Blue Smoke and Mirrors

Of course his KGB superiors would ask him why.

And Major Batenin would tell them. He was certain they would understand.

It was not America, he would say in the dusha-dushe-heart-to-heart-talk he envisioned. It was not the embassy. It was not even the devious Captain Rair Brashnikov. Exactly. Batenin could handle the diminutive thief. True, it was annoying to have to search Brashnikov's room when he was away in order to

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recover personal effects belonging to the embassy staff, but it was a small price to pay for the great technological gains that were being realized through Operation Nimble Spirit. Batenin understood that. Certain sacrifices were necessary.

It was not that he would have to report that after nearly three years of unsuspected operations, their agent had been seen. He had not been captured. He had not been identified. No one even knew he was a Russian, so far as Batenin knew. True, for the first time, stolen U.S. property had not been delivered to the embassy on schedule. No doubt those items were now in the hands of puzzled American CIA agents.

That was acceptable. Major Batenin felt certain that one blemish in what was otherwise the most flawless long-term KGB operation ever conducted in the western hemisphere would be overlooked.

But, Batenin intended to say, there were some things that were too much to bear.

It was simply, Yuli Batenin considered as he watched the immaculate shrubbery of Washington streak by the tinted car window, the Jaws travel case handcuffed to his left wrist, that things had gotten just too strange.

His superiors would naturally have an answer to that. Of course it is strange, they might say. You have charge of an agent who walks through walls and cannot be touched by human hands.

Batenin would reply that he had gotten used to that. It had become almost normal.

What was not normal was nearly succumbing to a heart attack from simply answering the telephone. That was not normal. It was too much. He would not want to go through it again. In fact, he had developed nightmares as a result. Now when the phone rang, Major Yuli Batenin would jump like a startled cat.

For Major Batenin, generally regarded as one of the KGB's best station chiefs, had developed a severe telephone phobia.

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It had happened two days ago, and Yuli still shivered at the memory.

A phone call had come in through the embassy switchboard. Major Batenin was in his office at the time, inventorying the latest military acquisitions, and eagerly anticipating the next group, which were being collected at a North Dakota missile grid. He remembered reaching for the intercom to ask who was calling. It was a simple thing, something he had done many times before.

"Ivan Grozny," he was told.

It was Brashnikov's alias. Batenin recalled saying, "I will take it," and switching off the intercom. He pushed the line-four button on his telephone-even the number four haunted him now-and picked up the receiver.

A simple act, this picking up of a telephone receiver. Major Batenin had picked up possibly a hundred thousand telephone receivers in his long career. He had no reason to suspect that this was anything other than a routine contact call.

He had placed the receiver to his ear. The sound of static was very loud. It was odd. Usually U.S. telephone lines were quite clear. This one crackled and whooshed. Mostly it whooshed.

"Hello?" he had asked.

The whooshing grew. Soon it was a roar.

"Hello?" Batenin had repeated. He heard voices. A mixture of voices in the receiver. None of them belonged to Rair Brashnikov. "Hello, Brashnikov? Are you there?" Batenin blurted out, annoyed. What foolish games was that thief up to now?

Only growing static answered him.

"Brashnikov! Speak! Answer me."

It was only because the roar of static grew unendurable that Yuli Batenin knew something was terribly wrong. He yanked the receiver from his ear. It was a fortu-

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nate thing that he did so, for who knew what might have happened had he not?

It all happened in an instant of time, but it would remain seared in Yuli Batenin's memory forever.

He had just jerked the receiver away when there came a sharp spitting sound from the earpiece, followed by a flash of supernatural brightness.

"Chart vozmi!" Yuli swore, inadvertently dropping the phone. He clutched at his eyes. The light had blinded him. He stumbled against his chair, cracking one knee.

"Govno!" he howled, falling to the rug. Taking his hairy hand from his eyes, he blinked furiously. He could not see the room. All was white.

"Help me," he cried helplessly. "I am blinded! Help me!"

Yuli Batenin heard the door open and his secretary call his name. Then, inexplicably, she screamed. The door slammed shut. He could hear her high heels clop away clumsily.

"Where are you going?" he cried. "I need help. I cannot see. Help me. Anyone. I am blind," Major Batenin cried. His face settled to the rug, which smelled of old shampoo, and he began sobbing.

The next several minutes were a maelstrom of white noise. He heard voices, cries. And then strong hands took him by the arms and lifted him to his feet.

By this time, the white brightness that his eyes perceived when the lids were closed had faded to a shim-mery gray. He feared that it would go black next.

"Batenin," the Soviet ambassador was shouting. "How do we get him down? Tell us!"

"Blind. I am blind," Yuli repeated dazedly. "Help me. I want to go home. Take me back to Moscow."

"Open your eyes," he was told sternly.

"Blind!" Batenin sobbed.

"Open them!" Then he felt a hard smack against his cheek. Startled, his eyes flew open.

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"Blind!" he repeated. But when he blinked, he could see again. "See! I can see. I am not blind!" he shouted happily.

"Get hold of yourself, Major. We need your knowledge. He is your man. How do we get him down?"

"Who? How?" Batenin asked shakily as he steadied himself against his desk.

He became aware of others in the room. They were standing in one corner of his office, broomsticks and desk blotters in their hands. They were swatting the air, as if at a pesky fly.

But it was not a fly that excited the embassy staff, Yuli saw to his horror.

For floating silently above the ducking and weaving heads of the embassy staff was a faintly luminous apparition.

"Brashnikov!" Batenin cried hoarsely.

"We cannot make contact with him, Batenin," the ambassador bit out. "And he is floating toward the wall. What can we do?"

Yuli Batenin pushed the ambassador aside as he stepped under the floating figure, his left knee wobbly with pain.

"Give me that," he ordered his secretary, relieving her of a broomstick.

He flipped the broomstick around until he had the straw end up in the air. He poked it at Brashnikov's eerily silent form.

The straw disappeared into Brashnikov's chest, as if swallowed by a cloud of milk.

"Is it ghost?" his secretary asked, horror in her voice.

Batenin withdrew the broom. Brashnikov's blisterlike face was distended like a clam's stomach. It neither contracted nor expanded. Brashnikov was not breathing. His arms and legs were splayed like a dead swimmer's. He floated on his stomach, just under the ceiling.

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As Batenin watched, Brashnikov seemed to be drifting toward one wall. It was an outer wall.

"We must stop him!" Batenin suddenly cried. "If he floats away, it will be as if we raised flag over official Washington proclaiming Soviet responsibility for their technological losses."

"How?" the ambassador demanded. "We have tried everything."

"Have you tried blowing at him?"

"What?"

"He is floating like balloon. Let us all get under him and blow mightily."

It took a moment for the thought to register, but finally the ambassador shrugged as if to say: What have we to lose?

The embassy staff stooped down under Brashnikov's silent, hovering body, their backs to the outer wall.

"Everyone," Batenin ordered, "take deep breath. Ready? Now . . . exhale!"

They all blew hot streams of air at the body. But there was no perceptible reaction.

"Again!" Batenin called.

They tried again. They huffed and they puffed, until their faces grew purple and some of them became dizzy from oxygen deprivation.

They ended up sprawled on the rug, out of breath. Batenin looked up dazedly. If anything, Brashnikov had inched closer to the outer wall. In another few minutes his left hand would drift into the wall itself.

"He is dead?" the ambassador wheezed.

"Da," Batenin gasped. "He breathes not."

"Then there is nothing we can do to stop him?"

"Nyet. Perhaps he will float out to sea."

"Moscow will not be happy that we have lost the suit."

Yuli Batenin looked up helplessly. If only there was a way . . .

And then he saw something that, had he not been

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so soul-shocked by the events of the last half-hour, he would have noticed long before this.

"Oh, God, no," Yuli breathed.

"What . . . what is wrong?"

"His belt light," Yuli said, pointing shakily. "It is red."

"Da," the ambassador said. "So?"

"It means that he is on emergency power supply." Batenin looked at his watch. "There is less than a half-hour until the suit shuts itself off."

The ambassador's dour face brightened.

"That is good, da?"

"That is bad, nyet" Yuli said, finding his feet. He didn't take his eyes off Brashnikov's floating form. "If the suit shuts itself off now, he will drop to rug and all will be well. But if he floats into wall, and suit shuts off then, there is no accounting for what could happen."

"What are the possibilities?" the ambassador asked. He had not been briefed on the vibration suit's operational details.

"It is possible Brashnikov's body will become permanently stuck in wall. In which case we need only replace wall."

"A minor inconvenience under circumstance."

"The other possibility is nuclear."

"Nuclear!" This came from almost everyone in the room in a single breath.

"If atoms mix," Batenin told them, "they may shatter. The result will be atomic explosion."

The ambassador jumped to his feet. "Quickly. We must evacuate embassy."

"No," Yuli said dully, still looking at the immobile blister face only inches above him. "How far could we get in less than one-half hour? Not enough to clear Washington outskirts. And if there is splitting of atoms, it will be many, many atoms splitting. Too many to count." He shook his head. "No, we are better off here, where our end will be swift and painless. For if

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suit goes dead at wrong time, all of Washington will be obliterated. Perhaps much of eastern seaboard as well."

The embassy staff all looked at one another in white-faced terror. And, as if telepathically inspired, they leapt to their feet and began blowing at the inexorably moving figure with all their combined lung power.

Even Yuli Batenin joined in, although he knew it was futile. But what else was there left for them to do-lie down and die?

It happened just before the tips of Rair Brashnikov's still fingers brushed the wallpaper. Without warning, the blister face constricted. Then it ballooned out. Another contraction. And a rhythm was established.

"He breathes!" Yuli shouted. "Brashnikov! Do you hear me? Turn off suit. Turn off vibration suit!"

Then the fingertips of Brashnikov's left hand disappeared into the wall.

"Oh, God," someone said hoarsely. Batenin's secretary ran from the room screaming.

"Rair ..." Batenin was sobbing now. "The suit! Turn it off. Use your left hand. Please!"

The face membrane respirated. But Rair Brashnikov still floated inertly, his limbs splayed. Then the red light blinked. Batenin's eyes widened in terror. He never saw the vanished fingers of Rair Brashnikov withdraw from the wall as he stiffly attempted to reach his belt rheostat. Batenin's eyes were fixed on that red light whose extinguishing meant their lives.

Then the whole world seemed to fall on Yuli Batenin.

When he woke up in the embassy infirmary later, he was screaming.

"Nyet! Nyet! Nyet!"

The infirmary nurse attempted to calm him.

"Be a man, Comrade Major," the nurse admonished. She was a hulking blond who knew nothing of what had transpired in the office two floors above.

"I live," Yuli breathed. It was more of a prayer than a question.

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"Da. Comrade Brashnikov will survive too. He had a nasty fall. It was fortunate that you were there to throw yourself under him to break it, otherwise he would have been severely injured."

Yuli Batenin turned his head. In the next bed, Rair Brashnikov lay with a white sheet pulled up to his sharp chin. His ferretlike profile was peaceful. He snored contentedly.

Major Batenin's nervous reaction to the sight of Brashnikov was so violent that he had to be sedated.

A calmer Batenin himself debriefed Brashnikov the next morning. Brashnikov's story was disjointed and Batenin did not believe much of it. He was certain that Brashnikov was holding something back. He did not know what. Brashnikov had spent much more time in North Dakota than had been necessary. What had he been doing there? Brashnikov insisted that penetrating underground launch facilities had been very difficult.

Later, Batenin conferred with the technician on staff who maintained the suit.

"He claims he was in North Dakota, making call to this embassy when he was surprised in hotel room," Batenin explained. "He turned on suit. He remembers rushing through dark tunnel. He thought himself dead. The next he knew he crashed to floor of my office. Tell me, how can this be?"

The technician considered.

"This tunnel," he asked, "was it a long straight tunnel?"

"No. He said it twisted and turned."

"Hmmmm. We do not fully understand the suit's many properties," the technician said slowly. "But as you know, when it is on, the atoms of the body are in an unstable state, as are the component protons, neutrons, and electrons."

"Yes, of course. I know all that."

"Electricity is composed of electrons. It is possible

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theoretically possible-that teleportation might have been achieved."

"I do not know that word," Batenin had admitted.

"A theoretical fantasy," the technician supplied. "One that postulates that if it were possible to disassemble a person or an object on the molecular level, it should also be possible to transmit those elements, as electricity is transported through wire or cable, to another place, there to be reconstituted into its original form."

"I fail to-"

"Imagine a fax machine," the technician said. "One which, instead of producing a duplicate copy of a document at another site, transmits the original document, which ceases to exist at the point of origin."

"Are you saying that Brashnikov faxed himself through telephone?"

"I do not think it was intentional. How could he know? As he said, he was talking into an open-line receiver. He turned on the suit. Somehow his free-floating electrons were conducted into the receiver, taking his other atomic particles with them, and transmitted out the other end."

Batenin shuddered at the memory of the incredible white light that had blinded him.

"And the tunnel he described?" Batenin prompted.

"Wire or fiberoptic cables," the technician assured him. "The Americans use both for voice transmission."

"This accident. Might it be duplicated?"

"If it worked once, it should work again. But I would not advise a repetition of the experience. It obviously had a traumatic effect on the agent. He was not breathing when he emerged from the receiver."

"Perhaps he will become used to the experience," Batenin said thoughtfully. "Thank you for your analysis."

Yuli Batenin had already made his decision when he visited Brashnikov in the infirmary.

The Russian was already sitting up, eating ice cream.

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He had developed a suspect addiction to American foods.

"I am returning to Moscow, captain," Yuli told him stiffly after explaining the technician's theory to the interested thief.

"I will be here when you get back," Rair said, spooning out the nuts in the bowl of pistachio ice cream. He liked pistachio, but hated the nuts.

"I may not be coming back," Yuli told him. "I am going to ask for a new assignment. While I am in Moscow, see that you behave yourself until my replacement arrives. Then you will proceed with the operation."

Surprised, Rair Brashnikov had put down the bowl of ice cream.

"I am sorry to see you go," Brashnikov said, his black eyes shining like a fawn's. "You have been a good man to work with. And you saved me from bad fall, for which I am grateful."

Touched in spite of himself, Yuli Batenin nodded. "Da, I will miss you too, Brashnikov."

And when Rair reached out his arms to give him a farewell bear hug, Yuli returned the gesture, even though he had never liked the tiny thief.

Yuli had to struggle to extricate himself from the sentimental gesture.

With a stiff "Farewell, Tovarich Captain," Major Yuli Batenin exited the room, quickly picked up the diplomatic case, and entered the waiting limousine.

And now, as the limousine pulled up at his terminal at Dulles International Airport, Batenin was pleased and relieved that he would no longer have responsibility for such a high-risk operation as this.

With the big case still handcuffed to his wrist, Yuli Batenin strolled to the airport lounge. He ordered a C-breeze, and stared at his watch, while awaiting his departure time. He did not want to be seen in the waiting room, the case so obvious on his wrist. There

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were many thieves in America who would be attracted to the case for that very reason. Yuli hated thieves of all kinds.

When the boarding call finally came, Batenin drained the last of his drink and walked casually to the X-ray station. There was an armed guard in uniform standing by the metal-detector frame. Another man was operating the X-ray machine. Yuli barely noticed him. It would be the guard he would have to deal with. This shouldn't take more than a few moments.

Ignoring the metal detector, Batenin walked up to the guard and fixed him with a bold stare.

"I am Batenin, charge d'affaires with the Soviet embassy," he said firmly, reaching for his wallet. He froze.

"I . . ." Yuli swallowed. "One moment, please," he said sheepishly, patting his inside coat pocket. It was empty. He tried the outer pockets. They too were empty. In vain, the perspiration streaming from his brow, he tried his pants pockets, although he knew that he never carried his wallet containing diplomatic identification there. America was full of pickpockets.

"I am afraid . . . that is, I seem to have left billfold in car," Yuli said in a sick voice as the loudspeaker announced the final boarding call for Aeroflot Right 182.

"Do you have your ticket, sir?" the guard asked politely.

"Yes, yes. It is here," Yuli said in relief, plucking it from his shirt pocket. "But diplomatic identification is missing."

"There are a lot of thieves at this airport."

"Thieves?" Yuli said blankly. Then his facial expression changed to one of anger. He was thinking of a farewell bear hug from a man whom he despised. "Brashnikov," he hissed.

"Beg pardon?" the guard said.

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"It is nothing," Batenin said quickly. "Please. I beg you. I must make flight."

"Certainly. But without ID, I'll have to ask you to go through the metal detector. And your valise will have to be X-rayed."

