BOOTSIE KLEIN WAS talking on the phone behind the counter of the clothing store where she worked in downtown Fairbanks when the bell over the front door tinkled to life.
As she took a good look at the pair walking in off the street, she dropped her voice low.
"I've gotta go," Bootsie whispered to her girlfriend. "No, I'll tell you later.... Yeah. Bye."
She quickly hung up the phone.
"Can I help you gentlemen with something?" she asked the two men.
It was clear that she could. When Bootsie had driven to work that morning, the digital thermometer on the bank had read eight degrees.
The old one wore a yellow kimono that looked as if he'd swiped a pair of curtains from a Chinese brothel. The young one was dressed to unload shrimp boats in Key West, not traipse around the streets of Fairbanks.
"Hi, Boobsie," Remo said, reading her name from the tag on her ample chest. "We need some winter gear. Something to keep us from freezing to death for a couple of days in the tundra. What do you think, Chiun," he said, turning to the Master of Sinanju, "windbreakers?"
"The lining cannot be too thick," Chiun sniffed. "My precious pores must be allowed to breathe."
"You got windbreakers?" Remo asked Bootsie, leaning his bare forearms on the glass countertop. "The early-spring kind, with the liners?"
"You're kidding, right?" Bootsie asked.
"Oh, and we're gonna need hats," Remo added.
"I, um, think your friend's already found one he likes," Bootsie suggested, pointing. "I'll have to check out back for windbreakers."
As the sales clerk ducked through a nearby door, Remo glanced over to the Master of Sinanju.
"Oh, brother," he muttered.
Chiun was standing at a narrow door mirror. Nestled over his bald head was a red plaid winter hat. Long flaps hung down like lazy dog's ears. Happy hazel eyes peeked out from under the pinned-up brim.
"Should I even try to talk you out of it?" Remo sighed.
"Of course, Remo," Chiun replied. "You may do so after I have convinced you to trade in that undergarment you wear as a shirt for a proper kimono." He wiggled his head. His hat flaps flapped.
"Figured I'd be on the losing end," Remo said. He leaned back on the counter to wait for the saleslady. Bootsie returned a few minutes later with a pair of spring jackets. By then, Remo had a plain wool ski cap for himself on the counter.
Chiun immediately plucked one of the coats from the young woman's hand. His arms vanished, turtlelike, up the sleeves of his kimono, dragging the jacket inside. With a few wiggling contortions, he slipped into the windbreaker. His bony hands reappeared a moment later.
"Pay the woman, Remo," he commanded. Spinning, he marched out the front door.
Remo had tugged on his own coat. It was a snug fit around his thick wrists.
"Did you mean what you said?" Bootsie asked as she rang up both coats and hats. "Are you really going outside the city dressed like that?"
Remo stuffed his hat into his pocket. He pulled out his wallet.
"You bet," he said, slapping a credit card on the counter. "And if we find a nice ice floe, a certain lucky someone might just be taking a one-way Eskimo cruise."
Bootsie's face darkened. "That's not a very nice thing to say," she scolded as Remo signed for his purchases. "He seems like a nice old man."
Remo's eyes met hers. "Who said I meant him?" Dropping her pen to the counter, he turned and left the small store.
REMO PICKED up a map from a gas station rack and called Smith from a pay phone. Between the map and Smith's directions, he was able to find the rural route to the Kakwik settlement.
Word had spread of the massacre, keeping highway crews from clearing the road after the recent storm. Luckily, a strong wind had blown snow to both shoulders. Remo's Jeep sped up the middle of the lonely road.
At one point, a crooked sign sprang up from a snowdrift to announce that Kakwik was five miles away. Remo saw something else printed in an unfamiliar language just below the English words.
"What'd that say?" he asked as they raced by the sign.
Chiun's face was bland. "How should I know?"
"I thought you were Sinanju's universal translator," Remo said. "You know every language known to man, including two dozen that everyone else has forgotten about."
"Languages, yes," Chiun admitted. "However, that was nothing I recognized. Those scratches were no doubt caused by a passing bear sharpening his claws."
"Didn't look like Gentle Ben scratches to me," Remo said. "Probably some kind of Eskimo dialect. Since I never saw any piles of whale blubber stashed away back in Sinanju, I guess the natives here never needed to hire an assassin."
The Master of Sinanju tugged at his hat flaps. "I have truly gone from one barbarian land to another," he grumbled.
Three miles shy of Kakwik, an Army blockade rose from beyond a pile of drifting snow. A few trucks and military jeeps were parked across the road
Remo stopped his rental near a wooden sawhorse. A young soldier hurried to the driver's-side window, an M-16 clutched to his chest.
"This area is off-limits, sir," the soldier announced.
"Remo Leiter, CIA," Remo said, holding up a laminated card for the soldier's inspection.
The young man looked from the ID to the two men in the car. Remo wore only a light windbreaker. Beyond him Chiun was playing with the flaps of his hat. He was holding them out like wings while making vrooming airplane noises.
"He's CIA?" the soldier asked.
"You bet," Remo said. "Right now he's practicing for his spy school pilot's exam. Makes you feel confident that America's ready to face the counterintelligence demands of the new century, doesn't it?"
"Rat-a-tat-tat," said the Master of Sinanju, as he and his hat strafed the dashboard.
The skeptical soldier found an officer who confirmed Remo's identification. Ten minutes later the two Masters of Sinanju sped up the main road to Kakwik.
There was really only one real road in town. The rest were merely glorified driveways. The main drag ran up between a pathetic collection of rusty tin huts.
The snow-clogged road became impassable at the edge of town. Remo and Chiun left their Jeep and continued on foot.
The fires inside the dilapidated homes had long ago burned to ash. The huts had grown cold in the day since the massacre. After Colonel Hogue's escape from town and the incredible story he had related of events there, federal and state authorities had descended on Kakwik like a human blizzard. Somberfaced men picked around bodies that lay frozen in the snow.
Some of the tin homes were doubling as makeshift morgues. With no need for refrigeration, some of the dead had been removed from the snow and stacked inside.