Ghost in the Machine

"Am positive. If building were no more, I could not be standing on floor as I am now. Would fall through to death."

"Why not?"

"I am vibrating normally. Therefore, floor is vibrating normally."

Randal Rumpp raced to a window. He took up the Frank Lloyd Wright chair and started banging it against a big bronze solar panel, splintering the legs of the eighty-thousand-dollar original. But Rumpp didn't care.

The glass cracked and shattered, and pieces fell out.

He stuck his head out and watched them fall.

The largest pieces shattered into a million golden shards when they hit the pavement below.

At that moment, the electricity returned.

"It's true! It's true!" Rumpp said distractedly. "Not now! I haven't closed the megadeal of the century yet!"

He grabbed the slick creature and said, "Make it go back to the way it was."

"I cannot."

"Then tell me how it got that way in the first place."

"I am not sure. Was sucked into telephone, but number I dial did not pick up. I think I was tricked by American agents. I have been trapped in telephone system since I do not know how long ago. I think I became trapped in your building, and somehow it became as I was. A ghost."

"You're no more a ghost than I am," Rumpp insisted, giving the thing's arm a hard squeeze.

"True," it gasped, grabbing its shoulder.

"Explain it again. You got sucked into the phone?"

"Da. I mean, yes."

"Show me."

"Why should I?'

"I'll give you this Rolex if you show me."

The faceless thing hesitated. He accepted the watch, put it to the side of his head where his left ear should have been, and listened curiously. He brought the watch face up to what passed for his own.

"Is fake," he said, returning it disdainfully.

"How do you know?"

"True Rolex has smooth secondhand movement. This jerks. Is no good. Cheap copy."

"Show me how you did it," Randal Rumpp said quickly, pulling out his ace in the hole, "and I'll let you have this entire building."

The thing moved its smooth head around like a curious radar dish. "Worth how much?"

"A quarter billion."

"Is deal. But I must have safe number to call."

"I got one. Dial 555-9460."

"Where is that?"

"My Florida summer home. The weather's great right now."

"Hokay. I go there," said the thing, picking up the receiver and stabbing the key pad with a flexible white finger. As he dialed the number with one hand, he squeezed the handset between his lifted shoulder and his head, and reached down to his circular belt buckle.

He gave it a twist. Instantly, his outline became a kind of fuzzy nimbus of light. Randal Rumpp blinked as the details of the creature's outer skin grew indistinct.

Then, like a cloud that was being sucked into a cave, the creature collapsed into the mouthpiece.

There was no sound. Just a quick inhalation of glowing white smoke. The deformed head was the last to go. It was drawn into the receiver, which hung in the air a brief moment, then hit the hardwood floor.

"Damn!" said Randal Rumpp, racing back to his office, yelling, "Don't answer that phone! Don't answer that phone if you value your fucking job!"

The ringing was coming from down the corridor, from his office.

He sprinted past his shocked assistant and to his office cellular phone. It was ringing insistently.

Randal Rumpp grabbed up a copy of The Scam of the Deal and slammed it onto the receiver, as if to block a rat trying to escape from a hole. He pushed down hard. The phone kept ringing.

"Dorma! Get a window open and throw something out!"

"But the windows don't open."

"Kick the glass out! Anything!"

The crash of glass came a moment later.

"Listen for it to hit the ground."

"I am."

"Anything?"

"No."

"Keep listening."

"It should have shattered by now."

Then the lights winked out.

"Great!" chortled Randal Rumpp. "It worked! It worked! My deal is still on! I'll be back on top yet!"

He dug out his attache case and extracted his portable cellular phone. It took but a moment to reprogram it to ring when his private number was called. He felt empowered again. He was on a roll. Nothing was going to stop him now.

Chapter 17

The first thing Cheeta Ching wanted to do upon disembarking from the churning BCN helicopter was to liberate the Rumpp Tower. She announced this in a triumphant screech that made everyone else reach for their eardrums.

"Nobody goes in until Cheeta Ching, superanchorwoman of our age, has done her duty!"

"So?" Remo asked. "What are you waiting for?"

Cheeta turned to her cameraman. "Is there enough tape left?"

The cameraman popped the cassette port, looked at the cartridge, and shook his head.

"Then load up a fresh one," Cheeta said impatiently. "I want every dramatic moment immortalized on half-inch tape."

"Oh, for crying out loud," Remo burst out, "just let's all go into the building, okay?"

"Not on your miserable life!" Cheeta flared. "Grandfather, please don't let him ruin my story."

"Remo, behave."

"Watch it, Little Father," Remo warned, "or I'll tell everybody how old you really are."

"I am not a day older than eighty!" Chiun screeched, in a voice whose tone clearly suggested that he had seen eighty a long time ago. In truth, the Master of Sinanju was more than a century old, a fact that he was sensitive about, inasmuch as he had never officially celebrated it. Somehow, by the logic of Chiun's ancestral tradition, this lapse denied him the right to claim that august achievement.

"Do not be ashamed of your advanced age," intoned Delpha Rohmer, "for in age there is wisdom. The druids knew this."

"Weren't they men?" Remo said.

"Warlocks. Male witches, which absolved them of the sins of ordinary men."

"Bulldookey."

Remo folded his arms while Cheeta and the cameraman fiddled with the videocam. Cheeta took possession of the old tape while the cameraman reloaded. That gave Remo an idea.

"Want me to hold that for you?" he asked helpfully. "So it won't get lost?"

"Sure, thanks," Cheeta said, handing it over her shoulder absently.

Remo reached out for the tape, a wicked smile on his cruel lips.

Suddenly, Cheeta let out a screech and her hand snapped back. Remo's reflexes ordinarily would have been equal to snatching it from her easily, but Cheeta's ungodly sudden screech had tripped his defensive reflexes and he had faded back from the horrific sound.

"Something wrong?" Remo asked innocently.

"Last time I let you near one of my cameras, a very important tape turned up missing. Mysteriously missing."

"Missing usually is mysterious," Remo agreed.

"I will be glad to safeguard the artifact," Delpha offered.

Cheeta hesitated. Then, saying, "I know I can trust a fellow woman," turned it over to Delpha, who promptly warmed the cartridge by slipping it down her swelling cleavage.

"It will be safe here," she intoned.

"Especially if it picks up traces of your animal repulsion," Remo said unhappily.

"You mean 'attraction,' " Delpha corrected.

"Let's split the difference and say 'aroma,' " Remo said.

The videocam reloaded, Cheeta Ching fluffed her raven-black hair. Strands of it clung to her fingers like a sticky spider web, and she pulled a small can of industrial-strength hair varnish and created a halo around her head. It not only tamed her hair but kept her thick pancake makeup from flaking off her flat cheeks.

She squared her padded shoulders and started for the entrance, saying, "BCN anchor chair, here I come. "

Remo turned to Chiun. "So we just watch?"

"Emperor Smith instructed me to investigate and report on all I beheld."

Remo shrugged. "I guess that means watch. There are worse ways to spend Halloween Eve."

Cheeta got halfway to the door when one of her spiked heels struck a pebble. She stumbled, caught herself, and said, "Oh, damn. I gotta start over."

She went back to her mark, squared her shoulders again, and retraced the path. Her heels made sounds that made Remo expect to see sparks spit in her wake.

Then, walking backward, Cheeta's cameraman went before her, his lens capturing her every brisk, fearless step, the way her hair bounced determinedly. Cheeta narrowed her almond eyes at the camera until they glinted.

She came to an abrupt stop and said, "Okay, cut. Now move off to one side."

The cameraman obliged.

He repositioned himself so he could catch Cheeta's resolute profile as she reached for the door and flung it back.

That was not the image his lens captured. Cheeta reached for the brass door handle. Momentum carried her into the glass. It didn't break. It didn't resist. Cheeta tumbled through it and fell on her flat face in the lobby marble.

Her face quickly sank without a trace, taking Cheeta's shoulders with it.

"The building! It went crazy again!" Remo said.

"Cheeta! My Cheeta!" Chiun screeched.

"Use your atavistic womanly powers!" Delpha called. "Levitate! Levitate!"

The Master of Sinanju reached the scene a second ahead of Remo. He grasped Cheeta by her wildly kicking ankles and pulled back.

Cheeta came loose from the marble floor like a big yellow tooth with legs.

"My God!" she said, wide-eyed. "It happened again!"

"We noticed that, too," Remo said, looking up at the building's face. The lights were going dim again. "We're back to square one."

Cheeta, fuming and flaring her magnificent nostrils, climbed to her feet and complained, "It's not fair! This was my moment of triumph. What the hell's going on here?"

"It is a puzzlement," Chiun said slowly, grasping his wrists firmly. His sleeves swallowed his hands.

Delpha Rohmer drew near, like a professional mourner approaching a vertical coffin.

"There is only one rational explanation," she said.

Everyone looked at her, their faces reflecting their combined thought that a rational explanation would be very welcome at this particular juncture.

"My magic worked, but it has now worn off."

"You call that rational?" Remo said.

"We must summon a greater magic to defeat these forces."

"Yeah?"

"We must join hands and form a circle around this building."

Remo looked at Chiun and back at Delpha. "There are only four of us, and the base of this thing must be the size of a baseball diamond," he pointed out.

"We will enlist others in our cause."

"Like who? Houdini's dead."

Delpha gestured to the line of barbed wire several blocks down Fifth Avenue. On the other side the huge crowd of gawkers, many dressed in Halloween regalia, stood watching. No one seemed to have any interest in approaching, not even the National Guard.

Remo growled, "I think you'll have a tough time drumming up volunteers. They look more scared than the people inside the building."

"I will appeal to their mystical natures," proclaimed Delpha Rohmer, throwing off her trailing garment.

Remo quickly moved upwind. Chiun looked away.

Delpha began chanting, "Sisters of the Moon, join us now! A mighty spell is needed to repair the rupture in our physical plane. Those who believe in the awesome power of womanhood unleashed, join hands with me now!"

To Remo's eternal surprise, those people who believed in the eternal power of womanhood unleashed numbered at least a third of the people behind the police lines, including several police officers.

They stampeded for the nude figure of Delpha Rohmer. Throwing her head back, she lifted her arms in thanks to the hunter's moon.

Almost at once the air changed flavor, and half the stampede came to a dead halt and grabbed mouths and noses. A number retreated. Others pushed ahead through those who were reversing direction.

They surrounded Delpha, whose voice rose from the pack.

"Sisters, join hands with me now!"

Hands grasped hands as a human daisy chain was formed. It wound, sinuous and fluid, toward the Rumpp Tower.

As Remo and Chiun stepped out of their path and Cheeta Ching got her cameraman to record the display, the line of mystical convocation surrounded the Tower until its two ends, like a necklace joining at the clasp, completed the circle.

Delpha called, "Repeat after me: 'Diana, Goddess of the Moon, symbol of our sacred womb . . .' "

"Diana, Goddess of the Moon, symbol of our sacred womb . . ."

"Wait! Wait!" Cheeta cried. "Make room for me. I'm a woman too."

"That remains to be seen," Remo muttered.

The chant was resumed.

"Shine down your mighty light . . ."

"Shine down your mighty light . . ."

"So this shaft of misfortune is restored to sight!"

"So this shaft of misfortune is restored to sight!"

"Now," Delpha cried. "Move around it, closing the circle."

The circle moved. Not everybody moved in the same direction. Not everyone had a clear grasp of the concept of "left," but they soon got organized. Delpha led the chant. "Repeat the following words of power over and over: 'Max Pax Fax.' "

"Did they have faxes in olden times?" Remo asked the Master of Sinanju.

"Hush! I must study this white magic. There may be something yet to be learned of value."

"I've already picked up a magic pointer. Use triple-strength Right Guard."

The circle went around once. Nothing much seemed to happen. It went around twice. The chanters grew hoarse.

On the third go-round half the chanters were croaking like toads and frogs, and Delpha was no longer where she had been.

"I do not see her," Chiun muttered, stroking his wispy beard.

"I do not want to," Remo said.

Altogether, the circle went around twenty times before the last voice gave out and people began collapsing on the cold pavement. Enthusiasm waning, the circle simply broke apart into clots of people standing around, breathing hard.

Cheeta came out of the group, checked her cameraman, and approached Remo and Chiun.

"It didn't work," she panted.

"Gee. Wonder why?" Remo said airily.

"Maybe Delpha knows," Cheeta said vaguely, looking around. "Where'd she go?"

Remo shrugged. "Search us. She disappeared on the second doe-see-doe."

Cheeta's dark eyes went to the spot where Delpha Romher should have been standing. But she was no longer there. She was no longer anywhere on the broad, empty stretch of Fifth Avenue, where old newspaper fragments skittered along the gutters, impelled by gusty winds.

Cheeta's quick brain registered the absence of Delpha Rohmer. Her exquisitely made-up face quirked in surprise. Her bloodred lips puckered in astonishment.

But from her mouth there came only these words: "My tape! That bitch ran off with my tape!"

Remo asked, "Don't you mean 'witch'?"

Cheeta turned like a angry lioness. "I mean bitch with a capital B! Do you realize how much that tape is worth?"

"What's the sweat? You still have the second tape."

"Of over a hundred New Yorkers making fools of themselves. Me included." She shouted over to her cameraman. "You! Erase that tape. Right now, buster!"

The cameraman obediently popped the tape. Instead of trusting his machine's eraser head to fulfill Cheeta Ching's instructions, he smashed the tape under his pounding heel until loops of tape squirmed beneath his feet, like a nest of flattened brown worms.

For good measure, he kicked the tangled mess into an open sewer grate.

Chapter 18

Remo Williams found a pay phone, put a quarter in the slot, and promptly lost his coin.

The next three NYNEX pay phones also ate his quarters. It finally cost him a dollar twenty-five to reach the long distance operator, who promptly asked him for an additional two dollars and sixty-five cents for the first five minutes of his long distance call to Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York.

When Harold Smith's lemony voice came over the telephone, Remo said, "Bad news, Smitty. The Rumpp Tower is still an intangible asset of the Rumpp Organization. "

"You can uncover nothing?"

"It's there, but it's not there. We went in, fell into the subbasement, and had to dig out again."

"Did anyone see you?"

"Only Cheeta Ching."

Smith's voice went stiff as a graham cracker. "Miss Ching is there?"

"Yeah, and she and Chiun have picked up where they left off."

Smith groaned. "Oh, no. Has security been compromised?"

"It's worse than that," Remo said cheerfully, enjoying getting a rise out of the colorless Harold Smith. "She has Chiun convinced that they are expecting their first child."

"My God! Chiun is the father. Do you know what this means?"

Remo rolled his dark eyes. "Do I ever. The rest of my life is going to be ruined by that lemon-faced shark. "

"Remo," Smith said urgently, "I want you to get Chiun away from that woman. Away from the Rumpp Tower. Regroup. We will look into this from other angles. "

"You calling us back to Folcroft?"

"No. Find a hotel. Contact me after you register."

"I'll give it a try, but Chiun's got Cheeta calling him 'grandfather.' This could be long-term problem."

"Is there anything else?"

"Did I tell you about the witch?"

"Witch?"

"Delpha Rohmer. Name excite a memory chip?"

Remo heard Harold Smith's fingers making hollow clicking sounds on his ever-present computer keyboard.

"I have her as the official witch of Salem, Massachusetts."

"You have her right."

"What is her role in this?" Smith asked sharply.

"As far as I can see, professional glory-hound. She ripped off one of Cheeta's precious videotapes."

"Is there anything on it that should concern the organization?"

"Not unless the thought of white night-gaunts running loose freaks you out."

"Excuse me?"

"Just witch talk," Remo said. "If I read Delpha right, it won't be long before she and that tape are on Horrendo Riviera or Nancy Jessica Repunsel."

Smith said, "Find a quiet out-of-the-way hotel and contact me directly, Remo."

"Gotcha," Remo said, hanging up. The phone immediately rang, and on impulse, he picked it up.

"This is the operator. Please deposit an additional seventy-five cents."

"Only if you refund the buck-twenty I lost to all your non-working pay phones."

"I cannot do that," the operator said primly.

"Then I cannot deposit additional funds."

"Then I must charge the receiving caller."

"His name is Smith, and he loves paying my bills," Remo said, hanging up.

The Master of Sinanju was not pleased at the instructions he was given.

"I will not abandon Cheeta in her hour of torment," he said tightly.

"Her hour of torment began the day she was born, and has poisoned everyone she ever came into contact with, not the least of whom is us," Remo said hotly. "Smith says we lie low. So do we lie low, or do we kiss off our current contract negotiation?"

"We lie low," Chiun said bitterly. "But if Cheeta refuses to speak with me after this incident, I will hold it against Harold the Smith forever."

"Gee, I was just talking to him, and he has his heart set on being the godfather."

Chiun's wispy facial hair trembled with surprise.

"Really, Remo?"

Chapter 19

When Delpha Rohmer, Official Witch of Salem, Massachusetts, President of the Sisterhood for Witch Awareness, swept into the lobby of the Multinational Broadcast Company's New York headquarters, the Purolator guard looked up, frowned, and sighed.

"Aren't you a little old for trick-or-treat, lady?"

"I offer no tricks," she said haughtily.

The guard dug out a handful of butterscotch candies he kept behind the desk for his own use. "Okay," he said grudgingly, "put out your bag."

"You fail to understand, man-mortal. I have come bearing a prize that your news director will covet greatly."

"Covet?"

"Be good enough to inform him that Delpha Rohmer has footage of the haunting of the Rumpp Tower."

"Haunting?"

"Baphomet has declared it his domain on earth. And I have proof that Randal Rumpp is in league with the Great Horned One." From out of Delpha's cleavage came the black videocassette.

The guard looked at it. He recognized that it was no home VCR cassette, but a half-inch-tape cartridge. He picked up the lobby desk phone and said, "Mr. Graff. I have a . . . witch here to see you. Says it's about the Rumpp Tower thing. She says it's haunted and she has tape to prove it."

The guard listened a moment, then said, "Let me just say that she sounds serious."

Knute Graff thought Delpha Rohmer looked serious, too. He accepted her business card, winced, and swallowed his impulse to laugh. He said, "Come with me," and turned swiftly so he could relieve the stress of the moment with a half-repressed smile.

