"Very," said Remo.

"The good die young," said Jordan.

Remo put a thumb on Jordan's throat. It brought the truth out of the man. Gagging, but the truth. Willoughby was killed because he was threatening the greatest agricultural advance in the history of mankind. In the history of mankind.

"What other history is there?" asked Remo.

Willoughby had evidence that the grain market was artificially depressed. Willoughby did not know why but he suspected something big. It was hard to breathe. Would the stranger release his throat grip?

"Whew," said Jordan getting all the oxygen he needed. "Thank you," he said and straightened his tie and brushed flat his fuschia suit. "Vito, Al," he yelled. "Will you come here a minute?" And to Remo he confided they could help explain some things. Willoughby wasn't the only one, nor were there just commodities brokers. There were some construction men too. And oh, yes, said Jordan when two large men in silk suits with heavy bulges at the shoulders entered, there would soon be a reporter who couldn't keep his hands to himself.

Hearing "hands to himself" one of the reporters in a boozy slumber said, "I'm sorry, Mabel. You've got to realize I respect you as a person."

"Vito, Al. Kill this sonuvab.i.t.c.h," said Jordan.

"Right here, Mr. Jordan?" said Al, drawing a large square .45 with pearl insets on the handle.

69."Yes."

"In front of the reporters?"

"They've pa.s.sed out," said Jordan.

"You said it, boss," said Vito. "Maybe we should use a silencer?"

"Good idea," said Jordan, hobbling to his men. "I have important things to do. Don't worry about police. It's self-defense. Defend yourselves."

Remo idly listened to this, drumming on a typewriter roll with his fingertips, legs crossed, leaning back in a chair. When Al aimed the bolstered barrel of a small automatic at him, Remo centered his weight and just in case Chiun might be looking into the press tent, he kept his left wrist very straight behind the typewriter carriage. He had one worry. The chair. But as his spine pressed down suddenly into the chair, it held. That was good. And his left hand was perfectly straight from palm to forearm.

Al was squeezing the trigger when he saw and felt simultaneously the silenced automatic come back into his chest along with something else. It was heavy. He felt himself jammed into a desk. A Royal Standard was in his chest along with, he guessed, the automatic. At least that was where his arm ended and the last time he had seen the gun a fraction of a second before. The return arm of the carriage was jammed into his right ear. The black roller was into where his nose bone had been. He found breathing impossible, largely because his right lung was flat. Which was all right too because the heart didn't need oxygen anymore since his left aorta supplied only a s.p.a.ce bar and the right ventricle ended at "D," "F," and "G."

"Keep down the frigging noise, will you?" said one of the reporters. "I'm trying to work." The reporter 70.rolled over on a desk, fluffing a raincoat for a softer rest for his head.

"Jeez," said Vito.

He said it again. "Oh, Jeez," and without silencer he squeezed the trigger of his .45 and kept on squeezing. Unfortunately his target had moved. So had the .45. It was in Ms mouth and before everything went black forever, which was very quickly, he was amazed at how little it hurt. Sort of one loud sting in the back of his head.

Jordan watched the back of Vito's head splatter against the new fuchsia suit and onto the imported tie with the silver and mud weave.

"We should talk," said Jordan. "Let us reason together."

"Am I correct in a.s.suming you had those commodities people killed because they knew about efforts to depress the market in wheat, winter wheat to be exact?"

"Correct. Absolutely. Totally correct. Totally."

"And that was so that people would invest in this new Wondergrain, because of the larger need now?"

"Make people more responsive. Correct. Totally correct. Greater need. Greater buying. It's going to be a boon to mankind. A boon. A helpful boon. Totally a boon. I can cut you in. You'll be rich beyond your wildest dreams."

"And Fielding?"

"He's an idiot," said Jordan. "We can control the whole thing. That dummy wanted to give away the profits. Name the grain after his dingy butler. It was I who saw the whole thing as Wondergrain, the miracle answer to today's food problems. I took over the packaging and marketing. I control the shares. We can be rich. Rich. Rich." Jordan screamed the "rich."

71.Most men scream when their spinal column snaps into their navel.

If Remo had thought only about what Jordan was saying and let his body flow the stroke, there would would have been no problem. If he had thought about just the stroke, there would have been no problem. But thinking about both, Remo noticed something wrong. Not that the final effect was different. Jordan lay on the press tent floor, ears at heel like a folded card.

It was the performance that was wrong, the angle of penetration that lacked the perfect perpendicular to his upper arm, which now felt a small meaningless twinge. The difference between Sinanju and other methods, other methods of anything for that matter, was that the form must be precisely correct, no matter what the result.

As Chiun had said: "When the results are different, it is too late." So Remo did the stroke twice more around an imaginary Jordan, the flat hand tip coming back towards itself in the snap that became perpendicular on final impact. It was right. Good.

