Ghost in the Machine, page 14
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 Twenty-two
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 off-yellow 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 Rushenko said firmly. He extracted a number of color photographs from the folder and slid them to Batenin’s side of the desk.
