And it was at the end of this dark cycle that Remo found himself experiencing an alien sensation. When he stripped away all other emotional possibilities there was only one he was left with. Happiness. Remo was startled at the discovery. And, he quickly found, the fact that he was happy made him even happier.

For a man who had nearly always found gloom to be the most comfortable part of his simple emotional wardrobe, it was like entering a new world. He was a walking corpse who, after years of wandering, had miraculously shed its eternal shroud.

And so it was that the evening breeze found Remo Williams whistling happily to himself as he loitered on the broad front steps of Boston's city hall.

Remo smiled at passing pedestrians. Few smiled back. Although he had been standing in the yellow lamplight for almost half an hour, few of the passersby even paid him any attention at all. This was because there was precious little about him that would have warranted a second glance.

Remo was a thin man who appeared to be somewhere in his early thirties. Although the air was cool on this late-May evening, he wore a simple black cotton T-shirt and a pair of matching chinos. He was of average height, with a face that usually skirted the border between average and cruel.

In point of fact there were only two things about him that were outwardly unusual. First were his wrists. They were freakishly large-like enveloping casts of solid flesh and bone. The second was the copper-bottomed stainless-steel pot that dangled from his right index finger.

Given his attire, it was easy for those who saw him to assume he was some kind of indigent. In fact, of the people who did notice him, a few who passed him as he was waiting attempted to flip change into Remo's pot. These were obviously tourists.

In a state like Massachusetts-whose citizens had a habit of making virtues out of vices-Boston was still an enclave of extremists.