Ghost in the Machine, page 10
“It is you,” Chiun sniffed, arranging his kimono skirts absently.
“Did I ask you how the current contract negotiations are going?” Remo asked the Master of Sinanju, knowing the rotor noise would prevent their conversation from being overheard. Even by the cameraman seated beside them.
“You have not.”
“So, how are they going?”
“Slowly. Smith is holding my most recent bargaining ploy against me.”
“You mean the time when you were going to quit to become Lord Treasurer of California, but your candidate turned out to be a Central American dictator in disguise?”
Chiun made a face. “You are just like Smith. Distorting the truth to further your own designs.”
“How else do you explain what happened?”
“I was duped. I would never have allied myself with that villain’s court had not Smith exiled us to California in the first place.”
“We were not exiled,” Remo pointed out. “We were on an assignment. How was Smith to know that the guy we were supposed to protect turned out to be a potential hit?”
“He is emperor,” Chiun squeaked. “He is supposed to know these things. And none of this would have happened except for your own negligence.”
“Old news,” Remo said, changing the subject fast. “When you go round again, put in my request for a new permanent residence. I’m tired of living out a suitcase.”
“Do not worry, Remo,” Chiun said frostily. “I intend to hold the loss of our precious home against Smith during the final discussions.”
Remo folded his bare arms. “Good. I want to settle down again,”
“Too late,” Cheeta called back. “I’m already married. And pregnant.”
“My hopes are dashed forever,” Remo said sourly. “Guess I’ll junk my hope chest.”
· · ·
The helicopter reached the serrated roof of the Rumpp Tower. Here, the top-floor apartments had unique, two-sided views of the city. Randal Rumpp had sacrificed floor space for the dual windows. It was considered a bad move, but Rumpp had the last laugh. He simply hyped the view and charged triple rent. Tenants gladly paid extra for an improved view, even with their square footage reduced. Once again, the fantasy had sold.
The lights were out all over the Tower. Still, in the dying light of the sun, they could see people in their apartments, some apparently oblivious to their situation as cosmic prisoners.
“Rumpp’s office is on the twenty-fourth floor,” Cheeta was telling the pilot.
“So?”
“Take us to that floor.”
They began counting down from sixty-eight. When they reached twenty-four Cheeta said, “Go to the south side.”
The pilot sent the chopper canting around. It twirled like a yo-yo in expert hands, then hovered in place. He said, “I don’t see him.”
“Who cares? Just fly in.”
“Miss Ching?”
“Did you leave your balls at home? I said, ‘Fly in’!”
“But we’ll crash!”
“Like hell, we will,” Cheeta said, grabbing the joystick. She sent the helicopter diving into the side of the Rumpp Tower like a flying buzzsaw.
The pilot’s scream was no louder than the rotor noise. It just sounded that way.
· · ·
Randal Rumpp was sitting with his back to the south facade, trying to put his pants on both legs at a time. Too many people had taken to saying that Randal Rumpp put his trousers on one leg at a time, like everybody else. Rumpp couldn’t stand being compared to what he called “the chump in the street.” As soon as he had mastered the trick, he would call in a news crew to film the myth-making technique.
Then it happened.
There was no sound. No warning. No nothing.
His first impression was of being swallowed by a monster bird with furiously whirling wings.
One second he was sitting at his desk, trying to draw his five-hundred-dollar button-fly pants over his monogrammed socks, the next he was enveloped in a fast-moving cocoon filled with people.
It happened in an instant. Enough time for him to dive to the floor. He rolled and rolled, wreaking minor havoc on his high-maintenance haircut. Only when he had gotten disentangled from his pants did he get a glimpse of something that made sense. Or almost made sense.
The sight of a helicopter’s tail rotors, slipping into the wall separating his office from his assistant’s, caused Randal Rumpp’s eyes to go very round.
“Are they crazy?” he shouted. “I could have had a heart attack!”
He picked himself up off the floor, calling, “Dorma! Did you get the number of that chopper? I want to sue those jerks!”
