Killing Time

Fitness guru Felix Foxx is really Felix Vaux, a former procaine researcher who has kept himself youthful with a formula the novel says was made from human-derived procaine. He murders Irma Schwartz after she describes an unusual lack of pain that he connects to procaine; her autopsy later shows unusually low procaine. He sells daily injections to wealthy Shangri-la members, while using the drug to recruit and sustain a private Team of aging soldiers. Riley’s account says the Team carried out missions including the assassinations of the Secretaries of the Air Force and Navy, then Army Secretary Clive Dobbins; its sponsor, Zadnia’s dictator Ruomid Halaffa, next orders them to kill the unnamed U.S. President.

Remo follows Foxx from Pennsylvania to the Black Hills, where he disarms the Team and releases its surviving members with their remaining medicine. Foxx has already fled. The Shangri-la guests, including Remo’s new love Posie Ponselle, die after their formula supply runs out; Seymour Burdich freezes while trying to get help. Remo and Chiun pursue Foxx to Zadnia, where Halaffa rejects Foxx’s appeal for asylum. Remo kills Foxx, who rapidly ages and decays after death, then he and Chiun defeat Halaffa’s guards; Halaffa falls from a tower after the crowd ignores his appeal. Smith later reports fifteen old soldiers dead in the Black Hills of South Dakota and suspects they were the Team’s released members, but Chiun evades confirmation. Remo arranges the photograph of Cheeta Ching that Chiun requested and quietly grieves for Posie.