In the MBC viewing room, he ran the tape through.

"Who shot this?" he asked.

Delpha said, "Does it matter? I am offering it to you."

The news director watched as Cheeta Ching came on.

"Wait a minute!" he exploded. "I can't run this! That Korean Shark would eat me alive!"

"The most dramatic footage has nothing to do with her," Delpha pointed out, in a toneless voice that made the man think of sucked-dry flies in an old spider's web. Dead.

Graff watched the footage of Randal Rumpp claiming credit for the dematerialization of Rumpp Tower incident, and his eyes went wide. Then he came to footage that he could not explain.

"What is that thing?" he blurted.

"It is a negative night-gaunt," he was told.

"Looks more like a positive one."

"A positive night-gaunt would be black," Delpha explained. "This unholy creature is white."

"I can see that. But where the heck is its face?"

"It has none. This is how I know it to be a night-gaunt. "

Eyes still wide, Knute Graff swiveled his chair around and looked at Delpha Rohmer.

"You know, if I use this tape, it might be called a gross breach of journalistic ethics."

"Yes?"

"On the other hand, that Korean Shark once shafted me good. How much do you want?"

"Ten thousand dollars. And as much exposure for myself and my religion as you can deliver."

"Religion?"

"Wicca was recognized as such long before the Burning Times," Delpha said in her sonorous voice.

"Exactly how long ago was that?"

"Before Christ was a corporal," she said flatly.

"You were an eyewitness to what's going on uptown?" Graff asked, switching the subject as fast as he could.

"I was."

"Deal." Knute Graff picked up the phone and made a quick series of calls.

"Payroll? Draw a check for ten grand. Payee: Delpha Rohmer."

"Editing? I have some tape you won't believe. I want it to lead our seven o'clock report."

"Security? Triple the guard. And if you see any sign of Cheeta Ching, fire a warning shot into the air. If she doesn't back off, shoot to wound. And don't miss."

Graff hung up and turned to Delpha Rohmer. "Lady, you're about to become the most famous witch since Elizabeth Montgomery."

Delpha Rohmer's smile was like moonlight falling across a row of tombstones.

"Fame is precisely what I want," she said hollowly.

Chapter 20

The Rumpp Tower footage went out over the air at exactly seven o'clock Daylight Savings Time. It was repeated on the seven-thirty New York satellite feed to local affiliates in the western time zones.

CNN picked it up, and once they had it the entire world saw it. Literally.

ITAR-the Russian Information Telegraph Agency, once called TASS-ran it in the middle of the night, which, because they were on the other side of the international date line, was November 1 in the Russian city of Nizhni Novgorod.

Nizhni Novgorod was a grim industrial city, once known as the closed city of Gorky. A place where dissidents were exiled. It was very cold in Nizhni Novgorod. And it was especially cold in the apartment of Yuli Batenin, formerly charge d'affaires with the former Washington embassy of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

These days, Yuli Batenin baked bread for thirty thousand rubles a day in an aging bread factory, which was enough to pay for a cold-water walk-up on Sovno Prospekt, but not to heat it. Even if there had been any fuel oil on the open market.

Yuli Batenin sat in his overstuffed sofa chair, trying to keep the loose spring from popping into his rectum, and shivered in a threadbare camel-hair blanket, which when he slept on a fold-down cot kept him no warmer than it did when he was awake.

The television reception made him shiver even more. There was so much snow he could only think of the coming Russian winter and shudder endlessly.

He was watching the news when the footage of the strange events in downtown Manhattan came on. The commentator was talking about an obscure American holiday known as Halloween.

The spring was worming itself into his left cheek, so Yuli shifted carefully. He was barely paying attention to what the commentator was saying. Under his breath he cursed the spring, the sofa, the apartment, the new Russia, and most of all the series of events that had turned him into a non-person.

It had been better in the old days. Before Gorbachev. Before Perestroika. Before Glastnost. When Yuli Batenin had enjoyed the privileges of being a major in the KGB at the same time as he enjoyed living among the comforts of the West. He didn't know which he missed most, the old Russia or the West.

Yuli Batenin happened to look up as the footage of the Western ghost came on.

Even through the snowy reception, and despite the fact that the tape had been duped several times and was as blurry as a Moscow drunk's speech, Yuli Batenin recognized the ghost.

He stood straight up and swore, "Chort vozmi!"

He put his face to the screen, as if to make out every detail, and fumbled with the broken contrast knob.

"Nyet, nyet, nyet," he moaned. "It cannot be!"

As the picture resolved itself, a low curse of a breath escaped Yuli Batenin's curling lips.

"Brashnikov!" he hissed. "You miserable thief! You are alive."

Yuli Batenin stood up, like a man who has seen his own ghost. He stared at the screen until the picture was replaced with footage of the latest food riots in Omsk.

"Alive," he repeated.

Then a twisted smile crossing his lips, he added, "But not for long."

There was no phone in Yuli Batenin's apartment. Even if he had been a millionaire in American dollars, there still would have been no phone in Yuli Batenin's apartment. Yuli Batenin had acquired an incurable fear of telephones during his last posting. The very sight of one made him shudder uncontrollably.

At first Yuli Batenin's upstairs neighbor, Mrs. Biliandinova, did not want to let him use her telephone.

"This is joke, da?" she asked suspiciously.

"This is joke, nyet. I must use telephone."

"You are afraid of telephone!" spat old Mrs. Biliandinova. "So you tell me countless times. I am forced to muffle bell because it frightens you so."

Batenin made his voice firm. "Babushka, you will let me use telephone. I am former major."

"In defunct Red Army. There is no more Red Army. And I will not let you use telephone unless you first tell me who you will be calling."

"I will be calling Moscow."

"I cannot afford to call Moscow. You are mad."

"I will call collect."

"They have no more money for foolish telephone calls in Moscow than they do in Nizhni Novgorod."

"Babushka, I will break down door," Batenin warned.

Silence. A chain rattled. And a huddled, red-faced woman drew open the door and said, "Broken door will cost more than telephone call. Make call, Batenin. But if you cause me trouble, I will have landlord throw you out. That is one good thing about the new order. Tenants can be evicted."

Yuli Batenin had difficulty getting through to Moscow. That was not unusual. With the current state of the collapsing Russian infrastructure, he would have had trouble calling a downstairs apartment.

It also didn't help that he made his call with his eyes shut because even now, three years after the telephone phobia had seized him, he could not bear to look at one. He asked the local operator to put the call through. Dialing would have been too much for him. Just holding the instrument made his knees shake.

Finally, he got someone at the number he called.

"Is this KGB?" Batenin asked eagerly.

"No. This former KGB. Once great spy apparatus. Now clearinghouse for secrets to highest bidder. You wish to buy?"

"No. I wish to make you rich."

"I am already rich. Today I have sold Stalin's diaries to American film company. It is to be miniseries. We are hoping Bobby will take part of Stalin."

"Bobby?"

"DeNiro. "

"Idiot!" Batenin snarled. "This is matter of national security. Soviet property of greater value than anything in your files is in United States and must be recovered."

"This is new?"

"Is greater than the method of preserving Lenin's corpse."

"Impossible! These is no such secret."

"Okay. We stole it from Japanese."

"That is better. Give me locator number. If we have not sold it, I will see."

"Locator Number 55-334. I will hold."

He held for over an hour, during which the babushka Biliandinova carried on something fierce, complaining bitterly of the cost. Yuli Batenin got so weary of it that he carefully laid down the telephone and brained her with her own wooden rolling pin, which she was waving threateningly. After she had hit the floor, he applied the hardest part of it to the back of her fat neck until he heard a satisfying crunching sound.

Thereafter it was very quiet in the apartment, and Yuli Batenin, formerly Major Batenin of the KGB, could at last hear himself think. He closed his eyes again, amazed that he had summoned up the courage to use the phone at all. Perhaps he was getting over it.

After a while, the voice came back. It sounded very impressed.

"You have told truth," it said.

"You have found file?"

"No. File was moved to new ministry. It must be very important, because everything else abandoned."

"What new ministry?"

"I have number."

Yuli Batenin called the number and got a crisp female voice that spoke only one word: "Shchit. "

"Am I speaking to new ministry?" asked Batenin.

"Who is asking, please?"

"I am Yuli Batenin, formerly with KGB, calling on matter of gravest important to Soviet Union."

"Idiot! There is no Soviet Union. Where do you call from?"

"Nizhni Novgorod."

"Where?"

"Gorky."

"Oh. Hold the line."

"But-"

The unmistakable sound of being put on hold came over the long miles between Nizhni Novgorod and Moscow. Yuli Batenin had no choice but to hold the line. If he was disconnected, it might be weeks until the lucky connection was reestablished. If ever, given the pitiful state of his once-proud motherland.

He hummed "Moscow Nights" as he waited. Perhaps they would reinstate him. Perhaps he would no longer be required to live in disgrace in this dull city, which had once been the dumping ground for inconvenient traitors like Sakharov. Perhaps the clock would be rolled back and all of Russia would be reunited in socialism.

Yuli Batenin had less time to wait than he had dreamed possible. And when they got back to him, it wasn't through a crisp female voice over hundreds of miles of rusting cable but by crashing in the apartment door and seizing him roughly.

There were three of them. Plainclothes men. Very KGB.

"Yuli Batenin?" the tallest of them asked stonily.

"Yes. Who are you?"

"You will come with us," the man said gruffly, as the other two dragged him by his elbows down the dingy apartment stairs and out into the sterile autumn cold of Sovno Prospekt.

They flung him into a waiting car and, as the car sped off, Yuli Batenin found himself weeping with a mixture of pride and nostalgia. He himself had seized dissidents in just this fashion during the days of his youth.

"Is just like old days," he blubbered. "I am so happy."

They slapped him to quiet him, but he only smiled harder.

Chapter 21

The Master of Sinanju was ignoring the prattling whites.

As he sat on a tatami mat before the hotel room television, with the incessant honk and blare of city traffic permeating the room, he bided his time, waiting for the glorious face of Cheeta Ching, his Cheeta Ching, rosy-cheeked with child, to appear.

The whites prattled on, disturbing his thoughts.

"I got it all figured out, Smitty," Remo was saying.

Over the miles of phone wiring, the brittle voice of Harold W. Smith buzzed. Its noise offended the ears of the Master of Sinanju above all.

"Yes, Remo?"

"It's a hologram."

"Pardon me?"

"The Rumpp Tower is a hologram," Remo repeated. "You know, one of those 3-D gimmicks."

Chiun snorted derisively. The whites prattled on, unheeding.

"What about the people trapped inside?" Smith asked.

"Holograms too," Remo said. "It's the only thing that makes sense."

"So far, you are not even making that," Smith buzzed.

"Follow my train of logic," Remo said, looking over to the bright television screen. His face was reflected in a wall mirror for the Master of Sinanju to see. His round white eyes grew interested in the image they beheld.

The Master of Sinanju casually reached up to change the channel.

Remo looked away with a frown and resumed speaking.

"Listen," he said. "Rumpp is about to be shut down. He's got an ego bigger than Lee Iacocca. He can't handle it, so he arranges for a hologram of his Tower to appear, to fool everyone who tries to evict him."

"Not likely," Smith said.

"And to make it really, really look good," Remo went on, "he has holograms of people planted so that when they seem to step outside, they fall into the ground."

"Explain how you and Chiun fell through the atrium lobby."

"Simple. Rumpp had the marble ripped up and laid down a hologram floor. We couldn't stand on it, because it was just light. The hologram people didn't fall through because they weren't solid either."

"Not plausible," Smith said sharply.

"Yeah? You got a better theory?"

"No," Smith admitted.

"Then let's go with mine until you do."

"There's only one thing wrong with your theory, Remo."

"What's that?"

"If the present Rumpp Tower is a three-dimensional illusion, where is the real thing?"

Remo's confident expression fell in like a black hole with a white face. He wrinkled his forehead unhappily. He pulled on an earlobe and scrunched up his right eye and that side of his face.

Remo snapped lean fingers. "Simple. He moved it."

The Master of Sinanju snorted and attempted to return to his meditations. But he knew there would be no peace unless these whites were allowed to indulge their mania for trivia.

"Remo, it is not possible to simply move a sixty-eight-story office tower," Harold Smith pointed out in a firm voice.

"Maybe it was on jacks, and he just sent it dropping into the earth," Remo said with less confidence than before.

"Hardly."

"Okay, there are some weak links in my logic chain. But I still say the only rational scientific explanation is a hologram scam."

"Perhaps we should not be looking for a rational scientific explanation," Smith said slowly.

"What other kind is there?"

"What has Chiun to say about this matter?"

"Who knows? I'm still trying to get a handle on this baby situation."

"I spoke with Chiun earlier," Smith said.

Across the room, the Master of Sinanju cocked a delicate ear while feigning disinterest.

Remo brought the receiver closer to his mouth and lowered his voice. "Yeah? What'd he say then?"

"We did not get to the matter at hand. It seemed that the Master of Sinanju expects me to become the baby's godfather."

"Uh-oh. "

"I told him it was quite impossible, for security reasons. He-er-hung up in a huff."

"Well," Remo said guiltily. "You know how Chiun gets these ideas into his head. It'll pass."

"It will not, liar!" Chiun hissed.

Remo, noticing something on the TV screen that interested him, grabbed the remote unit off the dresser and pointed it at the cable control box. He eased the volume up.

Chiun reached up and changed the channel manually.

Remo changed the channel back.

The Master of Sinanju, in response, lowered the sound.

"Chiun! Cut that out! That looked like a report on the Tower thing coming on."

"The only news that could be of interest will come from the divine lips of Cheeta Ching," he intoned.

Remo offered the receiver. "Here, Smith wants to know your theories about what happened tonight."

Chiun refused to move. "I will have nothing to do with a person who would turn away an innocent child."

"He, she, or it hasn't been born yet!" Remo called over. Cupping his hand over the mouthpiece, he added in a whisper, "Think how many points you can score with Smith if you can solve this mess for him. The President's on his back."

The Master of Sinanju hesitated between opportunity and stubbornness.

"And it'll sure make up for the way we screwed up our last assignment," Remo added hopefully.

"I screwed up nothing!" Chiun flared, leaping to his feet. "Your failure to dispatch the dictator allowed him to seize one of Smith's outermost provinces! No blame is mine."

Remo suppressed a grin. Last time out, Remo had been assigned to assassinate a deposed Central American dictator. Remo thought he had done the job, but weeks later, the man had resurfaced in an new identity as an office-seeker in the California governor's race. Chiun had been seduced into joining the campaign by a promised post as Lord Treasurer. When the truth came out the Master of Sinanju was embarrassed, and ever since he had been determined to restore himself to Smith's good graces.

"Tell that to Smith," Remo suggested.

Chiun grasped the telephone and brought the ugly device to his parchment face.

"Emperor Smith. The truth here is very simple, O all-seeing one."

"Yes?"

"The idiot Rumpp built his ugly tower on a cursed spot."

"Cursed?"

"All Koreans understand that one does not merely set a building down in any old place. There are lucky places and unlucky places in the earth. Restless spirits roam. Unmarked graves abound. This is why we employ mudangs to seek out efficacious places first."

"Mudangs?"

"He means witches!" Remo called over.

"Oh," said Smith, disappointment in his tone. "I do not think we are dealing with witchcraft here, Master Chiun."

"What other explanation is there? Even your white witches have emerged from their places of hiding to brave the hangman's noose to behold the awesome sight."

"I've been trying to explain about the Salem witch trials!" Remo called over. "Somebody forgot to tell him dunking stools went out with the Spanish Inquisition."

"Master Chiun," Smith went on. "Have you no ideas? This matter is beyond my ability to cope with it."

Chiun stroked his wispy beard, one eye narrowing thoughtfully. "White magic has obviously failed. It is time for yellow magic."

"Yellow?"

"Emperor, I have a certain trunk for situations such as this. Had I known more of this matter I would have brought it with me."

"You require it now?" Smith asked.

"You have it safe, do you not?"

"Yes, along with most of your other trunks."

"It is a sad thing not to be in possession of one's most treasured belongings," Chiun said, voice quavering, "but when one is homeless in a foreign land, one must sacrifice for the good of one's employer."

"I have been in search of a suitable property for you and Remo," Smith said quickly.

"I vote for the Bahamas," Remo chimed in.

"I will sign no contract until this unresolved matter is settled," Chiun said sharply.

"I will have the trunk shipped immediately. Which one is it?"

"The green-and-gold one. And take care, Smith-its contents are very powerful. Allow no lacky to manhandle it."

"The trunk will arrive intact, I promise," said Smith, hanging up without another word.

The Master of Sinanju padded back to his tatami mat. Remo had claimed it. Chiun cleared his throat in warning.

Instead of vacating the mat with alacrity, as was proper, Remo asked a question.

"Why does the green-and-gold trunk sound familiar?"

"Because it is familiar," Chiun sniffed. "Sitter-on-mats-which-are-not-his."

"Huh? Oh, sorry." Remo got up and made way.

The Master of Sinanju settled onto his mat and fixed his hazel eyes on the television screen, his expression expectant.

"Waiting for Cheeta, huh?"

"It should not concern you, offerer-of-false-hopes."

"Are you saying that I fibbed when I told you Smith wanted to be godfather to the brat?"

"I am not saying that."

"Good," Remo said in relief.

"The tone of your lying voice is saying that."

"Bulldookey."

Chiun lifted a gnarled hand. "Silence! Cheeta appears."

In fact, it was the harried face of BCN anchorman Don Cooder that appeared on the TV screen.

"Good evening," he said. "Tonight, all New York is agog as one of its most famous-some say infamous-skyscrapers has reportedly been spectralized."

"Spectralized?" Remo muttered.

"For more on this breaking story, we turn now to our junior anchorwoman, our own fountain of fecundity, Cheeta Ching."

Cooder turned in his chair to face the floating graphic of the Rumpp Tower, which expanded and became the repressed-with-fury face of Cheeta Ching. She was surrounded by ordinary New Yorkers, some dressed for trick-or-treating.

