Ghost in the Machine

Destroyer 90: Ghost in the Machine

By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

Chapter 1

Randal T. Rumpp lived by the telephone.

The lowly telephone was the symbol of his empire, his great fame, his vast wealth. In his hands, it was transformed from a mere instrument for idle conversation into a lightning rod for raw money.

Randal Rumpp was never far from the telephone. A bank of them sat on his office desk. Cellular units filled every car and yacht he owned. When the maid set his table, there was a cellular handset where the salad fork should be. In restaurants, the maitre d' would see to it that Mr. Rumpp's special table-and he had special tables in restaurants throughout Manhattan, Paris, and other world-class cities-was set with a telephone to the immediate left of the dinner fork.

For alleged billionaire Randal Tiberius Rumpp was a maker of deals. And deals were best made by telephone.

On the day the telephones stopped ringing all over the Rumpp Tower, Randal T. Rumpp, for the first time in his life, lived in fear of their clarion call.

He arrived at six in the morning and put to his executive assistant the crisp question always asked of her.

"Any calls, Dorma?"

"No, Mr. Rumpp."

And for the first time in his meteoric career, Randy Rumpp-as the tabloids and gossip columnists styled him-was pleased to hear that there had been no messages lying in wait for him. Usually, the messages were stacked to the ceiling. From Tokyo. From Hong Kong. From Zurich. There were always deals swirling around Randy Rumpp's pompadoured head.

Those kind of calls had long ago ceased to pour in.

Now, the only people who called were his creditors. If there were no messages, then the banks hadn't yet foreclosed on Randal Rumpp's last major trophies of an ill-spent business career: the Rumpp Tower, overlooking New York's Fifth Avenue, and the Rumpp Regis Hotel, up on Third.

Still, it was a blow to his ego.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"I think the phone company is having problems again."

"Well," he said, "if anyone does call, take names and numbers. And try to give the impression that I'm too busy to get back time anytime soon. Okay?"

"Yes, Mr. Rumpp."

"Remember, we're selling success here."

"Yes. Mr. Rumpp."

Self-consciously, Randal Rumpp patted his famous sandy crown of hair and entered his sumptuous, cathedral-like office overlooking Central Park. He set down the Spanish leather briefcase that contained the cellular telephone that was his lifeline when he was between stationary phones, and removed the handset. The way the phone company was plagued by service interruptions these days, one couldn't be too careful.

Once, Randal Rumpp, on his way to a major deal, had had the misfortune to be stranded in an elevator.

First he called his broker, obtaining the latest market quotes. Second, he called for help.

It took twenty minutes for the maintenance people to pry the elevator doors apart and haul him from the cage that had been stuck between the fourteenth and fifteenth floors. In that short span of time, Randal Rumpp made a cool two million in a series of brilliant stock transactions. Flushed with success, he strode into his business meeting and, simply by announcing his good fortune, demoralized his business adversaries, who had in fact arranged for the elevator to malfunction in a blatant attempt to put him at a psychological disadvantage. Rumpp greenmailed them into bankruptcy court in less time than he had spent in that elevator.

Now, surrounded by the very instruments that had, during the heady days of the 1980s, made him into a multibillionaire who oversaw a real-estate empire that spread faster than lymph node cancer, Randal Rumpp fervently prayed they would start ringing again on this final day in October.

He strode over to his magnificent view of upper Manhattan. Directly across the street was a skyscraper of silvery polished glass, not nearly as tall and fine as the tower that bore Rumpp's proud name.

When the rival building had first been proposed, Randal Rumpp sued to have it quashed, claiming that it would ruin his unique view. When the higher courts threw out the suit, he resorted to other types of legal harassment.

Finally, the thing was finished. It had been intended to tower over the Rumpp Tower, but Randal Rumpp's law firm had so drained the financial resources of the development company that they were forced to strike the top ten floors from the original design. In its final form, it stood one story shy of matching the lofty eminence of his own Rumpp Tower. That single story was all that Randal Rumpp required. He had never cared much for the view, anyway. But he simply despised being bested in business.

While the dedication ceremony was taking place many floors below his twenty-fourth-floor aerie, Randal Rumpp dictated a memo to his head of PR stating that the offending building was the ugliest dwarf since Quasimodo.

The press, then in love with his every loutish witticism, printed it on page one. It became a Newsweek "Quote of the Week."

After the furor had died down, Rumpp dictated another memo.

"I've changed my mind," Rumpp said of the silvery skyscraper. "I like it. Every day when I come to work, I look out my office window and there it is: the Rumpp Tower, and me, reflected in the most expensive mirror ever built. And it cost the Rumpster nothing."

That was Randal Rumpp in his salad days. A gracious victor.

On this last day in October, Randal Rumpp stared out at the mirror-like surface across busy Fifth Avenue, and the reflection of his greatest holding.

The Rumpp Tower was as brassy as its namesake. It looked like a phantasm of polarized bronze-colored glass, and steel. Fragile enough to be shattered by the throw of a common stone.

The illusion was closer to the truth than Randal Rumpp would have cared to admit. The Rumpp empire had been erected of steel and glass and concrete and debt. Debt had never bothered Randal Rumpp in the 1980s. Debt wasn't real. It couldn't be cut like glass, drop-forged like steel, or poured like concrete. Yet it was the true foundation of Randal Rumpp's mighty real-estate holdings. The more he borrowed, the more Randal Rumpp was able to build and buy. And the more he built and bought, the more the banks would lend him. He went on the biggest buying spree in human history. There were only two criteria to catch his interest: The prize had to the best of its kind, and it had to have a blank area large enough to accommodate his last name in six-foot-high letters.

That pretty much limited his major purchases to buildings, luxury yachts, and private aircraft. Once Randal Rumpp had considered making an offer on the world's largest diamond, and hired the premier diamond-cutter in the world as a consultant. He changed his mind when the respected jeweler informed him that cutting his name into the Hope Diamond would seriously reduce its value.

"How seriously?" asked Randal Rumpp cautiously.

"Seriously enough to make it unsalable at any price."

"Listen, I've put my name on classier buys than that gaudy rock and resold them at a tidy profit."

"Worthless, Mr. Rumpp."

Disappointed, Rumpp went on to purchase a shuttle service, and soon had RUMPP SHUTTLE emblazoned on a fleet of 727s traversing the Northeast air corridor.

It all started to unravel with the junk bond fiasco. Still, even as his debts mounted, they were just numbers on a computer. The buildings still stood, the planes still flew, and the flow of cash, although not flowing overwhelmingly in Randal Rumpp's direction or favor, continued to flow. Payrolls were met. Rents came in. The bottom line, although fluctuating wildly, continued to be written. The top line was staggering. Best of all, the press continued to print his brash pronouncements.

As long as Randal Rumpp got publicity, he knew he would eventually come out on top.

Yet the debt continued to mount and mount, until one day his accountant-the best number-cruncher money could buy-took him aside and whispered, "You're broke."

"Broke!" roared Randal Rumpp, in disbelief. "How can I be broke? I have assets of over two billion dollars."

"It's very simple. You have a combined debt of three and one half billion."

"So? I'll sell off a few trifles. That white elephant of a yacht. The Florida dump. It's no fun since the divorce, anyway."

"In today's market, Mal-de-Mer is worth half what you originally paid for it."

"We'll subdivide. That ought to piss off those Palm Beach jerk-offs who wouldn't let me join their private club, even after I gave them some of my beach frontage as inducement."

"You don't understand. In today's market, your current holdings won't fetch back the outlay."

"It's a temporary phenomenon. The market will bounce back. I'll call a press conference and announce I'm buying something big. Word will get out that Randal T. Rumpp is bullish on the economy. That should kick-start the commercial real-estate market just long enough for me to sell off a few soot-catchers and make a fast buck or two. Then I'll retire and leave the suckers holding the bag."

"There are no profits out there, Mr. Rumpp," the accountant said morosely.

"No one with assets of more than two billion dollars can be broke. Get real."

"Mr. Rumpp, let me explain this in simple terms," the accountant said carefully. "If you had seventy cents to your name, but you owed a dollar twenty, how would you describe yourself?"

"A pauper."

"A kinder term would be 'over-leveraged.' Which is what you are. Your acquisition debts exceed your assets by almost two-to-one. And the debt service on outstanding loans is costing you a healthy six figures a day."

Randal Rumpp paused in his pacing. "You're not listening to me, Chuck. I have assets of two billion. You said so yourself. I can't fall. No one is going to let me fall. What are the banks going to do-foreclose?"

"They could."

"Ridiculous. Nobody forecloses on multimillion dollar skyscrapers. My Atlantic City casinos alone are going to put me back in the black. Shangri-Rumpp is gonna bounce back."

The accountant shook his head sorrowfully. "The numbers just aren't there. I'm sorry."

"You're not sorry!" Randal Rumpp snarled back. "You're terminated! You just don't understand how business works! I am the economy!"

Slowly, the accountant got to his feet. He closed his briefcase gently. "I will submit a final bill for services rendered."

"Submit all you want!" Randal Rumpp snapped. "I'm not paying."

"And why not?"

"Take your pick," sneered Rumpp. "Either you're right, in which case you're way at the bottom of the creditor list. Or you're incompetent, and don't deserve to be paid. In fact, I should probably sue you for trying to pass off this garbage as accounting. You're a cheap fraud. Get out of my sight."

Stiffly, the accountant retreated to the door.

After he had gone, Randal Rumpp buzzed his executive assistant.

"Yes, Mr. Rumpp?"

"Have maintenance shut down the elevators. I want that fraud to walk all twenty-four stories to the ground."

"Yes, Mr. Rumpp."

Satisfied, Randal Rumpp hit the telephones. The world was full of businessmen who thought they were smarter than anyone else. Randal Rumpp had two PR firms working round the clock promoting the notion that Randal Rumpp was the man to beat in business. That always brought out the climbers. They were the easiest to fleece. They walked in the door with a chip on their shoulders-and usually left without their shirts.

It took only an hour to discover that none of the usual fish were biting.

"What the hell's going on here?" Randal Rumpp shouted into the telephone.

The voice at the other end of the line said in a cool, detached matter, "I read your book, Rumpp."

"The Scam of the Deal is earning me thirty grand a month in royalties!" Randal Rumpp snapped back.

"It has also shown the world how you run your shoddy business, you simpering egotist."

"Listen, Chuck. Randal Rumpp has the biggest ego money can buy, and don't you forget it!" shouted Rumpp, slamming down the receiver. But in the vast emptiness of his palatial office, the self-styled Rumpp-ster made a rare admission.

"Okay, so maybe the book wasn't a good idea. I'll transcend this."

But mounting debt, he soon found, was not so easily transcended.

The holdings of the Rumpp Empire may have been as solid as the materials they were built of, but they were static. Debt, on the other hand, although as insubstantial as electrons in a bank mainframe, grew inexorably.

One by one, markers were called in. One by one, his trophy assets had to be sold off at fire-sale prices. After each sale, Rumpp put the word out that he had gotten the best of the buyer. But this time, not even Randal Rumpp believed his own PR.

Randal Rumpp was forced to hire the second best number-cruncher that money could buy, hoping to consolidate his affairs. After a month's time, the accountant broke the bad news.

"You're hopelessly in debt."

"I own the biggest yacht in the world," Rumpp retorted. "The owner of the biggest yacht afloat cannot possibly be broke."

"According to my records, you sold the Rumpp Queen three months ago."

Randal Rumpp's bee-stung mouth pursed. "I did? Oh, right. I forgot. I hardly go near the thing anyway. I'm allergic to water, or something."

"Your interest payments alone obviate any hope of recovery, Mr. Rumpp. I recommend Chapter Eleven."

Intrigued, Randal Rumpp picked a copy of The Scam of the Deal off his desk and began leafing through it, saying, "Now you're talking my language."

When he came to the right chapter he looked up, scowling.

"My football league scam--I mean, deal? How will that help?"

"That's not what I meant," the accountant said dryly.

"Oh, right," said Rumpp, dropping the book and grabbing the sequel, People Hate a Winner. He had written it before his fortunes had changed, and now it was an embarrassment. Still, if Chapter Eleven got him out of this mess, it would have been worth it.

"What's this? Chapter Eleven is about that has-been boxer, Tyson."

"I meant," the accountant put in, "declaring bankruptcy."

Randal Rumpp clapped the book shut, his eyes glittering. "No chance. I just won't pay my creditors."

"The banks will have to foreclose."

"Then they'll be foreclosing on their own future," Rumpp snarled. "I'll drag them down with me."

"That doesn't change your bottom line."

"The hell it doesn't! All my life I've been playing financial chicken with the old-money crowd, the banks, the insurance companies, speculators. Well, now I play for keeps. From this day forward Randal Tiberius Rumpp pays out no money. Not one red cent. Let's take this to the edge. Let's see who swerves first."

Within a month, the bankers had started foreclosure proceedings. First it was the Florida estate. Then the surviving casinos. Then they came after his Manhattan holdings. Each time another trophy was seized, the phones lit up. For a day. But when the Rumpp organization put out the word that its CEO was no longer giving press interviews, even those flurries of interest ceased.

On the day the phones fell totally silent, Randal Rumpp was down to the Rumpp Tower and his Rumpp Regis Hotel.

"There's gotta be a way out of this black hole," he muttered. "Maybe I'll buy Russia on credit and rename it 'Rumpponia'."

The intercom buzzed.

"What is it?" demanded Randal Rumpp.

"There's a representative from Chemical Percolator's Hoboken Bank down in the lobby asking to see you."

"Is he alone?"

"I'm told there's a man from the sheriff's office with him."

"Sheriff's office? What do they think I am, some nickel-and-dime Savings and Loan?"

"What shall I tell the guard captain?"

"Don't let him in. In fact, have security throw them out on their asses."

Randal Rumpp severed the intercom connection.

A phone rang. At first, Rumpp didn't know which phone had rung. There were so many in the office it looked like an AT . A beeping red light on his desk cellular console began flashing.

It was his private direct number, available only to his main squeeze of the month and close friends. The number was changed often.

Smiling, he picked it up. "This is the Rumppster," he announced, primping the four and a quarter pounds of hair that squatted on his head like a startled sea anemone.

"And this is your ex!" a throaty voice purred.

"Igoria?"

"Of course, dahling. A little birdie tells me you're about to undergo foreclosure. I just wanted to be the first to say how very, very sorry I am."

"You're not sorry at all," Rumpp snarled.

"You know, dahling, you're right. And how is that little blond thing? The one with the inverted nipples?"

"How did you know about those?"

"You should never have canceled your subscription to Spy, dahling."

Randal Rumpp's simpering expression went prim. "Igoria, you know how you're going to end up? Like Zsa Zsa Gabor-your face stretched to the tearing point, slapping traffic cops to get ink."

"If you ever need a place to crash, dahling, I just bought this insouciant little Louis XIV couch. Bring your own bedding."

Randal Rumpp hung up. "Hag."

His face screwed up into his trademark scowl. He thought a moment. "I gotta get back. I gotta get back." Rumpp snapped his fingers. "I know. I'll leak the name of her plastic surgeon to Vogue."

He picked up the main phone. It was dead. He tried another. It, too, was dead.

"What's going on with the phones?" Randal Rumpp demanded of his executive secretary through the intercom.

"Sir?"

"I can't get a dial tone."

"Let me see."

Soon, it became clear that none of the phones in Randal Rumpp's suite of offices was working.

"Maybe . . . maybe the phone company cut service," Dorma Wormser ventured.

"They wouldn't dare!"

"They have been threatening to terminate if the bills weren't paid."

"Call them. Tell them the check's in the mail."

"How? The lines are all dead."

"Go down to the corner and use a pay phone. Get it done."

"Right away, Mr. Rumpp," said Dorma, hurrying into her coat and out the reception area.

Randal Rumpp threw himself behind his massive desk, which looked like a cherry wood pool table without pockets, thinking that if he docked the broad for her time out of the office he not only wouldn't have to reimburse her the quarter, he'd come out half a buck ahead. These days, a businessman needed every cent.

Dorma hadn't been gone long when suddenly every phone in the office began ringing. It was as if a starter gun had been fired. Every phone erupted into song at once. Some beeped, others warbled, and still others buzzed shrilly.

Seated at his desk, Randal Rumpp goggled, wide-eyed, at the banks of insistent instruments. They sounded angry. Like electronic rattlesnakes.

He decided not to answer any of them.

Then the faxes started emitting warning beeps and whistles.

"Incoming!" Randal Rumpp shouted, lunging to the table on which four fax-phones sat like circled wagons. Paper began rolling out in long white tongues. He hit the OFF switches. Just in time.

The exposed sheets were all blank. He didn't know if it was legal to fax foreclosure notices, but there was no sense taking unnecessary chances.

Back at his desk, the phones kept up their discordant accompaniment.

Randal Rumpp worked his way down the bank, picking up receivers and instantly hanging up again. This helped not at all. The phones continued to compete for his attention.

