A Pound of Prevention

At a meeting of crime organizations, a Mandobar pays Cali-cartel representative Russell Copefield to provoke a staged dispute, then has him killed as an example; the identity of the in-country Mandobar is initially left unclear. In Peoria, Remo attends infant Karen Carlson’s funeral, learns that Brad Miller killed her, and throws Brad from a window; his reaction deepens his doubts about his work.

Smith sends Remo to investigate Mandobar’s East African criminal-haven plan while Chiun travels to the Luzu after Chief Batubizee invokes an old Kwaanga–Nuk pledge. Chiun negotiates payment and warriors, and Chiun and the Luzu assault the Bachsburg palace. Remo joins the fighting, then accepts Deferens’s assignment to kill Batubizee only as a way to find Chiun; Chiun exposes water in a baobab to help the Luzu. Remo encounters a child apparition who calls himself the Master Who Never Was, gives him a carved figure, and plays Lodestones with him.

Meanwhile, Deferens secretly plants six nuclear bombs around Bachsburg, while Nellie Mandobar organizes a concealed gathering of crime leaders outside the city for her own political plan. Remo initially decides to let Deferens’s bombs kill the gathered criminals, but seeing ordinary families and children changes his mind. Remo and Chiun force Deferens to disarm the six devices; at the final one Deferens resets the timer and Chiun fatally wounds him before stopping the countdown with three seconds left.

Separately, Nellie reveals that she arranged a cave bomb near her gathering, in a deal with Don Giovani, and the Luzu attack her village. Remo drops Nellie’s bomb into a deep kimberlite shaft and the cave collapses around her; the narrative describes it as her final resting place, but Chiun later leaves her survival uncertain. The narrator calls the later rumble an explosion, while Remo infers that the shaft contained the bomb’s blast; the AP-style epilogue reports an unexplained tremor.

In the aftermath, Chiun identifies Bubu as Batubizee’s eldest son and heir, and Remo recognizes the apparition as Chiun’s deceased son Song after Chiun identifies the boy’s carving. An AP-style epilogue reports an unexplained tremor and newly exposed underground river; Batubizee hopes the water will restore farmland and promises the Luzu will repay their debts if it does, but those outcomes remain prospective.