CHAPTER ONE

Ben Isaac Goldman separated them, cold and thin, then stuck them into their stainless steel cages and lowered them into the boiling grease and watched them fry.
Then he watched the frozen golden chunks in their pale dough coffins being lowered alongside into the earth of liquid grease.
The next day Ben Isaac supervised the grilling of the round, flat pieces of meat, which were USDA inspected and not more than 27 percent fat. When the red light flashed and the buzzer sounded, he would automatically turn them over and sprinkle salt onto their burned backs. As they sizzled and spat at him from the grill, he would lower the solid weight atop them to keep them pressed down flat.
The day after that had always been Ben Isaac's favorite. He lined them up, bread round, acned with sesame seed, then fed them into the ovens.
After they were done, he would wrap them in their colorful paper shrouds and stick them in their styrofoam coffins.
For nearly two years, this daily, rhythmic eight-hour massacre had brought Ben Isaac Goldman a certain cleansing peace.
For two years, he had changed symbols: he had traded the six million dead from the swastika for the twenty billion sold from the golden arches. And he was content.
But no longer. He had lost his faith in both symbols, the swastika for which he had worked thirty years earlier, and the golden arches, which he served as an assistant manager in Baltimore, Maryland, spending three days a week controlling the scientifically designed slaughter of helpless food stuffs.
And so now he just went through the motions, his small paper cap squashed down on his wispy white curls, shuffling in greasy black shoes from section to section, making sure the plastic, non-dairy shakes weighed enough, that the measured-before-cooking semiburgers were not in their waiting bins more than seven minutes, and that the onion, tomato, pickle, and special sauce bins were never less than half full.
And he waited only for the end of his workday when he could take off the cheap white gloves he bought each day in Walgreen's drugstore, and drop them into the garbage on his way out.
Recently, he had taken to washing his hands constantly.
On a Sunday evening in April, a spring that promised a bone-melting hot summer, Ben Isaac Goldman pushed open the swinging top of the garbage can in front of the hamburger store, and watched as someone else dropped a pair of white gloves in. He followed with his own gloves, then looked up and met for the first time Ida Bernard, a tight-boned middle-aged lady, originally from the Bronx, who worked at the ice cream place next door.
She wore white gloves too, because her hands got cold working with the soft ice cream so many hours a day, making Mother's Day cakes and birthday treats and sundaes and flying saucers and parfaits and simple plastic cones, all under the auspices of an old man who did his own television commercials and sounded like a candidate for a total laryngectomy.
Besides their use of gloves, Ben and Ida suddenly discovered, talking over the trashcan, that they had a lot of other things in common. Like they both hated hamburgers. And they both hated ice cream. And weren't prices awful nowadays? And wasn't summer going to be hot this year? And why didn't they continue this scintillating conversation over dinner?
So at 8:30 on a Sunday night, Ben Isaac Goldman and Ida Bernard went off in search of a restaurant that did not feature either hamburgers or ice cream.
"I love good peas and carrots, don't you?" asked Ida, who had taken Ben Isaac's arm. She was taller than he was and thinner, but they both had the same length stride so he did not notice.
"Lettuce," said Ben Isaac. "Good lettuce."
"I guess lettuce is all right too," said Ida, who hated lettuce.
"Better than all right. There is something great about lettuce."
"Yes?" said Ida in a tone that tried, unsuccessfully, to hide the question mark.
"Yes," said Ben Isaac Goldman forcefully. "And what is great about lettuce is that it is not hamburger." He laughed.
"Or ice cream," said Ida, and laughed with him, and their strides lengthened as they searched more diligently for a restaurant that served good vegetables. And lettuce.
So this at last was the promised land, Ben Isaac Goldman thought. What life was all about. A job, a place to live, a woman on his arm. The meaning of life. Not revenge. Not destruction. Here, there was no one checking on him, no meetings, no bugged telephones, no dust, no soldiers, no sand, no desert, no war.
He talked all through dinner at a little place with wrinkled peas, white carrots that grew soggy, and lettuce no crisper than wet blotting paper.
By the time their coffee came, weak and bitter as it was, Ben was holding Ida's hands in his on the table.
"America is truly a golden country," he said.
Ida Bernard nodded, watching Ben's broad, jolly face, a face she had seen every day going to work at the hamburger palace, and that she had finally conspired to meet at the glove-disposal unit in the parking lot.
She realized she had never seen Goldman smile until now. She had never seen the twinkle in his deep brown eyes or color in his pale cheeks until now.