In desperation, he grabbed one up and shouted into the receiver, "Leave me alone!"

To his surprise a weak voice responded. It said, "Help me. I am stuck in telephone."

"Dammit! What's going on with these things?" Rumpp complained, slamming the receiver down. It resumed its annoying ringing. Only the cellular unit was silent.

A moment later, his executive assistant stumbled into the office, glassy-eyed and white-faced.

"Mr. Rumpp . . ." she began breathlessly.

"I asked you to restore service, not test the electronics! What is this crap?"

Then Randal Rumpp saw the ghostly pallor that had drained his executive assistant's face.

"What's with you?"

The woman took a deep, steadying breath. "Mr. Rumpp! I . . . never . . . left . . . the . . . building."

"There goes my profit," he muttered. Aloud, he said, "Why the hell not?"

"Because I didn't want to . . . fall in. Like the . . . others."

"Fall into what?"

She gulped more air. "The sidewalk, Mr. Rumpp. People were sinking into the sidewalk. It was awful. Like quicksand. They couldn't get out."

Randal T. Rumpp had ascended to the pinnacle of his chosen field because he knew how to read people. He read his secretary now. She wasn't drunk. She wasn't high. She wasn't trying to scam him. She was frightened. She was serious. So no matter how inane it sounded, Randal Rumpp knew he would have to look into her story.

"Are the people from the bank still down there?" he asked firmly.

"Yes."

"Did they see what you saw?"

"I don't think so."

"Did the guard?"

"No, Mr. Rumpp."

"Go back downstairs and tell the guard to throw them out."

"But Mr. Rumpp!"

"Out the main entrance. So I can see what happens."

The secretary was in tears. "But Mr. Rumpp!"

"Or I can go down there myself and have him throw you out."

"Right away, Mr. Rumpp." She hurried off, sobbing.

Randal Rumpp's executive assistant stumbled away. Rumpp went to the north wall, which was decorated with framed magazine covers depicting his own face. He opened the Vanity Fair portrait. It revealed a closed-circuit TV monitor.

There were cameras concealed throughout the building. Rumpp hit the button labeled CAMERA FOUR. A clear picture appeared. It showed the atrium entrance and the Fifth Avenue sidewalk beyond.

Randal Rumpp noticed that a crowd had gathered. Like at a fire. They were pressed close to the building facade, touching it curiously. He wondered why they were doing that.

Then, through the main entrance, came one of his black-coated guards, escorting a man in gray flannel and another uniformed person. These would be the bank officer and the sheriff.

They had taken no more than four steps beyond the brass-and-pink-marble confines of the atrium lobby when all three men threw up their hands, as if losing their balance. They twisted on their feet like surfers trying not to go under, faces incredulous.

Randal Rumpp watched curiously.

Then, they began sinking into what was apparently solid pavement.

It was a slow process. The crowd recoiled from the sight. Some scattered, as if afraid that the ground under their feet was going to swallow them, too.

But only the three men were affected. The video monitor captured no sound. Randal Rumpp fiddled with the volume control without success. All he got was the desultory gurgle of his eight-million-dollar atrium waterfall.

The way the three sinking men's faces and mouths worked was enough to convince Randal Rumpp that he would rather not hear their screams of terror anyway.

They were up to their waists within a minute and a half. They started to beat at the sidewalk with their fists. Their fists simply dipped into the ground. They yanked them back, undamaged, eyes astonished.

When their chins were only an inch or so above the pavement, the bank officer began to cry. The tower guard just shut his eyes. The sheriff was flailing his arms like a panicky blue bird. His arms appeared and disappeared, as if he were sinking into calm gray ice water.

At one point, he found something solid. The apron of marble lobby floor that projected beyond the entrance doors. His fingers slipped and slid along the edge. Hope leaped into his eyes. Then, inexorably, the weight of his sinking body was more than his strength could overcome, and he lost his grip.

The unforgiving line of the pavement crept up to their noses, past their wide eyes, and closed over their heads. Their hands were the last to go, clutching like those of drowning men.

Then they were gone. The sidewalk was empty. Everyone was gone.

Randal Rumpp stared at the bare sidewalk where three human beings had disappeared, in defiance of all natural law. He blinked. He looked to his desk calendar. It read: "October 31." Halloween. Then he blurted out the personal mantra that had exalted him to the heights of business success and dashed him back onto the rocks of near-bankruptcy.

"There's gotta be a way I can hype this disaster as a positive!"

Chapter 2

His name was Remo, and he was attending the twentieth reunion of the Francis Wayland Thurston High School, Class of '72.

The reunion was being held in the Pickman Neighborhood Club, outside Buffalo, New York, a white mansion of a place built by a turn-of-the-century industrialist that had been reduced to a function rental.

At the door, Remo gave the name he had been told to give.

"Edgar Perry."

The woman looked up from the list, blinked, and said, "Eddie! It's been ages!"

"Forever," Remo agreed. He looked at her name tag. "Pamela."

"Pam, remember? Here, let me get your photo badge."

As Remo waited patiently, Pamela dug into a folder in which splotchy photocopies of the 1972 class yearbook portraits had been clipped and then inserted into separate laminated badges. She handed Remo one that showed a bland face with staring eyes and the name "Edgar Perry" printed underneath.

"Yep, that's me," Remo said, clipping on the badge.

The face that stared out from the laminated holder in no way resembled the face of Remo Williams. Not in shape, head contour, or bone structure. Had it been in color, the eyes wouldn't have matched either.

"It sure is," Pamela agreed, giving Remo a smile that probably had been dazzling back in 1972 but was just teeth in a too-pink mouth today.

"Lewis here yet?" Remo asked casually.

"Lewis Theobald?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, now he's really changed. You'd never in a million years pick him out of the crowd."

Remo looked over the main function room. It was done in smoky brick and boasted an ancient fireplace that was as cold as the air outside. There was no need for a crackling fire, the room being warmed by the combined body heat of nearly two hundred "thirtysomething" people. Had his eyes been closed, Remo could have accurately counted the exact number of attendees just from the BTUs. Remo had no idea how much heat made a British Thermal Unit, but long ago he had learned how to sense the exact number of lurking enemies in a dark room from the heat radiation. He remembered the steps he had been taught. The rewards, which were few, and the punishments, which were many, before he could do it every time without thinking. Gradually he lost the specifics of that learning experience. All that remained was instinct. Now he just walked in, felt the heat, and a number popped into his head.

Remo's deep-set brown eyes roamed the sea of heads. None of the faces was familiar. He knew that Lewis Theobald's would mean nothing to him, either. But he wasn't looking for a face. He was looking for ears.

"That's him," Remo said, pointing at an animated, blond-haired man whose small ears had almost no lobes.

Pamela asked, "Which one? Come on, be specific."

"The blondish guy with the reddish mustache," Remo said confidently.

"You're right! You're absolutely right! You must have a fantastic memory. How did you do that?"

"I have a fantastic memory," said Remo, who just hours before had been shown pre-plastic surgery photographs of his target. There were no post-plastic photos available. But that wasn't a problem. There was no such procedure as an 'earlobe augmentation.' Remo had recognized the shape of Lewis Theobald's ears as if they had played basketball together every day since graduation.

Remo pushed through the crowd, ignoring a waitress in a vampire outfit who offered orange-tinted champagne in tiny glasses, slipped up to the man who wore Lewis Theobald's ID badge, and slapped him on the back hard enough to pop his contact lenses.

"Lew!"

The man with the Lewis Theobald name tag turned from his conversation and looked at Remo's face with a mixture of shock and surprise. His startled eyes went from Remo's familiar grin to his name tag. He absorbed the name and quickly grabbed Remo's hand. "Edgar! How'd you recognize me?"

"Your ears," Remo said, smiling thinly.

"Huh?"

"A joke," Remo said. "Long time no see. What's it been-almost twenty years?"

"You tell me," said the man wearing Lewis Theobald's name tag, pointedly ignoring the person whom he'd been talking to. The other man soon drifted off.

"Twenty years. You haven't changed a bit," said Remo.

"Neither have you, Eddie. My God, it's great to see you. Just great."

"I knew you'd say that," said Remo. "Hey, remember that time in biology class when we had to dissect the frog?"

"How could I forget?"

"And you took the scissors, cut off its head, and dropped it into Mrs. Shields' coffee?"

"That was great!" said Lewis Theobald, forcing a hearty laugh. He slipped one heavy arm over Remo's shoulder.

"Listen, Eddie. I can't tell you how relieved I am to see you. I've been in Ohio since '77, and I've lost touch with everyone."

A redhead with too much sun in her lined face slipped up and said, "Eddie! How nice to see you again!" She gave him a peck on the cheek.

Remo said, "Remember Lew?"

The blonde looked over the supposed Lewis Theobald, went momentarily blank, and finally forced a smile of recognition. "Lewis! Of course. So nice to see you!"

"Same here."

She slipped away, saying to Remo, "Let's catch up, shall we?"

"Count on it," Remo said straight-facedly. It was working. Just as Upstairs had said it would. Twenty years is a long time. People change. Hairlines recede, or change color. Beards come and go. Poundage settles in for the long haul. No one suspected that Edgar Perry wasn't Edgar Perry, who happened to be serving twenty to life on a manslaughter beef down on Riker's Island, and whose reunion invitation had been intercepted before it reached his prison post office box.

It had been a lucky break that the only living member of the Class of '72 who couldn't make the reunion happened to have the same hair color as Remo Williams, who had never heard of the Francis Wayland Thurston High School until a few weeks ago. Lucky for Remo. Not so lucky for the man trying to pass himself off as Lewis Theobald.

"Listen, Eddie," said the man who wore Lewis Theobald's name tag, "I've been out of touch a long time. Catch me up on some of these people. A lot of them don't remember me as well as you. it's awkward."

"No problem," said Remo, smiling to a pert brunette who blew him a kiss and mouthed the words "Hello, Eddie." No doubt the incarcerated Perry's once-and-future prom date. Remo picked a man at random, who had hair like a Chia pet, and said, "Remember Sty Sterling?"

"Vaguely."

"Sty's been dry three, four years now. On his second wife and third career change. He used to be a computer programmer for IDC. Now he not only owns Hair Weavers Anonymous, he's their best client."

"The economy brings them down, doesn't it?"

"And that's Debby Holland. Her LSD flashbacks finally settled down after she had the two-headed baby."

Lewis Theobald made a face. "Our generation has seen its trials, hasn't it? What about you?"

"Me?" said Remo Williams, looking the man directly in the eye. "I did a tour in Nam, in between pounding a beat."

Lewis looked his disbelief. "You're a cop?"

"Not anymore. I moved up. Work for the government now."

"Doing what?"

"Hunting weasels."

The man calling himself Lewis Theobald locked gazes with the man pretending to be Edgar Perry. Neither man flinched.

Finally Theobald said in a cool, toneless voice, "Weasels?"

"Yeah. The human kind. Guys who can't be caught any other way."

"I don't follow . . . ." Theobald said, his voice edgy.

Remo shrugged nonchalantly. "Serial killers. Whitecollar types. The big bad guys even the Feds can't touch. Supersecret stuff."

"FBI?"

"Not even close," Remo said.

An overweight woman wearing too much Chanel No. 5 dragged a balding, bespectacled husband over and said, "Eddie! Eddie Perry! Pam said you'd shown up! How are you?"

"Young as ever," Remo quipped.

"Go on. You look ten years younger than the rest of us."

"More like twenty," Remo quipped.

The overweight woman smiled through her confusion, and Remo said, "You remember Lew."

"Lew?"

"Lewis Theobald."

The supposed Lewis Theobald smiled hopefully.

"Did you go to school with us?" she asked doubtfully.

"I've been in Ohio since '77," Theobald said, flushing. "I'm the one who chopped the head off the frog in Biology."

"Do tell."

The woman dragged her compliant husband off.

"Where were we?" Remo said.

"Discussing your work. With weasels."

"Right. I'm the top weasel-catcher for Uncle Sam."

"Why have I never hear of you?"

"Only weasels ever hear about me. And when they do, it's already too late for them."

The supposed Lewis Theobald took a sip of pumpkin-colored champagne and smiled knowingly. "Who would have thought that Edgar Perry would go to work for the Central Intelligence Agency?"

Remo smiled back. The smile, under his deep-set dark eyes, made his high-cheekboned face resemble a death's-head. He was rotating his hands absently. It was a habit he had when he was about to zero in on a hit. The unaccustomed shirt cuffs chafed his thick wrists. He hated wearing jacket and tie, but this was a class reunion. Besides, Upstairs was especially nervous about excessive exposure. Especially after Remo's most recent plastic surgery.

Let Manuel "The Weasel" Silva think he worked for the CIA. It wasn't true. And Manuel the Weasel was not known to be afraid of the CIA. He was not known to be afraid of anything.

Here, at the Class of '72 reunion, no fear showed in the eyes of the man pretending to be Lewis Theobald. He had no reason to suspect that the person he thought was Edgar Perry was anyone other than who he claimed to be. To think otherwise would have been too unbelievable a coincidence.

Ever since the Gulf War, and the collapse of his main patron, Soviet Russia, Manuel "The Weasel" Silva had become a human hot potato. The most feared and successful terrorist of the last twenty years, responsible for masterminding a horrific string of hijackings, political murders, and bombings, Manuel had been kicked out of Syria several times. Usually to Libya. The Libyans, who had more to fear from U.S. intervention than the Syrians, invariably kicked The Weasel back to Damascus. Even Baghdad didn't want Manuel the Weasel.

Finally, Manuel disappeared on his own. He had been traced to Montreal, traveling on a falsified Australian passport. There, the trail had disappeared. Washington put its security forces on a higher state of alert, fearing a direct attack by Silva. None had come.

Upstairs, through his vast computer network, had picked up a few clues. Nothing definitive. But through careful work, a pattern had emerged. A bizarre one.

Manuel had not entered the U.S. to commit random acts of terror. He had come to assume a new identity.

The identity of Lewis Theobald, who was found dead in his Akron, Ohio, apartment, his spinal cord severed by a thin, flat blade that had entered through the back of his neck.

It had been a trademark of The Weasel to assassinate his victims in that way. It was the first solid clue Upstairs had gotten. And when Lewis Theobald's parents were both found murdered in the same way in their Miami condominium, Upstairs recognized what no law enforcement agent in the nation could have: The Weasel was erasing anyone who could prove that Lewis Theobald was no longer Lewis Theobald.

When the new Lewis Theobald relocated to Buffalo and opened up a print shop, Upstairs decided to act. The occasion of the class reunion had provided the perfect neutral ground, where Manuel would never dream of coming armed.

Just as he would never imagine that he would meet his assassin.

"Who said I worked for the CIA?" Remo whispered.

The Weasel shrugged. The dead face of Lewis Theobald looked at Remo through the laminated holder with blank, uncomprehending eyes. The eyes of Manuel held a hint of suspicion. He was trying to figure out if he was being stalked or not.

"If you're not FBI or CIA, then who could you work for?"

"It's called CURE," Remo volunteered brightly.

"CURE? That's one I never heard of."

"No surprise there," Remo said easily, smiling to put the man off his guard. "Officially we don't exist."

"Oh?"

"They set it up back in the sixties," Remo went on casually. "Strictly as a counterintelligence organization. One guy runs it. Directly answerable to the president. No official staff, no official payroll. Not even an office in Washington. That way, if things go wrong, it can be shut down inside an hour."

"Are you saying you're the person who runs this organization?"

"Nope. I'm its one agent. The enforcement arm."

Manuel the Weasel allowed himself an easy smile. His confidence was returning. Remo knew what he was thinking. He was thinking that Edgar Perry was trying to impress him with a cock-and-bull story. That Edgar Perry probably only worked for the Defense Investigative Service, or some similar low-level federal organization, and was trying to make himself sound more important than he was.

"Not much of an organization," The Weasel remarked. "One spymaster. One agent."

"Remember what they said about the Texas Rangers."

Manuel looked blank. Naturally, he would. He was a Basque Separatist, and wouldn't know the Alamo from a car rental agency.

Remo said, "One Riot. One Ranger. I'm sort of like that."

"Ah, I see. This is very interesting."

"Look," said Remo, looking furtively around. "I shouldn't really be talking to you about this. After all, we are a secret."

Manuel made no attempt to conceal his amused smile. "Supersecret, you said."

"Yeah. Yeah. Right."

"Why don't we retire to the other room?" Manuel suggested. "I would like to hear more about this . . . CURE."

"Why not? After all, we dissected frogs together."

Manuel threw back his head with a nervous laugh and guided Remo into the dining area. He shook his free arm and Remo heard the thin, flat knife slide from a hidden sleeve pocket and into The Weasel's hand.

Good, Remo thought. He's going to make it easy.