"Dan, I'm standing behind police lines surrounding what may be the Halloween spooktacular of the century." Cheeta stepped aside, disclosing the brassy Rumpp Tower. A scarecrow slipped up behind Cheeta and made a two-fingered rabbit-ears behind her glossy head. Cheeta elbowed him hard, and after he'd doubled over in pain, pushed his head below the camera frame and held it down with one foot.

The other trick-or-treaters moved away with haste.

Cheeta went on with her report, every so often grimacing and jumping slightly as the scarecrow attempted to get out from under her heel.

"Over my shoulder can be seen the Rumpp Tower, where tonight perhaps thousands of residents and office workers are trapped by the latest gambit in the titanic financial struggle between Randal T. Rumpp and his legion of creditors."

Don Cooder jumped in. "Cheeta. What exactly has happened to the Tower? We can see it there, plain as day. Looks fine. What's the story?"

"The story, Don, is that Randal Rumpp is claiming to have turned his prime architectural trophy into an insubstantial asset. It is literally untouchable."

"I understand, Cheeta, that you've spoken with Rumpp this evening."

"That's right, Don, I-"

"Any footage?"

Cheeta Ching's face colored. Her bloodred lips thinned, and her black eyes snapped with fury. She muttered something under her breath that, out of the millions watching the broadcast, perhaps only Remo and Chiun, who both understood Korean, picked up on.

"Did she just call him a bastard?" Remo asked Chiun.

"Hush!"

Cheeta went on. "Don, whatever dark forces are at work here, obviously it affects videotape. My exclusive interview was ruined."

"Too bad."

Cheeta smiled through set teeth. A guttural fragment of sound emerged, too.

Remo asked, "Did she just call him a prick in Korean?"

"Be still!"

"But," Cheeta added, lifting a notebook into camera range, "I can quote precisely several of the things Rumpp had to say." She began reading off the pad. "According to the real-estate developer himself, the Rumpp Tower has been 'spectralized.' That is, made insubstantial to human touch. Rumpp declined to explain why he had resorted to this unique approach to protecting his assets from seizure, but it's widely believed in banking circles that this is the last, desperate act of a desperate man, a man who, only a decade ago-"

"That's fine, Cheeta," Don Cooder cut in, "but we have a follow-up report to get to."

"But-"

The angry face of Cheeta Ching winked out and Don Cooder turned to face his audience, saying,

"Spectralization. What is it? Can it happen to your home? Here with a full report is BCN science editor, Frank Feldmeyer."

The Master of Sinanju stabbed the OFF switch angrily.

"Hey, I wanted to see that report!" Remo protested.

"There is a saloon in the lower regions of this building," Chiun said. "I am certain if you cross his palm with silver, the saloonkeeper will oblige you."

"Crap," said Remo, turning on the TV again. Chiun retreated to the dresser and seized the remote. He stabbed the button.

A competing newscaster appeared. The anchor was explaining, as if it were a perfectly ordinary occurrence, how the Rumpp Tower had been "dematerialized."

Remo switched back to BCN.

Chiun ran the channel selector to another broadcast.

This particular anchor, in referring to the Rumpp Tower, called it "owl-blasted."

Remo and Chiun stopped their struggle for television supremacy and looked at one another.

"Owl-blasted?" they said. They began paying attention to the screen, as the camera pulled back and no other than Delpha Rohmer was revealed seated beside the boyish anchor.

"Here with exclusive footage of the apparent haunting is Delpha Rohmer, official witch of Salem, Massachusetts," said the anchor.

"Perfect," Remo groused.

"First, Miss Rohmer," said the anchor, "can you explain the so-called 'event' on Fifth Avenue?"

Delpha Rohmer parted her scarlet lips in a dry, empty smile. Her eye shadow had been replenished. It was an unappetizing color similar to canned mushroom soup.

"It is not an event," she said in a vaguely sinister monotone. "It is the sign of the second coming of Baphomet, the Great Horned One. Soon all Fifth Avenue, then all of Manhattan, will become as the Rumpp Tower. More innocents will slip into the earth to roast in Baphomet's pitiless hellfires."

"You're not serious?"

Delpha's mushroom-hued lids settled, like an alligator's inner eye membrane. "It will be the fate of all who do not practice the craft of Wicca to fall into the Horned One's toils. Only by embracing the first religion can womankind be saved."

"What about men?" Remo asked the picture tube.

"What about men?" the anchor asked Delpha.

"Men," retorted Delpha Rohmer, "can be saved only by wise women. If the women out in the audience wish to be saved, or desire to succor their menfolk . . ."

"Here it comes," Remo said.

"I have a toll-free number they may call for information," Delpha finished.

"Actually, we don't have time for that," the anchor interjected hastily, "because we want to run that footage."

At which point Delpha Rohmer flicked her fingers in the anchor's face, causing him to fall into a sneezing fit. While the camera cut back to her, in order to spare the continental United States the sight of a star anchor's nasal distress, Delpha tore open her dress front, exposing two pale but generous breasts over which was stenciled a 900 number.

"A trick!" Chiun hissed, looking away. "I saw her fling some exotic herb!"

"If you call pepper 'exotic,' " Remo said dryly.

"To a Korean, Mediterranean spices are as alien as bubblegum." Chiun sniffed.

"Shall I change the channel, or do you want to copy down the number?" Remo asked.

"No! It is as the Book of Sinanju says: 'Never trust a mudang. Especially a white one.' "

"So much for magic," said Remo, grabbing the remote. But before he could bring it into play, the footage captured by Cheeta Ching's cameraman rolled. His finger on the channel-changer, Remo froze. "Chiun! Check this out!"

Chapter 22

The long black Volga automobile carried former KBG major Yuli Batenin through the gates of a forbidding gray stone prison, causing his heart to leap with joy.

In the good times, the KGB sometimes had operated from behind the impenetrable confines of Soviet state prisons.

The Volga swept past the security gate and around to a rear entrance-another good sign.

Batenin was marched in. His feet were glad. The oppressive weight of Democracy seemed to be lifted from his square shoulders with every stumbling step.

He was taken into an office with only the modest legend SHCHIT on the pebbled-glass door.

"There is that word again, 'Shield'," Batenin muttered.

A hard truncheon jabbed him close enough to the kidney area to get his attention, but not near enough to cause blood in the urine.

His grimace did not look like a smile, but he recognized the blow with pleasure. A good old-fashioned KGB blow. Not like the sissies in the new Federal Security Agency, a toothless organization designed to sound like the American FBI in a stupid compromise between national pride and good PR. It disgusted Batenin, the way the new leadership aped everything American.

The door came open. Batenin was urged in.

Seated at a substantial desk was a dour, thick-set man in a jet-black uniform he had never before seen. The man looked like a Khazakh. It surprised Batenin. Since the breakup, most ethnics had returned to their homelands-there to await the coming civil war, in Yuli Batenin's pessimistic opinion.

"Sit," he was told.

Yuli Batenin sat.

"Batenin," said the officer-a colonel, according to his silver shoulderboards. The man looked like a Nazi, there was so much silver in his black uniform.

"Yes, Tovarich Colonel?"

"I am not your comrade," the colonel spat.

And former Major Yuli Batenin's face fell. Since the failed coup, the term "comrade" had fallen into disfavor. But to Batenin, it spoke of the days of pride in the motherland, now shattered and fighting amongst itself.

"You will address me as 'Colonel,' " the black colonel said. His desk was T-shaped, and bare but for a phalanx of offyellow official telephones.

"Yes, Colonel."

The colonel in black shoved a manila folder across the green felt blotter.

Batenin recognized the KGB seal and the stark words, in Cyrillic letters, that were stenciled on the front.

UTMOST SECRET TO BE STORED FOREVER

"It is the file of which I attempted to warn the Kremlin," Batenin said.

"You mean the White House," said the colonel.

"Yes. Excuse me. The White House. I had forgotten."

It was another public relations humiliation. In order to appeal to rich Americans, the Russian Parliament had renamed the parliament building "the White House." With all the bronze Lenins being torn down, Batenin half expected statues of Washington and Jefferson to one day sprout in their place.

The colonel in black went on speaking.

"This file contains report on Operation Nimble Spirit. What do you know of this?"

"I was case officer," admitted Yuli Batenin.

"It was your assignment to see that the agent in the field . . ." The colonel consulted the file. ". . . Brashnikov, fulfilled his duties to the motherland." The use of the honored phrase made Yuli Batenin blink. These men sounded genuine. But who were they? And what was meant by "Shield"?

"I performed my duty to the best of my ability," Batenin said stiffly.

"Which is why you were exiled to Gorky," the colonel said contemptuously.

"You mean, Nizhni Novgorod," Batenin corrected.

"If Shield fulfills its mission, it will be Gorky once more. And St. Petersburg will again be Leningrad, and the people will eat once again," the colonel said flatly.

Yuli Batenin's eyes became startled coins. "You are KGB?"

"No, Major Batenin."

Major! They were calling him "major"! Why?

"We are Cheka," the colonel said flatly.

"Cheka?"

"Then, VCheka. After that, OGPU, NKVD, NKGB, MGB, MVD and more recently, KGB. Now we are simply Shield. The name is no more than the fashion of the day. Our purpose remains the same: Protection of the Motherland, Holy Russia."

"You are good communist?"

The colonel only glared with his narrow black Khazakh eyes.

"I am Colonel Radomir Rushenko, and I offer you an opportunity to be reinstated at your former rank with your former pay, in our organization."

Major Batenin almost leaped to his feet with joy. In fact his knees started to straighten, and the patched seat of his pants actually left the hard oak chair for a moment.

Then he remembered an important detail.

"A hummingbird could not live on my former salary, today."

"We pay in dollars, not rubles," said Colonel Rushenko.

"If you paid in nickels it would be better than rubles," Batenin admitted sadly. "But why me?"

"We have watched the same newscast as you did, Batenin," Colonel Ruskeno said firmly. He extracted a number of color photographs from the folder and slid them to Batenin's side of the desk.

Batenin took them up. They showed a manlike creature, all in white, with a smooth, bulbous head. A white cable looped up from sockets mounted on each shoulder, to disappear behind the creature's back.

The last photograph showed a black-haired Georgian, with shifty bright eyes and the sharp face of a ferret.

"This is Captain Rair Nicolaivitch Brashnikov, a special operative for KGB," the colonel said flatly.

"Nyet. This is Rair Brashnikov, who is thief. He ruined entire Operation Nimble Ghost. He cost me my career. And worse, he caused me to tremble at the very sound of-"

The telephone rang.

Major Yuli Batenin shot out of his hard chair and found refuge under the spread legs of a guard. Batenin had his hands over his eyes and was trembling from head to toe.

Colonel Rushenko let the telephone ring three times before picking it up. With cool dispassion, he noticed that each shrill ring had the same effect on the cowering major's body as would two live copper wires from a portable generator.

Ignoring Batenin, he listened to the voice at the other end of the telephone. Then he hung up.

"Your plane is ready, Major Batenin."

Batenin looked up. "Plane? What plane."

"The plane that will take you to America, where you will liquidate the renegade Brashnikov and recover the vibration suit that will restore the Union."

It was the most terrifying sentence Major Yuli Batenin had ever heard. Still, he found the strength to rise and salute.

"I am proud to accept this assignment," he said sincerely.

"You will be dead if you botch it," said the colonel, not bothering to return the salute.

And the cold, dismissive tones of Colonel Rushenko made Yuli Batenin's KGB-trained heart warm in response.

It was almost like being back in the USSR again.

Chapter 23

Remo and Chiun stared at the image on the TV screen.

It was a floating white figure, with cables looping up from its shoulders like the transparent wings of a fly.

"It can't be," Remo said.

"The fiend," Chiun rasped.

"I don't believe it," Remo growled.

The sniffling anchor was saying, "This footage was shot from a helicopter, and purports to show a supernatural being inhabiting the Rumpp Tower."

As they watched the white figure, visible through a darkened pane in the southwest corner of the Rumpp Tower, it rolled in midair like a drowned corpse.

Probably no one watching the tape could make out the blocky object that hung in the white webbing knapsack on the back of the floating figure. It was too indistinct. The letters on the back of the boxy object were too faint to be read by normal eyes.

But the eyes of the only two living Masters of Sinanju were not ordinary.

And they knew exactly what to look for.

A logo that said: SEARS DIEHARD.

"I believe it," Remo said unhappily.

"The Krahseevah," hissed Chiun, making tiny yellow mallets with his bone-hard fists.

"Mystery solved." Remo said glumly, snatching up the telephone. He got Smith immediately.

"Smitty. Turn on Channel Four. Right now."

"One moment."

A moment later Harold W. Smith's surprised voice came back, saying, "What should I be looking for?"

"It shiny and white and trouble."

"All I am getting, Remo, are two rhinoceroses copulating."

"Your Channel Four must be different than ours. Try MBC News."

The sound of Smith's breathing went away. Then there came a hoarse, "Oh my God."

"Look like the Krahseevah to you?" Remo asked.

"I do not know. I have never seen this creature."

"Well, Chiun and I have. And it's the Krahseevah all right. I thought you call-wasted him."

"By all rights, Remo, the Krahseevah, as you call him, should have been atomically scattered through the nation's telephone system, after we tricked him into teleporting himself to a dead phone here at Folcroft. "

"Well, he's loose in the Rumpp Tower. And five will get you ten, he's responsible for what's going on down there."

"I wonder," Smith said.

"Wonder what?" Remo asked.

"Remo, do you recall reading of system-wide telephone difficulties over the last few years?"

"Sure. Once La Guardia was shut down for over an hour, because flight-tracking information is carried between airports through Ma Bell's lines."

"These service interruptions date back approximately three years."

"Yeah. About that."

"The same length of time since we tricked the Krahseevah into, we thought, destroying himself."

"You don't think . . . ?"

"The Krahseevah, you will recall, possessed the ability to make himself insubstantial. This enabled him to steal into high-security installations throughout the nation and make off with valuable technology for his Russian superiors. It was one of the last-gasp efforts of the former Soviet Union to achieve technological parity with the U.S., before their system finally collapsed of its own backwardness."

"Don't remind me," Remo said sourly, glancing at the footage of their most aggravating opponent as it was replayed.

"A side effect of this property was that if he energized the suit that provided him with this ability while holding an openline telephone, his unstable, dematerialized atoms and molecules would be sucked into the phone lines, much the way electrons travel as electricity, only to reintegrate, intact and alive, on the other end."

"Yeah," Remo said bitterly. "He was a human fax. Chiun and I couldn't touch him, catch him, or stop him."

"Until I devised a foolproof plan to destroy him," said Smith.

"So much for foolproof," Remo pointed out.

Smith's harsh voice softened, as if he were reliving the entire operation.

"We set it up perfectly. A lure on an Air Force base."

"I remember. We had a stealth plane that didn't exist. It was a hologram."

"Designed to make the Krahseevah, when he turned off his suit in order to steal the prototype model, doubt the status of his molecular state."

"It was good enough for me to get a good shot in."

Chiun squeaked contrarily, "A proper blow, and we would not be having this problem!"

"So? I only winged him. It happens."

"Your repeated failures will go against us at the next negotiation!" Chiun said loudly. "But at least no blame will attach itself to our emperor. His head will be spared by the President, whoever that person will be this time."

Remo said, "I think Chiun's trying to brown-nose you, Smitty."

Smith ignored the outburst and went on: "The Krahseevah reacted as I thought he would. He went to the nearest phone and dialed the Soviet Embassy in Washington, from which he apparently operated. But the phone was programmed to dial only one number. That of a Folcroft phone."

"Which you disconnected," Remo pointed out. "You said it would scatter the guy into a million dial tones."

"The only explanation is that the Krahseevah has been caught up in the telephone system, wreaking havoc, and somehow emerged through one of the Rumpp Tower lines," Smith said.

"Talk about a wrong number," Remo remarked glumly.

"And I am responsible for it," Smith said, his voice aghast.

"Okay, we know what's up. Now we just have to figure out how to stop this jerk."

"There is more to it than that, Remo," Smith said slowly.

"Yeah?"

"Recall that Randal Rumpp had claimed credit for the events of this night. We have every reason to believe that Rumpp and the Krahseevah have joined forces."

"So? Chiun and I are running a two-for-one Halloween special. We'll take them both out."

"Not until we better understand the situation. Sit tight. I will get back to you."

"Do not forget my trunk!" Chiun called, just as Smith hung up.

Remo snapped his fingers. "Now I remember. That trunk! It was full of your shaman junk. The stuff you used to exorcise that missile base, before we knew we were dealing with a Russian scam and not poltergeist."

Chiun gave his kimono skirts a resolute hitch. "We were dealing with dark forces. This time, we will deal with them intelligently and atone for our past failures."

"Chiun, this is science, not magic. We gotta fight it scientifically."

"White ignorance," Chiun scoffed.

The TV began scrolling vertically. Absently, Remo stuck out his two outer fingers and folded back the middle pair and his thumb. He pointed them at the rising black transmission line and said, "There's no such thing as magic."

The line followed Remo's fingers when he lifted them.

"Machine-worshipper," Chiun spat.

"Bulldookey," said Remo. The transmission line slipped back just before it got to the top edge of the tube and Remo caught it again. This time it followed his fingers until the picture was perfect once more.

"When Emperor Smith instructs us to seek out this enemy," Chiun said firmly, "I will have my herbs and bells and you may attack it with a turbocharged hotcheese blaster, and we will see which is more effective."

"There is no such thing as a turbocharged hotcheese blaster," Remo pointed out.

"By morning, some greedy white tinkerer will have invented one. You may be first in line to purchase the worthless thing. Heh heh heh."

Ignoring the dry cackling of the Master of Sinanju, Remo went to the hotel window.

The Rumpp Tower was visible only a few blocks away. It was as dark as Remo's mood.

"This is not going to be easy," he muttered unhappily.

Chapter 24

The Aeroflot flight that carried Major Yuli Batenin of the supersecret Russian organization known only as "Shield" out of Russia had to refuel in Minsk because of insufficient fuel. And again in Warsaw, Oslo, Reykjavik, and Halifax, Nova Scotia, because Areoflot's credit standing was so poor no airport was willing to fill the Ilyushin jet's fuel tanks.