Yuli Batenin looked over to the X-ray machine. The operator was looking at him with an innocent expression. He had the deadest eyes Yuli had ever seen. Like nail holes.

"I'm afraid I must insist. For I have diplomatic immunity."

"I don't doubt that," the guard said firmly. "But without documentation, you'll have to go through the same security procedures as everyone else. It's for your own safety, sir."

"But I cannot," Yuli sputtered. "For key to handcuffs in missing wallet. You cannot expect me to go through X-ray device with case. I would not fit."

Yuli gave the guard a helpless smile. In truth, the key was nestled in his left shoe.-

The guard looked to the dead-eyed X-ray operator.

"How do we handle this?" he asked.

"No problem," the other man said helpfully. "We can X-ray the case without it going all the way through the belt."

"But ... but .. ." Batenin sputtered.

"If it's a problem, you can miss your flight," the guard said. "We can't make you go through security, but you can't board your plane unless you do. Your choice, sir."

The thought of having to return to the embassy and to that thief Brashnikov, whose scrawny neck he would like to strangle, flicked through Major Batenin's panicky mind. He decided to take the chance. Anything was better than another day on this operation.

"Very well," Batenin said stiffly. "I give consent."

"Fine. Now, since you can't go through the metal

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detector, I'll have to pat you down. Just take a moment."

Clutching the case with both hands, Yuli Batenin allowed himself to endure the indignity of being frisked. When that ordeal was over, he was escorted to the X-ray device.

"Just put it down on the belt," the operator told him cheerfully. He shut down the conveyor belt.

He was a very happy menial, Yuli noticed. Usually airport security people were as grave of face as a statue of Stalin, but this one seemed quite eager to be of help. Perhaps this would not be so bad. For he doubted that the X-ray would show anything that an untrained person would consider suspicious.

Yuli complied. The operator jabbed a button several times to make the conveyor belt inch forward. The case disappeared into the innards of the X-ray machine, Yuli's right hand following it in right up to the elbow.

"Will this hurt?" Yuli asked awkwardly. He had to lean on the machine to keep his balance. This was very difficult.

"Just hold that pose," the operator told him. Then he pressed a button. He pressed it again.

"What is wrong?" Yuli demanded nervously.

"Minor glitch. Be just another second. Don't worry."

"I do not want my hand to be X-rayed to what you Americans call a crisp."

"Not a chance," the operator assured him. He tapped the machine again. It seemed to tap back. And then the operator smiled.

"Okay," he said brightly, "you can pull it out now."

Batenin pulled the familiar case out again. He looked at his hand fearfully, but appeared not to be discolored from overexposure.

Nodding to the guard, the X-ray operator said, "He checks out. Let him through."

Major Batenin inclined his head to the two Ameri-

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cans as diplomatically as he could and hurried to the gate, muttering curses on the head of Rair Brashnikov under his breath.

The aircraft doors were locked after Yuli boarded. The moment he sat down, he felt the cold perspiration soaking his suit. But he breathed a slow sigh of relief.

But just to be certain, he kicked off one shoe and extracted the key as the wide-bodied Ilyushin-96 backed away from the gate. He put the key in the lock and twisted. The key would not turn. He forced it. It broke in the lock.

"What?" he muttered. Then he noticed that the bracelet attached to the case's handle was warped. He looked closer. It was fused at the locking point. It had not been that way during the drive. Could the multiple X-rays have fused the metal? he wondered anxiously.

And what about the contents?

Yuli Batenin pulled another key from his right shoe. It would not open the case. Not at all.

Fiercely, fearing the worst, he tore at the case with fingers like hooks. He broke his nails in the process, but by sheer might he ripped away one corner of the case.

Bits of torn paper fluttered out. There had been no paper in Batenin's case. Anxiously he dug his fingers in. They came away red. He had cut them on something. Glass.

"There was no glass in this case," he howled aloud.

Digging further, he found a slick sheet of paper. It looked like a page from a book or magazine. There was a color photograph printed on it. A woman's face. Yuli Batenin thought the face was familiar. It took him until the Aeroflot flight had rolled into position for takeoff before he recognized the face of the famous American singer and actress Barbra Streisand.

"Let me off plane!" Batenin screamed. "I must get off!"

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Back at the X-ray station, the operator pointed out to the guard that foot traffic had finally quieted down.

"Wanna get us both a cup of coffee?" he suggested.

"Sure. Take it black?"

"Yeah, black is fine," said Remo, to whom a cup of coffee was the equivalent to a dose of strychnine.

After the guard had disappeared around the corner, Remo rapped on the X-ray device and whispered, "It's okay, Chiun. You can come out now."

The Master of Sinanju slithered out of the compartment with a distasteful expression on his parchment face. He hauled a big boxy case with him.

"Next time, I will handle the buttons and you will hide inside," he hissed.

"Let's hope there isn't a next time," Remo said, taking the case. "And I apologize for the long wait. How was I to know he'd wait until the very last minute to board?"

"At least we did not have to resort to further subterfuge to make him relinquish his case."

"Yeah," Remo said as they walked away. "Funny how that worked out. I must've shown my FAA ID card to thirty or forty airline reps before they'd let me sub for the regular X-ray operator, and then had to coach the guard over and over to pretend the guy's diplomatic card had expired so we could get at the case. He was so nervous, I was positive he was going to blow it. And what happens? The Russian loses his ID. Must be my lucky day."

"Next time, I will handle the buttons," Chiun repeated as they sat down in a quiet corner of a waiting area.

"You know how you are with machines. Something could have gone wrong." Remo looked into the case. His face fell. "Uh-oh, I think something did."

"What?" Chiun asked quickly, leaning over to see.

"You did switch cases, didn't you?"

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"Do you doubt my prowess?" Chiun asked huffily.

"No, but I think we've been rooked. Look."

Remo held up an assortment of squares, like graphite tiles. Except they were a flat unreflective black and seemingly nonmetallic.

"What are these?" Chiun asked.

"Got me," Remo said quietly. "They look like Dracula's bathroom tiles. One thing for sure, they're not missile components or anything of the kind."

"Then you have failed," Chiun said coldly.

"Me? You did the switch."

"But you pressed the buttons."

Remo sighed. "Let's grab the next flight home. Maybe Smith can make sense of things," he said, sending the tiles clattering back into the case.

They went in search of a flight back to New York.

13

"You were not tricked," Dr. Harold W. Smith told them firmly. Smith was sitting in his cracked leather chair at Folcroft Sanitarium. The big picture window behind him framed Long Island Sound. Smith soberly turned one of the black tiles over and over in his thin hands.

"No?" Remo asked, pleased.

"I told you so," Chiun squeaked. "You worry too much, Remo. Imagine, Emperor, Remo left the critical task of switching cases to me and he had the audacity to suggest that I could make a mistake."

"Thanks a lot, Chiun," Remo muttered.

"These are RAM tiles," Smith said bitterly.

"Ah, of course, I have seen their commercials on TV," Chiun said pleasantly. "They are a big company. Perhaps they will agree to sponsor us in gratitude for recovering their valuable property."

"I doubt that," Smith replied dryly. "RAM is not a brand name. It stands for Radar-Absorbing Material. These tiles are made of a top-secret carbon-epoxy composition, and constitute the skin of our new generation of Stealth aircraft. It is fortunate, Remo, that you intercepted these before they reached Moscow."

"Remo?" Chiun squeaked. "It was I who made the exchange. Brilliantly, I might add."

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Smith cleared his throat. "Yes, Of course I meant both of you," he said.

"Remo just pressed unimportant buttons," Chiun said pointedly. "Anyone could have done that. A monkey could have performed Remo's task. I, on the other hand, performed the all-important exchange completely unsuspected by our adversary. Would you like to hear the story again, Emperor?"

"Er, no. Not just now," Smith said hastily. "I'm sorry. But let's stay on the subject. These particular tiles are from the Stealth bomber. There is only one place they could have come from and that is their point of manufacture, the Northrop Corporation facility in Palmdale, California, known as Plant Forty-two."

"These grow from plants?" Chiun asked, examining one tile.

"We have no leads on our thief," Smith said, ignoring him. "But these tiles tie in with the rash of Stealth crashes we've been having."

"How so, Smitty?" Remo asked with interest. Chiun pretended to examine his long curved nails. There was no sense in paying attention to whites when they rambled on in their unnecessary details. Let Remo explain the salient items later.

"What we know of the near-launch at Fox-4 tells us that this thief is capable of removing working parts from operational equipment. Suppose he extracted critical elements from hangared Stealth aircraft? If this went undetected, then the string of inexplicable Stealth failures is understandable."

Remo snapped his fingers. "I get it," he said. "They crashed because they were missing components."

"Exactly. And who would suspect that an unaccounted-for piece of Stealth wreckage had been extracted before the crash? At the same time, it would be impossible to steal sample tiles from a working aircraft because they are bonded to the frame." Smith paused. "He had to obtain them from the manufac-

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turer. And if the Soviets are attempting to develop a wing of Stealth aircraft of their own from our parts, they cannot accept this setback. They must acquire more tiles, otherwise the components they do have are valueless."

"You think our Krahseevah will try for these again?" Remo asked, hefting one of the tiles in his hand. It was unusually light.

"The Soviets have no choice. They may not move for weeks or even months, but unless a better lead develops, you and Chiun will guard the Palmdale facility."

"You haven't told us what we do to the Krahseevah if we meet him again," Remo mentioned.

Smith's face fell.

"I have no answer for that, Remo," he said helplessly. "I only wish I did. But at the very minimum, your mission is to keep any more RAM tiles from falling into Soviet hands."

"We'll do what we can," Remo promised.

"Remo will do what he can," Chiun said acidly. "I will do what you wish. As always."

"Don't mind him," Remo told Smith. "He's just in a snotty mood because he didn't get a window seat on the flight back. Probably not on the flight to California, either, the way he's acting."

Rair Brashnikov was feeling better. He was sitting up in bed and ready to eat solid foods. The embassy kitchen was preparing a thick London-broil steak for him. He would have preferred porterhouse, and he thought wistfully of the steaks he had had to leave behind in North Dakota. He didn't mind the missile parts that he could not bring with him. He was not paid for each item stolen, receiving only his monthly salary. He wondered what was wrong with Kremlin thinking that they offered a man no incentive to excel at the tasks given him to perform.

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For three years now Rair had contented himself with stealing a little here and there for Mother Russia, and stealing a lot for himself. Every week he shipped big packages to his cousin Radomir in Soviet Georgia. And he knew that every week his cousin sold them on the black market for American dollars. Quite a pile of dollars would be awaiting Rair when he returned to Russia. If he ever did. After all, it was very nice in America. And it would be nicer now that Batenin was no longer around to bother him.

Footsteps sounded outside the dispensary door and Rair Brashnikov sat up straighter in anticipation of a London-broil steak and salty french fries on the side.

But these footsteps were heavy and menacing. Rair's thin dark brows puckered. There was an unmistakably familiar sound to them.

"Nyet," he muttered. "It could not be."

But when the door slammed open and Major Yuli Batenin stood framed in it, huge shoulders heaving, Rair Brashnikov frantically reached for his belt-buckle rheostat.

His hand encountered only the drawstring of his pajamas.

And then Batenin was on him like an avalanche. Brashnikov felt himself being hauled out of bed and slammed against the wall.

"Where is it?" Batenin demanded vehemently, the force of his words expelling hot saliva on Brashnikov's shrinking features.

"Tovarich, what is wrong?" Brashnikov asked innocently.

Major Batenin slapped him across the face once. Then again with the back of his hand. Rair's cheeks stung.

"Under mattress," Rair said fearfully, recognizing blazing, naked hatred in the other man's eyes.

Batenin dropped him, and Brashnikov collapsed on the floor.

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He watched as Yuli Batenin rooted around under the mattress. In frustration he heaved the mattress off its springs with both arms. It was a heavy mattress. Brashnikov was impressed by the major's strength. Or possibly it was not mere strength, but sheer rage that empowered him so.

Brashnikov shrank into a corner of the room, awaiting the worst.

When Major Batenin straightened up, his wallet in hand, he turned to Brashnikov, his eyes fierce.

"If you ever steal from me again, I will wring your neck like a chicken's," he said in a too-low voice. "Do you understand, Brashnikov?"

"Da, da, Tovarich Major. I am sorry. It is merely irresistible urge that comes over me. I cannot help myself."

Batenin's red face was suddenly nose-to-nose with his own.

"I understand, Tovarich Brashnikov," Batenin said in a tone like grinding teeth.

"You do?"

"Da." He sneered. "I am even now seized by compulsion. Only mine does not urge me to steal. Only to break your thieving neck. I will make deal with you. I will smother my compulsion if you control yours."

"Deal," Rair Brashnikov said, gulping. The major's alcoholic breath filled his nose with fumes.

"Now, Brashnikov," Batenin said, straightening up, "I would advise you to get well soon. By dawn at very latest. You have important task before you."

"I do?"

"You are going back to place where Stealth tiles are made. You will obtain more."

"I did not obtain enough?" Brashnikov asked in a puzzled voice.

"If I have to explain, I may lose control of myself," Batenin warned. "And neither of us wish that-do we?"

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"Nyet, nyet," Brashnikov said, shaking his head.

"Good. Because until more tiles are in my hands, I cannot return to Moscow. And as long as I am stuck in embassy, your safety is in doubt. Are we in agreement on this, Brashnikov?"

"I feel much better already," Brashnikov told him. He cracked a lopsided, ingratiating smile.

14

Plant Forty-two of Northrop's high-security Palmdale facility was a completely windowless corrugated-steel building painted the color of the surrounding desert sands. No one who toiled within its fortresslike walls ever saw daylight during the working day. This unusual construction was necessary because of the number of special-access, or "black-budget," defense projects that were hatched within its austere confines; Spies both industrial and international were everywhere. And in today's world of high-tech espionage, a window was an open invitation to everything from a parabolic microphone to orbiting reconnaissance satellites.

The problem with having no windows was that while it inhibited opportunities for spying or invasion, it also made it more difficult to detect approaching threats.

"No windows," Remo said. "Great." He and Chiun watched the building from behind their rented car. It was parked on a lonely highway some distance from the barbed-wire-ringed facility. "We can get really close to the building without being seen."

They were out in a scrub-desert area of California. Telephone poles quaked in the brittle heat. In the distance were the sullen San Gabriel Mountains.

"Not necessarily," the Master of Sinanju said. "We are better off stationing ourselves far from this so-

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called plant. For it will not be our objective to prevent the Krahseevah from gaining entrance to this place, but to follow him after he leaves it."

"Isn't that risky?" Remo said. "What if he gets away with another batch of RAM tiles?"

Chiun shrugged as if it were an inconsequential matter.

"He will attempt to enter in this smokelike state," Chiun intoned. "We will not be able to stop him in that case. But if we allow him to leave unchallenged and, to his lights, unobserved, he will be less careful. Then we will follow him to his lair and catch him unawares, recovering any stolen artifacts."

"I like it," Remo said. "It's direct and simple."

"I tailored it for your mentality," Chiun told him. Before Remo could formulate a reply, the Master of Sinanju went on. "We will split up. I will position myself to the northeast, so that two walls are always in sight of my incomparable eyes. You, Remo, will take the southwest. Try to stay awake."

"Thanks a bunch," Remo said dryly. "You know we could be here for weeks."

"We will do what we have to do. That creature has angered me. I will take special delight in capturing and punishing it."

"Okay by me. Let's just hope something breaks soon. This isn't exactly my idea of the perfect place for an indefinite roost. I guess if you're taking northeast, and we happen to be parked southwest of the place, that means I get to wait in the car, huh?"

Chiun turned to Remo with his parchment features etched with disdain.

"Of course . . ." he began.

Remo grinned.

"... not," Chiun finished. "You will drive me to the northeast point of vantage and I will wait in the automobile."

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"And what am I supposed to do?" Remo growled. "Walk back?"

"You have something against walking, you who are young and smooth of skin, with unnumbered years stretching before you?"

"All right, all right," Remo said, getting behind the wheel. The Master of Sinanju settled into the passenger seat without a sound. The door closed like an infant's midnight exhalation.

Later, after Remo had parked the car in the shelter of a ridge, he picked his way through the triple ring of barbed wire and into the multibuilding facility. He secreted himself in an alley near a loading dock and crouched under the lip of a garbage dumpster. Fortunately, Remo thought, regulating his breathing so that the air came in too slowly to stir the scent receptors in his sensitive nose, this was an industrial area. Instead of smelling like dead fish, rotted cheese, and other rancid food smells, this particular dumpster reeked of hot plastic and acetone.