The dining room was decorated in a Halloween motif. Halloween was only hours away. The walls were a riot of witches, ghosts, and goblins. Every table bore a carved jack-o'-lantern, in which a lit candle had been set. The jack-o'-lanterns' triangular eyes quaked angry light at them as they took seats.

"This CURE," said Manuel. "How exactly do you function in its table of organization?"

"Between the tight-ass and the pain in the ass," Remo said. "The tight-ass is Smith, my boss. Affectionately known as 'Upstairs.' The pain in the ass is my trainer. A Korean."

"I am not following thees," said The Weasel, his suppressed native accent slipping out.

Remo leaned closer, hoping his target would go for his throat. "Like I said, I'm the weasel catcher. You see, long ago a president saw the country falling apart. Crime was riding high. Terrorists were operating with impunity. The Soviets were threatening to bury us. And our system of government was being twisted by low people in high places who perverted the Constitution so they could get fat, rich, and powerful pulling stuff."

"Stuff?"

"Heavy stuff."

"I follow," said The Weasel, who didn't follow at all. "But I still do not understand your function."

Remo looked around the empty dining room conspiratorially. Only hot-eyed jack-o'-lantern faces stared back.

"Swear not to tell?" Remo whispered.

"I swear."

"Not good enough. You gotta swear The Oath of the Headless Frog. Like in the old days."

"I swear by the Headless Frog," said Manuel "The Weasel" Silva, humoring this foot of an American.

Remo leaned closer, wondering what was taking this idiot so long. "My job description says 'assassin.' "

"Ah. You must be very good at what you do."

"I had a lot of training. CURE doesn't just hire anybody, you know."

"Naturally not."

"First they framed me for killing a nothing pusher. I was still a cop then. Then they gave me a new face, a new name."

"New name?"

"Yeah," Remo said, deciding to cut to the chase. "I used to be Remo Williams."

"But your badge says-"

"A crock," admitted Remo.

Manuel shifted so that his free hand-the one clutching the knife-could snake out without warning. He lifted his glass to cover the action.

"Then they made me learn Sinanju," Remo added.

Manuel the Weasel was in the act of swallowing the last of his champagne. It must have gone down the wrong pipe, because he started coughing.

"Here, let me help you with that," Remo said, taking the empty champagne glass from his fingers and grabbing Manuel the Weasel by the back of his neck. He literally lifted Manuel out of his chair and jammed his entire head into the table's guttering jack-o'-lantern. The thin, flat knife slipped from his fingers and struck the floor, quivering on its point.

Manuel the Weasel's face met the flame of the candle, bent the hot wax candle out of shape, and was pressed into the puddle of clear liquid wax that had melted at the bottom of the hollow gourd.

Manuel would have screamed, but Remo had paralyzed his spinal column. The man could no longer move, or yell, or do anything of his own volition.

Except listen. He could listen. Remo had not bothered to squeeze off his sensory receptors. Although he could have.

Since he had the time, Remo finished his story. He waved away a tendril of smoke that was seeping from the pumpkin. It smelled sickly sweet. Like burning flesh. "I figured you might have heard of Sinanju. I mean, you're an assassin. And I'm an assassin. General Motors knows about Toyota, right?"

Manuel didn't answer. He didn't do anything except smoke quietly and twitch.

"Speaking as one assassin to another," Remo went on, "not to mention victor to victim-or is that 'victee'?-I gotta tell you my boss was really worried about my nailing you. I mean, you've got a reputation. That's the problem. Having a rep. It's good for the image, but bad for security. Nobody knows I exist, so I can come to one of these dippy reunions pretending to be someone I'm not and no one knows different. Even if they figured out I wasn't Eddie What's-his-face, they still wouldn't tip to anything important. After all, Remo Williams is buried six feet under. The backtrail's cold. They pulled my prints and burned every existing photo."

Remo squeezed the man's neck harder. The quivering settled down to a spasmodic tremble.

"You, on the other hand, Weasel my friend, have left a methods trail a mile wide. You've got limited technique, so when the pieces started coming together it was easy enough to figure your game. Take off Lewis Theobald and everyone connected with him. Move back into the old neighborhood and strike up acquaintances with the old crowd. After twenty years, and a little plastic surgery, who could say you weren't Lewis Theobald? Pamela? I'll bet if you kissed her, she'd say you kiss just like the old days." Remo eyed the inert form bent over the table. "Or did. Hot wax tends to distort the lip contours."

Remo paused to listen. Manuel the Weasel's breathing was becoming ragged. Probably his nose was full of hot wax. His lungs were laboring. His heart, however, still beat strongly. It was usually the last major organ to give out.

Remo reached over and pulled Manuel the Weasel back into his seat. The jack-o'-lantern came with it. It sat on his lolling head like a topsy-turvy helmet.

Remo rose to get up. "Well, Weasel old pal, guess I'd better call it a night. Before I go, let me show you what CURE does to weasels."

Remo took the pumpkin in his hands and turned it to the right. He did it so fast that Manuel's head moved right with it, his neck snapping from the deliberate force.

Remo restored the head, so that Manuel "The Weasel" Silva would look natural when the Class of '72 poured in for dinner an hour or so from then.

Or as natural as a dead terrorist with an upsidedown jack-o'-lantern for a head could look.

"That's the biz, sweetheart," Remo said, slipping out through the kitchen.

A hour later, Jennifer "Cookie" Friend, secretary-treasurer of the class of '72, threw open the doors and beheld the novel sight of a supposed classmate seated in perfect Halloween form.

"Oh, now who is that?"

The general consensus was that it was Freddy Fish, the class clown. Until somebody remembered that Freddy had died attempting to hotwire his front door bell into a car battery three April Fools' ago.

Somebody got the courage to pull off the pumpkin. It refused to come off. But a lightning bolt of blood did trickle down from under the man's neck.

Someone laughed and said it was colored Karo syrup. He rubbed a fingertip in the goo and brought it to his mouth. When it tasted salty instead of sweet, he started heaving.

Cookie screamed.

When the paramedics arrived, naturally they removed the jack-o'-lantern so as to give the victim CPR. The moment the pumpkin came off, a woman shouted "My God! It's Lewis!"

"Who?"

"Lewis Theobald."

"Jesus, you're right. He's hardly aged at all!"

"Well, he ain't gonna age anymore."

"Poor Lew. What will his parents say?"

It was unanimously decided to turn over the proceeds of the Class of '72 raffle to Lewis Theobald's survivors. Cookie went along with a sick smile. She had had the raffle rigged so she would win.

By that time, Remo was miles away. He felt sad. He knew that if he could ever have attended one of his own high school reunions, he would have had no more in common with his old classmates than he'd had with the roomful of strangers he'd just fooled.

For everything he had told Manuel the Weasel-destined to be dumped into a potter's field when the coroner learned that Lewis Theobald was already buried in Ohio-was true. Remo Williams had been officially erased so that he could become CURE's enforcement arm. He had lost his name, his identity, his friends-he had no family-and his face. Only recently, he had gotten that back through plastic surgery. But as comforting as that was, it wasn't enough. Remo wanted more. He wanted a life. A normal life.

Remo had long ago ceased to be normal when Chiun, the elderly Master of Sinanju, had taken it upon himself to train Remo in the assassin's art known as "Sinanju." From this training, Remo had emerged a Master of Sinanju himself, the first and greatest martial art. There was almost no feat the human body was capable of that Remo could not match. Or exceed. He had become, in a literal sense, a superman, albeit an inconspicuous one.

It wasn't enough. He wanted more. Or perhaps it was less. He wanted a home of his own and a family.

He decided he would take it up with Upstairs. Chiun was in the middle of contract negotiations.

Pulling over to a roadside pay phone, Remo picked up the receiver and thumbed the 1 button. He held it down. That triggered an automatic dialer sequence that rang a blind phone in an artist's studio in Wapiti, Wyoming, and was rerouted to Piscataway, New Jersey, before finally ringing on a shabby desk in a shabby office overlooking Long Island Sound.

"Smitty. Remo. The Weasel is a dead duck."

"Remo," said the lemony voice of Harold W. Smith, director of Folcroft Sanitarium, in Rye, New York-the cover for CURE. "You have called just in time. There has been an event on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue."

"Nuclear?"

"No."

"Then what do you mean by 'event'?"

Smith cleared his throat. He sounded uncomfortable. That could mean anything.

"Smitty?" Remo prompted.

"Sorry. Chiun has already left for the site."

"Chiun? Then it must be serious, if you're rash enough to let him run loose unsupervised."

"It is unprecedented, I agree."

"Is it something you can explain in twenty-five words or less?" Remo wanted to know.

The line was very quiet. "No," Smith said at last.

Remo switched ears. "I'm not up for charades, Smitty. I've been strangling weasels, remember?"

Smith cleared his throat again. Whatever was bothering him, obviously it was big. Remo decided to press his advantage.

"You know, Smitty," Remo began casually, "I've been thinking. Ever since you threw Chiun and me out of our own house, we've been footloose vagabonds. I'm sick of it. I want a permanent campsite."

"See Randal Rumpp," Smith blurted.

"The real-estate developer? You got an in with him?"

"No. The-er-event is at the Rumpp Tower."

"There's that word again. 'Event.' Can I have a tiny clue?"

"People are-um-trapped inside the building."

"Okay."

"And people who go in-ah-never come out again."

"Terrorists?"

"I wish it were only that," Smith sighed. Then the words came rushing out. "Remo, this is so far beyond anything we've ever faced before, that I am at a complete loss to account for it. Please go to the Rumpp Tower and evaluate the situation."

Harold Smith sounded so ragged-voiced that Remo forgot all about pressing his advantage.

"Is Chiun in any danger down there?" he asked.

"We may all be in danger if this event spreads."

"I'm on my way."

Before Remo could hang up, the normally unflappable Smith said a strange thing.

"Remo, don't let it get you, too."

Chapter 3

The Rumpp Tower occupied half a city block at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-sixth Street, abutting the quiet elegance of Spiffany's.

By day, it gleamed like a futuristic cigarette lighter cut from golden crystal. By night, its sixty-eight stories became a mosaic of checkered light.

Day or night, its brass and Maldetto Vomito marble lobby atrium, containing six floors of the finest shops and boutiques, attracted thousands of shoppers. Offices occupied its middle floors, and above the eighteenth the sumptuous duplex and triplex luxury apartments began.

On this late Halloween afternoon, no one was shopping in the atrium shops. The tourists who had been caught in the building when the phones went dead were huddled at the ground-floor windows looking out with fear-haunted eyes, waiting for rescue.

No one dared leave. They had seen the terrible thing that had happened to any who made that mistake.

It was the same at the Fifty-sixth Street residential entrance. The doorman had opened the door to let a blue-haired matron out. He stepped onto the street, one hand on the brass door handle. It was very lucky for him that he kept his hand on the handle. The second he felt no solidity under his polished shoes, he pulled himself back in.

"What is it? What's wrong?" demanded the perplexed matron.

"My God! It felt like the sidewalk wasn't there."

"Are you drunk? One side, please."

The matron had a poodle on a leash. She let the poodle go ahead of her.

The poodle gave a frisky leap, yelped as if its tail had been run over, and the leash was pulled out of the surprised matron's hand.

"Joline!"

The matron started to step from the lobby, but the doorman pulled her back.

She whirled and slapped him.

"What are you doing?"

"Saving your life," said the doorman, pointing at the poodle's curly butt as it slipped into the pavement, like sausage through a meat-grinder.

"Joline! Come back!" The tail disappeared from sight, and she grabbed the doorman by his charcoal-gray jacket. "Save my Joline! Save my Joline!"

Any thought of rescue evaporated when one of the basement garage elevators rose to sidewalk level and a white stretch Lincoln rolled out.

Momentum carried it into the street. It was still moving forward as the wheels slipped into the asphalt. The grille tipped downward.

When the hood ornament dipped to ground level, the driver jumped free. His leap carried him clear of the car-and straight down into the unsupporting street.

People do strange things when confronted with danger. The chauffeur was up to his chest in gray street, and only a few feet away the stretch Lincoln was slipping from sight. Like a man grasping at a sinking straw he tried to flounder toward it, as if he were swimming in an unreal sea.

The chauffeur's head was lost to sight bare seconds after the Lincoln had vanished.

Not even an air bubble was left to show that they had sunk from sight on that mundane spot in midtown Manhattan.

"I think we'd better stay put," the doorman gulped.

The blue-haired matron said nothing. She had fainted.

Even now, three hours into the crisis, people were still stepping off the elevators, unaware that the Rumpp Tower had undergone an invisible but very dramatic transformation.

Whenever an unwary resident stepped off an elevator, a knot of the trapped would rush to intercept him.

"Please, don't leave the building!" they would implore.

The exchange was almost always the same. Beginning with the inevitable question.

"Why not?"

"Because it's not safe."

After the first dozen people had stepped out onto the sidewalk, and then into the sidewalk, the would-be Samaritans gave up telling the truth. The truth was too unbelievable. So they pleaded and cajoled, and sometimes held the person back by force.

Sometimes a simple demonstration was enough. Like the time two people demonstrated the unstable nature of the world beyond the Rumpp Tower when they rolled an R-shaped brass lobby ashtray to the Fifth Avenue entrance and shoved it out a revolving door.

The ashtray wobbled, tilted, and slowly began to sink. It tipped sand, and the sand seemed to melt into the cheerless gray pavement.

It was a convincing demonstration-and saved several lives-but soon they ran out of ashtrays.

Once, a brave fireman approached the Fifth Avenue entrance. By this time the block had been cordoned off with Public Works sawhorses and emergency vehicles. The fireman wore the black-and-yellow slicker and regulation fire hat of the Fire Department, which made him look like a sloppy yellow-jacket with an attitude. He carried a pole normally used to pick apart burning debris. He carried this like a blind man's cane, tapping the ground before him as if attempting to find a solid path through the apparently unstable concrete.

A cheer went up when, apparently by chance, he found a solid patch of pavement.

The door was thrown open for him. Hands reached out to shake his, to thank him, to touch the brave public servant who had defied an unbearable fate to rescue his fellow human beings.

No sooner had the fireman set foot on the splotchy pink marble apron extending from the lobby than he slipped from grateful hands and began sinking into its gleaming surface.

The fireman managed a stunned comment. "What the fuck!"

People rushed to his side. "Grab him! Don't let him sink!"

Gripping hands tried. They only slipped through the man's seemingly solid form. No one could touch him.

When he saw the marble floor creeping up to his waist, he screamed. It was a long scream. It went on for as long as he continued to sink and a little while after.

The last thing to go was his black fireman's hat.

Wide-eyed shoppers shrank back from the spot where the poor fireman had last been seen. They could see him scream, but no audible sounds reached their ears.

After that, those trapped in the lobby lost all hope and stared out the great windows like dull creatures in a zoo.

The Master of Sinanju regarded the lines of frightened faces from a position behind police lines.

He stood barely five feet tall, yet he stood out of the crowd like a lapis lazuli fireplug. This, despite the fact that several New Yorkers had crawled into their trick-or-treat costumes early.

His blue-and-gold kimono shimmered like the finest of silks. He carried his hands before him, tucked into the garment's wide, touching sleeves. His face was a webwork of wrinkles, like a papyrus death mask upon which spiders had toiled delicately over centuries.

In contrast to the stiffness in his visage, his young, hazel eyes looked out with a sharpness belying his full century of life.

"Nice costume," said a red-faced ghoul at his elbow.

"Thank you," Chiun replied in a chilly voice, not wishing to acknowledge the interruption.

"Love the mask."

Chiun's eyes narrowed. He looked up. The crown of his head, bald as an amber egg, wrinkled above the eyebrow line. There were two puffs of cloudy white over each ear. A tendril of similar color clung from his tiny chin.

"Mask?"

"Yeah. What are you supposed to be? Bozo the Chinaman, or what?"

The steely eyes lost their hard glitter. They flew wide.

"I am Korean, white!"

"No offense. The mask looks Chinese."

The Master of Sinanju's tiny mouth thinned even more. What manner of imbecile was this, who could look upon the sweet face of Chiun, Reigning Master of Sinanju, and mistake it for that of mask?

"I wear no mask," he said frostily.

"Ha-ha," laughed the ghoul. "That's so old, it's almost funny again."

This was too much for Chiun, who slipped the toe of one of his sandals onto the man's instep. The man never felt any pressure when his toe bones impacted all at once, sending waves of searing pain up into his nervous system.

This had a predictable result. The man screamed and began hopping in place.

Inasmuch as this had taken place but minutes after the fireman had vanished in plain view of everyone, it was enough to ignite the low spark of hysteria.

"The sidewalk! It's going here too!"

In a mad rush, the area surrounding the Master of Sinanju and the hopping wretch who had had the misfortune to insult him was cleared. The fire trucks pulled back. Word that the instability in the sidewalk was growing raced about like wildfire.

Normally, New York crowds have to be beaten back with mounted police and water cannon. But in this case, panic was enough to motivate even the stubbornest gawker.