There was no answer from the adjoining room. When he went to look, Randal Rumpp found the room deserted.
· · ·
“I think that was him!” Cheeta was shouting.
“The guy we ran through?” the wide-eyed pilot demanded.
“Yes. Turn around. And turn on your lights.”
The pilot obliged. Chin-mounted floodlamps kicked in, painting the corridors and rooms of the Rumpp Tower in blazing light as they passed through them.
“I don’t understand this,” the pilot was saying, in a voice that could have been coming through a tea strainer.
“Don’t try,” Cheeta said. “Just go with the flow.”
“I gotta get my bearings.”
“Get them fast.”
The pilot brought the chopper to a hovering point, half in and half out of the main corridors. He was having trouble dealing with the situation, inasmuch as he couldn’t see his own tail rotor and there was a potted rubber plant growing out of his crotch.
He sent the chopper spinning in place, until the nose was pointed back in the direction of Randal Rumpp’s office. Cheeta Ching’s screechy voice was in his ear again.
“Now, go slowly! I’ll tell you when to stop!”
The pilot pushed the cyclic ahead. The wall came toward them, and every sense screamed danger. He forced his eyes to stay open as the wall pushed up against his pupils and he entered the wall.
There was a short interval of subatomic darkness, and they were in an anteroom.
“There he is!” Cheeta howled.
· · ·
Randal Rumpp did not hear the helicopter approach. So when it emerged from the wall like a red-and-cream soap bubble, it took him by surprise.
“I’ll sue!” he shouted, shaking his fists at the people in the bubble.
Then he recognized Cheeta Ching, superanchorwoman. The hottest media celebrity of the month, by virtue of the fact that a lucky sperm had penetrated last month’s egg.
Rumpp forced his prim lips into a broad grin. He opened his fist and waved, in as friendly a manner as his ragged nerves would allow.
“Hi!” he said gamely.
Cheeta was waving back, all thirty-two teeth seemingly bared.
Randal Rumpp made an all-encompassing gesture with spread arms. “Ask me how I did it!” he shouted.
Cheeta’s mouth made a What? shape.
“I said, ask me how I pulled off the greatest magic act since David Copperfield!”
Cheeta stuck her head out of the bubble. She was definitely talking, but there was no sound coming out of her red mouth. It was obvious to Rumpp that she couldn’t hear him, either. No more than he could hear the helicopter blades as they slashed the still air of his office. Weren’t those things supposed to kick up a little dust? There wasn’t even a breeze.
Randal grabbed a pen and stationery off his assistant’s desk and wrote ANOTHER RANDAL RUMPP TRIUMPH.
Cheeta ducked inside, scribbled on a notebook, then pressed the open page to the inside of the Plexiglass bubble. One word was visible: HOW?
Rumpp wrote in return: A MAGICIAN NEVER TELLS. He smiled as he held up the answer, because a video camera suddenly poked out of the side and was staring in his direction. He made sure his tie was on straight and the hair was over his ears evenly. Image was everything.
Then he remembered his pants. Rumpp looked down.
“Oh, shit!” He stepped behind his assistant’s desk so the camera wouldn’t pick up his hairy, exposed legs.
He wrote on the pad, I CALL THIS TRICK SPECTRALIZATION.
· · ·
The pilot was saying, “I can’t hover like this forever.”
“Hold your pecker,” Cheeta said. “I almost have my story.”
“But you don’t have any sound.”
“For once, this is a time where no sound makes the footage. This is going to look sooo spooky on the air.”
“It’s pretty freaking weird right now,” said Remo, who was feeling like a mere hitchhiker. He and Chiun were absorbing the unique experience of being in a helicopter hovering inside a skyscraper. After they had gotten used to the disorienting effects, Remo decided it felt stupid. Like being inside a video game. He wanted to step out, but even though his eye told him there was solid floor under the skids, everything he had witnessed indicated that to step out would be to fall twenty-four stories to the subbasement, and his death.