"They think I am a dull old man," Goldman said, waving his arm to sweep together every frizz-haired hamburger jockey in the country who resented assistant managers who told them not to pick their noses near the food. Goldman's swinging arm bumped against a newspaper tucked precariously into the pocket of a man's raincoat hanging on the coat rack. It fell to the floor, and Goldman, looking around embarrassedly, bent to pick it up. As he leaned over, he kept talking.
"Aaah, what do they know?" he said. "Children. They have not…" His voice trailed off as his eyes fixed on a corner of the newspaper.
"Yes?" said Ida Bernard. "They have not what?"
"Seen what I have seen," said Goldman. His face had gone ash white. He clutched the paper in his hand as if it were a baton and he were a world-class relay runner.
"I must go now," he said. "Thank you for a nice evening."
Then, still clutching the paper, he stumbled up out of his seat and left, without looking back.
The waiter tiredly asked Ida if that would be all. He did not seem surprised at Goldman's sudden departure. The restaurant's culinary arts often had that effect on the digestion of senior citizens, people old enough to remember when things had been better.
Ida nodded and paid the check, but as she got up to leave, she noted Goldman's hat on the coat rack. He was not to be seen on the street outside, but on the inside band of his hat, his name and address had been printed twice in indelible ink.
His address was only a few blocks from where she stood, so she walked.
She passed the devastated blocks of business, their doors chained and their windows fenced in against the human storm of Baltimore. She passed the open doors and boarded windows of a dozen bars. The Flamingo Club and the Pleze Walk Inn. She passed a block of squat four-family houses, each with the same design, the same television aerials, and the same fat old mommas out on the stoops in their rocking chairs, fanning the soot away from their faces.
Goldman lived in an apartment building that was, to Ida's eyes, a forbidding brick square, chipped and worn, like a stone castle that had been under attack by the Huns for the past two hundred years. The street on which he lived had survived the murderous race riots of ten years ago, only to die, instead, of natural causes.
Ida felt another twinge of pity for the little man. The maternal instincts that had lain dormant since the death of her husband, her dear Nathan, rose up like a desert wind. She would sweep away Goldman's past and give them both something to live for. Then she would cook for him, clean for him, remind him to wear his rubbers on wet days, buy him new white gloves every day, and never serve hamburgers or ice cream.
Ida found the barely discernible "Goldman" inked under a button inside the front door, and pushed it. After thirty seconds of silence, she pushed the button again. Could he have gone somewhere else? She pictured him wandering the city, being attacked by roving groups of winos and junkies.
The intercom crackled. A small voice said, "Go away."
Ida leaned up close to the intercom and shouted: "Ben, it's Ida. I have your hat."
Silence.
"Ben? Really. There's nothing to be afraid of. It's me. Ida."
Silence.
"Please, Ben. I just want to give you your hat."
A few seconds later, there was a piercing buzz that nearly separated Ida from her stockings. The door popped open, and Ida quickly went inside.
The hallway smelled of urine, vomit, and age, which had scored a knockout victory over a heavy layer of Lysol. The stairs were concrete with a metal bannister. A naked forty-watt bulb illuminated each landing.
As she climbed each flight of stairs, the sounds of Pennsylvania Avenue assailed her, the honking of the white seven-year-old Cadillacs, the screeches of black kids and hookers.
She found Apartment A-412 in the corner. Ida stood on the cold floor under the loose, gray acoustical tile ceiling for a moment, then knocked.
The door opened immediately, to her surprise, and Goldman, who seemed to have aged in an hour, gestured quickly and said, "Hurry, come in, hurry."
Inside, the street sounds were dimmed by the sheer weight of plaster. The only light was from a bathroom bulb, but that was enough to let Ida see the environment Ben Isaac lived in.
As she took in the dirty beige walls, the worn green carpet, and the one broken-down brown chair, she thought the place was enough to give anyone nightmares. Her mental redecorating stopped as Ben Isaac came before her.
His eyes were haunted and his hands were shaking. His shirt was untucked and his belt was undone.
"You have my hat?" he said, grabbing at it. "Good. Now you must go. Hurry!"
He tried to move her out without touching her, as if contact would mean instant contamination, but Ida dodged nimbly and moved for the light switch.
"Please, Ben. I won't hurt you," she said as she flicked the switch. Goldman blinked in the stark one hundred and fifty watts.
"You must not be afraid of me. I would hate that," Ida said.
She moved toward the bathroom to switch off that light. She saw the wall and the seat of the toilet covered by wetness. The tile wall was imprinted with oily fingerprints, and the towel racks were empty so that they created a makeshift arm rest.
Ida ignored it only with an effort and switched off the bathroom light. Her care was tinged with pity as she turned back to Goldman, who looked ready to cry.
She looked into his eyes and opened her arms.
