So was it to be trained in Sinanju. Even in the dead heart of winter, the world was still a vibrant living thing.

Although Remo was aware of all that was going on around him, he did not allow it to distract him from his thoughts.

He was trying to sort through something. Just what exactly, he had no idea. He thought it might have something to do with his last assignment.

A few days ago, Remo had been sent to California to pull the plug on an old Soviet superweapon that had somehow fallen into the hands of a group of radical peaceniks. That the first thing they had done upon acquiring such a device was blow the hell out of everything they aimed it at was an irony completely lost on these aging pacifists.

While on this assignment Remo had been stunned to encounter an old flame, a beautiful Russian agent who had also been sent to defuse the situation. Bumping into Anna Chutesov after more than ten years would not have been so shocking had Remo not thought her dead. She wasn't. And as was the case with most things in Remo's life these days, complications had ensued.

Sitting alone in Wildwood Cemetery, pale white moonlight shining down across his shoulders, the cold wind snaking around his lean frame like the tendrils of some invisible beast, Remo pictured Anna Chutesov.

The real Anna had looked pretty much the same as he remembered her, yet it was her younger face he now summoned.

She came to him in his mind's eye. Icy blue eyes, blond hair, strong cheekbones. An ageless beauty. There was a time when he thought he loved her. Now she was just another face.

Nope. The something he was after didn't have anything to do with the Russian agent.

He placed her mental image carefully aside.