Remo had settled down to a long wait. An occasional security guard drifted by. Remo, in shadow, avoided them easily. The trick was not to catch their eye. Keeping still was a big part of it. Human peripheral vision picked up even the slightest movement, while a person looking straight on often missed the most obvious dangers because they did not act like threats.

Not watching an enemy was the other half of successful concealment. What the eyes missed, other senses often picked up. No one-not even Chiun-had ever satisfactorily explained human intuition to him, but Remo knew that even the worst-trained ordinary man could sometimes feel eyes on him. So he always looked away when the guards came by, confident that he would not be seen or sensed.

He was not.

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Long after midnight-Remo, who never wore a watch, knew it was exactly 3:44 A.M. because the last time he had happened to notice a clock it had been 10:06 and his biological clock told him that that was exactly five hours and thirty-eight minutes ago-he suddenly felt the air on his bare forearms lift in warning.

It was not cold, and even if it was, Remo should have been able to will his tightening flesh to relax. It would not. That meant an electrical phenomenon. Maybe the Krahseevah.

Remo slipped around behind the dumpster, looking for any sign of the creature.

The hair on his forearms grew stiffer. And the short hairs at the back of his neck rose up too. It was the identical sensation he had felt during his first encounter with the thing. Robin Green had reported exactly the same thing.

Remo was on his feet, staring up at the darkened edges of the surrounding buildings, when the Krahseevah walked by him as casually as a Sunday stroller.

Except that the Krahseevah was glowing like a misty moon with legs.

Remo faded back with alacrity. The speed and silence of the creature's abrupt appearance had taken even him by surprise. The Krahseevah had emerged from the steel tank of the garbage dumpster like an alien stepping out of the fifth dimension.

Remo watched it walk stiffly to the side of a building. It stuck its head in tentatively, paused, and then slipped inside.

Remo glided to the building's edge.

He stared around the corner. Down at the far end, the Krahseevah's glowing blister face emerged from the ridged steel like a forming bubble. The face hesitated, expanding and contracting regularly; then the Krahseevah stepped free of the wall. It cleared an open parking area with jerky strides. Then it crouched

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beside a tan Firebird. It melted into the car, causing the dim interior to glow faintly.

Remo hung back, seeing the thing's featureless face hovering over the dashboard. Ludicrously, its gold-veined boots stuck out below the chassis. The head swiveled slowly. It was obviously being very cautious.

Then the Krahseevah stepped from the car and, hugging walls and concrete loading docks, made its way to the windowless Plant Forty-two building.

Remo decided that he'd better get back to the garbage dumpster, where he would have a clear view of the building, but be least likely to attract notice. He did so.

Long minutes crawled by. Remo's eyes were trained on the building, but he fretted inwardly. Would the Krahseevah come out this way? He wished there was some way to warn Chiun. But he knew the Master of Sinanju was alert. But the problem would be that if the Krahseevah moved too fast, there wouldn't be time to get word to Chiun.

The Krahseevah appeared less than fifteen minutes later. Its glowing head poked out of Plant Forty-two's hangar doors-the same doors out of which the first Stealth bomber had rolled for media cameras. Evidently satisfied, the head withdrew and the hands came out, followed by the chest and the knees. The Krahseevah stood, one arm crooked, in the open. Then, clutching what Remo took to be an armful of RAM tiles, it backtracked its approach, going to the car, pausing, then working its way to the nearby building again.

Remo slipped around the back of the dumpster. The hairs on his arm began to rise again.

When they were at maximum elevation, Remo knew the Krahseevah was practically on top of him. He sneaked a peek around the corner.

The Krahseevah emerged from the other side of the dumpster and walked through a raised concrete walkway. Its legs disappeared below the thigh, which made

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it look as if it were wading through solid concrete. It vanished into a wall.

Remo went up the side of the wall like a spider. He crouched down on the roof, unseen in his black T-shirt and chinos.

The Krahseevah came out of the building on the other side and picked its way from object to object, like an octopus through coral. Whenever it found something to hide in-a wall or a car-it did. Once it scrunched down to conceal itself in a humming air-conditioning unit set in concrete.

Remo followed it with his eyes as far as he could. Then he floated to the ground and trailed it through the maze of barbed wire. The Krahseevah seemed to be heading north, which Remo hoped might mean he'd have a chance to tip off Chiun.

As the industrial park fell behind, Remo spotted the Krahseevah loping through open desert, toward the highway. Remo hung back to see if he could spot the Master of Sinanju.

Their rented car was about a mile down the road, which forked so that the car sat on the low road, in the shadow of a ridge. The high road climbed the ridge.

It was too far for Remo to attract Chiun's attention. Frowning, he returned to trailing the Krahseevah. The creature was moving from telephone pole to telephone pole, repeating its old tricks, Remo saw.

Then it stopped. As Remo watched, its lambent glow faded.

It had turned off the suit.

Remo moved. He knew this would be his one chance. He flashed through the desert, his toes making only tiny wedge-shaped marks in the sand, he was running so fast.

Then the low growl of an ignition sounded. A car! The Krahseevah had a car waiting.

The car was a big one. A black Cadillac. Its tail-

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lights flared; then it backed out of the shadows, stopped, and purred down the highway.

It was heading for the fork in the road.

"Damn!" Remo said, shifting direction. If it took the low road, it would pass Chiun. But if it took the high road, the Master of Sinanju might assume it was only a passing car.

Remo decided to take the ridge. He sprinted harder. Let Chiun be pissed for missing out. There was no way to avoid it.

Remo cut across the highway and hit the bottom of the ridge at full speed. Without pausing, he transferred his running motion into a four-limbed climb. He went up the rocks like a beetle fleeing a grass fire. Momentum took him halfway up before he needed to exert any effort. His hands and feet found plenty of handholds.

Remo levered himself up to the road just in time to spot the Cadillac's taillights whisk by like retreating eyes. The car was accelerating rapidly. Remo took off after it. They hit the downhill slope, so gravity helped carry him along. Not that he needed gravity's help. Remo's toes dug into the heat-softened blacktop like climbing spikes. Dig, pause, and push. Left and right. Right and left. Loosened granules of tar kicked up behind him. And soon he was running as fast as the speeding Cadillac, which had to run with its brake drums touching the wheel rims to negotiate the steep slope. Remo caught up with the car. Then he was running with the Cadillac, as if the car were merely coasting.

Rair Brashnikov was pleased with himself. He had successfully penetrated the high-security Northrop facility once again. It was easier this second time, for he had already explored the best approaches the first time. The RAM tiles were in the same storage area. It

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was a simple matter to shut down the suit, scoop up an armful, and turn the belt rheostat so that his glowing body was once more impervious to bullets and obstacles.

As he had last time, Brashnikov had left a parked car nearby. It was too far to walk to the nearest town, and although there was an added risk in removing his helmet and battery pack after shutting down the vibration suit in order to get behind the wheel and drive off, the risk was more than offset by the convenience.

Now, hurtling through the still California desert night, Rair Brashnikov watched the road ahead as it flat-teried out and became a twisting blacksnake toward freedom. He only hoped that these tiles would be enough to satisfy Major Batenin and that the charge d'affaires would shortly return to Moscow. Brashnikov feared that he had pushed the KGB major too far the last time. The man now had blood in his eyes whenever he saw Brashnikov, although the embassy buzzed with the rumor that Batenin would start at even the slightest sound. Especially ringing telephones.

Rair Brashnikov heard the sound before he realized he was being followed. There were no lights out here in the deserted highway, so the road ahead was a constantly changing splash of headlight glare. Behind him all was blackness and speeding telephone poles.

The sound seemed far away at first. It sounded like the distant wail of a siren. He wondered if it was an alarm being sounded back at Plant Forty-two. But the sound seemed to be drawing closer, as if it were a pursuing police car. But his rearview mirror showed only a wall of night. No pursuing vehicles at all.

Then Brashnikov happened to notice the man running alongside the car. He was all in black, so it was hard to make him out in the dim backglow of his headlights. But it was definitely a man.

Brashnikov looked down at his speedometer. It registered sixty-one miles an hour. That could not be, he

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thought to himself. There was a man keeping pace with his car. If the car was going sixty-one miles an hour, then it stood to reason that the man had to be going sixty-one miles an hour too. Maybe he was on skates.

Brashnikov swerved away from the man and took a look. No, the man was not on skates. He was running.

Then the man drifted-that was what it looked like, despite his speed-up to the driver's window. He knocked. Brashnikov looked up. He could not make out the runner's face. The man's mouth was wide open, yet he didn't seem to pant from exertion, as a man should who was running sixty-one miles an hour. The man's knuckles rapped on the driver's window again.

Brashnikov cracked the window open and the siren sound was suddenly very loud. Holding the wheel steady, he twisted around, but saw no pursuing car. Then Brashnikov realized that the sound was much closer. Almost at his elbow. Almost . . .

With a start he realized that it was coming from the running man. Crazily, insanely, he was making the noise with his mouth, like a child pretending to be a fire truck.

This was proved beyond any doubt when the man said, "Pull over." The siren sound stopped when he gave the order. Then it resumed again, this time louder.

"What is this?" Brashnikov demanded, reaching under the seat cushions carefully, one hand still on the wheel.

"I said, 'Pull over,' " the man repeated. "You're supposed to pull over when you hear sirens. What are you-from Russia or something?" This last sounded like a joke, so Brashnikov didn't reply.

Brashnikov felt the Tokarev pistol's cold butt under the cushions. He hated weapons, but Batenin had insisted he carry one when he was not in the suit. He

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hoped he would not have to kill the man. Rair Brashnikov considered himself a thief, not a murderer.

"Are you militsiya?" Brashnikov asked loudly. "Are you cop? Show me badge. I want proof."

Then he got a good look at the running man's face. The dead flat eyes over high cheekbones. It was the one who had chased him from LCF-Fox. The one who had the old Asian with him. How was this possible?

"Are you gonna stop or do I have to get rough?" the man growled.

That was enough for Rair Brashnikov. He dared not stop the car. There would not be enough time to don the helmet and battery. The man's threat obviously meant that he was armed. Otherwise, how could he stop a speeding Cadillac?

The Tokarev came up in Rair's hand, crossing his chest.

"Please," Brashnikov said. "Go away. I do not wish to shoot you dead."

"Naughty, naughty," the man said, grabbing for the half-open window. "Handguns are illegal in this state."

Brashnikov steeled himself and pulled the trigger.

The Tokarev did not fire. But it went off. It went off Brashnikov's trigger finger as if pulled by a magnet. It left a long streak of blood along Brashnikov's finger where the trigger guard had scraped the skin.

Sucking on his stinging finger, Brashnikov tried to keep the wheel steady with his free hand. The road was beginning to twist and turn. Brashnikov cast frightened glances at the still-running man.

He was busily taking the Tokarev to pieces. The ammo clip came out and was thrown away. Then the slide was yanked back in obviously strong fingers, because it fell away. The long barrel was then unscrewed like a light bulb. Finally the running man broke the handle and firing mechanism into fragments, and he dry-washed his hands clean of the metal filings

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that were all that was left of the well-engineered Russian pistol.

All the while, he kept up the childish police-siren sound.

"Last chance to pull over," he warned.

Brashnikov rolled up the window and floored the gas pedal. He left the man behind when the engine started redlining.

But only for a moment. Because, incredibly, the running man in black began overhauling the Cadillac again, which was now skating up to the ninety-mile-an-hour mark.

The man in black was a red-lit phantom in the rearview mirror. Brashnikov nervously watched him come on. His running motions were hypnotic. It didn't look as if he was really running. The coordinated actions of his arms and legs were slow, floating motions. There was a distinct rhythm to his running. Then, abruptly, he shifted left and drew up alongside the spinning right-rear tire.

Craning to see, Brashnikov saw him pause in mid-step as if to kick out.

Brashnikov sent the Cadillac swerving. The man swerved with it, as if anticipating the car's every nervous move.

That lunatic is trying to kick my tire, Brashnikov thought wildly. For some reason the absurdity of it was lost on him. He hugged the shoulder of the highway, fearing what would happen next.

Rair heard the explosive sound of a blowout and then he was wrestling with the steering wheel as the hard rim of the wheel dug into the flattened rubber. It was incredible. The tire was flat. The Cadillac started to weave and lose speed.

While Rair Brashnikov fought the wheel, his mind racing, a car roared in from the right. It was a small European job, and it sideswiped him viciously, send-

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ing the Cadillac veering raggedly. Brashnikov turned around to see who was driving.

It was the red-haired woman. The one who had tried to knock him down with a helicopter back in North Dakota.

"Pull over," she was shouting. "Pull over, dammit, or I'll run you off the road." She flashed a photo-ID card, which was laughable. Did she think a KGB agent would be impressed by such a thing?

Then the running man with the toes of steel appeared on his right. He was shouting too. Not at him, but at the woman.

"Hey, cut it out," he told her.

"Get out of the way, you fink," she shot back. "I'm going to run this sucker off the road."

"Are you crazy?" the man yelled back. "His car is bigger than yours. You'll be killed. Let me handle this."

Telephone poles flashed by on either side of them. The road was narrowing and the wobbling Cadillac dominated it. The man hugged the Cadillac's right while the woman's tiny car wove in and out on the left.

"Don't tell me my job!" the redhead was insisting. "And get out of the way. How can I run him off the road with you there? How are you doing that, anyway? I'm pushing fifty."

"If I tell you, will you get lost?" the man asked.

"No," the redhead said flatly.

"Then forget it."

Rair Brashnikov could not accept the evidence of his ears anymore. They were fighting like children. Did Americans not take their national security seriously?

But Brashnikov's wonder vanished when he realized that he had his own skin to think of. Seeing the road ahead veer into a sharp turn, he saw a way to rid himself of both pursuers.

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As the two vehicles and one running man hit the curve at fifty-three miles an hour, Brashnikov turned sharply to crowd the redhead's car. She met his challenge, crowding him back. But the Cadillac's flat tire made Brashnikov's machine more difficult to push. It didn't give, and when he realized this, he muscled the wheel sharply to the left.

Robin Green knew she wouldn't make the corner. She realized it too late. She hadn't been watching the road. She saw the telephone pole too late. It was framed in her windshield before her brain caught up with what her eyes were seeing and signaled "telephone pole in road." By then the windshield was already a splinterwork of cracks and the hood of the car was buckling like tinfoil and she could feel the seat pushing her forward and the wheel slamming into her chest.

The last thing she felt was her breasts. They felt like water balloons about to burst from impact.

Remo saw Robin Green's car pile into the telephone pole. It hit with so much force, it pushed the pole several feet beyond its pesthole. A tangle of transmission lines slapped the buckled hood.

Remo forgot about the Cadillac and ran to the mangled wreck. Flames began licking up from under the hood like red fingers. The smell of roasting wood filled the air. As Remo thought of Robin trapped behind the wheel, the smell was a sickening premonition. He got to the driver's side. Robin was just there, her head slumped over the warped steering wheel. Her eyes were closed. There was a streak of blood across her forehead.

Remo grabbed the door handle. It was one of those reach-under-and-pull-up types. Remo pulled straight out. The handle came away like an oversize staple.

"Damn," Remo muttered. He looked for another

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way in as the stench of flowing gasoline hit his nose like a chemical punch. He could see gas pooling under the rear bumper, away from the licking flames. But not for long. Already tendrils of gas were reaching out in all directions like feelers.

The driver's-side window was intact. But Remo knew if he shattered it, glass would fly into the car interior with dangerous consequences. Feeling his way around the door edge, Remo fervently wished cars still had external hinges. It would have been simpler to shear them off and pluck the door away. But this door was jammed shut.

Remo was about to hop across the hood to try the other side, when he noticed a hairline crack atop the window. It was not fully closed. He slipped his steel-hard fingers up under the rubber sealing strip and found the top of the glass. He levered down, and there came the grinding of an electric motor being forced into reverse as Remo pushed the window inexorably down against all manufacturers' recommendations.

When he had it halfway down, Remo reached in and shattered the exposed glass with a hard inside punch, sending jagged chunks out into the dirt. He pulled the door free and snapped Robin's seat belt. She didn't move. Her legs were wedged under the bent steering wheel, and Remo wondered if they were broken. He was about to check when a sudden whoosh! told him the fire had found the fuel in the engine. Now he had no choice.

Remo pulled Robin's limp body from behind the wheel as gently as he dared. Cradling her in his strong arms, he ran. He could feel the intensity of the flames building. The heat was on his back. When he knew the car was about to go, he dropped to his knees and shielded Robin's body with his own.