In less than twenty minutes, a four-block area surrounding the Rumpp Tower was clear to the last person. A new perimeter was hastily established.

From a place of concealment in the deserted B. Dalton's bookstore, the Master of Sinanju smiled thinly. With one blow, he had reprimanded an insolent idiot and created space in which to work without attracting undue attention or angering his employer, whom he believed was the secret emperor of America, known privately as Harold the Mad.

Now all that remained was to learn the nature of this sorcery before Remo arrived.

For not even in the five-thousand-year annals of the House of Sinanju, greatest house of assassins in human history, was there recorded any such magic as this taking hold of a building.

And that, more than the quiet horror that had befallen the most opulent landmark on Manhattan's gold coast, was what troubled the Master of Sinanju's parchment face more than anything else.

Chapter 4

Word of the bizarre fate that had overtaken the Rumpp Tower reached the ears of Broadcast Corporation of North America superanchorwoman Cheeta Ching, while she was giving an interview in her office.

"Don't bother me now!" she blazed, when her assistant poked her head in.

"But Miss Ching . . ."

All cameras and microphones turned from Cheeta's angry glare to that of her white-faced assistant.

Realizing that she was courting a PR disaster, Cheeta slapped the angry lines from her face and put a little sugar in her tone.

"All right. You may speak."

"It's a story. A big one."

Cheeta Ching had been in the midst of recounting her latest triumph. It was bigger than her Jell-O breast implant expose, or her four-part series on testosterone dementia, or the classic "Why Men are Bad."

It was the culmination of her three-year campaign to become with child. From the moment word had gotten out, Cheeta, who had walked off Eyeball-to-Eyeball with Cheeta Ching to undertake "the heroic struggle," had become a celebrity in her own right. The ultimate career woman who was having it all.

Even flush with biological triumph, she still wanted it all. All, in this case, meant the anchor chair at her network.

"One moment," Cheeta said crisply, excusing herself. She moved quickly to the door.

"What's this about a story?" one of her interviewers inquired nervously.

"I'll find out for you," Cheeta said helpfully.

She shut the door. The last sight they had of Cheeta Ching was of her treacly professional smile, set in a flat face so heavily made up it looked like a petri dish overwhelmed by mold spores.

Then they heard the lock click. Shocked glances were exchanged.

"She wouldn't . . . !"

Then came Cheeta's loud, screeching voice.

"Don't let them out until I'm on the air with this thing, whatever it is!"

"That Korean shark!" a reporter screamed.

Cheeta's next words were, "Does Cooder know about this?"

"No," said her nervous assistant.

"Perfect. Let me break it to him."

She hurried down the corridor to Dan Cooder's office and poked her glossy head in. "Hi Don," she said sweetly.

"Get lost!" snarled BCN anchor Don Cooder, not bothering to look up from his latest Nielsen standings.

"Hear about the Lincoln Tunnel collapse?"

"What!"

"I'd take it myself, but I'm giving an interview on the state of my world-famous womb."

"I owe you one," said Don Cooder, blasting past her like a hurricane with hair.

Ten minutes later, Cheeta Ching was piling out of a microwave van and tearing through the crowd like a bulldozer in high heels.

"Who's in charge here?" she asked a cop.

The officer pointed to a fire marshal. "The marshal is. At least, until the National Guard gets here."

Cheeta thrust her flat face into the fire marshal's grizzled, weatherbeaten features. "Sheriff . . ."

"Marshal."

"Let's have your story."

"No time. We're still stabilizing the situation. Now get back."

"I will not get back," Cheeta hissed. "I demand my rights as a dual minority-female and Korean."

"I am woman, hear me roar," the fire marshal muttered.

Cheeta lifted her mike to his face. "What was that? I didn't catch that."

"I said, 'Get back, please.' "

Cheeta Ching turned on her cameraman, snapping, "Follow me."

The cameraman meekly followed. Cheeta skirted the crowd until she found an opening.

She reached back, found the cameraman's tie, and using it as a leash, yanked him through the opening.

"Miss Ching! What are you doing?"

"Just keep your eye to the viewfinder and the tape rolling. I'll get you through the rest. Trust me."

The cameraman swallowed hard. He had no choice. Cheeta Ching could have a man hired and fired on the spot. It was rumored she had eaten her last cameraman alive when he'd screwed up. Not chewed him out, but actually cannibalized him. At least, that was the way he'd heard it. If the story had been about anyone but the Korean Shark, he would have laughed it off.

Cheeta worked her way to Fifth Avenue and boldly strode up to the sidewalk before the brass-framed Rumpp Tower entrance. Under the huge letters RUMPP TOWER, anxious faces stared out.

"Pan along the building," she directed. "I want every gut-churning, scared-white face on the six o'clock news."

"Yes, Miss Ching."

The cameraman began to pan. Evidently some of the trapped recognized the unmistakable features of Cheeta Ching.

They waved and seemingly called her name. But their voices didn't penetrate the thick glass.

"What're they saying?" Cheeta asked, frowning.

"I dunno. Can't hear them."

"Peculiar."

"What is?"

"They're supposed to be trapped, but it looks to me like a person could just walk right out the front door."

"Then why don't they?"

The moment the words were out of his mouth, the cameraman knew he had made a mistake. There were two kinds of mistakes a cameraman working for Cheeta Ching could make: recoverable ones and irrecoverable ones.

The cameraman understood, as if by divine revelation, that he had made a mistake of the irrecoverable variety.

His fears were confirmed by Cheeta's next orders.

"Go up to the door and ask them."

He gulped. "Is it safe?"

"I'll let you know," Cheeta said flatly.

"Miss Ching, we're already in violation of the fire marshal's orders."

Cheeta whirled, teeth flashing. "What's your problem? Are you leaking testosterone out a pinhole in your scrotum? This could be your chance to become a hero."

The cameraman wasn't concerned about his heroism. He was just hoping to live through the assignment. All he had been told was that there was a big story at the Rumpp Tower. From the looks of it, it was a terrorist thing. Someone had wired the tower and was holding its occupants hostage, or something.

"Miss Ching," he croaked. "I'd rather not. Please."

Cheeta Ching got around in front of him. She was in stiletto heels, which made her almost as tall as the cameraman, who stood five-foot seven. Cheeta Ching slowly rose up on her heels, like a creeping yellow vine. As she came up to his exact eye level, her poisonous red mouth broadened to expose her too-perfect teeth.

"Has anyone ever told you how . . . tasty you look?" she asked in a glittering tone.

Suddenly the cameraman had no fear of terrorists or high explosives or any ordinary threat to his bodily integrity. He was staring right into a flat, predatory face with dark, glittering eyes and excessively sharp incisors. If human evolution could be traced back to sharks and not apes, he thought, the face of Cheeta Ching would represent the highest state of mankind's long evolutionary climb.

"For God's sake," the cameraman pleaded, "I have a family!"

Cheeta grinned wickedly. "I'll bet the baby would taste just great microwaved."

The cameraman's eyes rounded perfectly. "But-but you're going to have a baby yourself!" he stammered.

"More oxygen for my baby, if yours stops breathing."

The cameraman reacted as if a brick had knocked him between the eyes. He took a faltering step backward. Then he turned woodenly, like a man ascending the scaffold to the hangman's noose. Except that he was heading straight for the Rumpp Tower.

A police officer stationed within shouting range spotted him and yelled for the cameraman to stop.

He walked on, oblivious, his footsteps as leaden as a sponge diver's.

Cheeta Ching had taken possession of his camera and now had it up on her padded shoulder, tape running.

"Pick it up, will you?" she said spitefully. "I don't want to run out of tape."

Someone had a bullhorn, and he began exhorting the cameraman to turn back. Inside the tower, the trapped grew panic-stricken. They tried waving him away. A man picked up a clothes rack in a famous clothing store and rammed it toward the glass, in an attempt to frighten the cameraman into changing his mind.

He didn't know his own strength. The heavy rack went through the glass, shattering it.

The expensive bronze solar panel didn't shatter in a normal fashion. It cracked apart. But there was no crystalline sound of breaking glass. There was no sound at all.

And because there was no noise, the cameraman, his dull eyes fixed on the looming entrance, completely failed to notice what happened to the glass.

Cheeta Ching noticed. With instinctive speed, she swung the videocam lens over toward the action. The camera recorded the glass falling and striking the ground.

The big triangles and trapezoids of solar panel might have been raindrops, or glass spun of candy cane touching a moist surface. The glass immediately melted into the broad sidewalk.

Cheeta blinked and brought the camera off her shoulder, a stupefied look on her heavily pancaked features.

"Am I seeing this?"

Under the circumstances, it was an intelligent question. Cheeta thought briefly of commanding her hapless cameraman to walk over to the mysterious spot and investigate, but decided that getting one of the hostages to speak on camera was more important. The chump could do that later.

The cameraman was almost to the door now. Inside the lobby, a security guard and several others were trying to hold the doors shut.

The cameraman's body blocked Cheeta's view, so she didn't really catch what happened next.

It appeared that the cameraman had reached for the door handle of polished brass. His hand jumped back, as if it had received a shock.

His voice was shocked, too.

"I can't touch the door!" he screamed.

"Try kicking it," Cheeta shouted.

"You don't understand! I can't touch it!"

"Yum-yum, baby!" Cheeta called.

If the cameraman hadn't already been frightened out of his wits, he never would have attempted what he next attempted to do.

He stepped back and, lifting his right foot, drove it toward the unyielding door.

He went through the glass door like light through a screen. Literally. The glass remain intact. He kept going.

Inside, trapped shoppers recoiled.

And the cameraman fell into the floor and kept falling. He twisted, as if in quicksand. His mouth was making horrible shapes. Oddly, no screams reached Cheeta Ching's pointed ears. Or worse, her directional mike.

Keeping the camera balanced, Cheeta tried to get his attention with a waving hand.

It worked. The horrified cameraman looked imploringly toward her. His eyes were wounded. It was as stomach-churning a sight as any ever captured on halfinch tape.

Cheeta shouted encouragement.

"Scream louder! I'm not getting a sound level!"

Chapter 5

Because of the nationwide cutback of military bases, Remo Williams was forced to catch a commercial flight out of Buffalo for New York City.

That was bad enough. Since nearly two-thirds of the nation's airlines had slipped into bankruptcy, there were no direct flights to Manhattan, and Remo was forced to change planes in Boston.

At the Boston gate, unmistakable signs that it was Halloween were apparent. The lounging stewardesses wore paint masks. A passing pilot lent a ghoulish air with his plastic skull face.

Remo noticed the passenger in flowing black especially.

It was hard not to notice her. She was tall and willowy, with jet-black hair parted down the middle of her pale scalp, lashes that resembled hair on a tarantula's legs, and a lipsticked mouth that might have been caked with blood.

Her gown made her look like she had been dragged through a mixture of coal dust and old cobwebs. All she needed was a conical black hat and broomstick to complete her ensemble.

The moment Remo entered the passenger waiting area, her eyes went to his lean body. Remo had shucked off his coat, shirt, and tie, leaving only a white T-shirt above the waist and exposing his wiry, understated musculature and unusually thick wrists.

The woman in black was looking at his wrists in particular. Women sometimes did that. It was not the wrists themselves that attracted them, but an indefinable something that made Remo what he was. A combination of perfect balance and coordination that was as alluring to the opposite sex as animal musk.

Remo found the attention as boring as playing gin rummy with blank pasteboards.

He found sex even more boring. The techniques of Sinanju extended to sexual ones. Just as Remo had learned the myriad arts of the silent assassin, he had mastered perfect sexual technique. Unfortunately, for Remo, perfect sexual technique was as mechanical as changing a flat.

Remo pretended not to notice the weirdly pale woman. It wasn't easy. Everyone else was staring at her, which only made Remo's feigned indifference all the more obvious.

A little boy in a Transformed Tae Kwon Do Teen Terrapin trick-or-treat outfit walked up to the woman and asked, "Where's your broom?"

Instead of answering directly, the woman made a pass with one hand and said, "I cast a spell on you, impertinent boy!"

The boy started sneezing uncontrollably and ran away crying, "Mommy! A witch hurt me!"

Everyone in the terminal laughed at the overimaginative boy except Remo, whose sharp eyes caught the sprinkling of black powder and the scent of fresh pepper in the air.

All eyes were on the mysteriously smiling woman. She moved in Remo's direction. Remo moved off. She followed. Remo ducked into the men's room and washed his hands slowly.

He was relieved when his flight was called. When first-class boarding was announced, Remo started for the gate.

The cobwebby apparition slinked in front of him, throwing a sickly smile over her black shoulder.

Hi.

"You look it," said Remo sourly, hoping to quash further conversation.

The hope died when he found that she had the seat next to him. First Class rapidly filled up, killing any hope of his sliding into another seat.

The seatbelt sign came on, and the plane moved quickly to the taxiing position and thundered into the sky.

It droned out over Boston Harbor and turned south.

At that point, the tall, languid woman in black asked, "Are you aware of witches?"

"I'm aware of the one sitting next to me," Remo said thinly. "But only because she smells like rotting toadstools."

"It is not enough to look the part. One must smell the part."

"I'd rather smell car exhaust."

"My name is Delpha. Delpha Rohmer. I come from Salem."

"Figures."

One brush-stroke eyebrow rose. "You have not heard of me?"

"No."

"You must not read very much. I've been on all the talk shows, and profiled in everything from People to Boston Magazine."

From her low-cut cleavage, Delpha Rohmer produced a warm white business card that smelled like a stinkweed potpourri. She offered it.

Without touching, Remo glanced it over. The card read:

DELPHA ROHMER OFFICIAL WITCH OF SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS

In small Gothic letters in one corner was the legend: "President, Sisterhood for Witch Awareness."

This motivated Remo to ask, " 'Witch Awareness'?"

"You think I am in costume for the holiday, mortal?"

"Halloween isn't what I'd call a holiday."

"Correct. It is a sacred day to those who practice Wicca."

"Wicca?"

"Wiseness. The religion of pre-Christian womanhood. It is the oldest religion known to woman."

"Never heard of it," Remo said flatly.

"You're a man."

"What's wrong with men-don't they count?"

Delpha Rohmer looked Remo up and down, in a way that made him think of a vulture eyeing something that was not quite dead.

"They have their place," she said breathily, restoring the card to its nesting place.

Remo decided not to ask where that place was. He hadn't a clue, but he knew he didn't ever want to end up there.

The stewardess came by to inquire of their needs. Delpha pulled down her tray and demurred. Remo asked for mineral water. "Straight up. No ice."

Remo noticed Delpha dealing out a pack of oversized cards on her tray. At first he thought she was playing solitaire, until he noticed the faces of the cards. They were crudely drawn and crude, period. They depicted medieval figures, mostly female, all nude. The few men included one called "The Fool," who was dressed as a priest, and another called "The Hanged Man." One card, titled "The Lovers," showed two naked women embracing.

"Tarot," Delpha said, noticing his gaze.

"I didn't ask."

"You asked with your eyes. It was enough."

"Forget my eyes asked, then."

"Shall I do your Tarot?"

"Only if you'll do it out on the wing," Remo said.

"Men fear what they do not understand. It has always been thus with my kind. In the Middle Ages, we were persecuted. Those were the Burning Times. Today, those who practice the Craft are ridiculed. But after tonight, I will change that."

"Good for you."

"Tonight," Delpha went on in her sonorous voice, "the entire world will see that Wicca is no mere fantasy. For tonight is Samhain, November Eve, the night the Great Goddess sleeps."

"Your night to howl, right?"

"No. My night to break the spell that has fallen over one of the most pretentious idols of pagan malehood."

Delpha continued to turn over cards and look at their faces. To Remo, it looked exactly like solitaire.

"Yes," she went on, examining a card. "It is definitely an omen of evil."

Remo looked at the card. It said, "The Hanged Man."

"No argument there."

"There can be no doubt, the Rumpp Tower has been owl-blasted."

Remo started to blurt out, "Rumpp Tower?" but "owl-blasted?" slipped onto his tongue first.

"The ignorant would call it 'bewitched,' " Delpha murmured.

"The smart would call it bullshit."

"You would not say this, if only you knew what has happened to the great modern Tower of Babel."

"Okay," Remo said. "I'll bite. What's happened to the Rumpp Tower?"

"I am still attempting to divine the exact forces at work. But retrograde spirits have seized it for their plaything."

"Uh-huh."

Delpha turned over another card. "Their intent is unclear. This may be only a sign of their coming in force. Or perhaps Baphomet merely intends to claim one of his own."

"Baphomet?"

"The Great Horned One. The Lord of Death."

"That anything like the devil?"

"Baphomet is the All-Satan. He is also known as Lucifer, Shaitan, and Beliel. There is no doubt that Randal Rumpp has sold his soul for gold, and Baphomet has come to claim it."

"You can tell all that by playing Go Fish?" Remo asked.