"You must not be ashamed, Ben. I understand. Your past can't hurt you." She smiled, even though she didn't completely understand and she had no idea what his past was.
Goldman's wide face was completely white, and he stood unsteadily. He stared into Ida's open, friendly, dream-filled eyes, then collapsed onto the bed in tears.
Ida came over to the old man and sat next to him. She touched his shoulder and asked, "What is it, Ben?"
Goldman continued to cry and waved his hand at the door. Ida looked but saw only a crumbled newspaper. "You want me to leave?" she said.
Ben Isaac was suddenly up and moving. He hung up his hat, picked up the newspaper, gave it to Ida, then went over to the kitchen sink and started to wash his hands. It was the newspaper he had picked up in the restaurant.
Ida glanced at the headline, which read, "SEX ROMPS THROUGH TREASURY DEPT.," then turned back to Goldman.
"What is it, Ben?" she repeated.
Goldman left the water running while he pointed to an item in the lower righthand corner. Then he went back to washing his hands.
Ida read as a soapy drop of water began to soak through the news item:

MUTILATED BODY FOUND IN NEGEV, Tel Aviv, Israel (AP) -A mutilated corpse was found early this morning on an excavation site by a group of young archeologists. The remains were originally described as being in the shape of a swastika, the Nazi symbol of power in Germany over three decades ago.

Since then, Israeli officials have negated that report and identified the remains as those of Ephraim Boris Hegez, an industrialist in Jerusalem.
When asked about the murder, Tochala Delit, a government spokesman, stated that the remains were probably left after an Arab terrorist attack. Delit said that he doubts that the excavations for evidence of Israel's two original temples, dating as early as 586 b.c. will be interrupted in any way by the grisly discovery.

The dark shape moved silently across the Israeli night sky. From Jordan it came, low and deadly. Not like a jet, which sent out sound warnings even before it crossed the border. Not like a Phantom fighter, which would be shot down immediately by the Israeli border defense.
No, it came like the silent wind, because it was a transport glider. Soundless, flying too low for radar, painted black to merge with the night desert sky, it moved invisibly into the Negev.
Abulicta Moroka Bashmar paced before his men, dressed in an antiradar plasticene scuba suit with specially made antiradar plasticene medals affixed on his chest.
"This is the moment," he said in English to the three men lined up by the door of the glider in their scuba suits and parachutes. "So far the Israeli patrols have not detected us. We will parachute into their Dead Sea, kill as many of them as possible, then swim back into Jordan and return to our own lands."
The three men smiled, secure in the knowledge of Bashmar's reputation for bravery, a reputation that he had acquired after leading fifty Libyan terrorists into an unguarded Israeli schoolhouse and massacring the eighty-three students and thirty-seven teachers Within. The men were sure that this mission would be as satisfying. One of the men was black, a special commando recruited from Uganda.
Bashmar raised his hand. "Drop our equipment… now." His hand chopped the air, and the black commando, nearest the open door, nudged the plasticene carrier with its underwater gear out.
"Now, we go," cried Bashmar as he fell out of the glider door, clutching a plastic-enclosed machine gun to his plastic-enclosed chest. The three others followed, and soon four dark figures and one dark thing were plummeting through the Israeli night sky.
First, the dark silk parachute for the equipment opened, and then each man pulled his rip cord. Each man's mind was filled with the visions of the violence they would create and the rewards they would receive on returning home to Libya and to Uganda.

CHAPTER NINE

No one saw them off.
Yoel Zabari had declared undying allegiance to both Korea and America. Zhava Fifer had declared undying allegiance to Remo's body. Tochala Delit had been riddled with bullets and dropped behind enemy lines, which was not difficult since all Israel's borders were enemy lines.
But Israel still existed, so life went on as if nothing had happened. Israel nearly having been destroyed did not mean anything. Zionism was still outlawed by the UN. The Arabs were still denying the Jewish state's existence. The price of gasoline was still sixty-three cents a gallon for regular, sixty-five cents for high-test. Nothing had changed.
Yoel and Zhava went back to work, wishing Remo well and asking that he give them at least three years' notice before his next visit.
"Israel is not a place," said Chiun. "It is a state of mind. The thought has not stopped, so the thought continues."
Things were not all bad, Remo learned. Smith had discovered the source of the original leak, who had revealed Remo and Chiun's mission to Israel.
"It was a simple matter of elimination," he had told Remo. "It wasn't me and it wasn't you and it wasn't Chiun so it could only have been one other person."
When Smith had mentioned the folly of ever repeating such a leak to the guilty party, the president had apologized profusely and almost choked on a peanut.
Smith had also sent instructions on to Remo to return home immediately since his job was done and Israel could safely get back to its primary national mission: staying alive.