The car exploded like a cardboard box filled with skyrockets. Fire burst out of the windows, melting the

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tires and congealing glass. The upholstery burned with an acrid stink.

After the shock wave had passed, Remo looked back at the blazing ruin. No explosion-borne pieces of metal had landed near them. He looked down at Robin's pale face. Touching her temple, he felt the throbbing of her pulse. She looked almost angelic in the crackling backglow of the flames. For a moment Remo forgot her abrasive personality and saw her only as a gorgeous, desirable woman. He instantly regretted leaving her in the lurch back in North Dakota. When she awoke, Remo decided, he would apologize.

Robin Green's eyelids began fluttering and Remo tenderly wiped a thread of blood from her brow. It came from a minor cut near the hairline, he saw.

"Take it easy, kid," he whispered. "You're in safe hands."

The first words Robin spoke dispelled Remo's solicitous thoughts.

"That was a stupid macho thing you just did," she snapped. "I almost had him! He would have spilled his guts after two minutes with me."

"You tried to run him off the road, and you're calling me macho?" Remo said incredulously. "You were nearly killed, you know that?"

"Another minute and I would have had him."

"And I'm the Incredible Hulk," Remo said. "Here, give me your hand."

Robin pushed the offered hand away. "I can stand without help, thank you," she said frostily. Then she got up on wobbly knees. She fell back immediately, landing on her rump.

"I just need to catch my breath," she said in a weaker tone. "If only you hadn't interfered."

"Right," Remo said bitterly, looking down the long stretch of deserted highway. "If only I hadn't interfered."

"That guy would have pulled over in another minute," Robin Green insisted as she redid her buttons,

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which had come loose in the excitement. "Damn. I wish I had been born flat-chested."

"Be careful what you wish for," Remo said. "You might get it."

"Just what's that supposed to mean?"

Remo looked away.

"You hit that pole head-on," he said distantly. "You should be dead. You probably would have been if you hadn't had all that natural cushioning."

Robin followed the direction of Remo's gaze to the blazing tangle that was her car. She felt her breasts and winced. They hurt.

"Oh," she said in a shaken voice.

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Robin Green was still very shaky when Remo pulled up in his rented car. He pushed open the door, and Robin eased herself into the passenger seat in obvious pain.

"Where's Charlie Chan?" Robin asked. "I thought you were going to fetch him."

"He wasn't there," Remo told her as he sent the car speeding down onto the road. "Just the car."

"Well, if you think I'm going to let you waste time chasing him down, you've got another think coming, buster," Robin snapped.

"Chiun wouldn't leave the car unless he saw something important. I think he spotted the Krahseevah."

"Fat lot of help he was," Robin said. "Where are you going?"

"After the Krahseevah," Remo told her. His dark eyes were intent on the road ahead.

"You can forget that too. He's long gone."

"A minute ago you were all hot to chase him. By the way, what are you doing here? Shouldn't you be in the brig or the stockade or whatever they call it?"

"The Air Force calls it corrective custody, and I have friends in high places. So I'm still on this case, no thanks to you."

"Me?" Remo said innocently. "What did I do?"

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"Do? You left me twisting in the wind, for one thing."

"Sorry. But I had my orders."

Remo spotted a fallen telephone pole and pulled over. He looked it over carefully, then started off again.

A few hundred yards down the highway, there was another felled pole, this time on the opposite side of the road.

"And that's another thing," Robin went on testily. "Who are you really? I've checked and the General Accounting Office never heard of you."

"Here," Remo said, handing her a photocard from his wallet. Robin took it.

"Remo Fleer, IRS," Robin read. Remo snatched the card away.

"Oops! Wrong card. Try this one."

"Remo Overn, OSI! Oh, give me a break."

"Hey, I'm undercover. Just like you. Or are you still with the OSI?"

"If you were OSI, you'd know that," Robin spat.

"Actually I've been pretty busy lately," Remo said airily. "Haven't kept up. I just noticed you were out of uniform and I wondered."

"That gives you away right there," Robin said triumphantly. "We only wear uniforms when we're undercover. No one knows who we are-even our rank is secret."

"Oh, yeah? What is your rank anyway? Major? Colonel? What?"

"None of your business."

"Maybe it's in these files," Remo said, taking a packet of folded sheets from his back pocket.

Robin, noticing that they were copies of her official OSI report on the first LCF-Fox incident, blew up.

"Where did you get these?" she said, grabbing them. "And don't feed me that crap about belonging to the

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OSI. If either of us is caught with these, our goose is cooked."

"Oh, I have my ways," Remo said casually, retrieving his ID card. "Just like I'm going to find the Krahseevah."

"No chance. The trail's cold by now."

"Not to me. Want me to let you off somewhere?"

"You're not ditching me now."

"Look," Remo said seriously. "You've just come through a serious accident. You're at the very least banged up. You're certainly in no shape to play tag with this guy. So why don't I let you off somewhere where you can get medical treatment? It's for your own good."

"I can't. If I don't produce results, my plans will go up in smoke."

"What plans?" Remo wanted to know.

Robin fell silent. She leafed through the OSI files.

"Come on, what plans?" Remo prompted.

"If I crack this thing, maybe they'll let me join the Air Force for real," Robin admitted quietly.

Remo pulled over to the side of the road. "Hold the phone," he said. "You mean you're a fake?"

"No," Robin said levelly. She paused, took a breath, and went on shakily. "I've never admitted this to anyone before. I'm a service brat. Daddy didn't have any boys. Just me. I tried to enlist, to continue the family tradition."

"No go, huh?" Remo said sympathetically.

"I was rejected for a real chickenshit reason. They called it 'weight not in proportion to height.' The fatuous jerks!"

"Why not try again? You look pretty trim now."

"They weren't talking about my weight."

Remo frowned. "Then what-?"

"These aren't falsies, buster," Robin snapped, patting her breasts. "They're not detachable before induction physicals."

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"Oh," Remo said, starting the car again. "That explains it."

"Damn straight it does."

"I meant the way you've been acting. Sensitive. Defensive. Trying to prove yourself. It all makes sense now. So how were you able to pass yourself off as an OSI agent?"

"I am not passing myself off," Robin insisted. "I am OSI. They employ civilian agents too. I passed their damn physical with no sweat. I turned out to be a damn good special agent and my record was spotless until this mess started. Now all I want is a chance to keep it clean. Then maybe-just maybe-they'll loosen up their silly regs so I can wear the uniform officially, not just when I'm undercover. If only I hadn't been cursed with these monster knockers."

"If you hadn't," Remo said dryly, "your face would right now be decorating the windshield of that wreck back there."

Robin had no answer to that.

"Tell you what," Remo said finally. "You do me a favor and I'll let you tag along until we catch this guy. Maybe we can work it so you get some of the credit."

"What do I have to do?" Robin asked in a wary voice.

"Simple," Remo said with a smile. "Just eat those reports."

"I beg your pardon?"

"You heard me. I was supposed to do it myself^ but I forgot. They're perfectly digestible. Even the ink."

"You're joking."

"Take it or leave it. There's a town coming up ahead. I'll just drop you off at a gas station."

Robin looked at the files in her hand and then at Remo's sober profile. She examined the files again. She nibbled on a corner experimentally. She swallowed. Her expression was quizzical.

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"How about you take half and I take half?" Robin suggested.

Remo thought about it, "Fair enough," he said. He put out his hand. They shook on it and then divided up Smith's files.

When they were done, Remo asked, "Now, that wasn't so bad, was it?"

"Not enough ink," Robin muttered. "You said you had a way of finding the Krahseevah."

"See that telephone pole we just passed?"

"No."

"That's because it's lying on its side. That's the fifth toppled pole we've gone by."

"And?"

"You know how Indians used to snap branches to leave trails through the forest? Chiun is leaving a trail for me to follow."

"The little guy did that?" Robin said, pointing to a dramatically leaning telephone pole coming up on their right.

"Without even trying. My guess is he spotted the Krahseevah while you were playing chicken and took off after him."

"And I suppose he just happened to forget to bring his car along?"

"Chiun doesn't like cars much. He says they're too slow."

"I'll believe it when I see it," Robin said huffily, folding her arms. She winced. Her ribs hurt. And her breasts felt like two humongous throbbing bruises.

Noticing her reaction, Remo asked, "You think you're up for this?"

"I'll be fine once I catch that Russian."

The lights of a desert community appeared up ahead. And in the solemn glow, a palm tree abruptly shook, shivered, and fell over.

"We're getting close," Remo said, pushing the accelerator to the limit.

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Rair Brashnikov slowed down when he approached the town. Once he had changed his flat tire, he did not plan to stop again until he reached Los Angeles International Airport, but neither did he wish to attract the attention of the California authorities by driving too fast.

A neon sign on the left side of the road caught his eye. It said "Orbit Room Motel." As Rair drove past it, he saw that it was a low stucco building with an attached bar. The bar was dark but in the window rows of fine liquor bottles gleamed invitingly. Good American liquor was at a premium on the Russian black market.

Rair drove more slowly. Checking the rearview mirror, he saw no sign of pursuit.

He executed a careful U-turn and pulled into the Orbit Room parking lot, thinking: What harm could there be in it?

The Master of Sinanju left the palm toppled and sprinted on down the highway toward the lights of a town. He hoped that Remo was behind him. He could not understand what had happened to him.

Back at the place where they had waited for the Krahseevah, Chiun had been sitting in the car, his eyes keen and unwavering. He did not see the Krahseevah enter the building that for some reason was called by whites a plant, and did not see him leave it.

But it happened that his magnificent eyes spied his pupil, Remo, atop a building away from his post. Chiun recognized from Remo's crouching body language that he was stalking someone.

That was enough for the Master of Sinanju, who burst from the car like a blot of blackness. He circled the building, searching with his eyes.

The faint glow of the Krahseevah became visible crossing an open stretch of highway. Hearing the sound

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of a car motor start up, Chiun knew that the Russian was going to attempt escape by vehicle.

Seeing Remo sprint for the car, Chiun decided that Remo had the situation in hand. But just in case, he would take the low road and be prepared to join Remo in the chase.

Chiun waited in the middle of the road, his sleeves linked, his face resolute, for the big car to turn the corner.

It never did. Instead, its headlight glow swept above Chiun's head and past him. The Cadillac had taken the ridge road.

Annoyed that Remo had allowed this to happen, Chiun flounced around and, sandals slapping the blacktop silently, streaked after it. He stayed on the low road, knowing that the two roads ran parallel for several miles before diverging.

When the ridge road flattened, Chiun saw the Cadillac moving rapidly. There was no sign of Remo. Chiun frowned. What could have happened to him?

Chiun crossed over a strip of desert to the other road and fell in behind the Cadillac. He maintained a decorous pace, keeping the car's taillights always in view, but never allowing his night-black kimono to be visible. Every few hundred yards he paused to fell a telephone pole.

Now the Cadillac was slowing as it came to the city limits. Dawn was turning the east pinkish-orange.

And as Chiun rounded a turn in the road, he saw the Cadillac pull into a combination motel/bar called the Orbit Room Motel.

Chiun dropped to a trot, and his arms ceased their steady pumping. He glanced over his shoulder. But there was still no sign of Remo. It was puzzling.

As Chiun drew up to the neon Orbit Room sign, he was no longer running. He was flitting from mailbox to palm tree, a patch of shadow that no human eye could perceive.

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Chiun saw the Krahseevah leave the big car. He wore an overcoat so that only his white boots showed. He carried the car battery and the collapsed bladder-like helmet under one arm. The tiles were not in his possession. He went around to the back of the bar.

Chiun drifted up to the Cadillac. He peered into the interior. There was a cardboard box in the back seat. The door was locked, but that did not deter the Master of Sinanju. He tapped his fingernails against the rear window. He tapped steadily, insistently, until the glass suddenly radiated cracks. It crystallized into nuggetlike pieces. Laying his palm against it, Chiun pushed in the window glass like a piece of soft cardboard. It plopped onto the seat with a mushy sound.

Chiun extricated the cardboard box and undid the flaps. The box contained over a dozen black tiles. Pleased, Chiun took the box to a mailbox and sent it sliding down the chute for safekeeping. He did not want them damaged in the conflict to come.

Then he marched for the front door of the bar. He vowed to himself that this time he would leave no walls for the Krahseevah to conceal himself in.

Remo almost drove past the Orbit Room Motel without noticing the parked Cadillac.

He finally spotted it when he executed a sharp U-turn and pulled into the parking lot.

"I hope this doesn't mean what I think it means," Robin Green said unhappily. She was looking at the motel's stucco face. Or rather, what was left of it.

For the Orbit Room Motel looked like a piece of white cheese that had been nibbled on by rats. Scablike chunks were falling from great holes even as Remo pulled into a spot. When he got out, his car door banged the one parked next to his. Remo noticed that it was a Cadillac. He checked the rear license plate. It matched the number of the Krahseevah'^ machine.

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But Remo didn't have time to consider that. He had spotted the Master of Sinanju.

Chiun leapt from a gaping cavity in the stucco corner. Whirling, he attacked the face of the building, his long fingernails working like scores of high-speed clippers. Stucco flew like broken teeth.

From the entrance, hotel personnel and guests in their nightclothes and underwear poured out screaming. They piled into cars and drove off in a mass exodus of confusion.

"Chiun, hold up," Remo called.

The Master of Sinanju turned, his clawlike hands poised.

"Remo! What kept you? Never mind. Come help me. The white thing is inside this building. We must root him out." And Chiun slashed a long horizontal line across the cracked stucco as he ran the length of the building's face.

"You'd better stay here," Remo told Robin in a solicitous tone. "Okay?"

"Are you kidding?" she said. "I had a tough enough time explaining one wreck of a hotel without being involved in another."

"Good girl," Remo said, starting off.

Robin watched him go. "What am I thinking?" she said, cocking her automatic. "He's going to blow it again." She squeezed out and limped after Remo.

When Remo stepped up behind Chiun, the Master of Sinanju turned on him, his face furious.

"Do not merely stand there like useless baggage," he shrieked. "I have followed that dastard here, no thanks to you, and I- "

Chiun's hazel eyes narrowed at the sight of Robin Green limping up.

"How did she get here?" he hissed explosively.

"I pulled some strings," Robin informed him.

Chiun blinked. "Strings?" he asked, approaching her. "Tell me of these strings. Are they part of the

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blue smoke and mirrors? I do not remember you saying 'blue smoke, mirrors, and strings.' What kind of string is employed?"

"What's he jabbering about?" Robin asked Remo.

"Look, let's save this for our old age, shall we?" Remo said. He turned to Chiun. "You say the Krah-seevah's inside? Fine. Let's dig him out and we'll sort out the pieces later."

Robin Green opened her mouth to say something, but her gaze was caught by something above and behind them. Her mouth froze in the open position.

Remo and Chiun turned just in time to see the Krahseevah's featureless face emerge from the stucco wall above their heads.

Robin sent two rounds into its face. Two spiderweb holes shattered the textured stucco. The face withdrew.

"It's on the second floor," she yelled.

Remo grabbed her gun.

"No wild shooting," he hissed. "We don't know if there are still people up there."

"Not after your friend, the Eastern earthquake, started in on this place," Robin said.

"I resent that," Chiun said.

"Both of you just put it away. C'mon, let's hit the second floor."

They went in together. The lobby was deserted. At Remo's suggestion, they split up. Robin followed him up a flight of stairs. Chiun took the elevator.

They reached the second floor simultaneously. Virtually every door was wide open, thanks to the mass evacuation caused by Chiun's attempt to bring the hotel down around the Krahseevah's head.

"This should be easy," Remo said as he passed from door to door.

"Look," Robin put in, pointing to a closed door. "Care to bet if he's in that room?"

"You're covered," Remo said. "Come on."

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"Can I have my weapon back?" Robin whispered as they closed in on the door.

"No," Remo and Chiun said in different degrees of vehemence.

Rair Brashnikov knew he had a problem. He could easily slip out of the hotel in his incorporeal state, but he could not drive off without turning off the suit. He knew from his experiences with the white man and the little Oriental that they were more than human. It was very strange. They possessed no electronic augmentation, but they did things no human could possibly accomplish. They would follow him no matter where he went, tireless and inexhaustible-which was more than Rair could say for the battery pack that powered his vibration suit. It was advertised as a sixty-month battery, good for over five hundred cold cranking amps for all-weather starts. But that guarantee held only if it was hooked up to a car. The suit usually drained it after twelve hours' continuous use.

