Gunner Nilsson, here to kill Vickie Stoner. But why wasn't he turned toward the helicopter that had just set down lightly on the ground behind the stage? Vickie would come from there. She would be defenseless.

Remo moved smoothly to his feet. «I go, Little Father. Do you join me?»

«I will stay here to entertain our friend.»

«Be careful.»

«Yes, Doctor Smith,» Chiun said, a small smile on his mouth.

Remo moved sideways through the crowd which was now standing. He shortened his body, trying to melt into the mass of people. He started left, then moved right again, toward the no man's land on the other side of the stage from Nilsson. As he got closer to the fifteen-foot-wide grassy strip, Remo could see Maggot, the Dead Meat Lice, and Vickie Stoner standing on a platform under the stage. There was machinery there too. Probably some kind of elevator, Remo realized.

Remo stepped across the swatch of grass separating audience from stage. Most of the guards had their backs to the audience now, watching Maggot themselves, violating the first rule of the bodyguard trade.

The stage now blocked Nilsson from Remo's view. Remo moved behind one guard and placed his hand behind the man's neck. If anyone were watching, it looked like a friendly arm draped around a friend's friendly shoulder. The view of the audience did not include a look at Remo's fingers, which had moved into the thick neck muscles of the guard and quietly gripped a major artery carrying blood to the brain.

Three seconds and the guard went limp. Remo propped him against the tree he had been standing under and moved off toward the elevator platform under the stage.

On the steps on the far side of the stage, Gunner Nilsson took his pistol from his doctor's bag and dropped down onto the platform floor. Slats shielded him from the view of the audience, but he could see through the audience clearly. He poked the barrel of the revolver through one of the slats and zeroed the weapon in on Chiun, who sat placidly, continuing to talk, lecturing the young people around him.

Where was the white man? That Remo? Nilsson looked through the slats, left and right, but saw no sign of him. Well, no matter. He would not be far away. First the Oriental.

He aimed the point of the barrel at Chiun's forehead, just testing. But the forehead was not there. It was to the left. He moved the barrel of the gun again slightly to the left and fixed it on the forehead. But the forehead was again gone. It was below the line of his fire. He lowered the barrel. How could this be? The Oriental had not moved. Gunner was sure of that. And yet, he was never in the line of Gunner's fire.

That told him something, something out of the dim history of his family. What was it? A saying. He searched the corners of his mind but he could not find the answer. What was that saying?

Then he had no chance to think. The loudspeakers blared with a sound like God announcing the arrival of Judgment Day.

«Friends,» a voice screeched. «People. Human beings all. We give you Maggot and the Dead Meat Lice.» The last six words were delivered in a scream so amplified it could have brought a Latin American country to a halt.

Gunner held the revolver at his side and stood up. On the stage smoke was rising heavily, Gunner could see, from chemical pots hung under the stage surface. The smoke began to cover the stage, heavy clouds of red, yellow, green, and violet, all merging smoothly in the hot still summer air. Gunner could hear machinery start. The lift below the stage was rising. He continued to watch the stage.

There was another sound. A giant vacuum began to suck away the smoke. It cleared almost instantly and there, standing on the stage, were Maggot and the three Lice. Behind them was Vickie Stoner. She would be last, however, Gunner thought to himself.

The girl backed away from the four-man group and suddenly, with a screech, Maggot and the Dead Meat Lice were into their first song. «Mugga, mugga, mugga, mugga,» they wailed. The audience screamed, drowning out the amplification, making it impossible for anyone to hear the musical group the quarter of a million persons had traveled what came to millions of miles to hear.

Remo's ears pounded. He moved under the platform toward the steps on the left and hit them lightly on his way up.

Eight feet above Remo, Gunner Nilsson felt the boards shake. It was not the vibrations of the music, because he had already registered that sensation and filed it in his mind. It was a different kind of vibration; Gunner turned and looked down. Eight feet below him, at the bottom of the steps, was the American, that Remo.

All right. The American would be first.

Remo took a step up the stairs.

«Your brother blinked, you know,» he said.

«Yes, but that was my brother,» Nilsson said. He slowly raised the pistol on a line with Remo's chest

No one saw; all eyes were on Maggot and the Lice.

Remo came up another step.

«He cleared his throat too, when he was ready to make his move.»

«Many people do,» Nilsson said, «but I do not.»

«Funny,» Remo said taking another step. «I kind of thought it was a family trait. You know, one of those weaknesses that are bred in and eventually wind up killing everybody.»

«Anything that is bred in can be trained out,» Nilsson said. «I do not have my brother's bad habits.»

He smiled slightly as Remo came up another step. The American fool thought he was being so clever advancing slowly on Gunner Nilsson. Did he think for a moment he would have advanced if Gunner Nilsson had not chosen to let him?

There was a thing he wanted to know. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the roar of music.

«How did you kill him?» he called. «By his own gun?»

«Actually, no,» Remo said. «I didn't kill him at all. Chiun did.»

«The old Oriental?» That confirmed what the black had said, but Gunner still could not fully believe it.

«Yes,» Remo said. «I think he took him out with a toe thrust to the throat, but I can't really be sure because I wasn't there.» Another step.

«That is a lie. Lhasa was too big for the old man to handle alone.»

«Wrong, Nilsson,» Remo said. «That's the trouble with you squareheads. You never learn anything. I should think you'd have learned your lesson by now. It's not the first time you've faced the old man.»

Nilsson searched his brain. «Chiun?» The name meant nothing. «Never have we met him.»

«But his ancestors,» Remo said, taking another step. «At Islamabad. The Master of Sinanju.»

Nilsson's face paled. «I have heard of such a one. It is now only a legend.»

«He lives and breathes,» Remo said. Another step.

«Not for long,» said Nilsson, but his face turned white as he remembered the saying he had been searching his brain for. It had been handed down through generations of Nilssons.

«Where walks the Master from the East, let all other men give way.»

Remo saw the blood drain from Nilsson's face. «You sure you don't blink or clear your throat? Or what's your weakness? From the looks of it, perhaps you just have a coronary.»

Another step. He was too close now. Nilsson closed his finger about the trigger. It went off with a crash, loud, piercing, but still unheard against the rumble of the music. The white man dropped. He was dead. No, he was not. He was moving. He hit the steps, rolled forward over his shoulders and with his feet, plucked the pistol from Nilsson's hand and dropped it over the railing.

And then the white man was on his feet, smiling, moving again toward Nilsson.

«Sorry,» he said. «That's the biz, sweetheart.»

Nilsson roared, deep down in his throat, a roar of generations of Viking raiders.

Perhaps, he thought. Perhaps the curse of Sinanju was on the Nilsson family. But he could still give meaning to Lhasa's death by fulfilling the family contract. He turned from Remo and bolted up the stairs. The girl. He would rip her throat out.