Inasmuch as few would accept Russian credit cards, they had to dig into their hard currency reserves at several stops.

This left them with seriously reduced operating expenses by the time the wheels touched down at Kennedy International Airport, chosen not only for its geographical proximity to the operations field but because it was more open to illegal entry than the Texas border.

"We must pool funds," Batenin told the captain in charge of the operation, whose name was Igor Gerkoff.

"It is for me to say these things; you are merely osnaz."

Which confirmed to Yuli Batenin the suspicion that had been growing since he had left the motherland. These men were not ex-KGB. Not all of them. They were Spetsnaz-spetsiadnoye nazhacheniye. Special purpose soldiers of the GRU, military intelligence. They were the shock troops of the former Red Army General Staff.

By osnaz, they were mocking him as a mere secret policeman, which is what he had been in his KGB days, albeit a glorified one.

Whatever this "Shield" was, it was comprised of the most hard-core members of pre-Gorbachev forces. Every man was an athlete of Olympic caliber. This was good. It was also very intimidating to Yuli Batenin, whose background was in intelligence, not operations.

"I have forty American dollars and three kopecks," Yuli said, showing Captain Gerkoff the contents of his pockets.

"Give me dollars, and save kopeks for after next Revolution. When they will be valuable once again."

Reluctantly, Batenin did as he was told. He did not think kopecks would ever be worth anything. Even in good times, they were valueless. But he had no choice.

Others chipped in. Soon, nearly two hundred dollars had been amassed.

"Should be enough to obtain us each fine room in best American hotel," the captain said confidently.

As it turned out, when they presented themselves at the front desk of the Rumpp Regis Hotel, the two hundred dollars was barely enough to get them a single room in the back.

When Yuli Batenin broke the bad news to his Shield unit, few of whom spoke passable English, Captain Gerkoff said, "Is no problem. Take room, Batenin. We come back."

Less than a hour later, there was a knock at Batenin's hotel room door.

He called through the door cautiously. "Who is it?"

"Gerkoff. Shchit."

Batenin opened the door. They were all standing there, in open-neck shirts whose pointed collars overlapped their suit coats. Gold chains festooned hairy necks.

"We have registered, and are prepared to go among Americans undetected by them," Gerkoff said, stepping in.

"How did you register?" Batenin asked, marveling at their clothes.

"Credit cards. We strangle tourists and take theirs. Is no problem."

"Did you steal clothes, too?"

"No. Clothes foolishly donated by Americans to Russia through Project Provide Hope packages. They are latest fashion, no?"

"They are latest fashion, twenty years ago," Batenin said unhappily.

This assertion caused the Shield unit to huddle and converse worriedly. When they broke their huddle, Captain Gerkoff said, "We have decided clothes too fine to abandon. We will keep them."

And Yuli Batenin, looking at the only hope of reviving the Soviet Union assembled before him like extras from Saturday Night Fever, could only smile weakly and hope for the best.

After all, these were the finest killers produced by the Soviet Union. What matter their wardrobe, when it came time to make moist red spots on the carpets of America?

Chapter 25

Randal Rumpp watched the sun come up through his magnificent office window.

The night had passed peacefully. Oh, there had been a few minor problems, such as the attempt by the mob below to storm his office.

Fortunately, Randal Rumpp had had anti-creditor doors installed on all access routes to the twenty-fourth floor. They were modeled on the waterproof sliding doors used to seal off flooded submarine bulkheads.

When his executive assistant burst in to warn him of the impending assault, he coolly reached into an open desk drawer and hit a switch.

A red light should have come on. None did. Then he remembered that the tower electricity was still offline.

Rumpp came out from behind his desk, screaming, "Man the manual controls!"

They jumped on levers and turned big iron wheels concealed all over the floor, sealing off the two main points of invasion and later the remaining fire exits.

Randal Rumpp, not satisfied with having saved his own skin, hurled abuse through the thick doors.

"Go home, losers!"

That only made the pounding grow more heated.

The pounding continued for an hour or so. Then, their rage expended, the mob had apparently withdrawn.

Now, with the sun up, and Randal Rumpp's enthusiasm, fortified by a wide assortment of candy bars ranging from a Skybar to a USA, restored, he was working his cellular phone. The USA company had gone out of business in the early seventies, and Rumpp, who had claimed in print that he hadn't really begun making money until he had tripled his sugar intake, had had a lifetime supply put into deep freeze for his personal use.

"Hello, Mr. Mayor," he said cheerfully, picking nougat out from between his front teeth with a monogrammed ivory toothpick, "have you given any further thought to Rumpp Tower II?"

"The plan is unworkable. Your FAR won't allow for two hundred stories."

"That's what the previous administration said about Rumpp Tower I," Rumpp countered. "The jerks said our permissible height was too much for our floor-area ratio. But I bargained for and got the max-21.6 FAR. And I didn't have an eyesore like this mess to cover up."

"According to some news reports, this mess, as you call it, is a haunting, not your responsibility," the mayor said.

"Hey! That's Cheeta Ching's version of events. She's got one in the oven. You know how that messes up those high-estrogen types. This has my fingerprints all over it."

"What on earth are you up to, Rumpp?"

Rumpp shrugged. "Hey, I do it to do it. I think that's what I'm gonna call my next autobiography. So what's the deal? Do I draw up a letter of intent, or what?"

"I have a nine o'clock with the planning commission."

"Listen, you tell those slobs if I don't get what I want, all city property tax payments stop!" Randal Rumpp warned. "You're not dealing with just any chump here. You're dealing with a Rumpp."

"I know," said the mayor bitterly, hanging up.

"Hmmm. That didn't come out right. Dorma!"

Dorma Wormser raced in, her eyes expectant.

"Take a memo," said Randal Rumpp.

Her face fell. "Yes, Mr. Rumpp."

"I want a reminder in my personal reminder book never to use the phrase, 'You're dealing with a Rumpp.' It's bad for the image. Doesn't sound right, somehow."

"Yes, Mr. Rumpp," sighed Dorma, who had been hired because her boss was an "ass man."

The cellular phone rang.

Randal Rumpp reached for the handset. But his attention was distracted by his executive assistant's headlong leap under a glass coffee table. She huddled under it, in plain view.

"Get out of there! What's with you? You've been jumpy all night."

"I can't help it, Mr. Rumpp. Ever since that . . . thing jumped out of the phone, I've been a wreck."

"Be a wreck on your own time," said Randal Rumpp.

The phone continued to ring.

Dorma shrieked, "Please answer that thing!"

Randal Rumpp lifted the handset. Instantly, his assistant stopped trying to shrivel up into a cowering ball.

"Go ahead," Rumpp said into the mouthpiece. His scowl fled when he heard the tight voice on the other end. He brightened.

"Dad! Now, about those chips . . . Yeah, sure, I'll buy them back. I promise. A little misunderstanding. I fired the jerk who handled that deal. Listen, I need a hand up here. Can you front me some start-up money. Huh? Oh, not much. Maybe three-four million."

The earpiece buzzed angrily. Rumpp's mouth squeezed into a moist, meaty pout.

"Yeah, Dad. I know you're not made out of money. But this is an emergency. I got a problem with the Tower. You know, I think I've outgrown it or something. I need to trade up. How about a little interest-free loan?"

Rumpp listened, wincing on and off.

"Tell you what," he said quickly. "I'll name the new building after you. How's that? Yeah, I'll call it 'the Rumpp Tower.' "

Rumpp listened eagerly. His face resumed wincing.

"Then I'll issue a press release explicitly stating that it's named after you," he said soothingly. "No, I don't want to call it 'the Ronald Rumpp Tower.' Why not? You know these jerks on the planning commission. They won't let me put up a sign that big. If I could do it, I would. Honest. You know me."

The line went silent.

"Hello? Hello? Dad? Damn!"

Rumpp closed the antenna with an angry bat of his hand.

"That old fart! The nerve of him! I offered him the best deal of his life, and he walked way from it. His blood must be running thin, or something."

Randal Rumpp felt the stiffness of his joints as he got out of his executive chair. He decided to commune with his trophies. In his favorite room in the whole world, maybe he'd find inspiration. He took with him his attache cellular.

"Hold my calls, Dorma," he said, as he marched out.

"Yes, Mr. Rumpp."

In the trophy room, Randal Rumpp pored over the takings of a lifetime of cutting corners, wheeling and dealing, and bait-and-switch at the executive level.

He paused to admire a rare Picasso hanging on a wall. He knew nothing about art, but someone had told him at a cocktail party that Picasso was the artist to invest in. He had bought it sight unseen. When it came in, he couldn't figure out which end was up and was afraid to hang it in a public place. Rumpp called the gallery to complain the paint had settled during shipping, and the work was ruined.

When the dealer refused to take it back, Rumpp had the signature painted over and "Property of R. Rumpp" inscribed in its place, figuring that would increase its resale value.

On his second circuit of the room, he noticed something missing. He ran to the door and stuck his head out into the corridor.

"Dorma!"

"Yes, Mr. Rumpp?"

"Did you take my monogrammed Colibri lighter?"

"Of course not."

"Well, somebody did. It's gone. And nobody's been in here except you and me and the-"

Rumpp's face acquired a sick look.

"Oh, God," he said thickly.

Randal Rumpp turned on his portable cellular phone. He lifted the receiver to his ear.

"Anybody in there?" he asked.

"Help me. I am lost in telephone," said a familiar voice.

"I know."

"You! You trick me!"

"There was a screw-up. But don't worry. I fired the jerk responsible. Listen, did you take my monogrammed cigarette lighter?"

"Are you calling me thief?" the voice demanded.

"It was either you or my secretary. And I saw you looking at it. You called it a funny name."

"I called it 'krahseevah.' In my language, it means 'beautiful.' I like beautiful things."

"Case closed. Good-bye."

"I admit it! I admit it!" the voice said hastily. "I have lighter. I will be happy to return it to you."

Randal Rumpp hesitated. "Can you do that without coming out of the phone yourself?"

"I can try."

"How?"

"You lift up receiver. I hand out lighter. It is very simple. Like opening refrigerator door for ice cream cone. "

Rumpp frowned. "I don't trust you."

"You trick me and talk about trust. You phony-baloney."

"Hell, you're the thief here!" Rumpp protested indignantly. "I'm a businessman. I don't steal. I just hoodwink people who don't do their homework. No law against that."

"You want pen, you must lift receiver. There is no other way."

"Forget it," said Randal Rumpp. "I'm not ready to cash in my chips just yet. I'll get back to you."

"Wait!"

Randal Rumpp hung up the telephone. Instantly, it began ringing.

From down the corridor Dorma Wormser shrieked as if in pain, and begged for mercy.

"Remind me to fire that weak-kneed bitch when this is over," Rumpp muttered, moving the bell lever to LOUDEST.

When his executive assistant's screams began to get on his nerves, Rumpp reluctantly suppressed the bell.

It was going to be a long, long day.

Chapter 26

The Master of Sinanju's green-and-gold steamer trunk arrived by express at nine o'clock.

"Your trunk's here," Remo called.

"Do not let the messenger escape."

"Escape?"

Chiun bounded out of his bedroom, wearing a blue-and-white ceremonial robe. Ignoring Remo and the surprised deliveryman, the Master of Sinanju fell upon the ornate trunk. He examined every inch of its lacquered surface for nicks or blemishes.

Finding none, he threw open the lid and did a complete inventory with suspicious eyes.

Only then did he straighten his cat-lean back and address the waiting messenger.

"You may live, careful one."

"You mean 'leave,' " said the deliveryman.

"That too," sniffed Chiun. After the man had closed the door behind him, Remo remarked, "He thinks you were kidding him."

The phone rang. Chiun ignored it. Remo scooped up the receiver and said, "Smitty?"

"Remo!" Harold Smith admonished. "You should never speak my name before I identify myself. Security. "

"Like there aren't twenty million Smiths in the world," Remo muttered. "Okay, what's your problem?"

"The Rumpp Regis is about to be seized for back taxes."

Remo raised an interested eyebrow. "Oh yeah?"

"It just broke over the wire services," Smith added.

"So what do we do?"

"Sit tight. If Randal Rumpp has somehow turned the Krahseevah technology to his own use, it's possible he may move to despectralize it."

"That means we're at ground zero. With a capital Z."

"Await developments."

"What developments?" Remo asked.

"Any developments."

"Great," Remo said sourly, hanging up.

"What did Emperor Smith say?" Chiun asked absently. He was going through the contents of his trunk. Remo noticed he was holding some sort of feather-decorated wind instrument, whose flaring mouth promised an ear-splitting cacophony.

Remo decided the less the Master of Sinanju knew, the quieter the lull before the storm would be.

"He said we're to hang loose until something happens," Remo replied, trying to keep his voice toneless.

Chiun looked up from his trunk. "He said to do nothing?"

"That's about the size of it."

Chiun returned to his rummaging. "Then we do nothing. "

"Not me. I'm going downstairs to get a newspaper."

"For an illiterate like you, that is nothing," Chiun sniffed.

Remo took the elevator to the lobby and bought a paper at the newsstand. He bought a Post, because the Times didn't have a comics section.

The lobby was busy with grim-faced official types who were showing badges. IRS. They were giving the desk clerk a hard time.

"Are we being audited again?" the clerk asked.

"No, sir," said the IRS man said. "We're not auditors. We're revenue collectors."

"If you want to take money from the hotel safe, you'll have to speak with the manager," the clerk sniffed.

"No need. We're seizing the entire hotel."

The clerk paled and looked on the verge of fainting. "Does this mean I'm unemployed?"

"Only if you don't follow instructions. You work for Uncle Sam now."

Remo decided to read the paper in the lobby, seeing as the IRS agents promised to be almost as entertaining as Calvin and Hobbes.

An agent sauntered over and said, "No loitering in this lobby."

"I'm registered," Remo pointed out.

The agent flashed his badge and said, "Agency rules. Sorry."

"You guys are going to bankrupt this place with that attitude."

"I don't make the rules."

"I know. You just jam them down people's throats."

Remo got up and started for the elevator. He reached it a step behind a thick-necked man in a John Travolta ensemble.

The door opened and Remo got on. So did "Travolta."

"I thought Halloween was yesterday," Remo remarked dryly.

The man looked at the elevator indicator board and said nothing.

"Got a match?" Remo asked. The man looked down at his shoes. One hand-his right-rose slightly . . . and Remo became aware that the man was armed. He was no IRS agent. That was for sure.

In fact, he didn't even smell like an American. Remo's senses had been trained to the peak of perfection. But that was only the first step. Chiun had taught him to utilize his heightened senses in ways Remo himself still found amazing. One exercise involved guessing people's nationalities by their personal scents.

It was not as bizarre as it sounded. Personal scents were a mixture of hygiene, diet, and other organic constants. Diet was the predominate determinate, however.

The man in the elevator smelled of black bread and borscht.

A Russian.

In itself, it was not unusual to find a Russian staying at the Rumpp Regis. It was a four-star hotel. Its clientele probably included citizens from Canada to Tongo.

Still, an armed Russian was unusual.

When the elevator stopped at the fourteenth floor and the Russian got off, Remo kept the door from closing again with the toe of an Italian loafer and stepped out into the lobby.

He hung back, staying close to the walls, as he followed the Russian's distinctive scent to a room at the end of one corridor. The man knocked, spoke a thick word that sounded to Remo like "shit," and was let in.

Remo noted the room number and went to a corridor phone. He called his own room.

"Chiun. We got Russians."

"Turn on the lights and they will scurry away," said Chiun unconcernedly.

"I think this may be connected to the Krahseevah. Smith said we may have another Rumpp Tower here."

"He did?" Chiun squeaked. "You did not not tell me of this! I must make preparations!

"Wait a minute!" The phone clicked in Remo's ear.

"Damn," Remo said, racing to the elevators.

The doors opened on a cage going up. Remo ignored it.

The next elevator was going down. Remo knew that because, when the doors opened, there stood the Master of Sinanju, standing before his green-and-gold trunk, wearing a ceremonial white stovepipe hat.

"Little Father, wait!"

From up one sleeve, the Master of Sinanju withdrew the strange feathered wind instrument and brought it to his lips.

It made a sound that paralyzed Remo's supersensitive eardrums long enough for Chiun to stab the door's CLOSE button. It shut in Remo's unhappy face.

"Damn," Remo said again, racing for the stairs.

When he got to the lobby, the Master of Sinanju had placed the trunk in the center of the ornate lobby floor. He flung it open.

An IRS revenue collector came over to lodge a protest and found himself being escorted to the revolving doors by the pressure of two long-nailed fingers on his right elbow. The incredulous look on his heavy, muscular face-revenue collectors, unlike IRS agents, are chosen for their brawn, not their brains-was that of a man who has been seized by a giant tarantula. He was placed inside, and the door started revolving with him in it. Then it stopped abruptly, bumping his nose hard.

Nothing the man could do could unstick the revolving door. He was trapped. He looked almost relieved about it.

Remo warned, "Chiun! That's only going to create more trouble."

"Stand back," Chiun said, shrugging his kimono sleeves back, exposing spindly arms like bony, tanned leather. He dipped into his trunk and extracted with one hand a bamboo wand decorated with silver bells and with the other a drum.

Remo put his hands on his hips. "Let me guess. You're going to drive off the evil spirits with those."

"No," corrected Chiun. "We are going to drive away the evil spirits with these tokens. You may beat the chang-gu drum, since it requires no skill or cadence."

"I am not beating any freaking drum. I told you, we got Russians. I think something is about to break."

"Yes. Our contract, if we do not give Smith proper service. You will beat the drum."

"Will you listen to me if I go along?" Remo asked in a heated voice.

"Possibly."

Remo took the drum. He wrapped one arm around it and began slapping the tight skin with his palm.

"I feel like an idiot!" he protested loudly over the noise.

The Master of Sinanju pretended not to hear him. Remo paused and then began, "Listen-"

Chiun flared, "Keep drumming. It is important. Relatively."

Chiun lifted his wand and shook it. His head rocking from side to side and threatening to dislodge his stovepipe hat, which was tied about his wispy chin by a string, he began to move about the lobby, chanting and making other noises that brought to mind a tomcat caught in the rinse cycle.