"The Tarot does not lie."

"It doesn't even whisper. And I'm still waiting to hear what happened to the Rumpp Tower."

Delpha Rohmer looked up from her cards. She regarded Remo's strong, skeptical face with its prominent cheekbones.

"People who go in, do not emerge," she whispered. "And those who attempt to flee its enscorcelled confines fall through the earth."

"I heard that. Yeah," Remo said vaguely.

"But if Ishtar is with me, I may be able to undo his black sorcery."

"Sort of fighting fire with fire?"

"I am a white witch!" Delpha Rohmer said indignantly.

"Then why are you tricked out like Morticia Addams' third cousin, Moronica?"

"White lace yellows like crazy," said Delpha Rohmer flatly.

At that, Remo grabbed a passing stewardess in clown face.

"Any empty seats back in coach?"

"Yes. Is something wrong, sir?"

"I have this urge to sit with people who come from the same planet as me," Remo explained, without a hint of humor.

The stewardess looked momentarily blank. Remo jerked a surreptitious thumb in the direction of his spidery seatmate. The stewardess nodded. "I'm sure I can fix you up, sir."

"It's been ooky," Remo told Delpha, as he vacated his seat.

"We are destined to meet again," said Delpha Rohmer in a sepulchral voice.

"Not if I see you first."

"You cannot escape your destiny, mortal man."

"Maybe not. But I can hightail it back into coach. Regards to Margaret Hamilton."

"A pox on you."

Remo settled into a seat over the wing. After the luxury of First Class, it felt like a baby's high chair. But at least the woman seated next to him wasn't wearing cobra-green eyeshadow.

The descent of the 727-it was one of the former Rumpp Shuttle fleet, now taken over by another carrier-brought it over Manhattan.

Curious, Remo tried to see past his seatmate, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Rumpp Tower-and maybe a hint of what all the trouble was about.

The pilot's voice came over the ceiling speakers.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the saw-toothed skyscraper over to our right is the fantastic architectural triumph known as the Rumpp Tower. Most of you have heard the reports of what's going on down there. And if any of you understand it, let us know," he added with a dry chuckle.

A hush fell over the aisle. Then the buzz of conversation rose anew, more animated than before.

Remo attuned his hearing and began separating out snatches that interested him.

"There it is!"

"They say over six hundred people are trapped inside."

"Do you think they'll condemn it?"

"How? They can't even touch it!"

The 727 banked, and the tower suddenly appeared framed in Remo's window. Under the rays of the setting sun, it was a thing of golden panels and monumental ego. Remo thought it resembled a set of high-tech disposable razor heads welded together. It was smaller than he had expected.

"Incredible," the woman seated next to him murmured.

"Excuse me," Remo said politely. "I've been out of touch. What happened to the tower?"

The woman turned, blinked, and said, "Why, it's disappeared."

It was Remo's turn to blink. He pointed out the window at the unmistakable shape of the Rumpp Tower.

"But it's right there. In plain sight."

"Yes," the woman said dreamily. "Incredible, isn't it?"

"Excuse me," Remo said, slipping from his seat. He found another vacancy, thinking that all the loons come out on Halloween night.

There was a serious-faced businessman in the seat next to Remo. He looked normal, so Remo asked, "Hear what happened to the Rumpp Tower?"

"Of course. Chilling."

"Then clue me in. All I hear is rumors."

"It's not there anymore."

Remo's returned "Thanks" was very small. Okay, he told himself, everybody's a joker tonight. Must be a new thing. Halloween Fools.

The seatbelt light came on and Remo buckled up, figuring he'd just keep his mouth shut and tough out the last few minutes until touchdown.

At La Guardia, Remo caught a cab.

"Rumpp Tower," he told the driver. "And step on it.

"Where you been? Nobody can go to the Rumpp Tower."

"Why not?"

"They got it cordoned off."

"I'll settle for the cordon."

The cabby shrugged. "It's your twenty, pal."

On the way into the city, Remo decided to take another stab at the riddle.

"So what happened to the Rumpp Tower? Exactly."

The cabby looked into his rearview mirror in surprise. "You don't know?"

"No."

"Then why're you so hot to check it out?" "Just answer the question."

"The tower ain't there anymore."

"Pull over," Remo said suddenly.

"Huh?"

"I said, 'Pull over.' "

"Suit yourself."

The cabby pulled over, and Remo reached forward for the safety shield that separated the driver's seat from the passenger. He grabbed it by the money slot.

The stuff was Plexiglas. Not brittle enough to shatter under an ordinary blow.

"If this is a heist, you're wasting your time," the cabby warned.

Remo used both hands to rub circles in the glass. His right hand rubbed clockwise, and the left counterclockwise.

The Plexiglas soon began to warp and actually run, like melting wax. It became very warm in the taxi.

The driver, seeing the impossible thing that was happening to his safety shield, tried to get out from behind the wheel.

He was too late. Remo put one hand through the widening hole and got him by the back of his neck. With the other hand, he swatted the Plexiglas away.

It fell into the front passenger seat like a tangle of lucite taffy.

"How'd you do that?" the cabby croaked.

"Tell me what really happened to the Rumpp Tower, and I'll be happy to oblige," Remo said in a reasonable tone.

"It's not there anymore," the cabby repeated.

Remo squeezed. The cab driver's red face turned purple.

"It's the truth!" the driver yelped. "You can see it, but you can't touch it. It's like-what do call it?'intangible.' "

"Intangible?"

"Yeah. It's there, but then again it's not. You can see it clear as day, but you can't touch it. People who go in, fall right smack through the floor. People coming out fall through the sidewalk. It's spooky."

"Anybody know what caused it?"

"If they do, they ain't sayin'. The betting is Randal Rumpp did it, on account the banks are about to foreclose."

"I don't think he's that smart."

"How 'bout lettin' go now?" the cabby suggested.

Reluctantly, Remo released him.

"Still want to go to the Tower?"

"Yeah."

The cab returned to traffic. After the cabby had the sputum cleared out of his throat, he resumed speaking in his normal Brooklyn growl.

"You were going to tell me how you did that trick with the Plexiglas."

"Sinanju," Remo said flatly.

"What kind of an answer is that?"

"A truthful one."

The cabby, mindful of the steel-like hand that had realigned his upper vertebrae in a way his chiropractor would have envied, decided to accept the answer as definitive. He drove north along Fifth Avenue.

He got only as far as Fiftieth Street and Saint Patrick's Cathedral. Traffic was backed up. The howl of sirens seemed to chase one another through the growing dusk. National Guard trucks were cutting back and forth along the cross streets, trying to find their way to the cordon.

Blocks ahead, the Rumpp Tower gleamed like a monument to the mirrored sunglass industry.

"Blocked," said the cabby. "I gotta let you out here. Sorry."

"It'll do," said Remo, throwing a twenty into the front seat and stepping out.

This stretch of Fifth Avenue was pure gridlock. Not only was the avenue locked up tight, but the sidewalks too. Cars, mostly cabs, had attempted to work around the stalled traffic and ended up on the wide sidewalks. The few open spaces were packed with people pushing forward against others.

Seeing the hopelessness of getting through the crowd, Remo simply climbed up onto the cab and began jumping from roof to roof. He willed his body mass to the approximate weight of a pillow, so that when he alighted on each roof the drivers remained unaware, and he left no telltale dents.

To the few bystanders who bothered to pay any attention, it looked like Remo was trampolining from roof to roof. It should have been impossible, but it wasn't. Correct breathing was the key. Remo had been taught to breathe with his entire body, turning every cell into a miniature, super-efficient furnace.

Control over breathing was the essence of the art of Sinanju. Once that had been mastered, the body would respond to any achievable demand required of it. Great strength. Uncanny stealth. Inhuman speed.

In a matter of minutes, Remo had reached the cordon. Kegs of barbed wire were being unrolled to keep back the crowds. National Guard APCs and sentries were stationed at every corner and lamp post. They didn't seem to be doing much, other than watching the crowd with one eye and the gleaming tower with the other.

The tower looked perfectly normal. Or as normal as a modern skyscraper, with dirt loam hanging over its lower terraces and trees growing up from that, could possibly look. Remo had read somewhere that Randal Rumpp had ordered the trees planted to give the building a friendly, organic look. Instead, it made Remo think of an abandoned temple the jungle was just beginning to reclaim.

The sun was reflected in its upper stories, burnishing it to a bright golden bronze. From the ground, its irregular roof line gave the impression of a mammoth crystal calliope. Remo was still surprised at how thin and unimposing it was. From all the hype about it, he had expected another Empire State Building.

To Remo's trained senses, something was very, very wrong about the Rumpp Tower. He was getting a cool fall breeze directly from the tower. Not swirling around it, as gusts typically do around tall skyscrapers. The wind was blowing through the Rumpp Tower. Definitely.

Yet the trees stood still.

Remo looked around the crowd. There was no sign of Chiun. But the cordon had been cast so wide that the Master of Sinanju might be anywhere.

"First things first," Remo muttered.

He pushed through the edges of the crowd to a man in National Guard camos. The crowd gave before Remo without realizing what was happening. He would pinch or prod-once he snapped the wrist of a pickpocket in the act of dipping into a woman's shoulder bag-until he reached the National Guardsman.

The Guardsman wore captain's bars, and was anxiously scanning the skies.

"Captain," Remo began to say.

The captain looked down, frowning. Remo flashed an ID card that identified him as an agent of the Foreign Technology Department of the U.S. Air Force.

The captain blinked. "FORTEC?"

Remo nodded soberly. "We think this is saucer-related."

The captain made a face.

"Don't believe in them," he snorted.

"Tell that to Randal Rumpp, who's probably brushing up on his Venusian even as we speak," Remo said flatly. "I'm looking for my colleague. He's Korean. Very old. And wears native costume."

"Haven't seen him. He's not here."

"If you haven't seen him," Remo said seriously, "that counts as proof he's probably here. Listen, if he lets you spot him, tell him Remo Gavin is looking for him."

"That's you?"

"Today it is," said Remo, moving on. Remo got on the other side of the barbed wire, flashing his FORTEC card and describing Chiun to each person he encountered. He had read somewhere that over sixty percent of Americans believed in flying saucers. From the response he got to his FORTEC ID, Remo decided the pollsters had severely underestimated their count.

At one point, a Coast Guard helicopter clattered overhead. Everyone stopped to see what it would do. Including Remo.

At first, the chopper-it was a white Sikorsky Sea Stallion-contented itself with buzzing the tower like a plump, noisy pelican.

Evidently, the pilot decided to drop lower to see into the Tower windows. The Sikorsky descended straight down on its wide rotor disk.

It was a smooth descent. At first. But the wind gusts that blew harmlessly through the insubstantial Rumpp Tower were swirling and spiraling around other tall buildings, creating the kind of turbulence that plucks hats off pedestrians.

One eddy pushed the Sikorsky into the south side of the tower.

A collective gasp rose from the crowd. Faces turned away. Others craned eagerly to see.

They all saw what Remo Williams saw.

The rotor blades chopped through the golden panes. They beat wildly, as the pilot attempted to correct his equilibrium.

Not a pane of glass shattered. Other than the rotor whine, no noise came from above.

The chopper pitched and turned. In his effort to clear the tower, the pilot managed to send the tail rotor slipping into the facade. It disappeared as if into still golden water.

"It's being sucked in!" someone screamed.

It looked that way. But only for a moment.

The white Sikorsky veered back into view and, evidently giving up, rattled eastward like a frightened bird.

"Okay," Remo said to himself, "it's not really there."

A screechy voice from somewhere near called, "Rocco!"

"Oh no," moaned Remo. Without looking in the direction of the voice, he ducked down and tried to move as far away from the sound as he could.

The voice called after him. This time it said, "Beppo!"

"Not even warm," Remo muttered.

He slipped back into the crowd at a convenient spot and tried to blend in. He took a moment to break the thumbs of another pickpocket, and to his surprise the moment the man began screaming the area around Remo cleared, as if the people were water and evaporation was taking place.

"The sidewalk's going here, too!" a voice shrieked.

It came from a disheveled man who had been holding a soup can in one hand and a sign that said HELP ME. I AM AN AIDS VICTIM in the other. He was the fifth AIDS panhandler Remo had passed in the crowd, which Remo thought as demographically unlikely as spotting zebra in Central Park. And he ran like a marathon runner.

Since the sudden evacuation had left Remo as exposed as a baby's behind, he moved with the crowd as far as the Rolex Building. There he broke off and slipped into an alley, where he almost stepped on the burning human hand.

Remo stopped. The hand was definitely human. It was shriveled, and a pale, waxy yellow. It was set in a kind of ebony base, with the thumb and fingers pointing skyward.

The tips of each digit glowed with a sick green light.

Before Remo could take it in, a cool voice from the shadows intoned, "You see. You cannot escape your destiny."

Remo hesitated. Before he could reverse himself the screechy voice, sounding very close now, called, "Geno! Oh, Geno!"

Remo groaned like a wounded bear. He had no place to run now.

Chapter 6

"Harm not ye hand of glory," warned Delpha Rohmer, as she emerged from the shadows, her pale hands making weaving patterns in the air before her. The spidery hem of her long black gown swept the dirty concrete, quickly turning gray with urban grime.

"Glory hand?" Remo asked, one eye on the alley mouth.

"It is potent magic. It will dispel any visitant from the nether realms."

Remo brightened. "Does it work on anchorwomen?" he asked.

"I do not understand."

Cheeta Ching picked that exact moment to burst into the alley, huffing as if from a hard run.

"Guido!"

"Not even close," Remo said.

Cheeta showed her teeth in a smug grin. "I have something to tell you," she said.

"Go ahead."

"I'm pregnant."

"I know. It's on the cover of every magazine in sight."

"And you're not the father."

"Louder. I want there to be no doubt."

"But you could have been," Cheeta said quickly. "You could have been the father to the most famous baby to be born in the nineties. Mine."

"I stand chastised," Remo said sourly. "My life in ruins."

"Good. I wanted you to understand the golden opportunity you lost when you spurned me."

At that point, Cheeta's predatory eye fell on the shadowy figure of Delpha Rohmer.

"Who is this?" she demanded.

Remo decided to go with the flow. "Cheeta, meet Delpha. Delpha, meet Cheeta. Delpha's a witch. Cheeta just rhymes."

Both women looked blank.

"What?"

"What?"

"Never mind," Remo sighed. "I don't suppose you've seen hide nor hair of Chiun?" he asked Cheeta.

"You mean the man responsible for the glorious fulfillment of my womb?" Cheeta returned.

Remo's eyes went wide. On his last assignment, the Master of Sinanju had achieved a long-held ambition: to meet the Korean anchor. Chiun had been carrying a torch for her since he had first beheld her barracuda face on TV. He had had visions of fulfilling the childless anchorwoman and siring Remo's successor in Sinanju with one stroke. But Cheeta had instead fallen for Remo. Remo, for his part, would rather have eaten sand.

By the time it had all been straightened out, Cheeta and the Master of Sinanju had gone off together. Chiun had returned home silent but contented. Cheeta had returned to the airwaves with news of her ovulatory breakthrough.

Still, Remo refused to believe it. Now he could only sputter, "You mean Chiun is the father?"

"I didn't say that," Cheeta said tartly. "I'm a married woman. In fact, I categorically deny that my husband isn't the father."

"Please, please," Delpha implored. "You're disturbing the spell. The atmosphere of power must not be dispelled by negativity."

"Spell?" asked Cheeta.

"I told you, Delpha's a witch," Remo said. "She's trying to un-hex the Rumpp Tower."

Cheeta Ching walked up to the smoldering hand of glory.

"Is that real? I mean, a real hand?"

"Sure," Remo said brightly. "In fact, it's probably good enough to eat."

"I resent the implication that I'm a cannibal!" Cheeta flared. "I'm a mother-to-be!" Her bloodred nails flashed and curled before her.

Remo backed away. "Hey, it was just a suggestion." He snapped his fingers loudly. "I know! Now that you two have been introduced, why don't you do an interview? Together. Leave me out of it. I'll find Chiun on my own hook."

A cold voice directly behind Remo said, "Look no further, late one."

Remo whirled.

Chiun, Reigning Master of Sinanju, stood in the alley mouth, his face severe, his long-nailed hands obscured by his joined sleeves.

"There you are," said Remo, relief in his voice.

"You are late," Chiun sniffed, drawing himself to his full height.

"Blame it on the disintegrating infrastructure."

"Grandfather!" Cheeta cried, rushing up to the Master of Sinanju.

Chiun's face stiffened. He froze, as if uncertain how to react.

Then, before Remo's astonished eyes, Cheeta Ching, self-styled supreme anchorwoman in the known universe, bowed before him. Twice.

Regally, the Master of Sinanju returned the bow. Once.

"It is good to see you again, grandfather," Cheeta murmured.

"And you, child. The baby quickens?"