There was only one thing to do. He turned off the suit and picked up the room telephone. He hit the outside-line button, and got a dial tone. Quickly Brashnikov dialed the Soviet-embassy number he had carefully committed to memory now that it represented his ultimate trump card in the game of espionage.

The phone rang. Once, twice. Then the door crashed open and Rair Brashnikov reached for the belt rheostat, steeling himself for the ordeal of fiberoptic cable teleportation.

They all saw the Krahseevah, his outline sharp and clear, poised, receiver in hand.

"Got him!" Remo exulted.

"No, he is mine!" Chiun cried.

They both swept into the room like black-clad demons.

Then the Krahseevah touched his belt. His sharp

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outlines blurred. He glowed hike the moon seen through fog.

Then, a strange thing happened. The Krahseevah's blurred outlines shifted and wavered. Remo was almost upon him when it happened.

The Krahseevah congealed like a luminous mist. It collapsed, and, like smoke, was drawn into the hovering receiver. It looked like a special-effects film run in reverse. The last bit of him to go was the hand that held the receiver. When that was gone, the telephone plummeted to the rug.

Remo caught it, one step ahead of Chiun.

Robin screamed.

"Oh, my God," she cried. "What happened to it?"

Remo, his eyes staring, looked at the receiver with a dumbfounded expression.

"It was sucked into the phone," Remo said slowly. "I think."

"Oh, do not be ridiculous," Chiun snapped.

"You got a better explanation?" Remo retorted.

"It was like he was made of smoke," Robin said in a stunned voice.

"Hah!" exclaimed Chiun. "Then there is truth behind those inscrutable words, blue smoke and mirrors. Now, where are the mirrors? I see no mirrors. Or string."

Remo put the receiver to his ear experimentally. There was a great deal of static, but through it he heard a voice. A Russian voice. It was saying, "Oh, no, not again! Brashnikov, you idiot!"

Then the Russian voice screamed and Remo heard a flurry of frantic shouting and activity.

Seeing Remo's absurd expression, Chiun demanded, "What is it? What do you hear?"

"Russians. I think the Krahseevah's in the line somewhere."

"He will not escape us so easily," Chiun declared,

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leaping to the baseboard. He began pulling the telephone wire free like string from soft butter.

"No, Chiun," Remo said, stopping him. "Hold up. We've got an open line here, let's not lose it." He handed Chiun the receiver. "Here, you keep listening."

Remo plunged into the next room, got an outside line, and called Dr. Harold W. Smith.

Smith's answer was sleepy.

"Remo. What is it?"

"Can you trace a line for us?"

"Yes, of course. One moment, I'm speaking from my briefcase phone. Let me take it to the next room, where I won't wake my wife."

A moment later, the sound of Smith keying his portable briefcase computer came to Remo's ears. Swiftly Remo gave him the hotel name and the room number the Krahseevah had used.

"It's the Soviet embassy again," Smith told him after a long silence.

"Well, I've got good news and bad news for you, then."

"What's the bad?"

"The Krahseevah got away from us again. And I know how freaky this is going to sound, but you'll have to take it on faith. He got away through the phone system."

"We must have a bad connection, Remo. I thought you just said-"

"I did," Remo said, cutting him off. "He was holding an open line, turned on the suit, and he was gone like a milkshake through a drinking straw. Into the receiver."

There was a long silence over the line. It hissed.

"There is no way you could have been deceived?" Smith demanded at last. "No chance of trickery or optical illusion?"

"No. I saw it. Chiun saw it. And Robin saw it."

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"Robin Green?" Smith's voice was sharp. "How did she get there?"

"Good question. I forgot to ask. Anyway, I think we'd better go after the embassy people."

"No. Emphatically, no. You said something about good news."

"Oh, yeah. The Krahseevah didn't have the tiles with him when he got sucked away. I don't know where they are, but he didn't have them."

"They are in the mail," Chiun called from the next room.

"Smitty, Chiun just said they're in the mail." Remo listened a moment. He put his hand over the mouthpiece. "Hey, Chiun. Smith wants to know if you addressed them to him."

"No. I simply put them in a postal box."

"Oh. Hear that, Smitty? . . . Sure, I'll get them back. So what do we do now?"

"Return to Folcroft," Smith said after a pause. "We are facing incredible technology and we must stop it now."

"Okay. We'll ditch Robin somehow."

"No. Bring her. But make certain she sees nothing that will provide her with a trail back to CURE."

"Gotcha," Remo said, hanging up.

The first thing Robin Green said to Remo when he returned to the other room was, "Who is Smith?"

"Look," Remo said, raising his hands. "Do us both a big favor. Pretend you never heard the name Smith. Okay?"

"Not okay. I asked you a direct question. Who is Smith and what does he have to do with you two?"

"Listen, I'm telling you that you'll be a lot better off if you don't know. Just, please, don't mention his name to his face, okay?"

"To his face? Is he coming here?"

"No, we're going to see him."

"I'm not going anywhere without some answers first."

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"Sorry," Remo said, edging closer. "I have my orders."

Robin Green quickly backed away. "Wait a minute, buster. You just keep your chicken-plucking hands away from me."

"Quickly, Remo," Chiun put in unconcernedly. "I wish to leave immediately."

"Give me a sec, okay? Look, I'm sorry," Remo said to Robin, cornering her by a window. "This won't hurt a bit."

"Hurt! Wait! Don't do anything you'll be sorry for later. My father is a full bird colonel. If you so much as lay a hand on me, he'll hunt you down. He'll-"

Remo reached out and squeezed a nerve in her neck. Robin Green's eyes rolled up into her head. She exhaled a slow, summery sigh and slumped into Remo's arms. He carried her easily.

"Excellent," Chiun said as he breezed out of the room. "Thus we will not have to listen to her on the trip back to Folcroft."

"Did you catch what she said about her father?" Remo asked as they took the elevator down. "No wonder she's not up on charges. Her father's been protecting her."

"And it is no wonder that she is named Robin," Chiun sniffed. "With a father who is a bird. What kind of depraved woman must her mother have been?"

16

Robin Green's vision cleared slowly. At first, everything was a blur. Her arms felt stiff. When she breathed, she inhaled her own exhaust. She felt enclosed, claustrophobic. And her ears rang, just like they would after a long flight.

"Better get set," a familiar voice said through the ringing. "Looks like she's coming to."

Into her blurred brown field of vision moved a vertical column of gray. It stopped before her. A man, she decided.

Robin tried to speak, but her throat was clogged. She coughed to clear it. Her eyes watered. Surprisingly, that seemed to help. The gray blur grew more distinct.

Robin realized that she was sitting down. There was a strange cottonlike smell in her nose. She squeezed her hands, but couldn't feel them. Panic started to mount in her throat. Had she been injured in the car accident more than she thought? Had any of the events that followed it actually happened?

She clutched at herself. Her breasts felt tender. She remembered the smashed steering wheel.

"Can you hear me?" she asked the gray blur.

"Yes," replied a male voice, dry and bitter as a week-old lemon peel. "Please do not exert yourself until the bandages are removed."

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Robin gasped involuntarily. "Bandages? Am I okay?"

"Sure," another voice said from behind her. "The X rays were all negative. Now, just sit still a minute." It was that first voice. Remo whatever-his-name-was.

Then it all came back in a rush of memory. The car crash. The fight at the motel. Remo's hand reaching out to her, and then . . . oblivion.

"What . . . what did you do to me?" she sobbed, reaching for her face. She couldn't feel her face. She couldn't even feel her fingertips. They were swathed in fabric. Or was it her face? Then her vision cleared.

Robin realized she was in a small room. The walls were odd. Not covered with paint or wallpaper, but Naugahyde or something similar. Like overstuffed upholstery. Padded and . . . Padded . . .

"Oh, God," she gasped. "I'm in a padded cell."

Then she saw the man. He was all in gray. A handheld mirror shielded his face. The mirror side reflected Robin's own face. It was the face of a Hollywood mummy. Only her stark and staring blue eyes showed through the winding gauze.

"Please calm yourself," the gray man said from behind the mirror. "The procedure is quite painless, I can assure you."

Robin felt a strong hand-presumably Remo's-take the top of her head, and the tiny snippings of surgical scissors began. She looked down and saw her bandaged hands clutching the armrests of a chair.

"Am I ...?" Robin choked out. "Will I be ... disfigured?"

"Nah," Remo said. "The bandages were so we could get you onto the airline flight while you were unconscious."

"What?" Robin barked indignantly.

"I asked Remo to bring you here," the gray man said. "It was necessary that you not see anything that could lead you back to Remo or myself. You were transported as a catatonic burn patient."

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"Smith! Are you Smith?" Robin demanded. "Because if you are, you're in big trouble, buster."

The gray man gasped involuntarily. "Remo," he said in a shocked voice.

"Sorry, Smitty. Your name slipped out. But don't worry. Robin's on our side."

"The hell I am," Robin shouted. Suddenly the bandages fell away. Her mouth hung open. Her reflection stared back at her. Except for a few bruises and a cut near her hairline, it was normal-if paler than usual. She breathed a sigh of relief.

"See?" Remo said brightly, coming around the front. "Good as new."

"Step aside," Robin told him acidly. "I want to talk with your boss."

"And we want to talk with you," the man Robin took for Smith said matter-of-factly. "So please try to calm yourself."

"Calm myself!" Robin cried, pushing herself from the chair. "This loon just kidnapped me. I'm an Air Force investigator. You can't get away with this crap."

"Allow me, Emperor," a squeaky voice said from behind her left ear. And a hand with long curved fingernails reached up behind her hair and took the nape of her neck.

Robin felt her legs suddenly go numb, as if they had gone to sleep. She fell back into the chair.

"What is this?" she demanded. And then she noticed for the first time that she was sitting in a wheelchair.

"Oh, dear Lord," she said weakly, the fight going out of her.

"The paralysis is only temporary," Smith told her. "Chiun will restore the use of your legs after we have the answers we seek."

Chiun stepped into view, his face placid.

"You bastard," she hissed at him. And the old Oriental's face took on an injured expression.

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"Perhaps if you continue to insult me, I will forget how to realign your spine," Chiun warned her.

"He doesn't mean that," Remo put in quickly.

"Yes, I do," Chiun snapped.

"Please, please," Smith said. "Miss Green, if you will just answer my questions, we can be done with this interview."

"Why don't you put down that stupid mirror first? I can see that my face is fine, thank you."

"This mirror is not for your benefit," Smith told her. "It is so that you cannot see my face for later identification."

"Then could you please turn it around? You can stare at your own face for a change."

"This is a two-way mirror. I can see you from this end. If I turn it around, ray features will be visible to you."

At that, Chiun sidled up to Smith, his face craning up at the mirror. He examined it from front and rear. "May I borrow that when you are through with it?" he asked curiously. "It may be what I have been looking for."

"Later," Smith said testily.

"What do you want to know?" Robin said quietly, her face flushed.

"How did you happen to be on the scene when the Krahseevah, as Remo has styled him, reappeared?"

"You know, I could ask the same of you."

"Simply answer the question."

"All right. Did Remo-if that's really his name- tell you about the gas-station owner who saw the guy without his helmet?"

"Yes," Smith said, voice puzzled.

"Well, after I was ditched by your friends, I had a hard time explaining the demolished Holiday Inn, but fortunately, I have friends in high places."

"We know your father has been protecting you. He's been informed that you are well and not to

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worry. And just to be certain we have no problems from that quarter, I had him shipped off to a NATO base in Europe. He will not interfere."

"Oh," Robin said, subsiding. She swallowed and went on. "Anyway, strings were pulled and I was allowed to stay on the case. I rounded up Ed, the gas-station owner, his brother Ned, and the Holiday Inn desk clerk and had them describe the Russian's face for an artist I hired. We came up with a great likeness. Since then, we've had Air Force personnel watching airports and train stations all over the country. When someone who looked like our guy showed up at Los Angeles International Airport, I flew out there. I tracked him as far as the Northrop plant. Then he slipped into the suit and got away from me. I kept his car under surveillance, waiting for him to return. When he took off, I took off after him." She turned to glare at Remo. "I would have had him, too, but Remo Roadrunner here screwed things up."

"Me?" Remo said hotly. "I was on his tail first. You're a Robin-come-lately as far as I'm concerned."

"That's it?" Smith asked in a disappointed voice. "That's the lead you followed?"

Robin defiantly shook red hair out of her eyes. "What did you expect? That he called, asked for a date, and gave me his phone number?"

"That much we know," Smith said dryly. "He operates out of the Soviet embassy in Washington."

"Well, back to square one," Remo said. "Sorry, Smitty. I thought she'd have a better story than that."

"I thought it was a pretty sound piece of investigation," Robin muttered. "Why didn't any of you think of it?"

"She's got us there, Smitty," Remo admitted.

"Never mind," Smith said.

"Look," Robin said. "This was my investigation before it was yours. I know you guys aren't what you claim to be. I can live with that. But thanks to Punch

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and Judy over there"-Robin indicated Remo and Chiun with a disdainful toss of her head-"I'm probably AWOL from the scene of yet another demolished hotel. If I don't bag this Krahseevah, my career has flown south forever. Help me, and I'll help you. I'm in so deep even my father can't pull me out of this mess."

"We do not need you," Chiun told her pointedly. "You, who think that blue smoke and mirrors can explain anything your feeble mind cannot trouble itself to understand."

Robin just stared at the Master of Sinanju uncom-prehendingly.

"We have recovered the RAM tiles," Smith said slowly. "There is a chance that the Krahseevah will return to Palmdale, but it's doubtful he would dare to anytime in the near future. He knows we would expect that. Given his past pattern of infiltration and theft, he could strike anywhere in our military-industrial complex. We cannot afford to wait. He must be captured and neutralized as soon as possible."

Remo stepped forward. "But how, Smitty?" he said. "It was bad enough when we just couldn't lay hands on him. But now that we know he can just dive into any handy telephone at the first sign of trouble, I don't see what even Chiun and I can do."

"I suggest we descend upon the Russian embassy," Chiun proclaimed loudly. "We will take hostages. We will force them to deliver the Krahseevah to us and then we will kill him and every other Russian as a warning to their leader not to send any more such as him to America's well-protected shores."

"No," Smith said. "The principle of diplomatic immunity is important to our side too. We cannot jeopardize that privilege. It is out of the question."

"What is this faintheartedness I am hearing?" Chiun asked Remo sotto voce. "Smith never used to be like this."

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"Relations with Russia have warmed," Remo whispered back. "Smith doesn't want to rock the boat."

"I have been doing some research," Smith said carefully. "It seems that three years ago there was an event at a Nishitsu Corporation plant in Osaka. Several top physicists perished and the matter was hushed up. Prior to that there had been leaks from Nishitsu of an incredible superconductor breakthrough involving atomic matter. Not energy, but matter. If, as I suspect, this was a KGB 'wet-affairs' operation, we can deduce that the suit now in Soviet hands is not a product of their limited technology, but a Japanese prototype. In other words, I doubt there is another Krahseevah waiting in the wings."

"So if we capture our Krahseevah" Remo said, "the problem is solved. Right?"

"I assume so."

"But how? He's like the little man who wasn't there. We can see him, but we can't touch him."

"Except when the suit is off," Smith pointed out.

"Yeah. But he never has his hands far from his belt-buckle control. He sees us coming and he's covered."

"I have been thinking about this suit," Smith told them. "I believe I understand the telephone phenomenon. It is a kind of teleportation, which physicists have long theorized as possible. You, Remo, have described how the Krahseevah stuck his head out of the Palmdale motel to observe you. Yet he had the suit off moments later when he used the telephone. It was only when you arrived that he turned it back on."

"That's right," Remo admitted.

"We know we cannot touch him while the suit is on. The reverse, therefore, must be true. The Krahseevah has to turn the suit off before he can physically touch something he intends to steal. Then he must reactivate the suit, and the object somehow becomes, as he is, noncorporeal."

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"What does his military rank have to do with this?" Chiun snapped, feeling left out of all this white mumbo-jumbo.

"He said 'noncorporeal.' Not 'noncorporal,' " Remo told him. "It means 'insubstantial.' "

"I knew that," Chiun said, not wishing to appear foolish. Why did these Americans have to have so many names for the same thing? he wondered. They were worse than the old Romans.

Smith went on. "If we know the Krahseevah's next target, we can be waiting for him. In the few seconds the suit is not operating, either you, Remo, or Chiun might be able to take him. You're fast enough."

"Definitely," Chiun said with confidence.

"But how do we figure out where he's going to turn up next?" Robin wanted to know.

"We are going to set a trap for him," Smith told her. "And you, Miss Green, are going to be the bait."