“Can you figure this out, Little Father?” he whispered. “He can’t hear us and we can’t hear him. But we’re both making noise.”
The Master of Sinanju was silent. His keen hazel eyes were darting this way and that, and Remo could tell by the set expression on his wrinkled face that he had no more idea what had happened to the Rumpp Tower than he did.
Eventually, the pilot could stand it no more.
“I’m outta here!”
He spared Randal Rumpp the novelty of being run through by a helicopter and sidled out through the eastern wall.
Once they had emerged into the night, their flood lamps making hot spots on adjacent buildings, Remo said, “Well, that was an experience we won’t soon forget.”
Cheeta smacked the pilot on the head and snapped, “You idiot! I wasn’t through yet! Go back in there!”
“I vote we land,” Remo said.
“This is a news helicopter, not a democracy!” Cheeta snarled, slapping the pilot again. “I order you to go back in there!”
The pilot, holding his head in one hand, sent the helicopter back toward the gleaming pinnacle that was the Rumpp Tower. He looked as scared as if he were about to jump into a bottomless hole in the earth itself.
The chopper raced to meet its own reflection in the Tower.
They all watched themselves in a disorientation of reality that was perfect for the occasion.
Then, from one corner of the twenty-fourth floor, there came a burst of white light.
And the Master of Sinanju, his voice a shrill squeak, cried out.
“Turn away! Turn away! We will all be killed!”
Chapter Fourteen
Dorma Wormser, executive assistant to Randal Rumpp, had gone through most of the twenty-fourth floor, picking up telephone receivers and speaking into them without success.
She wasn’t quite sure what she was going to accomplish. But she would do anything to rectify the terrible thing that had happened to her place of work. If for no other reason, than it meant she could go home. After over a dozen years as Randal Rumpp’s glorified secretary, being traffic manager to every conceivable hype and scam, going home every night was her favorite part of the working day.
It had been different in the beginning, when Randal Rumpp was a cocky young developer trying–Dorma was convinced–to outdo his old man, developer Ronald F. Rumpp. Every new deal was a challenge. Every success a cause for celebration.
Somewhere along the line Randal Rumpp had peaked financially. Unfortunately, by that time his ego had gone ballistic. His eye was always on the next deal, a bigger score. The publicity rush he invariably got kept him from tying up the loose ends of the previous deal. He talked openly of running for president, while overpaying for every gaudy object that caught his eye, like some overcapitalized raccoon.
It had all come undone with the fiasco Rumpp had dubbed “Shangri-Rumpp.” He had already bought into three other Atlantic City casinos. All successful. But he wanted to build one that would go down in gambling history.
Shangri-Rumpp was designed to be the biggest thing on the boardwalk.
And it was. The first night it pulled in six million dollars. Investors predicted that within a month Shangri-Rumpp–with its gilt domes, faux-gem trimmings, and neon fountains–would be synonymous with Atlantic City.
Unfortunately for Randal Rumpp, he had cut costs in a foolish area. The chips. Each one was emblazed with an RR on one side and Randal Rumpp’s simpering profile on the other. Rumpp had insisted on it.
So when the manufacturer could not deliver a sufficient quantity by opening night, Randal Rumpp faced a difficult choice: Go with blanks, or postpone opening night.
He did neither. Instead, he had had an emergency order placed with a manufacturer of plastic fast-food drink cup lids. They were cheap, they were inexpensive, and they would retain the sharpness of his profile in the stamping process.
They were also, Randal Rumpp discovered to his eternal regret, as easily counterfeited as cornflakes.
On his second day of business, more chips were cashed in than had been delivered. The record six-million-dollar opening turned, overnight, into a nearly twenty-million-dollar sinkhole.
When he realized the magnitude of the financial hemorrhaging, Randal Rumpp faced another difficult choice: Close down until the original chips came in, or keep playing.
As always, Randal T. Rumpp led with his ego. He ordered the roulette wheels to keep spinning, the blackjack dealers to keep dealing, and the baccarat tables to remain open, boasting, “The slot machines will keep us going until the chips are down. I mean, in.”
