An Old-Fashioned War

After Bill Buffalo returns to the Ojupa reservation to recover his language, a ceremony is underway when the stranger who calls himself Mr. Arieson appears and incites the Ojupa into an armed rebellion. The rebellion ends after Remo confronts him at Little Big Horn; Bill and Running Deere die. Arieson next transforms General Moomas’s Idran forces, which capture the USS James K. Polk, and provokes fighting in Belfast and at the Vatican. Remo and Chiun fail to stop him physically; the Pope says the unconsummated marriage to Poo was not binding, while Chiun continues to treat Remo as obliged to consummate it under Sinanju custom.

In Russia, Arieson excites the army and a Tartar horde to plan war against America, but agrees to leave the Russian camp after Remo asks him to prevent a Russia–U.S. war. At the Maginot Line, Arieson gives Remo one vase and again offers the rest of the treasure in exchange for withdrawal. Remo and Anna then identify the treasure under Sinanju’s garbage mound and recover it; word reaches Poo that Remo has been released from the vows in payment. Anna and Smith hypothesize Arieson is an electronic force, and Chiun addresses the recovered marble bust as Aries, God of War. Smith later advocates war with Canada while apparently influenced.

The closing scene continues with Chiun offering incense before the bust; its fumes vanish into the statue, Remo says the war god has returned to an observer role, and Anna, Smith and Chiun offer differing accounts of the force before the group leaves. The source does not resolve the mechanism behind these events.