And suddenly OSI Special Agent Robin Green wasn't as anxious to be freed from her wheelchair imprisonment as she had thought.

17

Major Yuli Batenin grabbed the edge of his desk when the phone rang. Even from beyond the closed door, the shrill, insistent sound went through him like a hot needle.

"Answer that damned thing!" he shouted into the intercom.

There was no telephone in Major Batenin's embassy office anymore. He had had the line removed to the reception area. Never again would Major Yuli Batenin answer a telephone as long as he lived. Not after what Brashnikov had done to him. Again.

It had not been as horrendous an experience, having Rair Brashnikov explode from the receiver a second time. At the warning roar of static, Batenin had thrown the receiver away and dived under his desk.

When he emerged, after the flash of white light faded, Brashnikov was not to be seen. Frantic, Batenin called in his staff and instituted a thorough search. The embassy was put on yellow alert. Every staff member, from the now-furious ambassador to the lowliest clerk, rushed about the embassy searching for him.

It was getting so that the existence of the vibration suit could not be kept secret much longer. Even the cleaning staff whispered about it.

They found Brashnikov in the office directly under Batenin's. Or rather, they found his feet.

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For Rair Brashnikov's gold-veined white boots were sticking up from the floor as if cut off at the ankles and placed upside down by a ghoulish prankster. And of course, they were sinking into the floor.

This realization sent everyone scrambling down another floor, where they discovered Brashnikov hanging from the ceiling like a great white bat.

Brashnikov's face membrane was in an expanded position, Batenin saw. Then the red belt light winked on and half the staff cleared the room in mute panic. The half that stayed had not known the significance of the red light. Batenin took careful pains to explain it to them.

After he had finished, others began to edge toward the door. Batenin was about to warn them of the consequences of not obeying him, when someone pointed at Brashnikov.

Batenin turned. The face was silently contracting. Brashnikov was breathing. Batenin looked ceilingward and saw that Brashnikov's booted toes were just about to come free of the ceiling.

"Brashnikov," Batenin shouted at him. "Do not turn off suit. Do you understand me? Do not touch suit."

Brashnikov waved his arms feebly. Batenin couldn't tell if he had heard him.

Then the tip of his toes emerged from the ceiling. Batenin examined the toes from every angle before satisfying himself that they were not in contact with the plaster.

"Now, Brashnikov.f Turn off suit now!"

Weakly Rair Brashnikov reached for his buckle. His hand twisted. Brashnikov's fuzzy outline clarified, and the suit came into hard focus. Rair Brashnikov landed on his head with a loud thunk.

Batenin rushed to the fallen man and pulled off his helmet, which came away with the ripping sound of separating Velcro.

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"Brashnikov! Are you well?" demanded Batenin, who secretly hoped the stupid thief had broken his neck.

"Da," Rair Brashnikov said feebly.

"You have Stealth tiles?"

Brashnikov shook his head dazedly. "Nyet. They found me again. The two I spoke of. I had to escape."

Hearing that, Yuli Batenin became a madman. He had to be pulled off Rair Brashnikov before he could strangle him. The thief s true face had turned a smoky lavender before Batenin's thick fingers were pried from Brashnikov's throat.

Now, a day later, Yuli Batenin sat in his phoneless office, worrying about the messages being telexed between Moscow and the Soviet ambassador. Twice he had failed to deliver the promised RAM tiles. He knew he could not honorably return to the Motherland until that last piece of Stealth technology was in his hands.

So when his secretary informed him that there was a call for him, Yuli Batenin pried his clenched fingers from the desk's edge and opened a drawer. He extracted a desktop speaker. It was wired to the reception-room line. Batenin had insisted on this after being assured by the technical-support person who maintained the vibration suit that there was no way that Brashnikov could emerge from a mere satellite speaker.

Just to be certain, he tripped the intercom. "Where is Brashnikov?" he demanded. Receiving assurances that the thief was recuperating in the infirmary, Batenin placed the speaker on his desk and turned it on.

"Yes?" he said, fearing the worst-a call from the Kremlin.

"You are the embassy's charge" d'affaires?" a saucy female voice asked in an unidentifiable American regional accent.

"Yes. Who is this, please?"

"I am an Air Force investigator who's had to go AWOL, thanks to your phantom thief."

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"I do not understand."

"I was assigned to LCF-Fox. Your man made a monkey of me there, and again at the Northrop Stealth plant. Let's not pussyfoot around. I'm a dead duck as far as my superiors are concerned. There were too many unexplained thefts and no one believed me when I tried to tell them the truth."

"What truth?" Batenin asked cautiously.

"About the white ghost with no face."

"I am not following you," Batenin said vaguely.

"You can check my story if you want. See if a special agent Robin Green is AWOL from the OSI. You know what the OSI is?"

"No, but I can look it up. What are you suggesting?" he asked, having received such calls from disgruntled U.S. military personnel before. They always wanted one thing, and Batenin thought that the less they discussed Brashnikov over an open line, the better.

"Political asylum. And I have something to trade for it."

"And what is that?"

"A U.S. military device even your ghost cannot steal without help."

"Naturally, I have no idea what you talk about. Ghosts are for children's fairy tales."

"Be as cagey as you want," the female voice said, "but what I have to trade is very big. And your man can only steal it if he knows what it is and where to find it. And I can supply that in return for safe passage to Russia and the usual arrangements."

"You are talking about defecting, nyetl"

"I am talking about the best damn trade you'll ever get handed to you. If you have any contacts that can verify my rank and current status, do it. I'll call back in an hour."

In that hour, Yuli Batenin set his staff to work. In short order they verified the existence of an OSI special agent named Robin Green, who was in fact miss-

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ing and presumed absent without leave. There were several notations in her file that could not be explained. The matter of a half-demolished Holiday Inn in North Dakota and another damaged motel in Palmdale, California.

By the time the woman called back, Major Batenin knew he had a very big fish.

"You are genuine," Yuli told her. "Perhaps."

"Where should we meet?" she asked him.

Batenin named a popular steakhouse in Washington, famous for its prime rib. He arrived ten minutes late, and was led past the bar, where autographed portraits of the restaurant's political clients covered virtually every square inch of wall space.

He sat at a solitary table and ordered a gin and tonic, but when it came he told the puzzled waitress that he had made a mistake. He would prefer vodka.

At that remark, an attractive redhead with sparkling blue eyes slid into the booth, facing him.

"You are Green?" he asked.

"Right at the moment, I'm black and blue. But that's my name, all right. And you?"

"Call me Yuli," Batenin said, his dark eyes falling to her chest. She wore a clingy knit dress that was cut just low enough to display her ample cleavage. For a passing moment Batenin wondered if this could be a CIA sex trap. It was not uncommon. The KGB did it to Americans. The CIA did it to Russians. It was a game everyone played.

"I will provide nothing until you deliver," Yuli said carefully, knowing that his diplomatic immunity would safeguard him from arrest. And if this was a CIA trap, what was the worst they could do? Declare him persona non grata and ship him back to Moscow? This was exactly what Batenin wanted.

"Agreed," Robin Green said, leaning closer. Her perfume tickled his nostrils. "Now, listen carefully," she said after the vodka came and she waved the

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waitress aside without ordering. "Your people are very anxious to obtain Stealth technology. No, I don't expect you to answer that. But I know that your spook- and I use the term advisedly-has been pilfering it hither and yon."

Batenin took a sip of his vodka. Headlights from a passing car threw the woman into sharp relief. It was then that Batenin decided that she could not be a CIA sex lure. Her face, under subtle makeup, showed bruises. Even her cleavage was a discolored yellowish-purple. She looked like she had been in a car wreck. He wondered what had happened to her.

"Okay," she went on, "you're probably aware that even with the first planes only now becoming public knowledge, the Stealth program is ten years old. By the time the Stealth bomber is fully operational, it's going to be obsolete. There's something new."

"I am listening," Batenin said coolly, taking another sip of his drink. His gaze raked the room. The other diners looked harmless. He sensed no eyes on him. He relaxed slightly.

"They've perfected the Stealth radar-absorbing material to a new plateau. Not just invisible to radar, this stuff is invisible, period. It's a transparent resin-based polymer mounted on a silicon-mica base. When it's pumped full of electricity, it is virtually invisible in flight. From a distance, you can't even make out the pilot or the engines. And best of all, it has all the radar-deflecting properties of existing Stealth material."

"This sounds, shall we say, preposterous?" Batenin said archly.

"No more preposterous than an electronic suit that will allow a man to walk through a solid wall," Robin countered. "Are you interested?"

"I must have more particulars. For my superiors."

"This stuff is so new, so experimental, that all the Air Force has now is a scale-model prototype. But it's operational. It's about to be shown to a secret con-

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gressional committee. But until then they have it in a nuclear-weapons storage bunker. It's supposed to be impregnable, but your man should have no problem with it."

"You have the exact location of this bunker?" Batenin asked, his remote voice fluttering with the first hints of real interest.

"It's Bunker Number 445. Pease Air Force Base, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It's going to be moved within the next two days, so your man had better move fast."

"How do I know this is not some inane American trap?"

"Look, I'm going to assume you checked me out, otherwise you wouldn't be here. So you know who I am, and you know my butt is in a sling over your agent's shenanigans. That means I know what he can do. And I know, just as you do, that nothing-no trap, no technology, no scheme-could possibly snare him. Right?"

Yuli Batenin nodded silently, his eyes staring into the distance. When they refocused, he said, "If this works out, I can definitely offer you what you want. Where can I reach you?"

"I'm hot," Robin Green said, rising to her feet. "So I'm going to be on the move until you get me on a plane. I'll check in periodically. Deal?"

"Done," said Yuli Batenin, who looked into the woman's frank American eyes but saw instead the lights of faraway Moscow.

18

Airman Henry Yauk thought it was ridiculous.

"What do you mean, no one's going to relieve us?" he asked his companion in the guard tower.

"That's the word," Sergeant Frank Dinan told him. "When we go off duty, we just go. We don't watt for relief and we don't hang around either."

"We just leave the nukes unguarded, is that it?" Yauk said angrily.

"That's it."

"Unbelievable. I know the base is being phased out, but isn't this a little premature?"

"Search me," Dinan said. He was looking out over the bunkers. Darkness had fallen. It was a warm Indian-summer night in New Hampshire. Moonlight brushed the grass-covered tops of the nuclear-weapons storage bunkers so that they looked like sleeping silver-furred monsters.

"I wonder if this has anything to do with opening up Number 445?" Yauk muttered.

"Search me," Dinan said again. Yauk frowned. He hated being paired with Dinan. The guy was a bogus conversationalist.

"I never saw them put a nuke back into a bunker like that. No special-purpose vehicle. No guards. Just a civilian truck."

Dinan said nothing. Yauk looked at his watch. His

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frown deepened. Five more minutes until the end of their shift.

For as long as Airman Yauk had been an SP at Pease Air Force Base, the nuclear-weapons bunkers had never been unguarded. Officially, there were no nukes stored at Pease, even though it was a SAC bomber base, headquarters of the 509th Bombardment Wing. At any given time, five fully manned FB-111 bombers sat under open-ended hangars on the flight line, ready to be cart-started in the event of a nuclear war, cocked nuclear bombs cradled in their bays. Everybody knew that. Just as everybody knew that the twin rows of bunkers hunched behind the wire-link fences were nuclear-weapons storage containers.

Few civilians ever saw these bunkers, however, which was why the base public-affairs officer was able to keep a straight face whenever he was forced to categorically deny the official Air Force line that absolutely no nuclear weapons were quartered at Pease. The bunkers looked like prehistoric turtles that had died, their heads drawn into their shells and the grass of ages grown over their sloping sides. The grass was to prevent the bunkers from being indentifiable from the air. This, of course, was a joke. From the air it would look like the Air Force had fenced off a section of the base and set a solitary guard tower around it just so SP's like Airman Yauk could keep gophers off official Air Force grass.

A utility road ran past the fence. Beyond it, a solitary road paralleled it. This road looped around the boarded-up Sportsman's Club and came back. This was so if any suspicious car drove past the security fence, it would have no place to go except back the way it had come, where it would be intercepted.

And although there were signs posted on the fence that warned that the SP's in the towers were authorized to use lethal force against any passing vehicle that did

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not maintain a constant speed-never mind actually stopped-outside the fence, Airman Yauk had never heard of any SP actually having to do that. The signs were there to keep curious cars-usually visitors to the base-moving. Yauk's orders were to hold fire unless fired upon or if someone went so far as to penetrate the utility road. The narrow corridor between the outer and inner roads was the death zone. Any unfriendlies caught there were cold meat.

No one had ever been shot in the death zone. And with Pease Air Force Base scheduled to be phased out of existence next year, Airman Yauk figured no one ever would. It made Yauk sad to think that a year from now he'd be stationed somewhere else. But it made him mad to think that even with a year to go, security was getting so slipshod that they weren't bothering to guard the nukes-the officially nonexistent nukes-round the clock.

"What if some terrorist group finds out we're slacking off?" he blurted out loud.

Before Dinan could answer him, his watch alarm buzzed.

"That's it," Dinan chirped. "Midnight. I'm outta here. Coming?"

"I think I'll walk," Airman Henry Yauk said. "You go ahead."

Dinan descended the steps from the huge white guard tower.

Yauk hesitated. He looked out over the array of bunkers once more. From the back, they reminded him of the old Indian burial mounds back in his home state of Missouri. But from the front, the big black double doors set in concrete made him think of modern mausoleums. Either way, the resemblance was appropriate. He wondered again if this had anything to do with the activity at Bunker Number 445.

Earlier in the day, a civilian truck had been admitted into the fence perimeter and something was un-

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loaded into Number 445. Yauk, as well as every other tower SP, had been ordered to keep his eyes averted, but the activity had been so unusual he couldn't help but sneak occasional glances at the unloading.

He couldn't see much. The base commander was there. So was a woman in a dress Air Force uniform. She had red hair, and the biggest chest this side of Dolly Parton. There were others. One guy was in his T-shirt. Yauk figured him for a civilian workman of some kind, which was unusual. The little Oriental in native costume broke the "unusual" meter. He was bizarre. The whole thing was bizarre. You had to have a secret clearance to work around nukes.

The unloading procedure took over an hour. When it was done, everyone got into the truck and drove off. Yauk followed the truck with his eyes, hoping to get a better look at the redhead with the big jugs.

No such luck. He was surprised not to see her in the cab. They must have made her ride in the back, which Yauk thought was pretty fucking unchivalrous of them. He didn't see the guy in the T-shirt either. Lucky stiff. He got to ride in back with the girl. Probably asking her out on a date, too.

Unless, of course, they had been left in the bunker, which was a ridiculous thought. As ridiculous as leaving the place unguarded overnight.

Reluctantly Airman Yauk descended the tower stairs. He felt guilty doing so. Some inner voice warned him that this was bad policy. He had joined the Air Force in part because of its reputation of being the least military of the services. There was none of the gung-ho bullshit you got in the Marines. And it was a damn sight more prestigious than being in the Army, which was for grunts anyway. Still, this was plain ridiculous, he thought as he left the outer fence behind him.

He walked forlornly down the utility road, thankful for the evening warmth. It was a good ten-minute walk back to Hemlock Drive, where he lived in one of

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the many identical base clapboard quadruplexes. He looked over his shoulder a few times. All was quiet and peaceful. But he couldn't shake the nagging feeling that he was making a mistake in leaving his post without relief, orders or no orders.

Airman Henry Yauk stopped looking back when the low bunkers disappeared around the bend. He wore a worried frown all the way home.

He would have worried more had he lingered five minutes longer.

A ghostly white shape emerged from the Sportsman's Club. Its white skin alive with pulsing golden veinwork, it detached itself like the luminous soul of a haunted house and paused briefly.

It drifted down the road slowly, methodically, through the first electrified fence, without causing sparks to spit or a short circuit, and then passed through the zone of death to the inner fence and beyond.

It stalked toward the array of bunkers, going up to the nearest one. It lingered there a moment, as if looking at the painted number over the massive black doors. Then it passed on to the next grass-sided bunker. It paused at three of the nuclear-weapons storage buildings until it came to the one marked 445.

The shining white being merged with the door, and after it had gone, there was only the soft sighing of a breeze through the well-tended grass.

19

Rair Brashnikov was unaccountably nervous.