"Only due to your greatness," Cheeta returned.

"Am I hearing this?" Remo shouted. "I'm not hearing this! You're not the father, Chiun-are you?"

The wise hazel eyes of the Master of Sinanju looked over to the face of his pupil opaquely, and tracked beyond him.

His hands emerged from his sleeves. One birdlike claw of a hand lifted and curled, gesturing with a bony yellow finger.

"Remo. Who is this mudang I find you with?"

Remo looked over his shoulder. Delpha Rohmer stared back.

"Mudang?" Remo asked Chiun. His Korean was good, but not perfect.

"A white witch," replied Chiun.

"You are very wise to know me for what I am," Delpha intoned.

"He doesn't mean 'white' the way you mean 'white,' " Remo snapped.

"I can see that he is in contact with greater harmonies," Delpha returned. "His aura is perfect."

"Absolutely," Cheeta said. "He helped me unlock my burgeoning womanhood."

"You are both properly respectful," said the Master of Sinanju. His eyes went to Remo's. "Unlike some."

Remo put his hands on his lean hips. "Look. We're here to do a job. Let's do it."

"One moment, Remo. I must examine this artifact." The old Korean strode up to the hand of glory and sniffed the smoke being exuded by its shriveling black fingers.

He looked to Delpha. "The hand of a hanged man?"

Delpha nodded. "I dug it up. It's very old. But there was still enough fat in it to burn."

"That's sick!" Remo said.

"Sick would be to use a woman's hand," Cheeta inserted.

Everyone nodded in agreement except Remo.

"It is potent magic," Delpha said.

"Can it help me get my cameraman back?" Cheeta wondered, circling it. She lifted her minicam to one shoulder and captured the smoking member on tape.

"Don't tell me you nibbled on another one?" Remo asked pointedly.

"Silence, Remo!" Chiun spat. "Do not remind this poor creature of her recent misfortune."

"Misfortune? She's buried alive with her cameraman and she eats him."

"I did not eat my cameraman!" Cheeta blazed. "Whole . . . I just noshed on a piece he wasn't using."

"His leg?"

"He was dead. He wasn't about to jump up and run marathons."

"This is a perfectly reasonable thing, Remo," Chiun inserted. "Now be silent. We must be about our important work."

Delpha lifted welcoming hands. "It is our destiny to work together. The three of us."

Remo told Cheeta, "I guess that leaves you out. Sorry."

"I meant, the three of us who understand the elder wisdom," Delpha added imperiously.

Remo frowned. "What am I-the spear-carrier?"

"No. But you may carry the hand of glory."

"I'm not touching that."

"Remo," Chiun said flatly. "Carry the hand. Come, we will solve this mystery before it blights the entire city."

The three started off, Chiun flanked by the two women. Remo watched them go. He looked down at the smoldering hand of glory.

"Damn," he muttered, stooping to pick it up. "Why do I always end up with the short end of the stick?"

Chapter 7

Randal T. Rumpp had not gotten where he was in life by being timid. He had his brashness to thank for his steady rise to the princedom of Manhattan real estate, and just as surely to blame now that he had plummeted to the sad status of paper billionaire in such a stunningly short time.

He did not understand the freaky thing that had befallen the Rumpp Tower. He dimly understood that he was trapped, as was everyone who had had the misfortune to be caught within its narrow confines when the mysterious event occurred.

What Randal Rumpp did understand was that there had to be some way he could turn the situation to his advantage.

The phones shrilled in his ears so loudly he could barely hear himself think. In other rooms on this floor, they also were clamoring for attention.

Hanging up did no good. So Randal Rumpp, because doing something physical always helped his brain to work better, went around his luxurious, selfportrait-dense office and started taking them off the hook, one at a time.

Once in a while, he would check for a dial tone.

The first time he did this he got a weird voice crying plaintively, "Help! I am trapped in telephone!"

"My ass," said Randal Rumpp, going to the next phone.

"Help me! Help me! Help me!" said another phone. It sounded like the same voice, so Randal gave it a shot.

"You say you're trapped?" he demanded.

"Yes! Help me, American! Please help me!"

"How much?"

"How much what?"

"How much would you pay me if I got you out?" demanded Randal Rumpp, getting right to the point.

"I will pay any price. Honestly."

"Okay, I need three billion bucks."

"Billion with a b?"

"Yes."

"Okay, I do this for you. Three billion."

"Up front."

"I cannot advance any money while I am in telephone," the weird, tinny voice said, reasonably enough.

"I'll settle for half up front," countered Randal Rumpp, who, had he not been so hard-up, would never have wasted time talking to the disembodied voice. But the man sounded hard-up. And vaguely foreign. The real money today was in foreign hands. Maybe this was some wealthy Japanese industrialist, and Randal Rumpp would luck into a killing. It had happened before.

"I am sorry. You must release me first."

"What are you, some kind of telephone genie? I pop the cork, and you give me three wishes?"

"Three billions. That is our agreement."

"Get lost," said Randal Rumpp, knowing a scam when he smelled one.

The cacophony of office phones having fallen silent, he moved on to his executive assistant's office.

"Dorma, I want every phone on this floor off the hook. Now."

The woman sat frozen at her desk, eyes staring straight ahead in the classic thousand-yard stare. They were misting over. She held a white linen handkerchief before her, as if it were too heavy to raise to her eyes or let fall to her lap.

"Did you hear me?"

"They . . . sank . . . without a trace . . . ." she moaned.

"How would you like to sink without a trace?" suggested Randal Rumpp, who boasted in his autobiography that he hired women to staff his empire because he felt they were just as capable as men. He neglected to mention that they also worked a third more cheaply and were twice as easy to intimidate as men.

"I . . . don't . . . care. . . ." Dorma whispered eerily.

"Then I'll do it myself," Rumpp snapped.

It took a while. Every so often he heard the weird foreign voice crying out from the receiver's diaphragm, like a lost soul. He slammed those phones harder than the others.

By the time the floor had fallen silent, the sun was setting. It was then and only then that Randal Rumpp realized the electricity was off. It had not been off before. The computers had been running. Now their screens were dim to the point of grayness.

Whatever had happened, the electricity was no longer flowing through the building's wiring.

He made a mental note to sue the contractor who had put in the wiring, and Con Ed as well. If he sued enough people, he was bound to recoup enough of his losses to bounce back.

Randal Rumpp brushed past his executive assistant and plunked himself down behind his massive desk. He decided to play a hunch.

There was one cellular phone in the office. It had not gone crazy like the others. He picked it up, extended the antenna, and stabbed out the number of the President of Chemical Percolators Hoboken, his chief creditor.

"Mr. Longstreet's office," a crisp voice announced.

"Randal Rumpp calling."

He was put through without another word.

"Alan? Randal here. By any chance have you heard about what's going on up here in the Rumpp Tower?"

"The TV is full of it. I don't understand. What is going on? Are you all right?"

"Never felt better. Listen, I don't appreciate being foreclosed on."

"The Tower was our collateral on the Shangri-Rumpp deal, and we had to call in the note. We had no choice."

"And neither did I."

"Beg pardon?"

"You can't seize a building you can't touch," Randal Rumpp said flatly, looking at his face reflected in his buffed and polished fingernails.

"Are you saying you're responsible for this . . . this Halloween prank?"

"No prank, Chuck. The Rumpp Tower is Randal Rumpp's top tangible asset. Now it's been converted into an intangible asset. Never play against a born winner. Chumps like you always lose."

At that Randal Rumpp hung up, smiling a simpering smile that could have belonged to a turn-of-the-century chorus girl.

"That ought to tangle up their balance sheets while I formulate my next move."

The trouble was, Randal Rumpp didn't have a next move. In fact, he still didn't know what the heck was going on. But in the game of life, he knew, he who talks big and bluffs high usually walks away with the jackpot.

And since he was a virtual untouchable in his own tower, he might as well pull on people's chains a little more.

"Get me BCN," he called into the next room.

"How? The phone's are all dead."

"Never mind. I'll do it myself." He stabbed out a number on his cellular and identified himself to the BCN switchboard. He was put through to the news director at once.

"Let me speak with Don Cooder."

"He's covering the Lincoln Tunnel collapse."

"Really?" said Randal. "It collapsed, huh? Maybe I'll rebuild it. How about the baby-maker-what's her name?"

"Cheeta Ching?"

"That's the one. Put her on. Tell her Randal Rumpp is offering her an exclusive in the Rumpp Tower spectacular."

"Spectacular?"

"You are covering this story, aren't you?"

"As a matter of fact, Miss Ching is down on Fifth Avenue now."

"Great. Tell her to meet me in the lobby in five minutes."

"But-"

Randal Rumpp hung up. He went to a wall mirror and primped his hair, straightening his fire-engine-red Hermes tie. He had to duck and twist to see himself clearly, inasmuch as he had had his last name etched vertically into the mirror surface. It was an antique, for which he had overpaid. But with his name on it, it was sure to fetch a princely sum when he got around to selling it.

"I look great," he said. "A winner."

As he walked past his secretary he said, "If anyone wants me I'll be down in the lobby, schmoozing with the media."

The woman looked up, pale and drawn. "There are no media in the lobby."

"There will be by the time I get down there," Randal Rumpp said confidently.

It was a prediction that proved true only because the elevators had gone dead. Randal Rumpp began the slow, tortuous stairwell descent to the lobby, vowing that when things got back to normal he would have a greased brass firepole installed in a masonry column, so if this ever happened again he could zip down to the lobby, just like Adam West.

Chapter 8

Up close, the Rumpp Tower looked more charcoal than bronze. Dying sunlight made it smolder, as if fires lurked beneath its opaque surface.

Remo looked around. Fifth Avenue was deserted in both directions for several blocks. It was a strange sight. But it enabled them to work unchallenged.

"He stepped into the lobby and just fell out of sight," Cheeta was explaining.

"Ridiculous," snorted Remo.

"Supernatural," said Delpha.

"I saw it all," added Chiun. "From my place of vantage. Before him, a lowly fireman was pulled down to a like fate."

Cheeta Ching looked startled. "You were here before, Grandfather?"

"In my secret capacity, I was studying the fate that has befallen this mighty but hideous structure."

"Was there nothing you could have done?" Cheeta asked, to Remo's relief. She hadn't seemed to pick up on Chiun's broad hint that he worked for someone important.

"Alas, no," said Chiun. "For when confronted with the unknown, the first rule of Sinanju is to observe, lest one become ensnared along with lesser mortals."

"Very wise," said Delpha.

"That's why I made my cameraman go in ahead of me," Cheeta said.

"You sent your cameraman in to his death?" Remo blurted.

"He is not dead," Delpha intoned, snatching the hand of glory from Remo. "He has merely gone to another realm."

"Bull! There's gotta be a scientific explanation for what's happening here."

"Self-blind science cannot explain all," Delpha insisted.

"Sure it can."

"Then why do men have nipples?"

That stumped Remo. While he was pondering the imponderable mystery, Cheeta snapped her fingers and offered a theory of her own.

"I know! It's a dimensional rift opening up."

"Huh?"

"Our planet is intersecting with a parallel dimension, causing an exchange of realities."

"Bull!" Remo exploded.

Chiun cut in. "Silence! Speak, child. Tell us more."

"It's just a theory," Cheeta said slowly, "but I think the tower is slowly entering the Fifth Dimension, or a parallel reality."

"Why?"

"Maybe it's a cultural exchange."

"With who?" Remo snorted. "Rod Serling?"

"Remo!"

Remo subsided. Cheeta went on.

"With any luck," Cheeta said smugly, "we'll get a skyscraper of theirs in exchange."

"What if they don't have skyscrapers in Dimension X?" Remo asked dryly.

"Then we'll probably get a pyramid, or something just as cosmic," Cheeta said flatly.

"This is not what my inmost eye tells me," Delpha warned.

"My ass," Remo said.

A crowd was collecting behind the ground-floor display windows of the skyscraper, where the boutiques and highpriced antique stores were. Others milled about the atrium lobby aimlessly.

Remo had never seen such forlorn faces. Some were calling out, but Remo couldn't hear the words.

He walked up to the glass of a window display.

"Remo," Chiun admonished. "Be careful. . . ."

"Relax, I'm just going to check this out."

Approaching, Remo lifted both hands to the glass. He set himself in case his highly attuned nervous system encountered something it could not handle, and he had to retreat fast.

His fingers were reflected in the glass. They approached one another's mirror image. At the point when they should have touched, both sets kept going. His fingers seemed to be swallowing each other.

Despite himself, Remo felt the hairs on the back of his neck lift and stiffen.

More incredibly, a part of the crowd inside, seeing how easily Remo's hand had passed through the seemingly solid glass, began beating their fists against the inner glass walls.

Their hands did not go through. In fact, the glass clearly wobbled in its frame from the strong blows.

"This is weird," Remo said, withdrawing his hands. They looked okay. He returned to the others.

"Do you still doubt that dark forces are at work?" Delpha inquired coolly.

"There's a scientific explanation," Remo insisted, frowning at the tower.

"No science of man can account for this."

"It's like a two-way mirror," Remo decided aloud. "You know, where the light goes through one way but not the other, so it's a mirror on one side and clear glass on the other."

"That makes no sense whatsoever," Cheeta Ching said snippily.

Remo frowned. "It's just a working theory. The light bulb wasn't invented in a day, you know."

Delpha lifted her hand of glory to the sky and waved it back and forth, getting oily smoke into their nostrils.

"Ia! Ia! Shub-Niggurath!" she howled. "Oh, All-Mother, we wish to communicate with the cameraman who disappeared into your nurturing earth."

"What is this crap?" Remo demanded.

"Shh, Remo!" Chiun hissed. "It is a kut."

Remo understood kut. It was Korean for "seance."

"This is loopy," he growled.

Chiun whispered, "Some matters must be dealt with in the traditional manner. Let the mudang work her white magic. It may not be Korean, but there may be some usefulness in it."

"How do you know it's not black magic, Little Father?"

Chiun shrugged. "She is white. What other kind of magic can she work?"

Delpha closed her eyes. Her face began to contort.

"She's in touch with higher forces," Cheeta said breathlessly.

"Looks like she's having a standing orgasm to me," Remo muttered.

Delpha's next words were incomprehensible. They weren't English or Korean. Remo decided they were probably witch, and therefore not important.

Delpha swayed like a palm tree that had been dipped in tar. Her face warped and twitched as her mouth chanted inarticulate phrases.

Then her eyes jumped open.

"I have seen! I have communed with the greater wisdom."

"What? What?" Cheeta demanded.

Delpha turned to Cheeta. "I have seen inside your womb."

"No!"

"Yes! It is a boy!"

Hearing this, Chiun turned to Remo, smiling happily. "Did you hear, Remo? A boy! A strapping Korean boy. I have always wanted a male child."

"The skyscraper!" Remo snapped. "Remember the skyscraper? We're here to figure out what the dingdong hell is going on with this stupid skyscraper."

Joyous faces collected themselves, sobered, and the three celebrants reluctantly returned to the matter at hand.

"Did you communicate with anyone about the mystery?" Cheeta wanted to know.

"I have heard a name spoken by the winds that whistle through this Tower of Babel."

"What name?"

"It begins with an R."

"The second name begins with an R," Delpha added.

"R . . . R . . ." Cheeta repeated, frowning. "A name that begins with an R . . ." Her smooth brow furrowed. "It's on the tip of my tongue."

"Try Randal Rumpp," Remo offered acidly.

"That's it!" Cheeta howled. "Randal Rumpp! Of course. Randal Rumpp. Is he responsible for this?" she asked Delpha.

"So the Great Goddess whispers in my third ear."

"Oh, brother," Remo groaned.

Chiun tugged on Remo's T-shirt and drew him aside. "Remo, what is wrong with you this night? Respect the powers that reveal hidden knowledge to that woman."

" 'Hidden knowledge'? She didn't exactly pull the name Randal Rumpp out of a hat, now did she?"

"I do not know if her white demons wear hats," Chiun said vaguely.

Remo pointed out the bronze lintel over the main entrance. It read: RUMPP TOWER.

"Maybe she got a major clue from that," he snapped.

Chiun looked, sniffed delicately, and said, "Coincidence."

Remo threw up his hands and groaned, "Oh, I give up!"

"Look!" Cheeta screeched. "There he is!"

"Who?" Remo said, turning.

"There he is! Randal Rumpp himself!"

"It is just as the All-Mother told me," Delpha called.

Chiun squeaked, "There, Remo! Proof!"

"Oh, blow it out your backside. Of course that's Randal Rumpp. It's his building, isn't it?"

In the main doorway of the Rumpp Tower Randal Rumpp had appeared, his hair slicked down with sweat and obviously breathing hard from exertion.

He was holding up a sign. It said: HALF PRICE.

"Don't tell me this is a cheap retail promotion," Remo growled.

Under the HALF PRICE were words scrawled by a blue felt pen: Wanna interview me about this?

