Ghost in the Machine, page 15
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 Twenty-three
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 hot-cheese 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 Twenty-four
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 Twenty-five
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.