Penetrating Pease Air Force Base was a simple matter. Perhaps too simple. He simply drove his rented Cadillac-he always drove Cadillacs because after years of driving a cramped Russian Lada, it was a luxury- past the sweeping entrance to Pease just off the Spaulding Turnpike. The brown sign with its inevitable "Peace Is Our Profession" slogan told him he would soon be approaching exit 4-S. He took 4-S, which whipsawed back on itself, and took a right at a self-service Exxon station. This put him on Nimble Hill Road with its pastoral homes. He followed this until he came to Little Bay Road. He took it and went left on Mclntyre Road.

It was nearly midnight. Rair noticed with a frown that while the forest on either side of the road was dense, the trees were very thin and sickly. Many of them had fallen and were leaning against other trees because there was so little open ground. Few standing trees would conceal him in an emergency.

Presently Rair came to a heavily fenced concrete bridge. He pulled over to the side of the road a little way beyond it and got out. The forest looked impenetrable, but not to him. Still, he was astonished at the lax security. The only fence was a series of waist-high metal posts strung with three wide-spaced strands of razor wire.

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Perhaps, Brashnikov thought as he doffed his coat to reveal the vibration suit, the Air Force assumed that if no Americans suspected that a public road like this one actually passed through Pease Air Force Base, no foreign agent would. Only a few yards back, the concrete bridge passed over Merrimack Road, which, according to the map provided him, ran past the nuclear-storage bunkers. But Rair would not take that road.

Slipping into the battery-pack harness, he hooked up the cables to his shoulders. He donned the thick gloves. Finally he pulled the helmet over his head and pressed the Velcro flaps closed.

He paused a moment, allowing his eyes to become used to the two-way face membrane. It was like looking through Saran Wrap. The membrane crinkled dryly as his kings sucked in the confined air and expelled it again.

Then he activated the suit.

He felt the plastic constrict like a straitjacket. He never understood that property, but he had gotten used to it. A faint shine came in through the facial membrane. There was no sound. Electricity flowed through the suit's circuitry and external tubes silently. The crinkling sound ceased too, which was a relief.

The only discomfort was a momentary bone-jarring as the suit achieved its new atomic vibration. Brashnikov's vision swam, and he had to grit his teeth to keep them from chattering. It was a side effect of the suit that required him to have the metal fillings in his teeth replaced twice a year. They kept falling out.

Carefully, because he had to relearn how to walk on his micron-thick boot soles, Brashnikov took a tentative step toward the razor wire. And then into it. His legs went through like milk through a strainer.

Brashnikov plunged into the woods. The first brilliant red and gold leaves of autumn were already on the ground. Although he had no weight, the slight pressure of his soles crushed the dry leaves audibly.

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That was not a problem. No one would hear him. It was the pine cones he feared. If he slipped on one, he would doom himself to an eternity of falling through space. Every assignment brought new challenges, taught him new tricks of using the vibration suit.

He passed from the sturdier oaks and spruces carefully, not venturing from each concealing trunk until he stuck his head out to be certain that there were no security police picketed about. It was easy, walking into a tree. Staying inside the trunk was the trick. For it was not simply dark inside. The suit's constant shine dispelled the subatomic darkness. It illuminated the wood that seemed to touch his very corneas. They didn't touch them, of course-nothing could touch them-but the very matter of the wood coexisted with his eyeballs. It made it impossible to keep his eyes open. The blinking reflex screamed protest.

And so Rair Brashnikov would close his eyes before he stepped inside. He paused to steel his nerves and pushed his head forward. When he thought his face had cleared the tree, he opened his black eyes.

Once, in a lightning-blasted pine, he miscalculated and opened his eyes on a rotted cavity swarming with termites. They literally crawled in his face. He shouted his fright, but of course no sound could carry beyond the suit's vibratory aura. He moved on, seeking other shelter.

Brashnikov made his way through the woods in this fashion, staying parallel to Merrimack Road. He came to an open area. Beyond it was the old white house he had been told about, the Sportsman's Club. But the intervening space he would have to clear was ope". There was a pond-Peverly Pond, according to his map-and he decided that it would serve him best.

Brashnikov walked stiffly to the edge of the pond and kept going. It was not quite deep enough to conceal him at first. He had to stoop so that the water covered his head. This was the truly frightening part of

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this penetration. Walking bent over presented him the ever-dreaded risk of losing his balance. If he fell, he would keep on falling. . . .

He walked through the pond, which was not much different from walking through water in a diving suit- except for the distressing tendency of some fishes to swim into his helmet.

When he emerged on the other side of the pond, he had a direct walk to the Sportsman's Club. He made for it, crossing the Merrimack Road, which ringed it like a driveway.

The house absorbed him as a sponge absorbs water.

Inside, once certain the place was deserted, Brashnikov turned off the suit. Dusty sheets covered massive furniture. Trophies adorned a cold fieldstone fireplace, and there were plaques on the walls. There were also windows which Brashnikov could use to reconnoiter the weapons-storage bunkers.

From the second floor he saw only the slanting grass-covered backs and sides of the nearest bunkers. They told him nothing. Major Batenin's instructions had suggested the best approach route and the bunker number-445-but nothing more. Still, that was more than Brashnikov had usually received. Often he got only simple marching orders: Go there and steal that. Do not allow yourself to be seen, and above all, avoid capture. It was not easy when the vibration suit sucked so much power from the battery. A nickel-cadmium belt battery would have been better, but Brashnikov would have had to carry several spares with him at all times. It was impractical. But in a country like America, cars-and therefore car batteries-were plentiful. It was just as easy to steal one in an emergency. After two years of experimenting, Brashnikov had come to depend on the Sears DieHard battery.

Brashnikov pulled off one of the thick gauntletlike gloves and checked his watch. Batenin had told him to wait until midnight, when the guard changed. It was

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nearly nine now. But as his eyes tracked the tall lattice-legged gun tower, and the great open spaces around the security fence, Brashnikov wondered if it would be possible even for him to slip up to Bunker Number 445 unseen. At night the suit's steady glow was like carrying a jack-o'-lantern. Worse, it was like being the jack-o'-lantern.

Brashnikov waited patiently. The guards climbed down off the tower like well-rehearsed spiders, their rifles slung over their shoulders. One came down a little after the other and seemed reluctant to go. But finally he disappeared down the utility road and was gone.

Brashnikov hesitated. Where was their relief? The solitary tower looked deserted, but it was impossible to tell. Its windows were smoked glass.

He decided that the relief team was for some reason delayed. It would be now or never.

Turning on the suit, he emerged from the lodge- first his head, then the rest of him.

Moving in a flat-footed run, he melted through the fence and across the green. The first bunker was Number 443. He moved to the next. It said 444. Good. He kept going until he came to the imposing black double door of Bunker Number 445. It looked like the entrance to some medieval castle with its massive external hinges and locking mechanism.

Brashnikov shut his eyes and put his head in. When he opened them, he saw only subatomic blackness. The gritty interior of the door was in his face. It was obviously a very thick door. He took a chance and walked into it. Craning forward, he opened his eyes again.

The faint shine of the suit illuminated a dark empty space. He stepped in.

He found himself on a bare floor. The walls were a pale gray, like newly poured concrete. A telephone was mounted on a bracket; otherwise the area was empty.

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There was another door beyond. It was like an air lock. He walked up and put his head into it.

Rair Brashnikov saw the object of his mission at once.

It stood on a pedestal in the center of the next room. Clearly this room was where nuclear bombs were stored. But there were no nuclear bombs stored here now. Instead two thin spotlights mounted on the ceiling crisscrossed downward to illuminate what looked to be a scale model of a futuristic boomerang-shaped jet. The model was transparent, as if cast in clear Lucite. It had a wingspan of perhaps a dozen feet. Only the wheels, the innards of the transparent dual wing turbines, and the tiny figure of a doll pilot were visible.

According to the briefing Major Batenin had given him, this was a small-scale version of a plane actually in development. It operated by radio control and could in fact turn virtually invisible when powered up and sent aloft, just as later full-scale versions would.

Stealing it should be a simple task, Brashnikov realized. But before he stepped into the vaultlike area, he checked the walls for guards or video cameras.

He saw none. The room was dim, even with the spotlights, which cast only a wan light. There was a hazy quality to the air, as if many people had been smoking in a poorly ventilated room. Brashnikov noticed one peculiar thing. Tall bluish mirrors hung on three of the walls, one to each wall. They reflected the bizarre sight of his glowing soap bubble of a face sticking to the wall like a leech.

Satisfied that the mirrors were harmless, Rair Brashnikov stepped all the way into the room. He walked carefully to the pedestal. The details of the craft, as he got nearer, were exquisite.

"Kmhseevah," he breathed in admiration, suddenly wishing that there were two planes. He would enjoy having such a toy for himself. But keeping this one for

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himself was out of the question. Batenin would kill him. Literally.

Brashnikov stopped before the pedestal. He looked around one more time, uneasily. He felt eyes upon him. But again, he was certain there were no video cameras. And he was obviously alone. Except for the pedestal-mounted model and the tall wall mirrors, the room was bare.

He turned off the suit. The fabric loosened and the unpleasant vibration in his teeth came and went quickly.

Smiling beneath his crinkling membrane of a helmet, he reached for the aircraft model.

His heart leapt up into his throat. His fingers went right through it!

Brashnikov tried again. But again, his hands merged with the craft's hull unfeelingly.

Frowning, he wondered if the suit was still somehow operating. Perhaps he hadn't turned it off all the way. He forced the rheostat angrily.

Now it was off for certain. He grabbed for the plane. But again his hands touched only air.

His unease rising, Rair Brashnikov turned the rheostat the other way. He felt the familiar vibration anew. Okay, he thought to himself, suit is operating. I must remain calm. This should be simple. Now I will simply turn suit off.

He twisted the rheostat the other way. The vibration ceased. Brashnikov reached for the aircraft. His fingers touched it. But they felt nothing. He clenched his hands, but the model stayed in place. Nothing he did disturbed it. Its gleaming immobility seemed to mock him.

Rair Brashnikov felt a ringing in his ears. Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong. He was insubstantial no matter what he did. What had gone wrong? Was the suit malfunctioning? Was it about to go nuclear? Or-and this somehow seemed to him infinitely more terrible than going up in a boiling ball

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of atomic fire-had his body become stuck in the vibratory pattern of the suit? Was he doomed to forever walk the earth a living ghost? It was too horrible to contemplate.

Brashnikov had no time to contemplate the possibility any longer, for on opposite walls two of the blue floor-length mirrors shattered with a single sound.

Brashnikov wheeled. He saw the tiny Oriental in black coming at him, his skirts flying, his face tight with anger.

Recoiling from the violence of the impending attack, Brashnikov reached for the belt rheostat. Out of the corner of one eye he caught his reflection in the remaining mirror. It was still intact, although it was shaking violently. His mind absorbed the split-second image of a man with dead eyes coming up behind him, two linked fingers driving for his shoulder like a striking cobra.

His heart high in his mouth, Brashnikov turned the control.

Too late! He felt the pain of impact. He screamed. His vision went red as he clutched at his pain-seared shoulder. The agony was unendurable. It felt as if the ball-and-socket joint had exploded, sending bone splinters flying into every muscle and nerve he possessed.

His vision cleared instantly, just in time for him to see the man with the dead eyes carried through his own chest with the momentum of his attack. That, and that alone, told Rair Brashnikov that despite the incredible pain, the man had just grazed him.

And the suit was operating!

The Oriental was upon him next. Fingernails tore at his face, his chest, his hands. They passed through him harmlessly, but something in their very fury filled Brashnikov with fear.

All thoughts of his mission gone from his mind, Brashnikov frantically flailed around. He must escape. He moved toward the third mirror, but it came apart

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to reveal a recess in the wall and a redheaded woman in an Air Force blue dress uniform.

She was firing at him. The bullets passed through him, but Brashnikov dared not take any chances with the suit malfunctioning so strangely.

He stepped quickly toward the other room. He remembered the wall telephone there. That would be his escape. He dared not engage the two men-he recognized them as his adversaries from two earlier encounters -in a game of hide-and-seek. He knew now that their powers and stamina would outlast his battery-DieHard or not.

Brashnikov emerged on the other side of the wall. The telephone gleamed like a faint beacon. It looked like any telephone, but to Rair Brashnikov it was a lifeline to safety.

The air-lock door reverberated with a pounding like sledgehammers, echoes bouncing off the bare walls. But in Brashnikov's panicky imagination, he did not see the pair taking sledgehammers to the opposite side. He saw them beating on it with bare fists. Bumps appeared on Brashnikov's side. They were fist-size bumps.

Brashnikov turned off the suit and with a prayer on his quivering lips reached out for the phone.

"Raduysa Mariye, blagodati poliaya, Gospod s't'voyu ..." he whispered, surprised that the old words came so easily from memory.

He felt the pressure of the gray plastic receiver against the thick material of his gloves, and tears of relief jumped from his eyes. He was solid! He could use the phone!

Brashnikov dialed the Soviet embassy in Washington with frantic stabs of his gloved fingers as the air-lock door behind him started to protest as it was forced out of its frame by an increasing machine-gun volley of blows. He hesitated. Had he just hit five? Or four? It should have been five. Should he hang up and

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start over? The air-lock door screeched horribly. He kept dialing. There was no time to waste. Even if he had misdialed, anyplace would be better than here.

He heard the first ring.

Then the door flew out. It came at him like a truck.

Brashnikov turned the rheostat hard.

He saw the skinny white man and the Oriental leap into the room, and then everything went white. Brashnikov wanted to shout at them. Too late, too late, Americans! But it was too late even for gloating.

Everything was all right. Everything would be all right.

Rair Brashnikov found himself hurtling through a dark tunnel. Voices sounded in his head. He listened, trying to separate a Russian accent from the babble of English. But all he heard was the insistent ringing of a telephone somewhere-far, far away.

He prayed that the switchboard operator would answer soon. She seemed to be taking an obscenely long time.

20

"We're getting nowhere," Remo Williams snapped hotly, stepping away from the door. "We're supposed to be a team. Let's see some teamwork."

"We are already too late," the Master of Sinanju fumed.

"Then we're trying to beat one another to something that isn't there anymore. So come on."

Remo and Chiun set themselves before the battered air-lock door. Together they slammed their palms into the center of the door. It jumped from its frame as if shot from a cannon.

They leapt into the room.

"There!" Remo said, seeing the Krahseevah frantically punching numbers on the keypad. He flew at him, hoping this time he wouldn't be too late. He knew he had touched the Russian's shoulder in the split second before the suit had activated. It was like touching a frustratingly elusive mirage-which of course the Krahseevah had been in every previous encounter. And although Remo had inflicted damage, he had not incapacitated the Russian. He wanted another crack at him.

But the Master of Sinanju had other ideas. "It is my turn," he cried.

"He's up for grabs," Remo growled.

They converged on the Krahseevah just as his glow-

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ing form misted over and was hungrily gobbled up by the telephone receiver. Their reaching hands grasped and clutched at the nebulous white shape as it collapsed and was drawn away. But to no avail. The last tendrils that were the Krahseevah's hand entered the mouthpiece, and it was gone.

Chiun caught the receiver as it fell.

"We are too late," he said angrily.

"Give me that," Remo said, taking the receiver away from him and clapping it to one ear. He listened anxiously as Robin Green, reloading a smoking automatic, stepped into the room.

"You lied to me," she said harshly. "You tricked me!"

"Quiet," Remo said, listening. He heard crackling static, and under it, the steady ringing of a telephone on the other end.

"Great," he said, punching a button on the telephone. He got another line and pressed the pound button continuously. A relay triggered an automatic dialing sequence, and soon Remo was hearing another phone ringing.

The receiver was picked up on the other end.

"Yes?" a dry voice said.

"Smitty. He got away from us. But he's coming your way."

"I know. The special phone is ringing," Dr. Harold W. Smith said.

In the background, Remo heard a telephone jangling.

"Yeah, I can hear it too," Remo said. "What do you want us to do?"

"I will handle this," Smith told him. "Tie up any loose ends and return to Folcroft." The line went dead.

In his office at Folcroft Sanitarium Dr. Harold W. Smith replaced the receiver. He turned his attention to another telephone, one which sat beside it. It was a

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standard AT&T desk model, unusual only in that it had no dial or push buttons. But this wasn't the dialless telephone that was Smith's direct link to the White House. That phone was red. This one was gray. The gray telephone kept ringing. Smith ignored it and turned in his cracked leather swivel chair.

He stooped at the baseboard where the ringing telephone connected to a wall jack. Smith took the round plug in his hands and pulled the prongs from the jack.

Abruptly, the gray telephone stopped ringing.

Smith returned to his desk, his thin lips quirked into a rare dry-as-dust smile.

"You turkeys tricked me!" Robin Green repeated.