"Disgrace," came the squeaky Oriental voice from the flap of the tent. "Now you learn to do it right. Now you bother to learn correctness. You have shamed me." It was Chiun.

"In front of whom? Who the h.e.l.l else would know?" said Remo.

"Imperfection is its own disgrace," said Chiun. And then in Korean bewailing the years of pearls cast before ungrateful pale pieces of pig's ear and how not even the Master of Sinanju could transform mud into diamonds.

"No," said Chiun to someone behind him. "Do not come in. You should not look upon shame."

72.A telephone rang behind Remo. A reporter stirred, woke up, and answered it groggily.

"Yeah. Right. It's me. I'm right on top of everything. Yeah. They planted the grain this morning under sparkling hot skies, the new Wondergrain that can save the world from starvation, according to James O. Fielding, 42, of Denver. Yeah. Let the lead stand. Nothing happening. I'll stay right on it. Right. Harvest will be in four weeks . . . the Wondergrain. It's rough out here in the Mojave. Let me tell you. Change that lead to planted the grain in the dry unyielding sand of the Mojave Desert.' Etcetera. Etcetera. Right." The reporter hung up and crawled over his raincoat to the bar, where he poured a full gla.s.s of Hennessey cognac, drank two gulps, and went slowly to the floor head first so that he was sleeping upside down.

"It is CIA plot," came a woman's voice behind Chiun.

She was beautiful standing there in the desert sunlight, rich black hair flowing to her shoulders, full womanly b.r.e.a.s.t.s and a face of jeweled perfection, eyes dark like an unlit universe, and skin smooth with youth. She also had a mouth. Loud.

"Is CIA plot. I know. CIA plot. CIA ruining goodwill of American peoples, attempting to destroy the revolution. h.e.l.lo, my name is Maria Gonzales. Long live the revolution."

"Who is this?" Remo asked Chiun.

"A brave young girl helping revolution against white imperialist oppressors," said Chiun sweetly.

"You tell her who you work for?"

"He is a revolutionary. All third-world peoples are revolutionary," said Maria.

73."Could you put aside that revolutionary jazz while you're with me?" said Remo.

"As a matter of fact, yes. I am a farmer first. I talk revolution like you talk apple pie. If you are a friend of this sweet old gentleman, I'm really glad to meet you." She extended a hand. Remo took it. The palm was soft and warm. She smiled. Remo smiled. Chiun slapped the hands apart. Such touching was improper in public.

"I'm an agricultural representative of the democratic government of Free Cuba. I think you people really have something good here," said Maria. She smiled. Remo smiled back. Chiun got between them.

Fielding was pressing the final soybean into the crusty dry soil when Remo got to the inner edge of the crowd. The field itself was on top of a small hill. While the planting area was no more than twenty yards square, it sat inside an open area four tunes that size, surrounded by high, barbed-wire-crowned hurricane fencing. The field had a strange smell to Remo, a slight odor that was more a memory than a sense.

"Tomorrow," Fielding was saying, "I will plant a similar crop in Bangor, Maine, and the next day in the Sierras, and the following day, the final planting in Ohio. You are welcome to attend those also."

After he covered the last seed with his foot, he straightened up and rubbed his back. "Now, the sun filter," said Fielding and the workmen covered the plot with an opaque plastic tarpaulin, shaped like a tent.

"What you have just seen," said Fielding, catching his breath, "is the most significant advance in agriculture since the plow. I will tell you this. It is chemical. It eliminates the need for expensive land preparation, it expands the parameters of temperature and water 74.needs which has kept tillable land at only a small percentage of the earth's surface. It requires no fertilizer or pesticides. It will grow in thirty days and I hope you will all be back here that day to witness this revolution. Gentlemen, you are seeing an end to world hunger."

There was a scattering of applause from foreign newsmen, some mumbling about whether this would be ten or fifteen seconds on national television, and then from the press shed came a shriek.

"Dead men. There are dead men all over the place. A ma.s.sacre."

"Wow," said a reporter near Remo and Maria. "A real story now. I'm always lucky. Send me to a nothing story and I always luck out."

Like seepage from a ruptured water tank, the mob flowed toward the press shed trailing television cables. A turbaned man, with a nameplate that said "Agriculture India" tugged at Remo's arm.

"Kind sir, does this mean I do not collect my money for attending?"

"I dunno," said Remo. "I don't work here."

"I took a trip for nothing, then. For nothing. Promised two thousand dollars and will receive nothing. Western lies and hypocrisy," he said in his Indian singsong, the language of a people Chiun had once said had only two consistent traits: hypocrisy and starvation.

Sweat beaded on the patrician face of James Orayo Fielding as he watched the press disappear from the Mojave compound, heading for the twin tents outside the perimeter fence. Suddenly, it appeared as if his entire life descended on him with fatigue and he reached out for a steady arm. He grabbed for support a thin 75.young man with high cheekbones and thick wrists. It was Remo.

