from compass point to map speck, crossing longitudes and latitudes, dropping down in countries he hadn't even known existed. But it had now, finally, completely, come to an end.