Frowning, Remo woodenly beat the drum. With any luck, he thought, this is the five-minute exorcism.

In the middle of all this, Yuli Batenin returned from having breakfast in the hotel restaurant, Soup de Rumpp.

Chapter 27

By eleven o'clock, Randal Rumpp had figured out that he was being stonewalled.

The mayor's office wasn't returning his calls. The Planning Commission wasn't returning his calls. No one was returning his calls.

Randal Rumpp's office suite included several televisions sets in elegant cabinets, and assorted sound systems. All useless in the blacked-out skyscraper.

"I can't stand this!" he complained. "I'm the lead story on every broadcast, and I'm missing everything. Dorma!"

"Yes, Mr. Rumpp?"

"Go down to the lobby and get me a newspaper."

"But Mr. Rumpp. The only papers would be yesterday's."

"Then get me yesterday's paper. The Post, not the Times. I gotta read something. This is driving me bugnuts."

"But the mob . . ."

Randal Rumpp's voice dropped to a throaty growl.

"Dorma, can the mob fire you?"

"No, Mr. Rumpp."

"Think the mob will hire you if I fire you?"

"No, Mr. Rumpp."

"Then go fetch, Chuck."

"Yes, Mr. Rumpp," said Dorma Wormser meekly.

She slunk away, slipping through one of the secret exits and closing it after her.

"Money always talks," said Randal Rumpp confidently. "She'll probably break the stair-climbing record, if there is one. Gotta remember to stiff her for the cost of the paper."

But when eleven o'clock became twelve-thirty and Dorma Wormser still hadn't returned, Randal Rumpp was forced to conclude that one of two things had happened: either she had deserted him, or she had been torn apart by the unruly mob below.

He privately hoped it was the latter. Dorma was single. He could probably get away with holding on to her last paycheck.

But that still left him out of touch. And Randal Rumpp hated to be out of touch. He roamed the twenty-fourth floor looking for a transistor radio. He doubted that he'd find one, inasmuch as personal property that cheap was banned from Rumpp Organization work space, but one never knew. Employees could be treacherous.

The ringing cellular sent him racing back to his office.

"Yes," he said, out of breath.

"Randy?"

"Don't call me that. The tabloids call me that. I hate it. Call me the . . . the Rumpporama!"

"This is Dunbar Grimspoon. The IRS has just seized the Rumpp Regis for back taxes."

"They can't do that."

"They did."

"Damn! Well, what are you sitting there for? Get on it! Get on their cases and make 'em cough back it up!"

"Uh, Rand?"

"Rumpporama. "

"This is a bad time for you, I know. But about your last bill . . . It's overdue."

"Is that all you overpaid lawyers ever think about-money?"

"That's why we're overpaid. Look, if it were just me, okay. But the partners are bitching. This is a sixfigure bill."

"Which will never, ever be paid if you don't jump up this seizure thing," Rumpp said heatedly. "Hear me, Chuck? You tell that to your partners, and get back to me within twenty minutes."

Fifty minutes later, Randal Rumpp was wondering if he had overplayed his hand. His called his law firm. When he identified himself to the switchboard operator, the girl's voice grew chilly and he was put on hold. For an hour.

Rumpp reluctantly cut the connection. "Okay, I overdid it. It happens. When you've been on a winning streak as long as Randal Rumpp, you're bound to screw up in insignificant ways. No big deal. The world's full of lawyers."

He ate three chocolate bars and immediately felt his confidence return. Idly, he picked up his dormant cellular and thumbed the bell button. It immediately began ringing.

Randal Rumpp, more for someone to talk to than for any practical reason, picked up his working cellular and said, "Hello, you still there?"

"Yes. And I still have cigarette lighter."

"Keep it. I got a better deal."

"What is that?"

"Come in with me."

"Come in where?"

"Become a vital player in the greatest deal-making organization on the face of the planet, the Rumpp Organization."

The voice grew interested. "You wish to hire me?"

"At a handsome salary. What say?"

"I say, how much salary?"

"Twice your previous one. I'll have to check references, though."

"I do not think KGB will give such things."

"I know they won't. There's no KGB anymore."

"Is true, then? Russia is no more?"

"Oh, Russia's still there," Rumpp said airily. "It's just a heck of a lot smaller."

"It shrink?"

"You might say that. Listen, this is chitchat. Are you willing to join the Rumpp team, or not?"

"Definitely."

"Okay. I'm going to pick up the other phone now."

"Before you do that, there are two things you must know."

"Yeah?"

"One, I will be unconscious when I leave phone. I will float."

"I saw that happen. You'll come out of it."

"Not if I do not turn off suit before battery runs out. "

"Suit?"

"I am wearing suit. Vibration suit. It enables me to vibrate through solid objects. If I float into solid object, then battery runs low and rematerialize inside, explosion may be nuclear."

"What explosion?"

"The one that will result when atoms and molecules attempting to be occupying same space collide. Is bug in suit."

"That's a pretty big bug," Randal Rumpp said dubiously.

"That," the voice said, "is the second thing. I am ready to come out now."

Randal Rumpp thought a moment. He hadn't bargained on a nuclear downside. On the other hand, who would have thought a day ago he could have found a scam to make the Rumpp Tower safe from the banks? He decided to go for it.

"I'm picking up the other phone now," he said.

The static roar was brief, loud, and seemed to pierce Randal Rumpp's unwary brain like a noisy stiletto. The air about him turned white. Very white.

Randal Rumpp fell back in his chair and hit his head. The cellular phone fell from his fingers and struck the floor.

When Randal Rumpp regained conciousness, he was looking at the ceiling. The ceiling looked ordinary. It was tile. The initials RR had been laid in the tile so large that only Randal Rumpp could see them.

He saw them perfectly now. He just couldn't understand why he was looking up at the ceiling, when he had been sitting up straight at his desk just a moment ago.

He found out, when he tried to extricate himself from his fallen chair. His head hurt. The circulation in his legs had been cut off by the weight of his thighs on the chair edge.

"Damn."

Unable to climb to his feet, he looked around.

Then he saw it. The white creature. The Russian. He was floating limply, just inches before the big picture window that looked out over Central Park and the nearby Rumpp Regis Hotel.

"Oh, shit," said Randal Rumpp, realizing from the limp way the Russian's arms hung down that he was dead to the world. Dead to the world and about to float into the window. The solid window.

Randal Rumpp's legs refused to support him. So he crawled. He crawled hard. He got under the floating thing.

Its face was not expanding or contracting. It looked dead. And Rumpp, for the first time in his life, cared about a fellow human being.

"If that schmuck dies, I'm dead," he said bitterly. "Gotta do something fast."

He tried throwing objects at the floating apparition. All sailed harmlessly through him. He crawled to his computer and yanked out cables, trying to form a lasso. Desperation made him remember his Cub Scout knots. He flung the loop and actually scored a ringer on a left foot.

The loop dropped through the ankle like it was composed of fine mist.

"Gotta figure out a fresh scam," he muttered.

Then, the creature floated into the window.

Randal Rumpp covered his head with his hands and hoped for a painless death. He got, instead, utter silence.

He looked up. Eventually.

The thing was still in the office. It was moving toward the glass again. This time Rump couldn't tear his eyes away from it.

It touched and, like a balloon animal sculpture, bounced back.

Randal Rumpp was exuberant. "Back! It bounced back! This is fantastic! I'm not gonna go nuclear."

Then, like a patient who had been subjected to electric shock therapy, the floating creature started to wave its arms helplessly. The fat bladder of a face contracted. Expanded. It was breathing again. Somehow.

Reaching for its belt buckle, the white creature gave the white rheostat affixed there a twist. Immediately, it lost its fuzzy glow and fell to the rug.

"Ouch!" it said.

Randal Rumpp forced himself to his feet. His feet felt like they were walking across tacks and not carpet nap.

"You-ouch!-okay, pal?" he asked.

"I am fine. Happy not to be vaporized in nuclear fire. "

"Same here," said Randal Rumpp, giving the thing a hand. He pulled it to its feet. It grabbed its own shoulder as if in pain.

"You bounced off the wall. How come?"

The thing tested its footing. Rumpp noticed it stepped carefully, as if testing the solidity of the floor under its ridiculously thick boot soles. "Building was insubstantial. I was insubstantial. We were on same vibratory plane, and so felt solid to one another." The manlike creature extended a rubbery white hand. "Here is lighter."

"Keep it," Rumpp said.

"Thank you. I can keep gold pen also?"

"You stole my graduation Waterman?"

"Da."

"What are you, some kind of klepto?"

"Da. I am klepto. This is why I was sent to America by KGB. To steal. I steal much technology for KGB. And other things for myself, which I send to cousin in Soviet Georgia for black market. All lost now."

"Okay," Rumpp said impatiently. "Now that I know your work history, let's get down to cases. I wanna buy the suit."

"What about job?"

"I changed my mind. How much do you want for it?"

"I keep suit, all the same to you. Very valuable."

"Don't be coy. Everybody's got their price. Name it."

"I want job."

"And I want that suit. Five million."

"Dollars?"

"Yeah."

"Hokay."

"Take a check?" Rumpp asked.

"No."

"Look, I'm Randal Rumpp, the greatest financial genius since Rockefeller. You know I'm good for it."

"I know you are not," the other snapped. "I have been trapped in your telephone system, and overhear every phone conversation. You are pauper."

"The hell I am."

At that moment, the lights came on.

Randall Rumpp looked up at the lights. "Oh, shit. Does that mean what I think it means?"

"If you mean, is building normal again, lights mean that, da."

"Damn. Okay. Forget my buying the suit, I want you to fax yourself over to my hotel."

"Why?"

"The IRS just seized it."

"Ah. The IRS. I have heard of them. They are more vicious that KGB."

"You're pretty smart for a guy without a face."

"Have face under helmet. Is for protection of eyes for when walking through walls."

"Right, right. Listen, if we can pull off spectralizing the Rumpp Regis, the IRS can't do anything."

"What about Rumpp Tower II?"

"On the back burner, until we get this straightened out. How about it?"

"I do not know if this will work. It is dangerous. Also, I do not trust you. You tricked me once already."

"Let me make you an offer you can't refuse."

"There is no such thing."

"When word gets out that the Rumpp Tower is back on line-so to speak-the mob is going to try to bust down my door and tear me limb from limb."

"Da?"

"If you're here when that happens, you get the same medicine," Rumpp pointed out.

The faceless Russian tilted his head, as if thinking. "You make excellent offer. I will telephone myself wherever you wish."

"Great. There's just one last thing."

"What is that?"

"Any way I can hitch a ride with you? I wasn't kidding about that mob."

"Nyet."

"That's Russian for no, isn't it?"

"Da. "

"Damn."

"Sorry. Technology brand-new."

"Okay," Randal Rumpp said, offering the celluar unit, "I'll be in a better bargaining position when the Regis thing is taken care of. Let's give it our best shot."

Randal Rumpp repeated a number and the thing dialed it.

Then the Russian turned on the suit.

Randal Rumpp had seen it before, but it still amazed him. The thing went white, seemed to congeal and collapse, only to be drawn into the diaphragm like a movie image being run in reverse.

The hand was the last to go. After the fingers had released their grip on the handset, the hand practically evaporated.

Rumpp caught the cellular before it could hit the rug.

"When this is over with," he growled, "I'm gonna own that fucking suit. And I don't care who I have to screw over to get it."

Chapter 28

Major Yuli Batenin took little note of the strangeness that was taking place in the Rumpp Regis lobby. There were two persons, one in some Asian native costume and the other a Western man, engaged in making a racket-to the consternation of the desk staff. No doubt, he concluded, it was related to the odd holiday known as "Halloween."

Batenin had just had his first American breakfast in three years, and cared little for watching street performers. He had ordered a Spanish omelet, blueberry pancakes, a side order of wheat toast, orange juice, and two cups of good Brazilian coffee.

It had cost him the equivalent of a year's salary at the bread factory-or it would have, if he'd had any intention of settling his room tab-and probably taken three months off his life span in cholesterol consumption. But Major Batenin didn't care. His first American meal in three years. His first decent meal in the same amount of time. It sat in his stomach like a warm mountain of pleasure.

It was good to be working-truly working-at his craft again.

He strode to the elevator and rode it, humming "Moscow Nights," to his fourteenth-floor suite.

The elevator was old, but soundproofed. So he didn't hear the insistently ringing telephone in one corner of the supposedly nonexistent thirteenth floor.

IRS agent Gerard Vonneau could hear the phone all too clearly. It had been ringing for fifteen minutes now. If he got his hands on the damned thing, he was not only going to give the caller hell, but personally audit him until the end of time.

Gerard Vonneau was an agent for the New York regional office of the IRS. It was his job, along with a team of other agents, to inventory the staid old Rumpp Regis and prepare its contents for auction.

His responsibility was the thirteenth floor, which hotel records indicated had been set aside for no less than Randal Rumpp himself. Somewhere, he knew, there must be an office where that damned phone was jangling. It was the only explanation.

He was going to enjoy answering that telephone. He was going to take extreme pleasure in giving the caller hell. If he ever found it.

There were rings under Cheeta Ching's eyes as she tore apart the morning paper. On the front pages were blurry photos of the white floating thing her cameraman had filmed the night before. Each was credited to MBC News.

"I could just spit!" she hissed, as she ripped the papers to shreds with her busy talons.

The phone rang and she snapped it up, saying, "What is it?"

"Miss Ching. This is Gunilla."

"Right. How are you?" said Cheeta, having no idea who Gunilla was.

"They say you're willing to pay five hundred dollars for information on that witch lady."

Cheeta brightened. "You know where she is?"

"Yes. I'm her maid."

"Maid?"

"At the Rumpp Regis. Her room number is 182. But you'd better hurry. The IRS has taken over the place."

"The check's in the mail."

"But you don't know my-"

Cheeta Ching hung up and stormed from her Park Avenue penthouse.

Moments later, she burst out of a yellow cab in front of the Rumpp Regis Hotel, and stormed up the palatial steps toward the revolving doors.

She noticed a heavyset man in the revolving door. He was pounding on the brass-bound glass, as if he were somehow stuck.

Delpha Rohmer was doing phoners when a demanding knock came at her door. She tried to ignore it. She was speaking to a talk show in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, and judging from the hysterical tones of the callers, witch awareness was reaching new heights.

The knocking continued.

When the talk-show host called for a commercial break, Delpha excused herself and hurried to the door. She threw it open.

The sight of a plump maid with a red worried face was not exactly what she'd expected.

"Can't this wait?" Delpha huffed.

"No, ma'am. Sorry, ma'am. My name is Gunilla, and I want to warn you that Ching woman is on her way right now. And she knows your room number."

If it had been possible for Delpha Rohmer to become more pale than her normal state, she would have done so. As it was, the only outward sign of her fright was a darkening of her mushroom eye shadow.

"Thanks," said Delpha, grabbing her coat. She thrust a five-dollar bill in the maid's plump hand and raced to the elevator, cursing the MBC news director, who had promised her absolute anonymity.

Remo Williams was trying to keep the beat on the stupid drum and at the same time avoid the bear hugs of various IRS revenue collectors.

Avoiding their clumsy grabs was easy. He barely had to pay attention. They tried to circle him, but he ducked and retreated effortlessly. They might as well have been wearing lead diving shoes while attempting to bear-hug a flock of doves.

Keeping time with the Master of Sinanju's jingling and caterwauling, however, was not easy. If there was a rhythm, Remo couldn't find it. If there was a beat, he couldn't keep it. So he just pounded on the stupid drum until the Master of Sinanju had finished his ceremonial spirit-chasing.

Then, suddenly, four strange and unexpected things happened at once.

First, Remo felt wrong. It was a kind of wrongness that was difficult to describe. His teeth hurt. His vision blurred for a microsecond, almost too quickly for an ordinary person to detect.

Chiun stopped in mid-warble.

"Remo!" he squeaked. "Something is wrong!"

"I know. I feel it, too."

They looked around. All seemed normal. Except for the persistent IRS operatives.

Then Remo noticed Delpha Rohmer hurrying from the elevator banks.

Simultaneously, the Master of Sinanju spied Cheeta Ching clopping in off the street.

Delpha and Cheeta were both headed toward the same thing: the revolving door.

They reached it simultaneously. Cheeta noticed Delpha, and Delpha spotted her mortal enemy. In between, the trapped revenue collector pounded futilely for release.

He, at least, got his wish granted.

Cheeta took a run at the door. Delpha, in the act of entering the revolving door, hesitated. Cheeta bulled through. Literally through. She passed through the door as if it were a brass and glass mirage.

The sight of that was enough to start the IRS man's adrenaline pumping. Like a slave lashed to a grinding wheel, he kept pushing the stubborn revolving door, forcing it to squeal and groan.

The door surrendered. The rubber weather stripping slapped and squeaked as Delpha, caught by surprise, was swallowed up and carried between two sheets of brass-bound glass.

The revolving door ejected the revenue collector onto the steps. He was so happy that he didn't realize he was sinking into cold concrete until he had reached the sidewalk and found he had no traction.

Delpha Rohmer saw the man standing-apparently-on his ankles, then looked down at her own feet and clutched for a brass awning pole, moaning, "O Ishtar, save your daughter!"

She was on the last step. It seemed solid.

The IRS man looked up to her with a beseeching expression on his wide face. "Help me!"

When Delpha recoiled, he grabbed for one of her pale wrists. Delpha tried to kick him. She lost her balance and fell into the sidewalk.

Delpha Rohmer had wanted to be a witch since she was a little girl. Witches were her role models. As she crouched on the intangible sidewalk, staring at her hands slipping into the gray concrete, her mind flashed back to childhood.

"Help me!" she screamed in a high, skittery voice. "I'm melting! Oh, I'm melting!"

In a matter of seconds, she was a pair of legs sticking up from the pavement and collecting a horrified crowd.

Oblivious to the fact that she had walked through solid glass, Cheeta Ching stumbled into the lobby yelling, "You'll rue the day you met me, Hortense!"

Seeing no sign of her prey, Cheeta stopped, her eyes raking the lobby.

She started sinking into the floor almost at once.