Cheeta Ching read those words. Their full meaning hit her like an anvil dropped on her head from the thirteenth floor. She shouldered her camcorder and without another thought-or any thought in the first place-she sprinted for the main door.

Remo and Chiun were caught by surprise. Never in their wildest dreams would they have imagined that Cheeta Ching would go plunging into the building, knowing what she did.

But an unbroadcast story was like blood in the water to the Korean Shark, and she plunged in. Through the immovable door, through the unresisting glass, through the startled figure of Randal Rumpp.

And promptly began sinking into the floor.

"Cheeta!" Chiun shrieked. He started in.

Remo got in front of him. "Wait, Little Father. You can't go in there!"

"Cheeta!" he squeaked. "She must be saved!"

"Forget her," Remo said, moving to block the Master of Sinanju. "She's gone."

"But the baby!"

"I'm sorry, Chiun, I don't care what you do or say, I can't let you go there. It's crazy."

The wispy head of the Master of Sinanju darted this way and that, attempting to see around Remo. His eye were frantic, his mouth a round hole of anguish.

"Look!" he shrieked.

Remo turned. And the instant he did so, his legs seemed to turn to water.

For a wild moment, Remo thought he was sinking into the pavement under his feet. No such thing. The Master of Sinanju had, with a sandaled toe, separated his ankles with such speed that Remo never felt the twin blows.

He went down on his knees, his stricken eyes following the blue-and-golden specter that was Chiun.

The Master of Sinanju bounded through the glass doors.

"No, Little Father!"

And before Remo's horrified eyes, he too began sinking into the lobby floor.

Chapter 9

Remo tried to get up. His legs refused to obey him. He was on his knees and helpless.

"Chiun! Chiun!"

"O Shub-Niggurath, hear our plea," moaned Delpha. "Smite the clutching hands of the Great Horned One, who pulls your children down into his fiery domain."

"If there's anything constructive you can do," Remo said, strugging to get his legs to work, "do it now."

Delpha closed her eyes. Her green eye shadow made it seem like they had been replaced by dull glass orbs. "It is in the lap of the All-Mother," she murmured.

His face twisting with fear and anger, Remo watched as Cheeta and then Chiun sank into the seemingly solid lobby floor. Randal Rumpp stuck around only long enough to acquire a dark stain in the crotch of his sharply creased pants. Then he fled in the direction of a fire door. He was followed by a knot of people shaking their fists at him.

Remo closed his eyes. He couldn't bear to watch. He willed the blood to return to his legs. He got the pins-and-needles sensation that told of returning function. Still, his legs were slow to respond. Whatever it was Chiun had done, it certainly had been effective. Remo was almost an invalid.

He blocked out Cheeta's frantic cries of, "This can't happen to me! I'm the perfect anchorperson! Somebody do something!"

There was no sound from the Master of Sinanju. Of course, Remo realized, Cheeta's screechy caterwauling may have been drowning him out.

Finally, when his circulation was again flowing normally, Remo regained control over his lower body. He ignored the tingling residual pain and found his feet.

Remo ran to the main entrance. There he found a yellow hump on the pink marble floor that looked like half a grapefruit fringed with cotton. As he watched helplessly it sank from sight, silently, soundlessly, and completely.

"Chiun!"

Remo was swatting at the glass door. It might as well have been a hologram.

Carefully, he put one leg in. It went through without sensation. He let the toe of his Italian leather loafer touch the lobby floor. It dropped down and out of sight. He felt nothing. Not warm, not cold. Simply . . . not there.

Remo withdrew the leg. He moved back and looked around frantically. The biggest thing in sight was a light pole. He went to it and began kicking the concrete base with controlled fury.

The pole shattered and began to tip. Remo raced to meet the descending light housings. There were two. The streetlights along this stretch of Fifth Avenue resembled two-headed serpents. He caught one, laid it down on the ground. Going to the base, he chopped away at the cables and copper wiring until they came loose.

Then, using both hands, he levered the base of the pole in a line with the main entrance and began to shove it in.

Remo kept pushing until he felt the other end beginning to tip. He pulled back about a foot of the pole and, certain of its balance, jumped on.

Hands held out to his sides, Remo began to walk the pole like a log bridge. He passed through the glass entrance and found himself balanced over what looked like solid marble flooring, although he knew it wasn't.

His dark eyes said it was solid. His other senses told him otherwise. If he fell, he knew he would be in deep trouble.

While people gathered around, shouting with their mouths but emitting no audible sounds, Remo got down on his knees. He dropped a hand into the flooring.

His hand vanished up to his thick wrist. He felt around experimentally. Nothing.

Remo shouted, "Little Father! Chiun! Can you hear me?"

No sound came back.

He brought his hand back and cupped it over his mouth.

"Chiun!"

Then he heard something. Faint. A voice. Thin. He couldn't make out the words.

"What?"

A single word was repeated. It sounded like "fetch." "Fetch?"

A "no" came back. It was clear enough. The faraway voice was saying "no."

"Not 'fetch'?" Remo called down.

The word that sounded like "fetch" was repeated.

"Louder!" Remo yelled at the marble. "I can't make it out!"

Then, something jumped out of the floor.

It happened so fast and was so unexpected that Remo's reflexes barely warned him to get out of the way in time.

A man came sailing up in a long arc. The parabola of the arc carried him through the second-level atrium floor and out into the street.

He began to fall.

Remo moved then. He flashed along the fallen lamp pole and out onto Fifth Avenue. Getting under the man, he raised his arms.

Remo had no idea if he could catch him. There was no question he'd be in the right place at the right time, but there was no way of knowing if the man would land in the upraised cushion of his arms . . . or fall through them and into the unforgiving pavement.

Remo set himself for the worst.

The man struck his hands like a bony sack of potatoes. Remo felt the impact bring him to his knees. It knocked the breath out of the man, but Remo's arm bones survived without shattering. He laid the man out.

"Who are you, pal?" Remo asked.

The man who had been ejected from the phantom skyscraper seemed to be staring through Remo, as if he had beheld sights that had dazzled his senses. "Never mind me," he gasped. "The others."

"Others?"

"Catch."

" 'Catch'? Was that the word? 'Catch,' not 'fetch'?"

"Hurry," the man gasped.

Remo moved back, his arms lifted. There was no time to figure out what was happening. He had to be ready.

Cheeta Ching came next. Remo heard her shriek of fright seconds before she popped-literally popped-out from the golden facade of the Rumpp Tower in a shallow arc.

Remo called up. "Don't worry! I'll catch you."

Like an infielder, Remo positioned himself for the catch.

Cheeta Ching, still shrieking, landed across his arms. Her arms flung out and took hold of his neck, her nails gouging red streaks in the vicinity of his jugular. She buried her sticky-haired head in Remo's shoulder.

"You can let go now," Remo said. "It's me. Rocco."

Cheeta Ching looked up dazedly.

Her voice sounding surprised, Cheeta said, "I'm alive."

"And clawing," Remo pointed out. "I'd like my neck back. If you don't mind."

Cheeta's manicured talons disengaged, like a gross of hypodermics withdrawing from flesh.

Remo set her on her feet.

"Thank you, Renko," she said. This time, her voice sounded subdued.

"That's-" Remo caught himself. "Never mind. Did you see Chiun?"

"No."

"No? Then how'd you get out of there?"

"I have no idea. It was all dark. I thought I was dead. I was caught in traffic. But the cars weren't moving. They weren't there. I mean, they were there, but they weren't. It was just like a 'Far Side' cartoon. 'Traffic Jam of the Damned.' I think one of them struck me. Because I was flying through space."

Cheeta Ching squeezed her almond eyes shut and her whole body shuddered so violently that matte finish, like old paint, flaked off her smooth features.

"Never mind." Remo moved back into position. With any luck Chiun would be along any second now. But several seconds passed. Then a minute. And the minute became three.

Delpha had gone to Cheeta's side to offer comfort. She called to Remo.

"I sense great conflict below. The wise old one has joined in mortal battle with Baphomet. He has made the Great Horned One vomit up his victims. Now he must become demon vomit himself if he is to live."

"Crap and double-crap," Remo muttered.

Delpha's deep voice rose. "Beware! The fiends below grow in power. They will demand payment for your blaspheming them."

Disgust on his face, Remo returned to the fallen light pole and walked along it back into the lobby.

He called down, "Chiun!"

There was no answer. His eyes were hot and dry, as if the tears of remorse had evaporated before they could escape his tear ducts.

Remo looked up. On either side of the brass-and-marble atrium lobby, potted trees formed a sentinel row. At the far end, water drooled down the wall. The water made no sound. Remo realized it must be the famous eight-million-dollar waterfall. It looked more like a main break.

There was a magnificent brass clock on one wall. It read three minutes past seven. Remo decided that if he got no sign from Chiun by five past, then he would jump in himself.

No matter what the consequences were.

The Master of Sinanju grew tired of waiting for his pupil.

There was darkness all around him. Darkness and shadows. Vehicles. They were as insubstantial as smoke, for when he moved near one, no vibrations were given back.

Chiun found that he could walk through these shadowy machines. His face was screwed up in unhappiness as he did so. He could not wait forever.

His path took him finally to a solid form. In the darkness it was impossible to tell what the form was. It gave back coldness and the dank smell of the tomb.

Earth. It was the earth.

He put his hands into the wall and he felt dirt, closely packed and firm. He inserted a forefinger deep into it. The dirt crumbled, surrendered, and tumbled loosely out of the wall.

Using both hands, the Master of Sinanju began to dig a horizontal hole.

He could only imagine where it might lead. But any other hell was to be preferred to this hell of ghost machinery.

The lobby clock read five past.

Remo set himself.

Then, through the intangible lobby glass, Delpha's voice came.

"I am warned of an approaching presence."

Remo whirled.

"Where?"

"It is near, and drawing nearer."

Delpha's eyes were closed. She held the hand of glory high. Its fingertips each burned a sickly green. Remo could see them tremble. Delpha's drooping, cobwebby sleeves trembled too.

"It is very near!" she cried.

Without warning, the pavement under the opposite end of the lamp pole on which Remo stood cracked. It heaved up. The lamp pole, balanced precariously, began to tilt downward.

Remo hesitated, his brain thinking furiously.

Then the lamp fell into the lobby floor, taking him with it.

He had a momentary sensation of falling through darkness and shadow. The disorientation was sudden and absolute. But his racing brain repeated only one thought: There's gotta be a rational explanation for all this.

Chapter 10

Randal T. Rumpp lost the pursuing pack at the tenth floor.

It had all happened so fast, his brain was still trying to process everything. He had walked all twenty-four floors to the lobby, confident that he was about to give the greatest interview of his business career.

He had been smiling as he stepped into the stunning wonder of the Rumpp Tower's six-story atrium. It was a concession he had been forced to make to the city, in order to get the zoning variance that would enable the tower to go up in the first place. In private, he complained bitterly to his architects that it was costing him a fortune of retail footage, and instructed them to make it as small and narrow as possible. Every optical trick was employed to create the illusion of space that wasn't there. And to dazzle the smart ones, a garish, eye-repelling Italian marble was layered over every exposed surface.

In public, Randal Rumpp hyped it as the greatest thing to hit New York since the toasted bagel.

It had been one of his favorite scams, and he always smiled when he entered the arcade.

His smile had collapsed to a surprised pout when he turned a corner and came upon his would-be interviewer, silently sinking into the marble he had personally scoured Italy for.

Randal Rumpp had only had time to wet his pants in fear before he'd doubled back for the safety of the stairwell. It was too late. He had been spotted by a group of shoppers, tourists, and Tower residents.

"That's him!" they shouted. "It's his fault! He built this monstrosity!"

They had pursued him like the villagers from Frankenstein, shouting that he was to blame for their plight.

Randy Rumpp didn't exactly disabuse them of that notion. He knew that if he survived the sprint to his office, word would spread. He wanted credit for the whole crazy mess. It would help him pull off the greatest deal of his life.

Or it would land him smack in a federal penitentiary.

Eventually, the stamina he had gained from endless games of tennis paid off. The pack thinned, fell back. By the eighteenth floor, he had outlasted them. And he was barely winded.

Randy Rumpp burst in on his executive assistant.

"Let nobody in," he huffed. "No matter what."

"Yes, Mr. Rumpp." "Any calls?"

"No, Mr. Rumpp. The phones are dead."

"For Randal Tiberius Rumpp, the phones are never dead." He strode into his inner office, grabbed up the cellular phone, and gave it a flick. The antenna snaked out to its full length.

He dialed a local number as he stepped out of his wet pants, then laid them on the double-R monogrammed rug to dry.

"Office of Grimspoon ouse, Attorneys at Law," a professional voice said.

"Put Dunbar Grimspoon on. This is Randal Rumpp."

"Go ahead, Rumppster," said a firm male voice a moment later.

"I've moved up in the world. I'm called the Rumppmeister now."

"I'll write it down."

"Dun, I got a legal hypothetical for you."

"Shoot."

"Let's say the bank forecloses on the Rumpp Tower."

"Yes?"

"Let's say before they can serve papers, the building goes away."

"What exactly do you mean by 'goes way?' "

"It no longer occupies the block."

"Randal, what are you up to now?"

"It's a hypothetical," Randal Rumpp said quickly. "The Tower's not there. So. Who owns the air rights?"

"Air rights? Since the building itself is the collateral, I guess you do. The lot, too."

Randal Rumpp's brisk voice brightened. "Are you sure?"

"Not without a week's worth of intense research at six hundred per hour."

"If I made use of the lot and air rights, it would hold up in court, wouldn't it?"

"Maybe. Probably. It sounds like a precedent-setter. I think we could litigate it in your favor. Hypothetically."

"Thanks, Dun. You're a classy guy."

"I'll send you a bill."

Smiling, Randal Rumpp hit the disconnect. "Send me a bill. What a kidder." He dialed again.

"Office of Der Skumm s, Architects."

"Randal Rumpp here. Let me speak with Derr."

A flavorful Swedish voice came on the line, saying, "Der Rumppster! How's der boy?"

"Couldn't be better. Listen. I may have a deal for you."

"Dot so?"

"Don't sound so surprised. The stories that I'm on the ropes are highly exaggerated, Der. Tell you why I called. I want you to draw up plans for another Rumpp Tower."

"Anodder Rumpp Tower?"

"Only bigger, bolder, and brassier than the original."

"Dot vill take some doing."

"But you can do it, right?"

"It will have to be der same height as der first."

"No. Higher. I want it twenty stories higher."

"But der zoning laws . . ."

"Screw the Zoning Commission. With the deal I'm gonna offer them, they'll be happy to let me build this thing in Central Park."

"Okay. Dis I can do. But first, where do you intend to build dis new Tower of yours?"

As Randal Rumpp leaned into the telephone, his voice deepened and grew conspiratorial.

"Exactly," he said, "where the old one was."

"Vas?"

"Er, I hate to break this to you, Der, since you built the first one, but we lost it."

"Der bank foreclose?"

"They tried to. They were too late. I beat them to the punch."

"I do not understand what happen to my magnificent building. My pride and joy?"

"It suffered a business reversal," said Randal Rumpp unconcernedly. He reached down to test the crotch of his discarded pants. Definitely drying. He wiped his fingers on his tie.

"You are talking riddles. Speak plain English."

"Look, I'm in the middle of three different deals here," Randal Rumpp said, checking an imitation Rolex watch he had purchased off a street vendor when he'd had to pawn his original. "Instead of me explaining it to you, why don't you turn on the TV? The news boys can fill you in."

"But-"

When Randal Rumpp disconnected, he was grinning from ear to ear.

"Now," he proclaimed happily, "all I have to do is convince the city to fund the project, and I'm back on top!"

Chapter 11

The human eye contains a chemical substance commonly known as "visual purple." It increases nightvision capabilities whenever the retina is exposed to dark conditions. Normally, it takes a few minutes for the night vision to reach optimum sensitivity.

Remo Williams willed his visual purple to compensate for the complete lack of light that surrounded him, and got almost instant results.

It helped. Enough to see shadows and outlines.

He was, Remo was surprised to discover, in a garage of some kind. There were cars set in rows. Most very expensive. Mercedes. Bentleys. Rolls. Even a Porsche.

Okay, Remo thought. I'm not in Hell or China. That's a start.

He began to move about in a circle. It was actually a widening spiral-an old trick. The quickest and most efficient method of reconnoitering an unknown area is to move in a widening spiral, taking in as much territory as possible without losing one's starting point.

Remo found himself confronting a solid wall. At least, it looked solid. He went through it without resistance or tactile sensation.

He was forced to close his eyes, even in the dark. The optic nerve screamed back at him when it connected with the wall.

Remo realized he was in the basement garage of the Rumpp Tower. He had fallen two floors, so this must be the subbasement. It was too high to jump back, even if there had been anything to jump back to. The lobby floor wouldn't exactly catch him.