"Your friends are gone," said Remo.

"The news mentality," said Maria. "In Cuba we do not allow journalists to cater to such morbid curiosity."

"Sure," said Remo. "That's because murder is an everyday thing."

"You're being unfair," said Maria.

"It is hard to make an American fair," said Chiun. "It is a thing I have been trying to teach him, lo these many years."

"Korean fairness, Little Father?" said Remo, laughing.

Chiun did not think that was funny, nor did Maria. Fielding steadied himself. Weakly he took a pill from his shirt pocket and swallowed it dry.

Remo's eyes signaled ever so briefly for Chiun to get Maria out of hearing range. Chiun suddenly noticed a vision of hibiscus, lo, across the desert, like rising zephyrs above the Katmandu Gardens, Had Maria ever seen the Katmandu gardens when the sun was mellow and the river cool like a gentle breath of a friendly north wind? In an instant, Chiun had her walking out into the desert aimlessly.

"You have very unnice friends," said Remo to Fielding.

"What do you mean?"

"Your friends kill people."

"Those deaths in the shed that everyone's yelling about?"

"Others," said Remo. "Commodities men. Construction men."

"What?" said Fielding. He was feeling weak, he said.

"Feel stronger or you'll go the way of your soybean.

76.Planted." But Fielding collapsed and Remo could tell it was not an act.

Remo carried Fielding to a small shack built inside the fenced compound for security guards and there, Fielding recovered and told Remo how he had discovered a grain process that could end starvation, could literally end hunger and want. All his troubles had started when he discovered this. Yes, he knew about the commodities men. He knew about the depressed grain market.

"I told them, I told Jordan, we didn't need that sort of help. The Oliver method, as I called it-now it's Wondergrain-it didn't need artificial help. It would replace other grains naturally because it's better. But they wouldn't listen to me. I don't even own the company anymore. I'll show you the papers. Greed has ruined us. Millions will starve because of greed. I'm going to have to go to court, won't I?"

"I guess," said Remo.

"All I need is four months. Then I'm willing to go to jail for life or whatever. Just four months and I can make the most significant contribution to mankind, ever."

"Four months?" asked Remo.

"But that won't do any good," said Fielding.

"Why not?"

"Because people have been trying to stop me since I started. Did I say four months? Well, really I don't need that. Just a month. Just thirty days until the miracle grain comes up. Then the whole world will plant it. They will throw out their old crops and put in the new feed for mankind. I know it."

"I'm not in the food business," said Remo. But what the man said haunted him and he sneaked some seeds 77.from the briefcase of James Orayo Fielding and told him he might be able to help.

"How?" asked Fielding.

"We'll see," said Remo who that afternoon checked out two things. One, according to a botanist, was that the seeds were real. The second, according to a city clerk in the Denver munic.i.p.al building, Feldman, O'Connor and Jordan now owned the controlling shares of the corporation which had rights to Wondergrain, as of a date three months and sixteen days in the future.

As Remo explained to Chiun that night: "Little Father, I have a chance to do something really good for the world. This man is honest."

"For one to do what he knows, is good," said Chiun. "That is all the good any man can do. All else is ignorance."

"No," said Remo. "I can save the world."

And to this the Master of Sinanju shook his head sadly.

"In our records, my son, we know that those who would make heaven tomorrow make h.e.l.l today. All the robbers who ever stole and all the conquerers who ever conquered and all the petty evil men who preyed on the helpless have not, in their counted history, caused as much ma.s.sive grief as one man who attempts to save mankind and gets others to follow him."

"But I don't need others," said Remo.

"So much the worse," said the Master of Sinanju.

CHAPTER SIX.

Johnny "Deuce" Deussio saw it on television while waiting for the Johnny Carson show. It was the latenight action news. Johnny Deuce always watched it between his feet. Beth Marie did her nails. She had so many curlers and pins and rods in her starkly blonde hair that Johnny Deuce long ago stopped making advances to her. It was too much like loving an erector set with cream.

Beth Marie did not complain. She thought it was nice, in fact, and that Johnny was becoming more gentlemanly. The bed came around their feet in a circle. To his left was the light panel indicating the electronic security systems were working. It also had an open phone to Ms cousin, Sally. Because of the dream that night, he now had a small-caliber pistol tucked near the control panel.

Beth Marie lathered cream on her face to his right. He fingered the panel a lot while watching late night action news, starring Gil Braddigan, anchorman. Un- 79.like many other newsmen of St. Louis, Braddigan did not require little gifts to do favors. He didn't know enough to be bought off. Beth Marie thought Braddigan was s.e.xy. Johnny Deuce did not tell her that Braddigan was a flaming f.a.g. You didn't use that kind of language to your wife in bed.