Chiun shrieked, "Cheeta! She is sinking!"

"We lost Broomhilda, too," Remo said. "What the heck's going on?"

The Master of Sinanju didn't reply. His face a knot of concern, he bounded for the helpless figure of Cheeta Ching.

"Do not fear, child. I am here."

Cheeta seemed not to hear. She was staring at her legs as they vanished into the lobby marble, taking the rest of her with them. Her arms were lifted high. They trembled.

The Master of Sinanju reached out to help her. His thin fingers grasped solid flesh, only to come away empty.

"Remo!" Chiun said in a horrified voice. "I am helpless!"

Remo jumped to his side, but found he could no more touch Cheeta Ching than the Master of Sinanju. He said, "Get down to the basement and catch her there."

Chiun flew off. Remo hit the revolving door. It was as solid as it looked. So were the steps. He took them in one leap.

At the last step, Remo reached out for the crying IRS man. He accepted Remo's outstretched hands gratefully. Remo pulled him to solid ground, then got down on his knees.

He was too late. Delpha Rohmer's kicking feet vanished like popped soap bubbles.

"Damn!" he muttered, rising again.

Along Fifth Avenue, passersby gawked and shouted. They made the same sound as silent movie actors. Which is to say, none.

"What in God's name is happening?" the IRS man moaned.

"Halloween decided to stick around an extra day," Remo said, pushing the man back up the steps.

Back in the lobby, Remo left the man to his fellow agents and went in search of the stairs to the basement.

On the way down, he felt weird again. His teeth chattered briefly, and his vision blurred. The sensation reminded him of the vibrating floor-plates in carnival fun houses he had visited as a boy.

"Now what?" he growled.

IRS agent Gerard Vonneau had gone through the thirteenth floor twice without finding the hidden office. On his third run-through, he decided to be scientific about it.

He located a suite where the phone sounded loudest. In the adjoining suite, it was equally loud. He stormed across the hall. Softer. Definitely softer.

So Vonneau went back to the first suite. Then it hit him. There was probably a connecting suite. Sure enough, what he had taken for a closet door opened on the most immodest office Vonneau had ever seen in a twenty-year career of auditing large corporations.

The telephone was a sophisticated model. He raced to it, snatched up the receiver, and shouted "Hello?" before the entire universe turned white and his right ear was filled with a roar that made him dream of diesel locomotives crackling with static electricity.

It was twenty minutes before the shock wore off.

By that time the floating, white, manlike thing had merged with the ceiling, like a melting ice cream bar. His dangling wrists and limp fingers were the last things to disappear from sight.

Yuli Batenin was seated on the wide, warm bed in his fourteenth-floor suite, watching the latest bulletin with his fellow Shield operatives.

The American anchorman Don Cooder was framed in the screen, looking, to Batenin's eyes, like a wellbarbered water buffalo.

"As yet there has been no explanation for the mysterious reversing of the Rumpp Tower situation. Less than twenty minutes ago, a sharp-eyed National Guard helicopter pilot noticed what no one else had-that his rotor blades were causing the trees decorating the lower building to sway. A team of rescue firefighters braved possible death to enter the building and liberate the people trapped on the ground floor. Efforts are now under way to evacuate the entire building before the uncanny events of Halloween Eve can recur. Of the man at the heart of the controversy, Randal Rumpp, omninously, there is no word."

Captain Igor Gerkoff turned to Batenin, his bulldog face dully curious.

"What does this mean, Batenin?"

"I do not know, but we must watch carefully. All channels."

"There is more than one channel on American TV .

Batenin nodded. "There are hundreds."

And the men of Shield laughed at the hilarious joke. Until Batenin began running up and down the dial with sure clicks of his remote control.

A Russian muttered thickly, "It is no wonder we lost Cold War."

Gerkoff slapped him and Batenin settled on another channel, saying, "Go to other room and watch other televisions. They will bring Brashnikov out. That is when we will strike."

"By then it will be too late."

"No. We could not hope to succeed. There are too many people. Too many cameras."

"So? We kill them all. We have bullets."

"No. It cannot work. We will allow Brashnikov to show himself, and we will find him later. This is a socalled open society. It will be easy."

"I am in charge here, Batenin."

"And I am only one who is certain to recognize Rair Brashnikov when he shows his face."

Captain Gerkoff jumped to his feet angrily. Batenin stiffened where he sat.

The agents of Shield arrayed about the room perked up. Their two senior officers were about to settle a dispute over operational seniority. They licked dry lips, hoping to see blood spilled.

Instead, Major Yuli Batenin suddenly grew a third hand in the middle of his chest.

The hand was white, blurry, and seemed to sprout from the center of Yuli Batenin's breastbone.

Major Batenin, stiffening in anticipation of the fight of his life, seemed unaware of the phenomenon. The hand grew a wrist and, like some fast-growing, leprous vine, continued to emerge from the unaware ex-KBG major's person.

"Sukin syn!" Gerkoff swore, his eyes growing wide.

They had to point to the thing coming from Batenin's chest before the petrified major looked down and saw the phantom appendage.

The howl Batenin gave was like a hot needle piercing their eardrums. He scrambled off the bed as if it were afire, became tangled up in the loose bedding, and thrashed around on the rug.

"Brashnikov!" he screamed. "He is here!"

Of that, there was no doubt. A luminous white figure, its limbs spread like a crippled white starfish, continued to rise out of the mattress. It was still as death.

"What do we do, Batenin?" Gerkoff sputtered.

"We must capture him."

This proved difficult. They threw blankets on the slowly rising figure. They fell flat on the bed without impeding the thing in the least.

Each Shield man carried a white silk strangling scarf under his shirt, which was imprinted with key commands in Russian and translations in the major NATO languages. They pulled these out and tried to ensnare the stiff limbs of the ghostly corpse of a thing.

They might as well have been attempting to capture moonbeams.

Gerkoff looked back, his face twisted in anger and superstitious fear. "Batenin, what do we do?"

"We pray."

"Why?"

"Because there is nothing we can do, and if Brashnikov's power is drained while he is in contact with physical object, it will be just like Chernobyl, but much worse."

This galvanized the men of Shield. They drew Tokarev handguns, P-6 silent pistols, and short-barreled AKR submachine guns from hidden holsters and opened fire on the untouchable apparition.

"Nyet nyet nyet!" Batenin screamed over the din. "You will awaken entire hotel and ruin mission!"

But the Shield men didn't hear. Or if they heard, they didn't care. They peppered the thing that threatened them with nuclear disaster, as if the sheer volume of their fire could affect this untouchable thing they could not understand.

Chapter 29

The lowermost floor of the Rumpp Regis Hotel was the storage subbasement. It was crammed with the historical castoffs of the nearly century-old hotel. Everything from old brass mantel clocks to spittoons littered the dusty shelving.

It was dark. Remo closed his eyes and listened for the sound of a heartbeat he knew better than anyone's on earth. Chiun's.

He zeroed in on it and simply moved in the direction his ears indicated, oblivious to the solid-looking obstacles he breached with each step.

He passed through antique highboys and turn-of-the-century dining tables like a phantom wading through the history of furniture.

His bare arms felt the body warmth of two people.

Remo opened his eyes to see the frantic figure of the Master of Sinanju, bending over the prostrate figure of Cheeta Ching.

Apparently, Cheeta was drowning on the concrete floor. At least, that was the impression her body language gave Remo. She had landed on her back, and now strained to keep her mouth and wildly flaring nostrils above the level of the floor. Her hands threshed the air, and when her mouth came up above the floor level, it made shapes Remo mentally called "inarticulate."

Remo looked down at his feet. The floor supported his feet perfectly. It gave Remo a creepy feeling.

The Master of Sinanju was fussing helplessly.

"Remo! I cannot help Cheeta!"

"Tell her to stand up," Remo told Chiun casually.

"I did!" Chiun squeaked. "Cheeta cannot hear me!"

Remo folded his arms. "Oh, that's right. We can't hear them and they can't hear us. In this case, it's a blessing."

Chiun stood up. His wizened face was beseeching. "Oh, Remo, what do we do?"

"Look, she's not going to drown. She just thinks she is. Give her time. She'll figure it out."

Chiun stamped an angry foot. "Heartless one!"

At that moment, Remo felt the vibration again.

"Oh-oh. Don't look now, but the building's becoming glued again."

"Quickly! Cheeta will be trapped. Help me!"

"Help you how?"

"Take one precious hand."

"If you insist . . ."

Remo reached down. Chiun did the same. Their fingers attempted to capture the incapturable.

In a flash of a second, the insubstantial hands of Cheeta Ching grew palpable. Remo and Chiun each grabbed a flailing bunch of fingers.

"Now!" Chiun cried.

They heaved. Cheeta came up out of the floor. They set her on her feet.

In the darkness, Cheeta Ching swayed like tightrope walker.

"You okay now?" Remo asked.

"What? What? What?" Cheeta gulped. "Who's there?"

"It's me," Remo said.

"Frodo?"

"She's okay," Remo said.

"She is not!" Chiun flared. "She has been traumatized by machines. Cruel, white, oil-drinking machines."

"Fine," Remo said, starting off. "You comfort her. I'm going to look around."

"I am coming with you."

"You bring that barracuda, and there will be complications," Remo warned.

"Chico, don't leave me!" Cheeta pleaded.

At that, the Master of Sinanju rendered Cheeta Ching insensate with a simple application of pressure to a neck nerve. She collapsed with a rattly sigh.

Bearing the limp figure, Chiun followed Remo Williams back up to the lobby level.

"In her hour of need, she spoke your name!" he hissed.

"Technically, no," Remo pointed out.

"I am humiliated."

"Wait'll she names the baby."

"Argh!"

They found the Rumpp Regis lobby in an uproar.

The desk clerk was screaming at the IRS men, saying "They're shooting up the fourteenth floor! Do something!"

"Call the police," suggested one IRS man.

"But you're government agents!"

"Yeah, but we're tax collectors, not enforcers. We don't carry guns. Call the police."

Remo turned to Chiun. "The Russians are up on the fourteenth floor."

"Then that is where they will perish," said Chiun, placing Cheeta on a divan. She immediately rolled over and began snoring.

"There they are!" one of the IRS men shouted. It was the one Chiun had imprisoned in the revolving door. "You, stop!"

"Let's go, Little Father!" Remo urged. "The last thing we need now is tax trouble."

"Woe to him who touches the Master of Sinanju's trunk!" Chiun hurled back.

They flashed to the elevators, Remo racing and the Master of Sinanju floating along in an effortless series of leaps.

Three revenue collectors hit the closing elevator doors and bounced off like ping-pong balls.

Remo and Chiun piled out on the fourteenth floor and ran into a wall of frightened hotel guests, who pushed past them in a blind panic and commandeered the elevator.

"They will surely hinder pursuit," Chiun remarked, as the elevator started down.

"Follow me," Remo said grimly. "I know exactly what door to knock on."

Captain Rair Brashnikov floated in the middle of a bullet storm. He knew it was a storm, because all around him the fine gold-leaf molding and framed pictures were cracked and coming apart as assorted Soviet-made ammunition took their toll.

Assorted rounds pierced his brain, his lungs, and other major organs with no effect, other than to cause him to blink when the stray bullet crossed his retina.

Otherwise, it was quite peaceful up here under the ceiling. Much like the bathhouses of his homeland.

He faced an interesting dilemma. He knew that he could not float here forever. Yet to deactivate the vibration suit would be to become vulnerable to the angry bullets.

On the other hand, he seemed to be floating toward an outer wall. This was not good, Brashnikov knew. To float into a outer wall in this bodiless state would be to float out the other side. Depending on how high this particular floor was, he might find himself floating high enough off the ground that to turn off the suit would be to risk a broken neck or a completely pulverized skeletal system.

The third option, no less terrifying, would be to wait until the suit's battery power died. There was no telling how long that might be. He had been trapped in the American telephone system for a very long time-much longer than his reserve supply.

Somehow, the power had not been drained in all that time. This was good. What was not good was that he had no idea how long he had until the power went dead.

Then, in the tight-fitting confines of his white protective helmet, he heard an angry wasp's buzz. Looking down toward his midriff, he saw the red warning light illuminate the core of his belt control rheostat.

Rair Brashnikov knew two things then.

One, that he had only twenty minutes of power left.

The second thing he spoke aloud in a thick voice.

"I am dead man."

Even if Remo Williams had not followed one of the Russians to his hotel room, there would have been no question which door they were behind.

It was the one full of punch holes, from which the occasional bullet snarled out.

Remo dodged a stray round and dropped to one knee.

A step behind him, the Master of Sinanju hugged a wall, his eyes like steel.

"Game to crash the party?" Remo asked.

"Make haste. Cheeta awaits me."

"Never keep a hungry shark waiting."

Remo moved on the door. He drove a half fist ahead of him. It connected with the lock, which surrendered with a metallic clank. Remo brought his other palm around and spanked the door in its exact center, sending shock waves through the thick wood.

The heavy panel flew off its ornate hinges and became a wonderfully efficient room-clearer.

It flew true, unimpeded by the natural resistance of the air, and pinned at least three unwary Russians against the far wall. Remo figured it was three because, in the instant he paused to assess the situation, that was the number of left hands he counted sticking out from the door edges.

Then Chiun bounded in.

The Master of Sinanju selected the nearest man, a Tokarev-weilding ox, and relieved him of his pistol with a high kick that shattered every bone of his gun hand, creating a kind of limp bag of bone-and-blood pudding at the end of the man's wrist.

His scream refocused the attention of every Russian in the room. Away from the floating target, and toward the two intruders.

It was exactly what Remo and Chiun wanted.

They harvested their foes with methodical precision.

A strangling scarf descended on Chiun's frail neck. One long-nailed finger snapped up, struck, and the heavy silk parted with a short snarl.

Two others tried to use Remo for target practice. He gave them a few seconds of his time, twisting and arching out of the way of their precise shots.

They were good. That is, they were skilled marksmen. But to Remo, they might as well have been cavemen attempting to brain a man on a motorcycle with stone hatchets.

Remo eluded each shot by sight alone. He could actually see the bullets emerge from each muzzle, compute the trajectory, and easily slide out of the bullet track.

Two shots from each man equaled two steps closer to each man. Remo didn't need three. He took one out with a two-fingered strike to his rotator cup that sent shoulder bone spears ripping through his major organs, and dislocated the neck of the second with a light tap to the point of his chin. His head snapped back so far on his suddenly elongated neck it was crushed under his broad back when he hit the rug.

The survivors took note of the carnage and, dropping their weapons, took man-to-man fighting stances.

"Guess these guys' taste in fighting styles matches their taste in clothes," Remo grunted.

"We will educate them," Chiun sniffed.

It took less than two minutes. But they cleared the room.

All except for a stark-white figure floating over their heads and another cowering behind the big television.

Chiun got under the Krahseevah and began leaping up at it, like a pit bull after a treed cat. His clawlike hands swiped futilely, and he hissed his anger.

"Nothing we can do about that one," Remo muttered, stepping over to collect the other. He dragged the shivering form of Major Yuli Batenin out by the collar of his shirt.

"At least this one is in fashion," said Remo, noticing his suit, "So who are you, pal?"

"I cannot say."

Face angry, Chiun stepped up and pinched a dangling earlobe.

"You can."

Suddenly, the man could say. In fact, he could sing. He began singing out a stream of information, evidently convinced, in his pain, that singing was faster than speaking.

"I am Major Yuli Batenin, formerly with KGB, come to America to capture Captain Rair Brashnikov, also formerly with KGB, and reclaim vibration suit for motherland before nuclear event occurs and we all die."

Remo turned to Chiun. "You make any sense of that?"

"He is off-key." Chiun squeezed harder.

Batenin screamed louder. He pointed toward the ceiling. "Brashnikov! Is Brashnikov! Vibration suit is running out of power. If he rematerializes inside wall, atoms will mingle and there will be nuclear event."

"He is making no more sense," Chiun warned.

Remo looked to the floating Krahseevah edging toward the wall and the burning red light at his belt buckle. "Wait! I think I get it. The suit is about to shut down. If the guy is touching anything, it'll be like the old atom bombs, only worse."

"More machine talk," sniffed Chiun.

"Maybe. But we gotta keep him from entering that wall."

"How?" asked Batenin.

"Like this," said Remo, going up to the wall. He made one hand into a spear point, and using it like a jackhammer, began chipping out a section of the wall. He cut a long horizontal line just under the floating figure, stepping onto an end table to continue cutting. Plaster dust and old lathe cracked and showered down in a dusty storm.

Remo swiftly completed a rectangle and pulled it inward. A square chunk of horsehair plaster came loose and hit the carpet, with a billow of dry white dust.

"Problem solved," Remo said, stepping down. "If he floats out, he won't hurt anything."

"But we still have not captured that fiend!" Chiun said harshly.

"The day's young yet," Remo said, returning to the shivering Major Batenin. "I recognize you," he said.

Batenin looked incredulous. "You do?"

"Yeah. Our boss once had us intercept you when you were trying to smuggle stealth technology out of the country in a diplomatic bag."

"I was never intercepted by you."

"Sure you were. Remember at Dulles International, we made you put your case through the X-ray machine?"

Major Batenin's suspicious eyes lost their narrowness. "That was you?"

"In disguise," said Remo.

"I was inside the machine," sniffed Chiun.

"We switched bags," Remo added. "You got one filled with junk."

"It was not Brashnikov's fault?" Batenin said bleakly.

"It was us. But enough ancient history. You said you were with the KGB. Everybody knows they went the way of the Berlin Wall. Who are you with now?"

"I will not say."

The fingernails bit into his earlobe again, and Major Yuli Batenin screamed, "I am Shchit! I am Shchit!"

"You got that right," said Remo, killing the Russian by the simplest means at hand. By killing his brain. Remo's steelhard right index finger went in through the forehead bone and came out clean.

"Not bad, huh?"

Chiun made a disgusted face. "Check under your fingernail for brain."

Remo looked injured. "There's no brain under my nail."

"Did you check?"

"I don't have to check. That was a perfect stroke."

"Your elbow was not aligned perfectly."

"Are you saying it was bent? It was not bent!"