So what the hell was Remo doing on the tea trail?
"What the hell am I doing on the tea trail?" asked Remo.
"I have done you a service, so now you must do me a service," replied Chiun.
They were walking along the centuries-old caravan trail that was lined with prayer-inscribed rocks, into the Sinai Desert.
"What other service do I owe you?" asked Remo. "You got your daytime dramas, didn't you? I sent the Norman Lear, Norman Lear letter, didn't I?"
Chiun had watched him do it, too. Only what Chiun had not seen was that Remo failed to put stamps on the envelope and had written the return address as:
Captain Kangaroo CBS Television City Hollywood, California
"So what other favor do I owe you?" Remo finished.
"Those were not services," said Chiun, "those were obligations. But do not worry, my son, I am merely looking for a sign."
"Well, hurry up, Little Father, or we'll miss the plane."
"Be calm, Remo, we could do much worse than to remain here," said Chiun.
"What is this?" retorted Remo. "Are you getting soft in the head? Where is 'this land of little beauty'? Where are the palaces of yesteryear, remember?"
"They are gone," said Chiun, "gone with the sand and returned to the earth like the bones of Herod. As it should be. The surface beauty of this land has been destroyed but if Israel itself is destroyed, it might be best that the rest of the world be destroyed with it. Except Sinanju, of course."
"Of course," said Remo. "Quit fooling yourself. If Israel was destroyed, the world would probably turn the other way and keep going."
"Yes. Keep going to certain destruction," said Chiun, "for everything this land is, the world needs. Israel is based on the same beauty, love, and brotherhood as is Sinanju."
Remo laughed. The two places did have similarities all right. Both tended to look barren. Israel looked like a giant beachfront to Remo.
Sinanju like a mountain of crab grass littered with outhouses.
"What are you saying?" he said. "Love? Brotherhood? Sinanju? We're killers, Chiun. Sinanju is the spawning ground of the world's greatest assassins."
"Sinanju is an art before it is a place," said Chiun, his face grave. "Do you think I have just fought the atomic forces of the universe and won? I have not done this. Sinanju has done this. I am everything Sinanju is. Everything Sinanju is, is me. Israel holds the same power. It is up to the people here to tap that power."
Remo remembered the smell of sulphur and the ticking of the bomb. He remembered Delit's words and Chiun's actions. He remembered the nuclear device not exploding. But Sinanju a love nest? A monument to Brotherhood Week?
Chiun turned toward the Sinai and continued along the trail, speaking as if he had read Remo's mind.
"Yes, without our love, our brotherhood, and our home, Sinanju would just be another way of killing people. A toy to break bricks with. The world would be wise to pay heed to the lessons of the land with little visual beauty."
Remo looked out across the desert, experiencing its breathtaking view again. Just because every other landscape was a mine field and the town you passed through might not be there by the time you got back didn't mean that one could still not learn to love the place. Remo thought about Zhava and the flowers.
"There," came Chiun's voice, interrupting Remo's dreams. Remo turned and saw the Korean kneel by a rock, then leap to his feet and move quickly across the desert.
Remo ran past the other prayer-inscribed rocks until he came to the one Chiun had been by.
"Praise be to Herod the Wonderful," Chiun's voice drifted across the sand, "a fine, noble, honest man whose word even after centuries is as good as gold."
The rock had been inscribed with the letters, "C-H-I-U-N." Remo ran after the aged Korean.
"It is the sign I have been promised by the ancient chapters in the Book of Sinanju," Remo heard. "Come quickly into the desert, my son."
Remo plowed after Chiun's diminishing shape. "Where are we going?" Remo called into the wind.
"We are going to collect a debt," answered the Oriental's voice.
The dust rose in Remo's face from the speed of the Korean. Remo shut his eyes and kept running until he felt the grittiness disappear from his senses.
When he opened his eyes again, he was standing with Chiun before a small cave, seemingly etched out of the sand and rock. Chiun smiled at him knowingly, then went inside. Remo followed, bending over to fit through the small opening.
"Ah," said Chiun, "you see?"
Inside the cave was a small room lit by a series of canals cut into the solid rock. Atop a thick rug was a skeleton wrapped in royal robes and wearing jewelry. Before the body were two heaps of gold. The walls were lined with silk.
"Friend of yours?" asked Remo.
"Herod is a man of his word," said Chiun.
"Was a man of his word," replied Remo. "This can't be Herod. He was buried in Herodonia." Remo looked at the mummified bones and the diamonds and ruby encrustations, then at the expression on Chiun's face. "Wasn't he?"
Chiun felt it unnecessary to reply. "We will take the gold that belongs to Sinanju," he said, instead. "Come." He handed Remo a silken bag.