"Hey, you had your chance," Remo told her defensively.

"I almost didn't get out from behind my mirror. It was supposed to shatter at a single blow."

"Gee, mine shattered the first time," Remo said in a dubious tone. "How about yours, Little Father?"

"My mirror broke easily," Chiun said smugly.

"I meant a normal blow!" Robin shouted, face flushed. "I kept pounding and pounding. Finally, I had to shoot my way out."

"Everyone knows that women are weak," Chiun sniffed. "I am sure that had you been born a male, you would have had no trouble breaking your mirror."

Robin Green looked at them with smoldering blue eyes. Her knuckles whitened on the butt of her automatic. Remo thought for a moment that she was going to open up on them. Instead, she sucked in a deep breath, as if to get control of herself. A button on her dress-blue uniform popped and hit the floor noisily.

She looked down at it. "Oh, I give up," she said in a small defeated voice. She slumped up against the wall. "Just tell me what happened here, okay?"

"You saw it through your two-way mirror," Remo said, returning the button, "just as we did. The

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Krahseevah panicked. He thought the suit wasn't working, so we went for him while he was switching back and forth."

"And you were too slow," Chiun said shortly.

"Hey, I touched him. I hurt him," Remo retorted. "Which is more than I can say for some people around here."

"If you are referring to me, my place of concealment was further away from that creature than yours. You had an unfair advantage. No doubt you were abetted by the whites who constructed this snare under Emperor Smith's direction."

"Same distance. We measured them, remember? You insisted."

Robin stamped her foot suddenly.

"Will you two stop it!" she scolded. "We lost him. Probably for good, this time. All I want is something plausible to put into my report. Maybe I can still salvage what's left of my career."

"Uh-uh, not for good," Remo said. "I'll admit I would have preferred to capture him with my bare hands, but Smith knew that that was an iffy proposition at best. So he had a backup plan in place."

"Whoa, go back two squares. What about this?" Robin asked, pointing to the model.

They crowded around the model aircraft.

"Go ahead, touch it," Remo suggested.

Her brows puckering, Robin Green reached out with both hands. They passed through the model as if it were a mirage.

She looked at Remo in slack-jawed amazement. Remo indicated the ceiling lights with a finger.

"It's a hologram," he explained. "A three-dimensional image projected by lasers. It's not real. Never was."

"You could have told me that before you sealed me behind that chickshit mirror."

Remo shrugged. "No time. Besides, you're still re-

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covering from the car crash. We couldn't risk you getting hurt."

"Hey. I'm as good as any man. I've proved that."

The Master of Sinanju walked over to a corner where a little brass censer squatted. Stooping, he sprinkled white powder onto dimly smoldering coals. With a noxious puff of smoke, the coals went out.

Chiun brought the censer back to the pedestal and presented it to Robin Green with a twinkle in his hazel eyes. She accepted it wordlessly.

"What's this?" she asked at last. "I don't understand."

"There was a little bit of a problem with the laser image," Remo explained. "We tested it before we brought it here and it flickered like film going through a bad projector. We didn't know what to do until Chiun came up with a solution."

Chiun's papery lips broke into a satisfied smile.

"Blue mirrors and smoke," he explained, gesturing through the haze to the shattered blue-tinted mirrors whose dangling shards framed closetlike wall recesses. "You had it backward, which is typical for someone who has had the misfortune to be born both white and female."

"He's teasing you," Remo told Robin.

"About what? Being female or the other nonsense? And why are you grinning?" Robin demanded, looking for a place to put the censer down. She tried to set it to one side of the aircraft model, but there was no room. Finally she muttered, "Oh, the hell with it," and set it squarely atop the hologram aircraft. The combined object looked like a brass bowl with glass wings.

"Because it's all over," Remo said pleasantly.

"What do you mean, all over? He got away. Again."

"Nope," Remo said, escorting her to the wall telephone.

"Did you ever hear of a telephone being installed in a nuclear-weapons storage bunker?" Remo asked.

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"No. I may be a service brat, but I didn't exactly grow up in one of these things."

" 'Brat' is the word," Chiun sniffed.

"Another piece of Smith's handiwork," Remo said, picking up the receiver. "No matter which number you dial"-he demonstrated by hitting several keys at random-"it's programmed to ring only one phone in the entire world. A special one on Smith's desk."

"Oh, he has a desk, does he?" Robin said sarcastically. "And here I thought he lived in a padded room with all the other lunatics who think they're Napoleon. Don't think I missed Charlie Chan here calling him emperor. Or you calling him Little Father. I must have been crazy to try to work with you two. No, I take that back. I must be the only sane one around here. Just give me that."

Robin took the receiver. Brushing away a bit of hair, she put it to her ear.

"I don't hear anything," she said.

"That's good," Remo said. "It means Smith disconnected the phone at the other end."

Robin blinked as the significance of Remo's words penetrated.

"Disconnected?"

"Yep," Remo said with a self-satisfied grin.

"So where's the Krahseevah?'' Robin asked uncertainly.

"Got me," Remo said casually, hanging up the phone. "But he didn't come out on Smith's end. He didn't come back. My guess is that he's somewhere in the coils of Ma Bell. You know, I once saw a commercial that claimed there are billions and billions of miles of cable in our telephone system. I think our Krahseevah's in for a long, long roller-coaster ride."

"And just to make certain . . ." Chiun said, stepping up to the phone. He took the device in one hand and began squeezing. The edges of the phone wavered and

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collapsed. Tiny jets of smoke spurted from the rupturing seams.

When the Master of Sinanju extracted the phone from the wall, it was a blob of plastic. He slapped it into Robin Green's hands. She said "Ouch!" and tossed it from hand to hand like a hot potato.

"What's the idea?"

"A souvenir," Chiun told her. "For your grandchildren."

"I don't have any grandchildren. Hell, I don't even have children."

"Ah, but you will," Chiun said, indicating her cleavage, which strained at her remaining buttons. "For you carry your destiny proudly before you."

Robin turned to Remo. "Is that Korean for 'barefoot and pregnant'?" she asked.

"He's teasing you again," Remo assured her.

"How about it, buster?" Robin asked Chiun. "Are you pulling my leg?"

"No. I leave the pulling of your legs to the future father of your children." Chiun bowed. "May you bear many squalling infants," he intoned.

"Well, that's it," Remo said quickly, edging for the door.

"That's it?" Robin said shakily.

"What else is there? We bagged him."

"It is not as good as a bird in the hand," Chiun told Robin solemnly. "But neither is it two in the bush."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Chiun shrugged. "I thought you would know. You who are so fond of sayings concerning birds."

"Is he kidding me? He is kidding, isn't he?"

"Don't worry about it," Remo told her. "We gotta go now. Been nice working with you."

Robin blocked his way. "Go! You just hold your horses. What about me? I got you onto this base. You can't leave me hanging out to dry. For a third time."

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Remo picked Robin up bodily and set her aside like a coat rack.

"You won't be," he said. "And you didn't help get us onto the base. We only let you think that. Once you baited the trap, you were just window dressing."

"But what about me? What about my career?" Robin demanded, following them out of the bunker.

"Everything's been taken care of. Don't sweat it."

"Taken care of-by whom?"

"Smith, of course. He's fixed your files. You're not AWOL, and all is forgiven. In fact, there's a pretty good chance that you're going to be offered an Air Force commission. But there's a catch. You can't mention me or Chiun or Smith in your report. Otherwise not only will there be no commission, but your goose- if you'll pardon the expression-will be cooked."

"What! That's impossible. You're lying to me again. Smith couldn't possibly do all that. He's a civilian. Even my father couldn't pull that many strings."

"Hey, don't thank us. We're just doing our job."

"If you're lying to me," Robin shouted after them, "I won't let you get away with this. Do you hear me?"

"Do I hear her?" Remo muttered as they hurried away. "Smith can probably hear her clear down to Folcroft."

"True," Chiun said. "She has an amazing set of lungs-for a woman."

"Oh, really." Remo smiled. "And how, exactly, do you mean that, Little Father?"

"In the spirit it is intended, of course."

"Of course."

A week later, Remo was in his kitchen boiling rice. A familiar knock sounded at the back door, and before Remo could say, "Come in," Harold W. Smith did.

"You're getting to be a pretty casual neighbor,"

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Remo told him. "Maybe we should get you your own key."

"Er, sorry, Remo," Smith mumbled, adjusting his glasses. "I have only a moment."

"Then you won't mind if I don't ask you to sit down and join us?" Remo returned as he poured the rice into a woven rattan colander. He shook it to drain away the last steaming water.

"Of course not," Smith said, standing in the doorway as if unwilling to trespass further.

Remo tapped a small brass gong over the stove. It reverberated solemnly. "Good," he said. "I only cooked for two."

Chiun swept into the door, saw the rice, and then saw Smith. His placid expression flickered into momentary annoyance. Then, like the sun breaking through clouds, a smile beamed from his pleasantly wrinkled face.

"Ah, Emperor," he said. "You are just in time to join us in a simple repast."

"There's only enough for us," Remo put in quickly.

"Nonsense," Chiun replied. "Remo will have his meal later."

"Chiun . . ." Remo warned.

"It is all right, Remo," Chiun said, pulling out a chair for Smith. "Come, Emperor. I insist."

"Actually, I've eaten," Smith told him, accepting the seat. "I merely wanted to brief you on the aftermath of the Krahseevah matter."

"Then you may do so and observe how the Sinanju assassin ekes out his pitiful existence. Remo, serve, please."

As Remo ladled out helpings of unseasoned brown rice onto two china plates, Chiun launched into a running commentary.

"Notice the simple fare," he told Smith. "Rice. Only rice."

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"I understand that rice is the staple of the Sinanju diet," Smith said uncomfortably.

"Ah, but we are also allowed to eat duck, and certain fish. Do you see any fish on this meager table?"

"No," Smith admitted.

"I am certain that the Boston Red Sox are eating fish even as we speak. Even the lowliest of them. The ones who are so poorly paid that they earn as much as other menials. Like atomic scientists, brain surgeons, and that underappreciated but necessary minority, the assassin."

"Master of Sinanju, I must tell you in all frankness that you are exceedingly well-paid for your work."

"True," Chiun said simply as Remo sat down and dug into his rice. "I am better paid than the Master who came before me. But he lived in evil times. I am privileged to live in an era when riches are bestowed on persons in all manner of ridiculous professions. I read only the other day that that talk-show woman, Copra Inisfree, is paid millions for her services. Have you ever watched her program, Emperor?"

"No, not really."

Chiun leaned closer. "Most of the time she just sits," he said in a hushed voice. "I would like an assignment where I might simply sit and speak with boon companions, basking in the applause of others."

"I don't think you quite grasp the complex economics here, Master Chiun. As with baseball games, The Copra Inisfree Show is sponsored by commercial firms. They pay her fabulous sums because of the audience she attracts, which in turn purchase their products."

"Then I will attract an audience!" Chiun cried. "It will be the biggest audience the world has ever seen! We will sell their products and we will all become rich men."

Smith looked to Remo helplessly.

Remo took a sip of mineral water in an effort to keep a straight face.

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"Our work is secret," Smith said stiffly. "You know that."

"But our sponsor is the greatest sponsor in the land. The President of the United States. Surely his coffers can spare a few more gold ingots."

"Please, Master of Sinanju. I have only a few minutes. We can discuss this later. After all, your current contract has nearly another year to run."

"Perhaps you are right. Excuse me while I allow myself a sip of purified water, for it is the only beverage I can afford on my present salary."

Smith sighed. When Chiun put down the glass, he resumed speaking.

"I have been reviewing CIA intercepts of message traffic out of the Soviet embassy down in Washington," he said. "The post is in an uproar. They have not heard from their agent at all."

"That means we've seen the last of the Krahseevah, right?" Remo said through a mouthful of rice.

"So it would seem. They've given up on him and recalled their charge d'affaires to Moscow. Evidently, as his case officer, he will bear the brunt of the responsibility and the punishment for what happened."

"So what did happen to the Krahseevahl Is he dead?"

"I don't really know," Smith admitted. "Going on the assumption that his nuclear constituents were being carried by electrical impulse through the phone system to my telephone, the act of unplugging it before the connection was made could have caused any number of consequences. Perhaps his atoms are still racing through the system. Perhaps they've been scattered or destroyed. When dealing with experimental technology such as this, it's impossible to say. The bottom line is that he's no longer a threat and the Soviets have lost their unrestricted access to U.S. technology. Just in time, too. They may have plundered key parts of our Stealth technology, but without sample RAM tiles

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to replicate, they might as well be trying to build an operational plane from a child's plastic model kit."

"You know, I just realized something," Remo said. "Except for the Krahseevah-and you actually took care of him-we didn't have to kill anyone this time out."

Hearing this, Chiun dropped a forkful of rice.

"Do not hold this against us, Emperor," he said loudly. "I promise you that this will never happen again. You will have bodies in plenty during our next assignment. For an assassin's worth is truly measured by the blood he spills, and I promise you that soon your swimming pool will brim with the blood of America's enemies."

"But I don't own a swimming pool," Smith protested.

"Have one built. Remo and I will supply the blood."

"Please," Smith said. "I'm just as happy that this assignment produced no unnecessary casualties. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must be going."

"Let me see you to the door," Chiun said, getting up.

Smith looked at the dozen or so feet that separated him from the back door. The distance suddenly looked to be a mile long. "As you wish," he said unhappily.

Guiding Smith by the elbow, Chiun escorted him to the door.

"I have been watching these baseball games with Remo. It is always the same. Boston beats Detroit and then Detroit savagely attacks Chicago. This is exactly the kind of intercity warfare that brought down the Greek Empire. Let me suggest that Remo and I pay secret visits to the rulers of these recalcitrant city-states. We will force them to mend their ways. Perhaps in this way the union may endure another two hundred brief years and the President will be so grateful that he will offer to raise your salary, and you in turn might see fit to increase the tribute paid to my house." Chiun paused to stroke his facial hair thought-

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fully. He measured Smith's aghast expression out of the corner of his eye and went on.

"Of course, it is only a suggestion," he said dismissively. "But I know you will see the wisdom of not allowing America to tear itself apart in such an unseemly and public fashion."

Smith nodded mutely. Just two more steps ... he thought numbly. It was like walking the last mile.

"You perhaps do not realize that this baseball warfare has spread beyond your shores," Chiun went on. "The Japanese have fallen into settling their differences in this manner as well. It is a plague. But if we work together on this, we will both profit."

Remo's uncontrollable laughter followed them out into the backyard.

Epilogue

Crackle.

". . . So, Cinzia. Wanna whoosh tonight?"

"I don't crackle know. Will you respect me in the morning?"

"I don't respect you now." Crackle. Tomorrow can only be an improvement." Whoosh.

"Oh, you! You always make me laugh." Whoosh. "Sure. Dinner first?"

"How about Legal sput Seafoods? Haven't eaten there in a crackle."

"Help!"

"Hey, do you hear that?"

"What?"

"Something on the line."

"This is a crackle staticky pop line."

"No. It wasn't static. It was a strange voice. Like 'whoosh.' "

"Say again? I didn't catch that last part."

"I said, it's like we're on a party line."

"Maybe your phone's being tapped."

"No. Shhh. Listen."

"Help, help! I am trapped in telephone line. Someone help me."

"Hear it now?"

"Yeah. Funny accent pop crackle don't you think? Sounds Russian."

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"Hey, maybe it's the KGB."

"Why would they tap my line?"

"It's probably crackle a crossed wire."

"Help me. Help me. Help me."

"He sounds real unhappy."

"Get real, Cinz. It's only someone playing with their sput."

"I don't know. That's real panic in his voice."

"Oh, come on. 'Help me, I'm trapped in telephone line'? Reminds whoosh of that stupid fortune you got when I took you to the Cathay Pacific last crackle. You know, the one that said, 'Help, I'm being held prisoner in a fortune pop cookie factory.' "

"You're right. What could I be thinking of?"

"So . . . pick you up, say, sevenish?"

"Hmmm. Better make it eight. I'm going to run out and buy a new phone. This one's been acting sput a lot. As you can hear."

"Yeah. Things sure haven't been crackle since Ma Bell broke up."

Whoosh. "Tell me about it. Ciao."

The tunnel walls zoomed by. They seemed to go on forever. And all Rair Brashnikov could imagine was that this time he truly was dead. This time the dark tunnel was not a fiberoptic cable. And soon he would see the silvery light that would bring him peace.

But as he rushed along endlessly, Brashnikov felt only a wild, numbing panic. If this were truly the path to heaven, why were all the voices American?