"I did not say bent," Chiun sniffed. "I said not perfectly aligned. It is not the same."

"It wasn't bent," Remo insisted.

"It was not perfect, either."

"Never mind. Let's finish up our business here."

The eyes of the two Masters of Sinanju looked up toward the helplessly floating figure of the thing Remo had years ago dubbed "the Krahseevah," and which they now knew was a Russian named Captain Rair Brashnikov.

Behind his expanding and contracting face membrane, Rair Brashnikov looked down at the pair of deadly eyes and came to a bitter conclusion.

"I am not dead. I am worse than dead."

His choice was as simple as it was stark. Turn off the vibration suit and be delivered into the hands of the same American agents that had tricked him into a purgatory of fiber-optic cables and American telephone cross-talk, or hope that the suit stayed powered long enough for him to float out into the clear air and drop to his certain death.

Rair Brashnikov was not a brave man. He was, in his heart of hearts, a common thief. It was his kleptomania that had gotten him cashiered from the old KGB in the first place, and the same uncontrollable urge that had compelled his old KGB superiors to reinstate him and unleash him, virtually untraceable in the vibration suit, upon the technological candy shop that was America.

He reached for the buzzing rheostat and gave it a twist. The buzz cut out.

His teeth suddenly hurt, and his vision went blurry.

Gravity took hold and Rair Brashnikov crashed to the carpet, taking a chunk of wall with him.

"I am surrendering peacably to you," he said, as swift hands more strong than Soviet leg irons took hold of his wrists. He was hauled to his feet unceremoniously.

"Gotcha!" said the Caucasian American agent.

"Your ugly head will be set before my emperor by sundown," threatened the Oriental American agent.

"I would like to be keeping head," Rair said thickly.

"That'll be up to our boss," the Caucasian said. "I'd better call him. Here, Chiun, hold both hands so he doesn't pull a fast one."

The Oriental took the wrist the Caucasian surrendered. Rair Brashnikov looked down at the old man through the transparent inner lining of the permeable face membrane, which enabled him to breath in dematerialized oxygen when he was in his bodiless state.

The old man looked impossibly ancient. His arms were like twigs coated by animal hide. He looked frail enough to snap under a kneecap's pressure.

But the strength in his long-nailed hands was anything but frail. And so Rair Brashnikov remained very, very calm. He had seen these two destroy whole buildings with their bare hands when attempting to seize him, and perform other dazzling feats. They were very dangerous.

And it was always better to lull a dangerous foe in the hours before one vanquished him.

The Caucasian was speaking into the telephone.

"That's right, Smitty. We just captured the Krahseevah."

Brashnikov cocked his featureless head in surprise. "Krahseevah?"

"You are misnamed, ugly one," spat the Oriental, tightening his grip. Brashnikov bit the inside of his cheeks to keep from crying out in pain. His shoulder was on fire, and he remembered the single blow that landed on him during their last encounter had struck there.

The Caucasian was asking, "What do you want us to do with him?"

Rair Brashnikov attempted to listen, but he could not hear the other side of the conversation. The conversation that was no doubt deciding his very fate.

"It's what?"

The Caucasian clapped a hand over the telephone mouthpiece and called over to his comrade.

"Smitty says there's new trouble over at the Rumpp Tower. It's sinking."

"Sinking?" asked Rair Brashnikov. "My tower?"

"Yours?"

"Randal Rumpp gave it to me."

"I think Randal Rumpp pulled the wool over your eyes, buddy. You do have eyes under that blob of a face, don't you?"

"Yes. Would you like to see my eyes?" Rair Brashnikov asked hopefully.

Chapter 30

Randal Rumpp learned that he was riding the largest elevator ever built straight to the center of the earth, as he was happily channel-hopping in the security of his Rumpp Tower office.

The electricity was back on. Lights shone, computers hummed, faxes spooled out unimportant transmissions, and the telephones rang and jangled insistently.

Everybody, it seemed, wanted to talk to Randal Rumpp. Just like in the long-ago eighties.

Best of all, the TV sets were working.

The early reports indicated that the Rumpp Regis had become "spectralized." Every channel was using the word, another source of pride.

"Gotta have it trademarked," Rumpp chuckled, "and charge those chumps for using it. This is great! I'm getting ink again. By Christmas, I should be a Barney's display."

It was so great, in fact, that he didn't pay any attention to the furious pounding on the creditor-control doors throughout the twenty-fourth floor.

What the hell are they using? Rumpp wondered. Their thick heads?

An American Networking Conglomerate news report answered the question, when Rumpp paused to check out the local ANC affiliate broadcast.

"At this hour," a reporter was saying, "the Rumpp Tower has been completely evacuated, except for the bankrupted developer himself, whom authorities believe is holed up on the twenty-fourth floor. Police spokesmen tell us that attempts are being made to batter down the doors. Meanwhile, a grand jury has handed down a seventeen-count indictment against Randal Tiberius Rumpp for criminal fraud."

Randal Rumpp jumped up from his chair, shouting.

"Fraud? Is that the best those jerks can come up with? Fraud! I can beat that crummy rap without my law firm. I didn't defraud anyone. I just exaggerated my involvement here and there. The worst they can nail me with is malicious mischief."

The reporter went on. "Adding to the sense of urgency is the bizarre fact that the Rumpp Tower appears to be settling."

"Settling!"

A live shot of the Rumpp Tower facade replaced the reporter's stern face. The brass lintel on which Randal Rumpp's name had been cast in gleaming letters was now at sidewalk level. The lower edges of the bold brass letters were bent and mangled from contact with the too-solid sidewalk.

Rumpp's astonished mouth imploded in an uncomprehending pucker.

"Settling?" he exploded. "I'm sinking! I'm headed straight for China!"

A voice-over added, "Scientists are unable to account for this latest phenomenon, but estimate that if it continues to settle at this present speed, the Rumpp Tower may be entirely underground by Thursday."

Randal Rumpp sat stupefied.

The pounding continued throughout the twenty-fourth floor.

The phone rang. Woodenly, Randal Rumpp picked it up.

"Yeah?" he said dully.

"Dahling . . ."

"Igoria?"

"Dahling, I am watching the news, and I see you are about to be arrested. How droll. Be sure to pack your toothbrush, and an extra set of those snug little monogrammed shorts."

"Igoria!" Rumpp bit out. "What do you want?"

"I was calling because I have a wonderful business opportunity for you, my pet."

Randal Rumpp blinked. Momentarily, he was caught off-guard. His better judgment invariably shut down when he smelled a deal in the air.

He made his voice sound disinterested. "Yeah. What?"

"Well, it seems there are these unhappy little S ou could pick up for a song."

"Yeah?"

"You could buy them all up and weld them into a superbank all your own."

Randal Rumpp perked up. "I could be my own bank. Make loans to myself. Interest-free loans. Duck payments when it suits me."

"Yes. And you could call them all BankRumpps. Because that's what you are, dahling." Tinkling laughter broke through the earpiece.

"Igoria," Randal Rumpp hissed, "you were only a trophy wife. You hear me? Just a trophy wife. I should have had you stuffed and mounted after the honeymoon!"

"Ta-ta, dahling. Give my best to Leona."

Rumpp hung up angrily. Down the hall, the pounding went on and on.

He stood up. Outside the window, a few blocks away, the ornate mass of masonry that was the Rumpp Regis looked the same as it always did. On the other hand the silvery skyscraper across the street, only a day before a single floor shorter than the Rumpp Tower, was now at least a head taller.

For the man who prided himself on being the biggest, boldest, and best at everything he did, it was a crushing blow to the outsized ego of Randal T. Rumpp.

"I'm ruined! I'm not only ruined, I'm sunk! Literally sunk!"

Rair Brashnikov listened to the American with the dead eyes. The American was not interested in seeing his Georgian face. This was unfortunate. It represented an opportunity for escape lost. For in order to remove the velcroseals of his helmet, they would have to release his hands. Long enough to reengage the vibration suit.

"Listen, you know how to stop the Rumpp Tower from sinking?" the American asked.

"I am not sure," Brashnikov said carefully, thinking perhaps a new opportunity was presenting itself.

"Then we have no further use for you," snapped the Oriental.

Brashnikov brightened. "Sinking? Of course I can help. But I must speak with Randal Rumpp first."

"Got a number for him?"

Brashnikov indicated the phone with an eager nod of his head. "Yes. Give me phone. I will happily make call."

"No chance. Call it out."

Rair Brashnikov's cabled shoulders deflated. "It is 555-9460," he murmured.

The Caucasian dialed and listened a moment. He put the earpiece to the side of Rair's featureless head, not quite getting the spot where his ears were, but it was close enough for the ringing of the other line to come through.

Randal Rumpp's querulous, dispirited voice answered.

"Who is it?"

"Ho ho ho," said Rair Brashnikov hollowly.

"You! What happened? The TV says the Rumpp Regis is back to normal, and my Tower is sinking into the ground. How do I stop it?"

"How am I to know? I am thief, not rocket scientist."

"Do better than that!" warned the Caucasion named Remo.

"Who is that?" Rumpp wanted to know.

"New friend," Brashnikov explained.

"So what do I do?" Rumpp pressed.

"Try calling Moscow. I give you number."

Rumpp grabbed a pad and paper. "Shoot."

The long-distance operator was very helpful. She got through to Moscow in under an hour. Normally it took two, she explained. On a good day.

The voice that picked up on the other end at first denied any knowledge of the vibration suit.

Then Randal Rumpp said, "I'm Randal T. Rumpp, and I see a lot of investment opportunities in your country."

"Ah. Vibration suit. Why did you not say so? I will put you through to Vibration Suit ministry. We are only KGB liquidation unit."

"You're killers?"

"It is not that kind of liquidation we are doing."

"Oh."

The line clicked and hissed and hummed, and Randal Rumpp watched the ever-changing TV screen to keep from being bored.

Finally a low female voice said, "Shchit. "

Rumpp said, "I guess some words are universal."

"Who is speaking, please?"

"Randal Rumpp, famous billionaire."

"The one whose building, it is sinking?"

"The very same. And it's all the fault of your crummy vibration suit. It got into my Tower electrical system and screwed it up somehow."

"Vibration suit?"

"Don't be coy. Your guy was just captured."

"Which guy?"

"I don't know. I didn't catch his name. But I do know who I'm gonna sue if I don't get some satisfaction."

"USSR did not invent suit," the woman said crisply. "You should take this up with manufacturer."

"Who's that?"

"Nishitsu Corporation. Osaka."

"The Japs? How did you guys get hold of the technology?"

"KGB steal it."

"Oh," said Randal Rumpp, hanging up.

The long-distance operator put him through to the Osaka research and development plant of the Nishitsu Corporation in Japan.

Rumpp identified himself, and asked to speak with the department that designed the suit.

At first, the thick voice at Nishitsu denied any knowledge of the invention.

Then Randal Rumpp said, "The Russians say they stole it from you."

The man at the other end said, "Ah," and asked a simple question. "You possess device now?"

"Could be," Rumpp said cagily. "And I might be willing to do a trade."

"Prease continue."

"First, I want my skyscraper to stop sinking."

"How does bakemono suit have anything to do with that?"

"Bakemono?"

"Means gobrin."

"Spell it for me."

"G-o-b-l-i-n. "

"Good name for it," said Randal Rumpp, going on to explain how it had all started with a funny Russian voice in his telephone system, and what had squirted out when his secretary picked up a certain receiver.

The voice at the other end said "Ah" again, and in the background a number of people could be heard conversing in rapid, unintelligible Japanese.

Finally a different voice came on. It said, "It appear person wearing gobrin suit was captured by your buirding terephone system, much rike virus in broodstream of a riving person."

"Makes sense," said Randal Rumpp, wondering how a people who couldn't pronounce their L's could be so successful in international business.

"The properties of suit were transferred to buirding."

"That much I figured out by myself," Rumpp said dryly.

"Now person has reft, but your Tower is sinking?"

"You got the picture."

"Perhaps probrem remain in terephone wires," the Nishitsu representative suggested.

"Could be. So what do I do?"

"Ask terephone company to shut off power."

"And if it doesn't work?"

"Carr back."

"Count on it, Chuck."

The AT representative listened to Randal Rumpp's odd request.

"We will be only too happy to comply," the rep said smoothly.

"Great. Do it now."

"However, there is the matter of an unpaid bill due four months ago." Rumpp heard a clicking of a keyboard. "The current outstanding balance is $63,876.14."

"What is this crap! You've been threatening to shut off my lines for weeks over that bill!"

"I imagine so."

"'Well, I'm still in arrears. So shut me off, Chuck!"

"Not without payment."

"You can't do this! It's un-American!"

"Continued service is entirely an AT ," the infuriatingly unruffled voice said. "In this case, we elect to continue to serve your telephonic needs."

"I demand to be disconnected! Right now!"

The line went click, and Randal Rumpp found himself listening to a dial tone.

He hung up the telephone, with no life left in his eyes.

"I'm dead," he said dully. "I'm sinking into the earth and I'm dead."

A thought occurred to him.

"Where the heck am I going, anyway?"

Rumpp went to a hand-carved globe and spun it. He picked out the longitude and latitude of Manhattan, spun the globe, and found their counterparts on the other side. It was in a mountainous border region of what was once the Soviet Union.

"Great," he muttered. "I'm heading for 'Kazakhstan.' I never even heard of Kazakhstan. They probably don't even speak English there. Maybe I'd better just surrender."

But the pounding at the credit-control doors made him think again. It was getting louder. Louder than the insistently ringing office telephones. They really wanted him. Wanted him bad.

"What the heck!" he told himself. "Can't hurt to call those riceballs at Nishitsu again. I haven't threatened to sue them yet. Maybe I can hose them into building Rumpp Tower II. "

Grinning, Randal Rumpp reached for his portable cellular phone.

Chapter 31

Rair Brashnikov was attempting to induce the two American agents to let him remove his helmet.

"No," said the Caucasian.

"I am having trouble breathing."

"Then die quietly."

The Oriental was arguing with the Caucasian. They were arguing over his head. The Oriental wanted it removed from his shoulders, and the Caucasian was in favor of letting Brashnikov keep it.

In the meantime, they were waiting for the telephone to ring. And then it did.

The Caucasian picked it up.

"Yeah, Smitty. What's the deal?" The Caucasian listened.

He looked up and said to the Oriental, "Smitty says the Rumpp Tower is still sinking, and they can't get Rumpp out."

"Offer to Smith our services to extricate the schemer, Rumpp."

"Smitty. Chiun says we can get Rumpp out." He listened again. "Okay. What do with do about Ivan here? Gotcha."

The Caucasian hung up.

"Smith says we grab Rumpp."

"And this monstrosity?"

"Put him on ice until we get back."

The old Oriental was still holding on to Rair Brashnikov's aching wrists, pinning them together as irremovably as shackles. Now he manipulated his long bony fingers, transferring both wrists to the unshakable grasp of one amber hand.

All around him, the bodies of the many Russian agents sent to recapture Brashnikov lay still and waxy as a Disco museum after an earthquake.

"What means 'on ice'?" Brashnikov asked.

Silence.

"Does 'on ice' mean dead? I must know. Am I allowed a final prayer? I know some very short ones."

The cold-eyed Oriental reached for his throat.

Down the corridor the elevator doors rolled open. Remo called, "Shake a leg, Chiun!"

Then came Cheeta Ching's voice. "Grandfather Chiun! Where are you?"

Chiun started. "Cheeta?"

But the corridor was suddenly filled with the tramping of heavy footsteps.

"We can't leave him now," Remo hissed. "That's either the IRS or the cops."

The Master of Sinanju stepped toward the open doorway. The helpless Russian came with him, unable to free his pinioned arms.

Then the tiny Korean lifted one foot. A simple gesture barely noticed. Remo moved to the edge of the door, hands high, ready to strike if need be.

A clot of Manhattan's finest clopped up the corridor, guns drawn.

"Grandfather Chiun!" Cheeta shouted. "It's all right! I brought the police!"

"Some one shut her up," a voice growled.

And the Master of Sinanju pivoted on his one planted foot.

The thick-soled white boots on Rair Brashnikov's feet buzzed the rug, as sudden centrifugal force brought him around in a standing arc.

Incredibly powerful fingers released his wrists.

By that point, momentum had set his legs at right angles to the walls. His feet flew through the bullet-gnashed doorway, taking the rest of him with it.

The Russian bowled over four policemen before they could react or retreat.

Remo and Chiun jumped out into the corridor, their feet busy. Their heels stamped pistol muzzles flat and broke cylinders from their frames.

"Remo!" Chiun squeaked. "See to the Krahseevah!"

"Right."

Remo reached into the tangle of blue and white and came within a hair of grabbing the Krahseevah by its rubbery neck.

That hair made all the difference. For Rair Brashnikov had fumbled for his belt rheostat. Remo's reaching hand dipped into a sudden blur of white shine.

"Damn!"

Chiun turned. "What?"

"Lost him."

"Idiot!"

Rair Brasnikov remembered his KGB training. In his disembodied state, he had to be careful. Only micron-thick wafers in the bottom of his boot soles enabled him to stand on solid ground when the vibration suit was operation. He could not use his hands to lever himself up.

He could only unbend himself until the boot soles found traction.

Unfortunately, that was not as easy at it sounded.

He realized that his rear end was sinking through the hall carpet, when all around him dazed American policemen recoiled and shouted hoarse curses.

Rair Brashnikov decided to go with the flow.

The flow was taking him through the floor, much to the frustration of the Caucasian American agent, who frantically tried to grab him by any handy extremity.

The level of the floor soon crept up to Brashnikov's chin, his nose. Then he shut his eyes-and did not open them until the subatomic darkness had gone away and he could see pink light through his closed lids.

Remo was taking his frustration out on the hapless police.

"You guys couldn't have waited another lousy minute," he said, grabbing ankles and pulling the police into his inexorable grip. Remo put them all to sleep with simple nerve pressure, while the Master of Sinanju confronted a shocked and wide-eyed Cheeta Ching.

"It is all right, my child. This was not for your eyes."

"My God!" Cheeta gasped. "That witch-bitch was right. It is a night-gaunt!"