"Why me?" said Remo. "You should pick up your own pay."
"This is the service that you owe," said Chiun. "You should be honored that I am allowing you to glimpse the innermost workings of Sinanju."
"Yeah, collecting money," said Remo, wondering how the hell he might get a silken bag filled with gold through customs. "Lucky me."
After the gold was secure, Chiun took the sack and walked to the mouth of the cave. As Remo joined him, the Oriental turned for a last look at the skeleton that had once been an emperor of one of the strongest empires that had ever existed.
"So it is. So it was. So it always shall be. Poor Herod the Maligned. The Book of Sinanju states, 'A human being is here today-in the grave tomorrow.' "
Remo turned to the reigning Master of Sinanju and remembered where he had heard that before. And from whose lips.
"That's funny, Chiun," he said. "You don't look Jewish."

CHAPTER ONE

Ben Isaac Goldman separated them, cold and thin, then stuck them into their stainless steel cages and lowered them into the boiling grease and watched them fry.
Then he watched the frozen golden chunks in their pale dough coffins being lowered alongside into the earth of liquid grease.
The next day Ben Isaac supervised the grilling of the round, flat pieces of meat, which were USDA inspected and not more than 27 percent fat. When the red light flashed and the buzzer sounded, he would automatically turn them over and sprinkle salt onto their burned backs. As they sizzled and spat at him from the grill, he would lower the solid weight atop them to keep them pressed down flat.
The day after that had always been Ben Isaac's favorite. He lined them up, bread round, acned with sesame seed, then fed them into the ovens.
After they were done, he would wrap them in their colorful paper shrouds and stick them in their styrofoam coffins.
For nearly two years, this daily, rhythmic eight-hour massacre had brought Ben Isaac Goldman a certain cleansing peace.
For two years, he had changed symbols: he had traded the six million dead from the swastika for the twenty billion sold from the golden arches. And he was content.
But no longer. He had lost his faith in both symbols, the swastika for which he had worked thirty years earlier, and the golden arches, which he served as an assistant manager in Baltimore, Maryland, spending three days a week controlling the scientifically designed slaughter of helpless food stuffs.
And so now he just went through the motions, his small paper cap squashed down on his wispy white curls, shuffling in greasy black shoes from section to section, making sure the plastic, non-dairy shakes weighed enough, that the measured-before-cooking semiburgers were not in their waiting bins more than seven minutes, and that the onion, tomato, pickle, and special sauce bins were never less than half full.
And he waited only for the end of his workday when he could take off the cheap white gloves he bought each day in Walgreen's drugstore, and drop them into the garbage on his way out.
Recently, he had taken to washing his hands constantly.
On a Sunday evening in April, a spring that promised a bone-melting hot summer, Ben Isaac Goldman pushed open the swinging top of the garbage can in front of the hamburger store, and watched as someone else dropped a pair of white gloves in. He followed with his own gloves, then looked up and met for the first time Ida Bernard, a tight-boned middle-aged lady, originally from the Bronx, who worked at the ice cream place next door.
She wore white gloves too, because her hands got cold working with the soft ice cream so many hours a day, making Mother's Day cakes and birthday treats and sundaes and flying saucers and parfaits and simple plastic cones, all under the auspices of an old man who did his own television commercials and sounded like a candidate for a total laryngectomy.
Besides their use of gloves, Ben and Ida suddenly discovered, talking over the trashcan, that they had a lot of other things in common. Like they both hated hamburgers. And they both hated ice cream. And weren't prices awful nowadays? And wasn't summer going to be hot this year? And why didn't they continue this scintillating conversation over dinner?
So at 8:30 on a Sunday night, Ben Isaac Goldman and Ida Bernard went off in search of a restaurant that did not feature either hamburgers or ice cream.
"I love good peas and carrots, don't you?" asked Ida, who had taken Ben Isaac's arm. She was taller than he was and thinner, but they both had the same length stride so he did not notice.
"Lettuce," said Ben Isaac. "Good lettuce."
"I guess lettuce is all right too," said Ida, who hated lettuce.
"Better than all right. There is something great about lettuce."
"Yes?" said Ida in a tone that tried, unsuccessfully, to hide the question mark.
"Yes," said Ben Isaac Goldman forcefully. "And what is great about lettuce is that it is not hamburger." He laughed.
"Or ice cream," said Ida, and laughed with him, and their strides lengthened as they searched more diligently for a restaurant that served good vegetables. And lettuce.
So this at last was the promised land, Ben Isaac Goldman thought. What life was all about. A job, a place to live, a woman on his arm. The meaning of life. Not revenge. Not destruction. Here, there was no one checking on him, no meetings, no bugged telephones, no dust, no soldiers, no sand, no desert, no war.