When he lost over twenty-five million to counterfeit chips on the third night, Randal Rumpp issued a statement that Shangri-Rumpp was setting new records for payouts and quietly talked his father into buying forty million dollars’ worth of twenty-dollar Shangri-Rumpp chips to bail him out for the first operating week.
It was a disaster from which the Rumpp Organization had never recovered. Not even when Randal Rumpp refused to allow his father to cash in his chips, claiming they were “shoddy counterfeits.”
The entire house of cards began to collapse then. Loans were called due. Assets were seized. Staff was fired. Dorma Wormser, like most Rumpp employees, was forced to accept a fifty-percent pay cut. The only reason she stayed on was because jobs in corporate America in the early nineties were scarce. Especially if a job-seeker was in the position of having to list Randal Rumpp as a reference.
And now this. She was trapped, with an angry mob roaming the building. A mob that blamed Randal Rumpp for their plight.
If there was anyone who could help, Dorma Wormser wanted to talk to him.
She was beginning to think she would have to test every phone in the Tower, when she tried a desk phone in the executive trophy room. It was off-limits to everyone except Randal Rumpp. It was the place where he kept his favorite trophies–from his childhood Monopoly game and photographs of former girlfriends, to the more modest business acquisitions, such as the solid-gold stapler that never worked but was brought out for office photo opportunities.
The desk phone was a simple AT&T ROLM phone. But it had been Randal Rumpp’s first business phone, and he treasured it. The bell had been disabled, but a red light winked on and off, indicating an incoming call.
She lifted the receiver.
Dorma Wormser had answered telephones both personally and professionally for most of her life. She was good at it. Her voice was clear and crisp. Her manner smooth and businesslike. It was the perfect executive assistant’s telephone voice.
This time, she whispered a timid, “Hello?”
There was no answer. Just a rushing, like a comet composed of static coming in her direction. It grew louder very fast. Soon it was a wooshing roar. It was coming from the earpiece. Definitely.
Then came the flash of blinding white light that changed everything.
After she had regained her sight and other senses, Dorma Wormser knew she would look back upon her life in entirely different terms. She would never regain the normal, ordinary existence that had been hers before she’d picked up that ordinary telephone handset, as she began the long slide into nervous collapse that would haunt her for the rest of her days.
The stunningly bright light was all around her. It was soundless. It was not an explosion, but the suddenness of it was enough to knock her on her back. How long she was out, Dorma Wormser had no idea. Her eyes fluttered open and there it was, floating directly above her.
“Oh, God,” she moaned.
It might have been a man.
Her initial impression was that it was white. It was white from the hairless bald top of its bloated head to the tips of its very white feet. But it was not all white. Some of it was golden. There were golden veins on its smooth white skin. Not in, but on. They lay along the skin like printed circuits, except that they pulsed and ran with fleet golden lights.
That was weird enough. But the thing that shocked Dorma Wormser, that sent her scrambling to her feet and running for help, was the dead way the manlike thing floated just under the high ceiling. It was like a white, lifeless corpse filled with helium. Worst of all, it had no face.
Chapter Fifteen
The pilot of the BCN news helicopter heard the voice of the old Korean warn him against flying into the Rumpp Tower. His brain told him that the shrill voice was serious. His brain also screamed that he was flying into a solid object and should swerve to avoid it.
He had been with BCN for over six years, half of them working for Cheeta Ching. Before that he had been a bush pilot in Alaska. And before that he had seen action in Grenada. He was used to risk. Even though every fiber in his high-strung being told him to swerve, he stayed on course.
If I die, he reasoned, I die. If I disobey the Korean Shark, I’m worse than dead.
He closed his eyes, not bothering to hope for any particular result.
So it came as a total shock to him when Cheeta Ching dug her bloodred claws into his shoulder and screamed, “You heard Grandfather Chiun! Swerve, you testosterone-drunk fool!”