"No, it-"

Remo straightened. "Exactly. A night-gaunt. And we want you to spread the word. Tell the world that the night-gaunts have broken loose into the waking world. You're the only one who can convince people."

"Yes, yes, I must!"

"But leave us out of it."

"But . . . but you're part of the story."

"Chiun," Remo said.

The Master of Sinanju took Cheeta Ching's cold hands in his.

"Child, you must do as Chico says."

"Frodo," Remo corrected, straight-faced.

"No word of us must be spoken aloud. Have I your word on this?"

Cheeta Ching had never been known to squelch a story in her career. She was being asked to do so now

It was a complete violation of everything she thought she stood for.

Silently, she nodded, her lids lowered demurely. She bowed. Twice.

The Master of Sinanju bowed in return. Once.

"We must go now, to seek out other night-gaunts," said Chiun solemnly.

Cheeta Ching brushed away a tear. "Go in peace, Grandfather!" Her wet hand got stuck in her sticky hair, and refused to come loose.

Remo and Chiun slipped to a fire exit.

"Good move," said Remo. "Now we just gotta capture that Krahseevah without raising a ruckus."

"This is all your fault," Chiun spat.

"Why? You let him go."

"But you failed to seize him. A mere Russian, faster than a Master of Sinanju? My ancestors would disown me for having lowered myself to instruct you in proper breathing."

"I had my hands full. The police were loaded for bear."

They reached the thirteenth floor. Chiun led the way to a point along the corridor.

"It is here he should have fallen," Chiun said, looking up at the paneled ceiling. There was no sign of the Krahseevah under the ceiling, or along the carpet.

"Split up?" Remo said. They split up, breaking down doors, moving from room to room like unstoppable juggernauts.

When they had worked their way down the corridor, a white shining bubble emerged from the wall near where they had paused. The bubble continued to grow until it became a smooth rubbery head, whose blank face expanded and contracted like some gruesome external lung.

Then the Krahseevah tiptoed across the hall with soundless ease. It melted into a door as if it were a gossamer curtain painted to look like wood.

Rair Brashnikov was in luck. There was a telephone in the room he had chosen. He strode up to it and put his hand to the belt rheostat. It was buzzing angrily and emitting a warning red shine. He would have to move fast, he knew. There was no telling how much power he had left in his reserve supply.

Grasping the knob, he turned the rheostat.

Down the hall, Remo and Chiun both heard the sudden sound of a heartbeat that had not been audible on the thirteenth floor before. They flashed out into the corridor, nearly colliding, and plunged up the hall.

They hit the door at the same time. Simultaneously they burst into the room. Their eyes read the figure of the Krahseevah-which was not shining-a telephone receiver clamped to its bald head.

"Hold the phone!" Remo shouted.

And as their reaching hands traveled the space between the door and their quarry, the creature acquired a nimbus like a frosted light bulb.

The Krahseevah turned.

"Too late Americans! Speed-dialing!"

Then it began.

"Damn!" said Remo, slapping at the vaporous mist that was oozing into the mouthpiece. It was drawn from sight like inhaled smoke.

"Again you have shamed me!" Chiun squeaked, stamping a tiny foot on the receiver as it hit the rug.

"Me? You had the same shot as me."

"You were in my way."

"My left foot."

"Which is that, clod-footed one? For I count one at the ends of each of your clumsy legs."

"Har de har har," Remo growled.

Remo noticed a blinking light on the telephone console. There was a menu of speed-dialing buttons, and the blinking light was the button marked: RANDAL RUMPP.

"Looks like we may have another crack at the guy," Remo pointed out.

"I insist upon no interference this time," Chiun said sternly.

Remo rolled his eyes skyward. "Done. Now let's get cracking."

Chapter 32

Randal Rumpp had one finger in his ear and the free ear to his cellular handset.

He was trying to reason with the Nishitsu technician over the pounding on his creditor-control doors and the telephone-orchestra accompaniment. It killed him to ignore all those ringing phones. Probably all reporters hot to quote him. But if he was going to walk out of this clean, he had to get a handle on this sinking setback. If he knew why the Rumpp Tower was acting like a mole, maybe he could stop it. That would be his bargaining chip with the courts. Lighten up, and the Rumpp Tower won't end up in Kazakhstan.

The Nishitsu technician was trying to explain his theory in layman's terms.

"Buirding has great weight," he was saying. "Many tons. But when buirding rose mass, there is no weight. Ground rerax."

"Ground what?"

"Rerax. Take it easy."

"Got it," said Randal Rumpp.

"When buirding regain weight, it exert downward force. Rike pire driver."

"Like what?"

"Pire driver."

"What the heck is a pire driver?"

"You are construction man. You do not know?"

"Oh. Pile dliver," said Randal Rumpp, after writing the words down on a pad and substituting L's for R's. "Why didn't you say so?"

"Did."

"Right. So you're saying that the skyscraper is literally pounding its way into the ground?"

"Yes. You must not ret it demateliarize."

"Spectralize. Get it right."

"Spectrarize. Yes. You must not-"

"Hold it," Rumpp interrupted, hearing a beep in his ear. "My other line just beeped."

Randal Rumpp tapped the handset switch hook and got a familiar staticky roar in his ear. He jumped out of his chair and under his desk just in time.

The light was a cold flare that soon abated. Rumpp crawled out. The Russian in the vibration suit was hanging suspended in the air, his belt buckle as red as if it were on fire. A cold chill went through Randal Rumpp's trim body.

"Oh, shit. Forget ending up in Kazakhstan. We're about to go nuclear."

Over the next ten minutes, Randal Rumpp did everything he could to capture the floating white apparition before it merged with anything solid.

A luminous foot slid into an oaken coat rack. Rumpp knocked the rack over. The top of its head merged with a ceiling fixture, and Rumpp got up on a chair and shattered the frosted glass globe with a paperweight carved in the shape of his own initials.

He got under it and tried to blow it away from the wall with his breath. He was close to fainting before he gave it up.

He tried sucking the thing down with a Dustbuster he found in a maintenance closet, but the thing was impervious to suction, too.

Finally, as Randal Rumpp lay under the thing, out of breath, it came to life. Its arms and legs started waving crazily. One hand reached for its belt buckle.

Realizing what was coming, Randal Rumpp tried to roll out of the way. He was too late.

"Oof!"

When he regained his senses, the white thing, no longer luminous, was standing over him, its expression even more blank than usual.

"You almost killed me!" Rumpp roared.

"Sorry." The white creature cocked a head in the direction of the door. "I hear pounding."

"The police are trying to break in. We're trapped."

"It is worse than that. American agents are coming to liquidate you."

"Liquidate me how?"

"How do you think?"

"Well, I'd like to think they're coming to liquidate my assets."

"It is not your assets they are coming to liquidate, but your ass."

Randal Rumpp groaned. "How do you say 'damn' in Russian?"

"Proklyatye. "

"Proklyatye, " Rumpp repeated. "What do we do?"

"Surrender to police at door."

Rumpp sat up, aghast. "And be lynched?"

"Better than being killed dead," said the Russian.

"You got a point there," the Rumppmeister said, getting to his feet. He looked around his office frantically.

"There's gotta be another option. All my life, I've found other options." His eyes fell on the faceless Russian agent.

"That suit got any more power in it?"

"Probably."

"Buy it from you?"

"No sale. You are broke."

Randal Rumpp shrugged. "Okay. Just thought I'd ask. It can't hurt to ask, can it?"

"No. It cannot hurt to ask. Suit not for sale."

Randal Rumpp picked up the heavy paperweight in the shape of his initials. His eyes were on that blank white head, which suddenly looked as fragile as an eggshell.

"On the other hand, I can just bash your stupid head in, Chuck, and take it."

"You would not do such a thing. Would you?"

"Bet your ass."

Just then, the pounding at the door grew in intensity and fury.

"They must have brought up a battering ram," Rumpp mumbled.

The pounding turned into the screech of metal.

"Sounds like tank coming," said the Russian.

"I don't think a tank would fit on the freight elevator. "

"Then it is not tank. It is American agents come to liquidate our asses."

Something that sounded like a hull plate of a battleship clanged to the floor. The entire floor shook.

Randal Rumpp stiffened. The paperweight dropped to the carpet. He didn't know what to expect, never having been liquidated-in any sense of the word-before.

Then two strange figures appeared at the door, moving fast. One was a tiny wisp of an Oriental and the other a lean American not exactly in business dress.

They split off. One came toward Randal Rumpp and the other toward the Russian, who had snatched up his cellular. The other hand was going to his belt buckle.

"You are mine!" the Oriental screeched.

Randal Rumpp didn't see what happened next. He was staring at the approaching eyes of the tall skinny guy. His eyes were as dead as a loan officer's. A hand came up and took him by the throat and kept going.

Randal Rumpp was slammed into the big picture window behind him.

"You," said the cold voice of the dead-eyed man, "have caused enough trouble."

"Urkkk."

"What?"

"I made it all up!" Rumpp said breathlessly. "I didn't make any of this happen! I lied! You can't liquidate my ass over a lie!"

"That's the biz, sweetheart," said the man, as he gave Randal Rumpp a harder push. The back of his sandy head banged the wobbly glass.

"But I didn't-" Randal Rumpp attempted to say. The hand constricted, choking off the words. Randal Rumpp wanted to tell the man that it had all been a scam. That he had not caused any of this to happen. He had just taken advantage of events to engage in a little creative restructuring of his debt load.

But the man wasn't listening. He was using his free hand to manipulate Randal's Rummp's helpless limbs. He forced Rumpp's left arm against his side, his palm flat with his thigh so they formed a straight standing line. Then he crooked Rumpp's right arm at the elbow and set his fist on his hip. Lastly, he made his right leg stick out straight at an angle from his pelvic bone.

Randal Rumpp's couldn't see what he was doing, but when the man was done Rumpp was standing on one leg, frozen in the awkward pose.

"Guys like you," the dead-eyed man was saying, "used to have the courtesy to jump out of their offices when things went bad."

The man's hand rose. Randal Rumpp's polished shoes left the floor.

Then he was being forced out through the bronze solar window glass. It made a sudden crack, but strangely didn't shatter as it should have.

Randal Rumpp flew twenty feet straight out, and saw why.

His nerve-stiffened body had punched out a perfect silhouette. It was in the shape of a six-foot letter R.

Rumpp smiled. It was perfect. A classy touch. The guy was a real pro. He wanted to salute the guy on his taste, but his arms were still stiff and gravity was starting to exert its inexorable influence.

As the ground zoomed up to meet him, Randal Rumpp's life flashed before his eyes. It was such a kick to relive it all that he completely forgot about his predicament-until he went splat on the sidewalk in front of the mangled letters RUMPP TOWER.

Remo Williams waited until the pulpy sound had reached his ears before turning to check on Chiun's progress.

The Master of Sinanju was using a delicate sandal toe to kick apart the cherry wood desk that dominated the cathedral-like office.

"Missed, huh?" Remo asked.

"The fiend resorted to his machine trickery again."

"Well, I got mine."

Chiun sniffed. "The unimportant one."

"The big cheese. Rumpp was the big cheese," Remo said, picking up the fallen receiver.

He put it to his ear. The line was still open. He heard voices shouting and screeching in confusion at the other end.

"Here, check this out."

The Master of Sinanju snatched the handset from Remo's grasp and listened, fuming.

He made a face.

"Pah! It is nothing," he snapped.

"What makes you say that?"

"It is only Japanese complaining."

"Just the same," Remo said. "Let's take this phone to Smitty."

"Yes," Chiun said bitterly. "Let us take the evidence of our ineptitude to Mad Harold. No doubt he will wish us beheaded for our miserable failure."

A relentless pounding continued to come from down the hall. Remo indicated it with his head.

"Think you can keep it down, until we can slip out of the building the same back way we got in?"

"Who could detect us over that racket?"

Harold Smith was very interested in the telephone. He looked up from his shabby oak desk at Folcroft Sanitarium later that day, his gray, pinched face thoughtful.

The cellular unit had been partially disassembled and was now connected to his computer system.

"According to the memory chip," he said, "the last number dialed was that of the Nishitsu Corporation in Osaka."

"Nishitsu?" Remo said. "Weren't they the ones behind that crazy invasion of Yuma, Arizona, a few years ago?"

Smith nodded. "A rogue operation. Or so it was claimed. But recall, Remo, that before that we had intelligence on an event at Nishitsu Osaka which was laid at the KGB's doorstep."

"Right. You thought that the suit was a Japanese invention, and that was how the Soviets got hold of it.

Smith nodded. "No doubt Rumpp was attempting to gain more information on the suit from Nishitsu. When you and Chiun burst in, the Krahseevah simply hit the redial button."

"And faxed himself to Nishitsu. Damn!"

"Not necessarily, Remo."

Remo and Chiun looked interested.

"Then where did he go?" Remo asked.

"Recall that prior to this, the Krahseevah traveled through fiber-optic cables and short-distance cellular transmissions. In order to reach Osaka, he would have to be uplinked to an orbiting communications satellite and relayed back to a ground station. It is not clear that his atomic structure would retain its integrity during such an extreme transfer."

"You mean he might have had his molecules scrambled?"

"It's possible."

Remo folded his arms. "Last time, you were sure he was never going to come back to haunt us again."

"And I am not certain of his fate this time. But it is a possibility."

"Yes," said Chiun. "That must be what happened."

"Since when did you become the technology expert?" Remo asked dryly.

Chiun surreptitiously kicked Remo in the ankle. Remo went silent. Chiun went on.

"Obviously the Russian fiend is no more," he said firmly. "And since we dispatched the schemer Rumpp, this assignment has been successfully accomplished and all glory and credit is ours."

"I imagine that it has," Smith allowed.

"And contract negotiations may continue," Chiun added.

"Er, yes," Smith said carefully.

Chiun beamed. "Then I suggest we begin now."

"If you do not mind, I have a few loose ends to tie up."

"What could be more important than contract negotiations?"

"Briefing the President."

"Yes. Do that. And be certain to speak our names prominently and often."

"Of course, Master Chiun."

"You know, there's one thing I still don't get," Remo said slowly.

The others looked at him.

"Who were those Russians?"

"That is a good point," said Smith. "You had no chance to interrogate them?"

"Yeah. The head guy said he was shit."

"He did?"

"So I obliged him."

"No," Chiun interjected, "he said he was 'shield.' "

Remo frowned. "I thought I heard the other word."

"Your mind is a sewer," Chiun sniffed.

"One moment." Smith turned to his ever-present computer terminal and called up his Russian lexicon file base.

"The only Russian word that transliterates into that term is Shchit."

"That's the word I heard. What's it mean?" asked Remo.

Smith looked up, his face puzzled.

"Shield."

"Means nothing to me."

Smith switched to another file. Keys rattled. "There is no such Russian organization on file, past or present."

"Maybe they're new, Smitty." Smith's lemony face grew more bitter. "I believe I will create an active file under that name. Strange things are happening over there now. If there is a new Russian group or organization known as 'Shield,' it may be a problem for the future."

"Emperor, what will be the fate of the mighty building of the schemer Rumpp?"

"It has been condemned. Demolition experts are going to wire it with shaped charges and implode it into rubble."

Chiun nodded. "It will be an improvement."

Remo said, "One last thing, Smitty."

"What is that?"

"Those people who fell into the ground when the Rumpp Tower first spectralized. What happened to them?"

"Officially, they will be counted among the missing."

"And unofficially?"

"Unofficially, we have no idea. They may have simply slipped into the earth some distance. Or they may continue falling until they emerge from the earth's crust at some point on the other side of the globe." Smith consulted his computer briefly. "Which would appear to be Kazakhstan."

"Then what will happen to them?"

"I have no idea. And it is not something I care to dwell on," said Harold W. Smith, closing the file and pressing the concealed stud under his desk edge that sent his CURE terminal slipping into the concealment of his desktop receptacle.

Epilogue

With the coming of winter, the Kazakh hill men of Kazakhstan came down from the gray folds of the Tian Shan Mountains to dwell with their herds in the valley.

Bulbul, leader of his people, led them off the mountains, as he had every winter for twenty-two years. Come the spring, he would lead them back up. It was the way of the Kazakh hill men of Kazakhstan.

After they had pitched their felt tents and set the bullocks to grazing, they cut the head off a sheep and played the last game of buzkashi until the spring.

It was a rough, sweaty game. The men on their horses would swoop down on the carcass, and fight with one another for the privilege of carrying it from a circle drawn at one end of the great winter valley to a pole at the other, and back.

It was a tradition as old as the mountains.

Bulbul, as always, was the first to reach the dead animal. Leaning over his pounding pony, his weathered hands snatched up the thing by its wooly white coat just ahead of the others.

Laughing and calling, they thundered after him. They seldom caught him. But this year, Pishaq bumped his horse against Bulbul's own and grabbed a sheep leg.

Tugging and struggling, they rode hard, the sheep carcass straining between them. The man who had it firmly in hand when he reached the end of the valley would be declared the winner.

In past years, for twenty-two winters, the winner had been Bulbul. This year, he felt, for the first time, the strength of a new champion in opposition to his own. It made his blood run hotter, but somehow his spirit grew sad. He did not yet wish to become old.

They never reached the end of the sheltering valley, still green with grazing grass.

Directly before their pounding hoofs, something came up from the earth.

It looked like a man. A strange, dead man.

Bulbul gave a warning shout, and immediately all horses were reined in.

Through the dust they watched as the dead man floated up from the grass, as if he were a ghost arising from some long-forgotten grave.

Their narrow eyes tensed, in the wonder of it.

"A ghost!" Bulbul hissed.

"Look at its eyes! They are dead!"

It was true.

The eyes of the ghost were open and staring, but its pupils were like pinpoints. Dead.

As they watched, it floated up toward the sky.

A rider shouted.

"Another ghost!"

It was so. This ghost wore a blue uniform, like a soldier. His eyes, like the other's, were round in a way they had never seen.

A third ghost, too, soon emerged from their ancestral grasslands.

They watched in stolid silence, these men of the mountains, rough of face and hard of eye.

They had seen strange things in their lives. But none stranger than this. Yet such were they, that they did not retreat or betray cowardice. Only the horses were skittish.