He talked all through dinner at a little place with wrinkled peas, white carrots that grew soggy, and lettuce no crisper than wet blotting paper.
By the time their coffee came, weak and bitter as it was, Ben was holding Ida's hands in his on the table.
"America is truly a golden country," he said.
Ida Bernard nodded, watching Ben's broad, jolly face, a face she had seen every day going to work at the hamburger palace, and that she had finally conspired to meet at the glove-disposal unit in the parking lot.
She realized she had never seen Goldman smile until now. She had never seen the twinkle in his deep brown eyes or color in his pale cheeks until now.
"They think I am a dull old man," Goldman said, waving his arm to sweep together every frizz-haired hamburger jockey in the country who resented assistant managers who told them not to pick their noses near the food. Goldman's swinging arm bumped against a newspaper tucked precariously into the pocket of a man's raincoat hanging on the coat rack. It fell to the floor, and Goldman, looking around embarrassedly, bent to pick it up. As he leaned over, he kept talking.
"Aaah, what do they know?" he said. "Children. They have not…" His voice trailed off as his eyes fixed on a corner of the newspaper.
"Yes?" said Ida Bernard. "They have not what?"
"Seen what I have seen," said Goldman. His face had gone ash white. He clutched the paper in his hand as if it were a baton and he were a world-class relay runner.
"I must go now," he said. "Thank you for a nice evening."
Then, still clutching the paper, he stumbled up out of his seat and left, without looking back.
The waiter tiredly asked Ida if that would be all. He did not seem surprised at Goldman's sudden departure. The restaurant's culinary arts often had that effect on the digestion of senior citizens, people old enough to remember when things had been better.
Ida nodded and paid the check, but as she got up to leave, she noted Goldman's hat on the coat rack. He was not to be seen on the street outside, but on the inside band of his hat, his name and address had been printed twice in indelible ink.
His address was only a few blocks from where she stood, so she walked.
She passed the devastated blocks of business, their doors chained and their windows fenced in against the human storm of Baltimore. She passed the open doors and boarded windows of a dozen bars. The Flamingo Club and the Pleze Walk Inn. She passed a block of squat four-family houses, each with the same design, the same television aerials, and the same fat old mommas out on the stoops in their rocking chairs, fanning the soot away from their faces.
Goldman lived in an apartment building that was, to Ida's eyes, a forbidding brick square, chipped and worn, like a stone castle that had been under attack by the Huns for the past two hundred years. The street on which he lived had survived the murderous race riots of ten years ago, only to die, instead, of natural causes.
Ida felt another twinge of pity for the little man. The maternal instincts that had lain dormant since the death of her husband, her dear Nathan, rose up like a desert wind. She would sweep away Goldman's past and give them both something to live for. Then she would cook for him, clean for him, remind him to wear his rubbers on wet days, buy him new white gloves every day, and never serve hamburgers or ice cream.
Ida found the barely discernible "Goldman" inked under a button inside the front door, and pushed it. After thirty seconds of silence, she pushed the button again. Could he have gone somewhere else? She pictured him wandering the city, being attacked by roving groups of winos and junkies.
The intercom crackled. A small voice said, "Go away."
Ida leaned up close to the intercom and shouted: "Ben, it's Ida. I have your hat."
Silence.
"Ben? Really. There's nothing to be afraid of. It's me. Ida."
Silence.
"Please, Ben. I just want to give you your hat."
A few seconds later, there was a piercing buzz that nearly separated Ida from her stockings. The door popped open, and Ida quickly went inside.
The hallway smelled of urine, vomit, and age, which had scored a knockout victory over a heavy layer of Lysol. The stairs were concrete with a metal bannister. A naked forty-watt bulb illuminated each landing.
As she climbed each flight of stairs, the sounds of Pennsylvania Avenue assailed her, the honking of the white seven-year-old Cadillacs, the screeches of black kids and hookers.
She found Apartment A-412 in the corner. Ida stood on the cold floor under the loose, gray acoustical tile ceiling for a moment, then knocked.
The door opened immediately, to her surprise, and Goldman, who seemed to have aged in an hour, gestured quickly and said, "Hurry, come in, hurry."
Inside, the street sounds were dimmed by the sheer weight of plaster. The only light was from a bathroom bulb, but that was enough to let Ida see the environment Ben Isaac lived in.
As she took in the dirty beige walls, the worn green carpet, and the one broken-down brown chair, she thought the place was enough to give anyone nightmares. Her mental redecorating stopped as Ben Isaac came before her.
His eyes were haunted and his hands were shaking. His shirt was untucked and his belt was undone.
