Union Bust

Telephone installer and union steward Jimmy McQuade is recruited by an unnamed International Communications Workers vice-president to supervise an overtime crew building a secret facility on Nuihc Street outside Chicago. Two FBI agents investigating the construction are killed; the President hears the labor secretary’s and FBI director’s reports, privately contacts Smith, and asks CURE to act. Remo is first sent to kill James Thurgood, a Tucson financier of a heroin network. After eating a hamburger with monosodium glutamate, Remo suffers a severe reaction; Dr. Gerald Braithwait diagnoses it at a hidden coal-barge clinic, learns CURE’s secret, and is killed by Remo. Under the alias Remo Jones, Remo enters the International Brotherhood of Drivers convention through Abe “Crowbar” Bludner.

Gene Jethro wins the presidency with a concealed plan to combine four transportation unions. The labor secretary warns that a joint transportation strike could paralyze the nation’s economy. Smith orders the extreme plan: kill the four union leaders. Remo rejects that course, accepts Jethro’s offer to become recording secretary, and instead tries to enter the guarded Nuihc Street building. Jethro’s girlfriend and secretary, Chris, identifies the other union chiefs and supplies enough information for Remo to disperse them by bringing their wives to the Chicago hotel. A layered 27-man ambush nearly kills Remo; the Scarlet Ribbon turns the shooters’ lines of fire against one another, but Remo is wounded and reports that his alternative failed.

He prepares to drop a convention-hall beam on the leaders, then finds the hall empty after the meeting is moved to the new building and abandons the plan. Chiun reveals that Nuihc is his nephew, a Sinanju-trained deserter who built defenses against Sinanju methods. In the building, Remo survives Jethro’s poison-mist trap and defeats him, then attacks Nuihc while feigning acceptance of his offer of fame, power, and family. Nuihc wounds Remo badly, but Chiun intervenes, orders Nuihc to leave, and saves Remo. Chiun says he cannot kill another member of his village; Nuihc escapes. Remo returns to the convention, falsely announces Jethro’s resignation, engineers Bludner’s election as president, and arranges for Chris to give the FBI evidence tying the three other union chiefs to misuse of union funds. The merger is stopped, and Remo expects to disappear again under a new face.