"I think he knows that," Remo said impatiently. Petito nodded. "I was just testing them," he explained.
Chiun's eyes narrowed slyly. "You can make them in the proper color?"
"It's not easy nowadays, but it's doable," Petito said.
Chiun folded his arms imperiously over his chest. In the process, the bills somehow disappeared inside his kimono.
"Do it," he commanded.
"Knock it off, Chiun," Remo said. "We're not helping this nit screw the United States government."
Chiun's hooded eyes were flat. "What has the government done for me lately?" he queried.
"Pay you a king's ransom in gold every year, for one."
Chiun erased Remo's words from the air with one flapping hand. "There is no reason why the one should have anything to do with the other," he dismissed. "If you hope your future Masterhood to be anything more than a footnote in the annals of Sinanju, you must be aware of opportunities when they present themselves."
"Chiun, I am not shackling this numbnut to the furnace back home, and I'm sure as hell not hauling all this crap out into the car."
"Not even if I make it worth your while?" Chiun asked craftily. A pair of blue ten-dollar bills appeared from the folds of his kimono. Thinking better, he pocketed one and offered Remo the other.
Remo shook his head wearily. Turning from the Master of Sinanju, he focused his attention back on Paul Petito.
"Before he's got you stashed in the hold of some freighter bound for North Korea, that's everything you know?"
The counterfeiter racked his brain. While there was certainly more, he couldn't seem to get it out in time.
"Uh, oh, um..." he began.
"Time's up, Gutenberg," Remo pronounced. Hand moving in a blur too fast for Paul Petito's eyes to even follow, Remo sank a single hardened index finger into the man's ink-soaked occipital lobe.
Petito's mouth formed a blue circle. He slipped from Remo's receding finger and toppled onto the stained floor.
When Remo turned back to the Master of Sinanju, the old man wore an angry scowl.
"You are a hateful man, Remo Williams," he accused.
"Just keeping you honest," Remo said. "Besides, the golden rule of Sinanju says paper is just the promise of real money. I've gotta call Smith." He headed for the stairs.
"Do not lecture me on the rules of our House, engraver killer," Chiun said, following unhappily.
"I did us all a favor," Remo said absently. He had suddenly noted a sound upstairs. "Sure, you wanted to bring him home today, but I know who'd end up having to feed him and walk him." His eyes were trained upward.
Chiun aimed a stern finger at his pupil. "You can explain to my grandchildren why they will not be receiving birthday gifts this year."
Bullying past his pupil, he had placed but one sandal on the bottom cellar stair when the darkened figure appeared at the top of the staircase.
Both of them had been aware of the man skulking across the floor above them, but Remo hadn't prepared himself for what the latest arrival would be wearing. Head to toe, he was dressed in the same commando outfit as the two men who had attacked him on the street in New York. The white button with its circle-in-parentheses design was affixed to his camouflage jacket. Through the holes of his ski mask, his eyes peered down the stairwell.
"What the hell?" was all Remo had time to ask before the man let a small object slip from his fingers.
A hand grenade clunked down the cellar stairs. Above, the masked man darted away.
With a puff of impatience, Remo scooped up the grenade, slapping both hands around it. When the grenade went off an instant later, Remo had softened his hands to relax his muscles, meeting the explosive force with an equal containing force. The grenade made a little clicking noise and died.
Remo tossed the still intact but now useless hand grenade to the floor.
"Let's see what's what with the khaki downhill set," Remo announced.
He and Chiun flew upstairs, racing out into the backyard where they'd heard the commando's boots clomp. The man was crouching in the snow near a squat brick wall, his index fingers tucking mask material into his ears to ward off the sound of the expected explosion. When he saw Remo and Chiun exit into the yard, his mouth and eyes widened in his mask.
"Okay, lodge bunny," Remo announced as they crossed over to him, "who are you guys and why are you trying to kill me?"
For a moment, the commando didn't seem certain what he should do. But as Remo and Chiun continued to walk toward him, he seemed to reach some inner conclusion.
Pulling another grenade from the pocket of his camouflage jacket, he wrenched the pin loose. Remo fully expected him to lob it at them, but the man did something completely unexpected. With a grunt, he thrust the grenade up under his own ski mask. For a moment, it looked as if his head had sprouted a particularly grotesque tumor. Then he was gone.
The commando flipped over the brick backyard wall. There was an explosion from the other side, and the sky began to rain little flecks of red-streaked slush.
"Dammit," Remo growled, "not again."
When they looked over the wall, they found a corpse with a crater where a head used to be. The little white button was streaked with black.
"And I am not very fond of the type of boys you are playing with these days," Chiun sniffed beside him.
Twirling, he marched back through the snow toward the house.
WHEN THE PHONE RANG, Smith was dozing in his chair, the dull light of his desk lamp the only illumination in his shadowy office. Blinking sleep from his eyes, he picked up.
"I'll give you three guesses who was just attacked by another button-wearing commando," Remo announced.
Smith's brain snapped instantly alert. "Like the ones in New York?" he asked worriedly.
"Right down to the suicide-before-capture work ethic. Looks like I was right. They work for Raffair."
Smith was still trying to absorb the information. "No," he said. "It does not add up. You were not a risk when they went after you in New York. I have been thinking that they could be associated with MIR."
"The Puerto Rican terrorists?" Remo asked. "No way, Smitty. They'd have no way to find me unless they followed me from San Juan. And I didn't sense any beady little revolutionary eyes watching me on the plane home. Anyway, I've gotta keep this short, seeing as how I'm using that counterfeiter's phone and right now there's a blown-up commando sleeping in his neighbor's petunia bed. The guy's boss is named Sweet. No front name, but he's in New York."
Smith adjusted his rimless glasses. "That limits the search parameters. Anything else?"
"There was more than just the one guy Chiun kacked back at the office. Sounds like there's a whole goon squad out looking for us right now."
Smith's lips thinned. "I was afraid of that."
"Still no bigee," Remo assured him. "They've got a needle in a haystack's chance of tracking us down. And you don't have to worry about us ending up on 'Bloopers, Boners and Beheadings.' This is where the video was fed. That Sweet guy got the only other copy, so it looks okay on that front." In Boston, Remo glanced at the floor from where he sat at the edge of Paul Petito's bed. Spools of videotape coiled like silvery serpents on the worn carpet.