"You have my hat?" he said, grabbing at it. "Good. Now you must go. Hurry!"
He tried to move her out without touching her, as if contact would mean instant contamination, but Ida dodged nimbly and moved for the light switch.
"Please, Ben. I won't hurt you," she said as she flicked the switch. Goldman blinked in the stark one hundred and fifty watts.
"You must not be afraid of me. I would hate that," Ida said.
She moved toward the bathroom to switch off that light. She saw the wall and the seat of the toilet covered by wetness. The tile wall was imprinted with oily fingerprints, and the towel racks were empty so that they created a makeshift arm rest.
Ida ignored it only with an effort and switched off the bathroom light. Her care was tinged with pity as she turned back to Goldman, who looked ready to cry.
She looked into his eyes and opened her arms.
"You must not be ashamed, Ben. I understand. Your past can't hurt you." She smiled, even though she didn't completely understand and she had no idea what his past was.
Goldman's wide face was completely white, and he stood unsteadily. He stared into Ida's open, friendly, dream-filled eyes, then collapsed onto the bed in tears.
Ida came over to the old man and sat next to him. She touched his shoulder and asked, "What is it, Ben?"
Goldman continued to cry and waved his hand at the door. Ida looked but saw only a crumbled newspaper. "You want me to leave?" she said.
Ben Isaac was suddenly up and moving. He hung up his hat, picked up the newspaper, gave it to Ida, then went over to the kitchen sink and started to wash his hands. It was the newspaper he had picked up in the restaurant.
Ida glanced at the headline, which read, "SEX ROMPS THROUGH TREASURY DEPT.," then turned back to Goldman.
"What is it, Ben?" she repeated.
Goldman left the water running while he pointed to an item in the lower righthand corner. Then he went back to washing his hands.
Ida read as a soapy drop of water began to soak through the news item:

MUTILATED BODY FOUND IN NEGEV, Tel Aviv, Israel (AP) -A mutilated corpse was found early this morning on an excavation site by a group of young archeologists. The remains were originally described as being in the shape of a swastika, the Nazi symbol of power in Germany over three decades ago.

Since then, Israeli officials have negated that report and identified the remains as those of Ephraim Boris Hegez, an industrialist in Jerusalem.
When asked about the murder, Tochala Delit, a government spokesman, stated that the remains were probably left after an Arab terrorist attack. Delit said that he doubts that the excavations for evidence of Israel's two original temples, dating as early as 586 b.c. will be interrupted in any way by the grisly discovery.

No one saw them off.
Yoel Zabari had declared undying allegiance to both Korea and America. Zhava Fifer had declared undying allegiance to Remo's body. Tochala Delit had been riddled with bullets and dropped behind enemy lines, which was not difficult since all Israel's borders were enemy lines.
But Israel still existed, so life went on as if nothing had happened. Israel nearly having been destroyed did not mean anything. Zionism was still outlawed by the UN. The Arabs were still denying the Jewish state's existence. The price of gasoline was still sixty-three cents a gallon for regular, sixty-five cents for high-test. Nothing had changed.
Yoel and Zhava went back to work, wishing Remo well and asking that he give them at least three years' notice before his next visit.
"Israel is not a place," said Chiun. "It is a state of mind. The thought has not stopped, so the thought continues."
Things were not all bad, Remo learned. Smith had discovered the source of the original leak, who had revealed Remo and Chiun's mission to Israel.
"It was a simple matter of elimination," he had told Remo. "It wasn't me and it wasn't you and it wasn't Chiun so it could only have been one other person."
When Smith had mentioned the folly of ever repeating such a leak to the guilty party, the president had apologized profusely and almost choked on a peanut.
Smith had also sent instructions on to Remo to return home immediately since his job was done and Israel could safely get back to its primary national mission: staying alive.
So what the hell was Remo doing on the tea trail?
"What the hell am I doing on the tea trail?" asked Remo.
"I have done you a service, so now you must do me a service," replied Chiun.
They were walking along the centuries-old caravan trail that was lined with prayer-inscribed rocks, into the Sinai Desert.
"What other service do I owe you?" asked Remo. "You got your daytime dramas, didn't you? I sent the Norman Lear, Norman Lear letter, didn't I?"
Chiun had watched him do it, too. Only what Chiun had not seen was that Remo failed to put stamps on the envelope and had written the return address as:
Captain Kangaroo CBS Television City Hollywood, California
"So what other favor do I owe you?" Remo finished.
"Those were not services," said Chiun, "those were obligations. But do not worry, my son, I am merely looking for a sign."
"Well, hurry up, Little Father, or we'll miss the plane."
"Be calm, Remo, we could do much worse than to remain here," said Chiun.
"What is this?" retorted Remo. "Are you getting soft in the head? Where is 'this land of little beauty'? Where are the palaces of yesteryear, remember?"
"They are gone," said Chiun, "gone with the sand and returned to the earth like the bones of Herod. As it should be. The surface beauty of this land has been destroyed but if Israel itself is destroyed, it might be best that the rest of the world be destroyed with it. Except Sinanju, of course."
"Of course," said Remo. "Quit fooling yourself. If Israel was destroyed, the world would probably turn the other way and keep going."
"Yes. Keep going to certain destruction," said Chiun, "for everything this land is, the world needs. Israel is based on the same beauty, love, and brotherhood as is Sinanju."
Remo laughed. The two places did have similarities all right. Both tended to look barren. Israel looked like a giant beachfront to Remo.
Sinanju like a mountain of crab grass littered with outhouses.
"What are you saying?" he said. "Love? Brotherhood? Sinanju? We're killers, Chiun. Sinanju is the spawning ground of the world's greatest assassins."
"Sinanju is an art before it is a place," said Chiun, his face grave. "Do you think I have just fought the atomic forces of the universe and won? I have not done this. Sinanju has done this. I am everything Sinanju is. Everything Sinanju is, is me. Israel holds the same power. It is up to the people here to tap that power."
Remo remembered the smell of sulphur and the ticking of the bomb. He remembered Delit's words and Chiun's actions. He remembered the nuclear device not exploding. But Sinanju a love nest? A monument to Brotherhood Week?
Chiun turned toward the Sinai and continued along the trail, speaking as if he had read Remo's mind.
"Yes, without our love, our brotherhood, and our home, Sinanju would just be another way of killing people. A toy to break bricks with. The world would be wise to pay heed to the lessons of the land with little visual beauty."
Remo looked out across the desert, experiencing its breathtaking view again. Just because every other landscape was a mine field and the town you passed through might not be there by the time you got back didn't mean that one could still not learn to love the place. Remo thought about Zhava and the flowers.
"There," came Chiun's voice, interrupting Remo's dreams. Remo turned and saw the Korean kneel by a rock, then leap to his feet and move quickly across the desert.
Remo ran past the other prayer-inscribed rocks until he came to the one Chiun had been by.
"Praise be to Herod the Wonderful," Chiun's voice drifted across the sand, "a fine, noble, honest man whose word even after centuries is as good as gold."
The rock had been inscribed with the letters, "C-H-I-U-N." Remo ran after the aged Korean.
"It is the sign I have been promised by the ancient chapters in the Book of Sinanju," Remo heard. "Come quickly into the desert, my son."
Remo plowed after Chiun's diminishing shape. "Where are we going?" Remo called into the wind.
"We are going to collect a debt," answered the Oriental's voice.
The dust rose in Remo's face from the speed of the Korean. Remo shut his eyes and kept running until he felt the grittiness disappear from his senses.
When he opened his eyes again, he was standing with Chiun before a small cave, seemingly etched out of the sand and rock. Chiun smiled at him knowingly, then went inside. Remo followed, bending over to fit through the small opening.
"Ah," said Chiun, "you see?"
Inside the cave was a small room lit by a series of canals cut into the solid rock. Atop a thick rug was a skeleton wrapped in royal robes and wearing jewelry. Before the body were two heaps of gold. The walls were lined with silk.
"Friend of yours?" asked Remo.
"Herod is a man of his word," said Chiun.
"Was a man of his word," replied Remo. "This can't be Herod. He was buried in Herodonia." Remo looked at the mummified bones and the diamonds and ruby encrustations, then at the expression on Chiun's face. "Wasn't he?"
Chiun felt it unnecessary to reply. "We will take the gold that belongs to Sinanju," he said, instead. "Come." He handed Remo a silken bag.
"Why me?" said Remo. "You should pick up your own pay."
"This is the service that you owe," said Chiun. "You should be honored that I am allowing you to glimpse the innermost workings of Sinanju."
"Yeah, collecting money," said Remo, wondering how the hell he might get a silken bag filled with gold through customs. "Lucky me."
After the gold was secure, Chiun took the sack and walked to the mouth of the cave. As Remo joined him, the Oriental turned for a last look at the skeleton that had once been an emperor of one of the strongest empires that had ever existed.
"So it is. So it was. So it always shall be. Poor Herod the Maligned. The Book of Sinanju states, 'A human being is here today-in the grave tomorrow.' "
Remo turned to the reigning Master of Sinanju and remembered where he had heard that before. And from whose lips.
"That's funny, Chiun," he said. "You don't look Jewish."