He cupped his hands over his mouth. "Chiun!"

No answer.

Remo continued his circuit. He noticed that, while there was a concrete flooring beneath him, his feet sank into it like a deep-pile rug. He was actually walking on a surface immediately under the floor. Probably the hard-packed dirt foundation, he figured.

It was eerily still in the subbasement. Ordinarily, there would be air flow from ventilation ducts. Not here. Just an uncanny stillness and absolutely no sound.

Remo kept moving. Soon, his sensitive nostrils picked up a faint scent. Human. Smelling faintly of chrysanthemums. A personal scent he knew only too well.

"Chiun," Remo whispered. He lined up with the odor trail, and moved along it.

It brought him, with almost no deviation, to a blank wall, from which spilled fresh earth that might have been excavated by a very tidy steam shovel. The earth seemed to be spilling from the solid wall. Not a crack showed. Yet a fetid breath of air seemed to be coming out of the wall at the precise point where the dirt lay in piles.

Remo ignored the evidence of his eyes and moved into the wall. He discovered himself, after a moment of darkness even his visual purple couldn't dispel, in a tunnel. It sloped up, and Remo saw daylight.

Before Remo could move toward the light, he heard a sound behind him.

It was a low moaning, a kind of mew mixed with a barely human sobbing. It made Remo, in spite of himself, think of a sound that might have filtered out of a primordial forest.

Hesitating, he muttered, "What the heck," and moved back toward the sound.

The subbasement was as large as the foundation, so there was quite a bit of area to search. The walls were a problem. Remo could pass through them, but not see through them. Once, he lost his orientation and started into a wall, only to encounter a stubborn solidness. Remo literally bounced off the wall, and almost lost his balance.

Remo realized then that he had tried to go through an outside wall. The wall itself was no problem, but the earth beyond was as solid as earth should be.

The sound came again. This time, it blubbered.

Remo got a fix and swept toward it. This time, he simply closed his eyes and moved in a direct line. It was easier that way. The seemingly solid walls and cars only confused his eyes. But his hearing could not be fooled.

When Remo picked up human lung action and an accelerated heartbeat, he opened his eyes.

The gloom quickly lifted as his visual purple kicked in.

There was a man almost at his feet. He was on his hands and knees-actually, on his knees only. He was using his hands to try to climb the set of concrete steps that led to the upper basement. His hands were going through the hard-looking steps. As if he refused to accept his inability to make contact, he kept trying.

A sob broke from his lips.

Gently, Remo said, "Hey, buddy. Let me give you a hand."

"Help me. Help me. The steps won't let me touch them. I don't know where I am. I don't know what's going on."

The man sounded as if on the verge of nervous collapse. Remo decided to deal with him in the most expedient way. He reached down, got the back of the man's neck vertebrae, and found a responsive nerve. The man simply fell into the steps, as all volition left him.

Remo gathered him up, realizing only then that he had a fireman. The black-and-yellow slicker told him that.

Once more closing his eyes, Remo retraced his steps. This time, he zeroed in on the breath of cool night air that was coming from the earthen tunnel.

When he saw pink light through his lids, he opened his eyes.

Remo, the limp fireman in hand, emerged onto deserted Fifth Avenue. He laid the fireman out on the sidewalk. The man kissed the solid pavement and began to crawl toward the distant police lines, as if fearing that to stand up would cause him to lose all support.

"Remo! Come quickly!" Chiun's excited voice squeaked.

It was coming from around the corner. Remo moved in the direction of the summons, thinking, "What now?"

He came around the corner to find the Master of Sinanju, Delpha Rohmer, Cheeta Ching, and the man who could only be Cheeta's missing cameraman, staring at an antique store's display. The cameraman was capturing it on film. He looked as steady as a threelegged chair.

As Remo came up, Chiun said, "We have found the zone of disturbance."

"We have?" Remo asked, looking over their shoulders.

"Lo!" announced Delpha Rohmer, pointing to the display. Around her, the faces of the others were grim and drawn.

It was a Halloween display. Centered around a black velvet surface were assorted ikons, chief among them a goat's head set in the middle of a silver pentagram.

"I see the head of a goat and the Star of David," Remo said tightly. "So what?"

"It is the symbol of Baphomet, the Horned One," Delpha intoned in a chilly, distant voice. "Some ignorant window decorator, unaware of the forces he was unleashing, made this display and brought ruin down on his head."

" 'He'? What makes you say 'he'?"

"No woman would do this," Delpha snapped. "Women are naturally intuitive. A woman would know better than to create such a potent configuration. Besides, those horns are so phallic."

"I give up," Remo said.

"No. We must not surrender to the dark forces. There are countermagics we can summon up."

"That's not what I-"

Delpha cried, "Back! I must unleash my full charms!"

"Everybody step back thirty or forty miles," Remo growled. "This could be serious."

"What did I ever see in you?" Cheeta sniffed, pulling her cameraman back and pointing first him, and then his lens, in the direction of Delpha Rohmer.

"A snack."

Chiun's wizened cheeks puffed out in indignation. "Remo!"

"Sorry, Little Father."

As Remo watched, Delpha squared her wan shoulders and began to chant, "Max Pax Fax. Spirits of darkness, dispel before my feminine talismans."

She threw up her arms. Nothing happened, except that Remo reached up to pinch his nose. The toadstool odor was there again. He realized it was coming from under Delpha's armpits.

"Is it working?" Cheeta breathed.

Remo looked up. He saw a gray-streaked pigeon attempt to land on one of the trees that decorated the lower setbacks of the Tower and fall through, only to jump out of the trunk in a scattering of frantic wings. "No."

Delpha frowned. "My female powers are not strong enough."

"Tell that to my aching nose," Remo muttered.

"Is there anything I can do, as a female?" Cheeta called.

Delpha looked back over her shoulder.

"Do you shave your armpits?"

"What kind of question is that?" Cheeta wondered.

"Do you?"

"Of course."

"Then you are powerless," Delpha said flatly.

Remo looked at Chiun. "Anything about this you care to explain to a skeptic?"

Chiun sniffed. "It is white magic. It may not be as good as yellow."

"Yellow couldn't smell as bad, that's for sure."

Delpha continued to hold her pose. She stood rigid and unmoving. In the distance, the cacophony of New York traffic noise came and went. It was quieter than usual, and had an almost frightened quality.

Remo noticed that the crawling fireman had finally reached police lines, and was being lifted over the barbed-wire barrier by helpful hands.

His "Thank God!" was probably audible in Hoboken.

When Remo's attention returned to Delpha Rohmer, he saw nothing that made any more sense than before.

Curious, he moved to a better angle.

He saw that under Delpha's armpits were two clots of black hair, thick enough to pass for twin muskrats.

"Is there a name for what you're trying to do?" Remo called. "Or are you just imitating Elsa Lancaster?"

"It is hair magic."

"Hair magic?"

"A potent talisman," Delpha explained, straining to keep her arms high. "Modern women have been brainwashed into shaving their bodily hair."

"I heard it had something to do with good hygiene."

"It is a scheme by men to deprive them of their most attractive lures, their greatest power, before which most gods and male demons are powerless. Delilah understood this."

"Yours aren't exactly raising the dead here," Remo pointed out.

"You are right. I must unveil my most fearsome talisman." Her hands dropped to her shoulder straps.

Remo's eyes went surprised. "Not-"

"I must be skyclad!"

At that, Delpha shrugged her shoulders and her black spidery gown slipped to the sidewalk, revealing a third muskrat.

Remo looked to Chiun. The Master of Sinanju brought one sleeve of his kimono up to his eyes to shield them from the white woman's shameful nakedness. Cheeta was positioning the cameraman and hitting the zoom button.

Remo decided to withdraw.

"Nice show, huh, Little Father?" he asked dryly.

"Why is she naked?" Chiun asked.

"She's trying to flash the goat's head into surrendering."

"Ah, Flash Magic. I have heard of this. Is it working?"

"Well, she is turning bluer."

The Master of Sinanju stole a peek, then quickly looked away again. "Remo, this is embarrassing."

"Glad you've come around to my way of thinking. How about we ditch the two dips and get down to work?"

"Cheeta is not a dip," Chiun sniffed.

"Okay. She's a dipette. My offer stands."

"Quiet," Cheeta hissed. "You'll ruin the magic spell. "

"Perish the thought," Remo said. To Chiun he added, "I rest my case."

Remo folded his arms. "Then I wait here until the moon turns blue."

Chiun looked up. The moon was high overhead, very full and not at all blue.

"It is no such color," he sniffed.

"That isn't the moon I meant," Remo said, pointing to Delpha's pale, goose-bumpy backside.

Chiun hid his face anew.

Remo was saying, "Give it up, Delpha," when the helicopter arrived with a noisy clattering.

"Get a shot of that!" Cheeta told her cameraman, slapping him on his head like a spotter signaling a mortar man to fire.

The cameraman pointed his videocam up at the descending helicopter, an eggshell-colored Bell Ranger with a red stripe.

It settled into the middle of Fifth Avenue, revealing the world-famous BCN logo.

Cheeta screeched, "You idiot! That's us!"

"But you said-"

"Never mind," Cheeta said, rushing to meet the pilot, who was braving the prop wash to come in her direction. He actually saluted before speaking.

"Miss Ching. The station just received a call from Randal Rumpp. He's offering you an exclusive if you'll meet with him."

"But we can't get in!" Cheeta fumed. "We tried."

"The news director said to do whatever you had to.

Cheeta looked at the pilot, at the helicopter, and back at the streaked-by-sunset Rumpp Tower.

She wrapped her bloodred fingernails about the pilot's tie. "How do you feel about flying into Randal Rumpp's office?" "Miss Ching?" Cheeta grinned like a happy moray eel. "I promise you the ride of your life," she said.

Chapter 12

Randal Rumpp was explaining to the mayor of New York City the facts of life.

"Look, you can't collect property taxes on it, you can't move it, you can't sell it, and let's face it, Mr. Mayor, you run the greatest city on the face of the earth. Do you want an embarrassment like a sixty-eight-story skyscraper that no one can enter on your hands?"

The mayor's voice was suspicious and taken aback at the same time. A unique combination.

"What do you . . . propose?" the mayor asked.

"You waive all property taxes for the next hundred years, provide the manpower and the material, and I'll build a new, bigger, and brassier Rumpp Tower on this exact spot," Randal Rumpp said quickly.

"Can you . . . do that?"

"Why not? You can't touch, taste, or feel the current one. It's as useless as tits on an avocado. So we build up from the current foundation, and through it. Make it taller. Of course, I'll need a piece of all frontages."

"Why?"

"We gotta bury the old facade, don't we? You don't want it to show through. It'll ruin the effect. I think the new one should be green. Like glass money."

While the mayor was digesting all this, Randal Rumpp took a sip of Marquis Louis Roederer Cristal champagne from a Baccarat crystal goblet with the name "Rumpp" carved into the base. It was the only one of its kind. Rumpp had had two made, but upon delivery smashed one, in order to make the survivor more valuable. In another year, Randal Rumpp figured, it would be a collector's item and he had plans to move it through Sotheby's.

The mayor's voice came again.

"What about the people trapped inside? What about you?"

"I'm working on that, Mr. Mayor. It took a lot to pull this off. It's going to take a lot to undo it."

"This is insane, Rumpp. You can't get away with something this big."

"Everything I ever got away with in my life was big," said Randal Rumpp coolly, draining the goblet. "Get back to me when you have something I can work with."

He hit the OFF button on the cellular, then bounced out of his seat, humming.

"It's working!" he chortled. "It's really, truly working! I'm going to get a higher tower, and I won't even have to pay for it. This will be the deal of the century!"

In the outer reception room, a phone rang. Rumpp marched in and confronted his executive assistant.

"I thought I told you to leave every phone off the hook!" he snapped.

The woman was shaking. "I couldn't help it. I wanted to see if it worked."

"Try it."

She picked up her receiver and said, "Hello?" A notch appeared between her brows. After listening a moment, she handed the receiver to Randal Rumpp, saying, "I . . . think it's for you."

"Who is this?" Rumpp demanded.

"I am Grandfather Frost," said a strange voice.

"Never heard of you." "I am like your Santa Claus. I bring presents to those who are good."

"Yeah? How come I never heard of you?"

"I am secret. You understand?"

"No."

"Let me out and you will understand."

"Are you that crazy guy?"

"No, I am not crazy," the voice insisted. "I am Grandfather Frost. I am able to do amazing things. Remarkable things. Set me free, and you will see with your own eyes."

There was something about the voice-Randal Rumpp realized it was the same voice as before-that intrigued him.

"Amazing things, huh?"

"Yes," said the confident voice. Randal Rumpp was beginning to like this voice. Its smooth tone reminded him of his own.

"Listen, do you know who you are talking to?" he asked.

"No."

"I am Randal Tiberius Rumpp."

"I have heard of you," the voice said instantly. "You are very famous and very, very rich."

Rumpp smiled. "That's me. Impressed?"

"Very. You are exactly the man I have been seeking. You are powerful."

"Right. Good," said Randal Rumpp, growing bored with the conversation. He had the attention span of a flea. And suddenly, he got the idea that the weird voice was about to put the arm on him.

"Listen, pal," he said, his tone becoming brittle, "I have my own problems."

"Which I alone can solve."

"Is that so? Well, right now I'm in my office in the Rumpp Tower and the whole place has gone crazy. The people inside can't get out without falling into the ground. And nobody can touch this place. It's like Spook Central here. I'm inhabiting a haunted skyscraper. How are you going to help me with that?"

"It is not I who can solve your problem," the voice said.

"I thought so."

"You can solve your own problem."

"Yeah? How?"

"Set me free."

"How will that help me?"

"I am cause of problem," the voice said. "I am making your Tower like ghost. You set me free, and your building will return to normal once more."

"Why should I believe you?" asked Randal Rumpp.

"What have you to lose?"

"Okay, I'll bite. How do I set you free?"

"I do not know. I am trapped in telephone. Usually, I come out without any trouble. I think maybe you must pick up correct telephone receiver to release me."

"Do you have any idea how many individual phones there are in the Rumpp Tower, on this floor alone?" Rumpp said hotly.

"I do not care. One of them will release me. You must try, if you desire normalcy again."

Randal Rumpp slapped his hand over the receiver and muttered to his assistant, "This guy doesn't know what he's asking. Wants me to answer every phone in the building."

The secretary simply looked blank. The side of the conversation she was privy to wasn't exactly balanced. And Randal Rumpp was standing there in his monogrammed argyle socks and boxer shorts.

Rumpp pursed his mouth thoughtfully. "Okay. Tell you what. I'll give it a shot, see how far we can take it. No promises."

"Thank you."

"There's one other thing."

"Anything."

"A while ago, you said something about three billion."

"I did."

"I still want it."

"It is yours."

And the weird voice was so smooth and confident that Randal Rumpp, for a wild moment, actually believed it to be sincere.

"I'll be in touch," he said breezily.

"I will be here. In telephone."

Randal Rumpp hung up, and told his secretary, "Hold all my calls. Especially if that loser calls back."

"But . . . what about the promise you made to that man?"

"In my own sweet time. If that chump can un-jinx the Rumpp Tower, I don't want it to happen until after I close my deal with the mayor."

Randal Rumpp closed the door to his office.

His executive assistant stared at the oaken panel for several long moments. Her oval face was stone. Then, without a word, she moved out into the corridor. She began going from office to office, lifting every receiver and whispering "Hello?" into each one.

Chapter 13

Delpha Rohmer was saying, "Shaving your armpit was the absolutely worst thing you could do."

"Really?" shouted Cheeta Ching over the rotor churn. The BCN news helicopter was rising into the Halloween sky. It was very dark now. The hunter's moon hung in the black sky like a sphere of shaven ice.

"Without doubt," said Delpha, arranging her gown. "This hair is called shade. In the old days, those who persecuted my Craft depowered witches simply by shaving their armpits."

"No!"

Delpha nodded. "Yes, Shade has many uses. Tied in a silken bag, it makes an infallible love potion. Thus, if you wish to succeed in love and in life you must let your natural hair grow."

Cheeta Ching was looking at Remo when she asked, "Would that explain why certain people don't succumb to my obvious charms?"

Remo avoided Cheeta's pointed glance. He watched the darkened Rumpp Tower floors drop away, frowning.

"Yes," returned Delpha. "In ancient days females went bare-breasted. It wasn't until men made them cover their natural breasts that the breast became an erotic icon. However, underarm hair has always been one of the most erotic sights a man can see. And one of the most intimidating."

"Is that why they made us shave them?" Cheeta asked.

"Yes. "

"The beasts!" Cheeta huffed.

Seated in the rear, Remo turned to the Master of Sinanju. "Is it just me, or are those two making even less sense than usual?"

"It is you," Chiun sniffed, arranging his kimono skirts absently.

"Did I ask you how the current contract negotiations are going?" Remo asked the Master of Sinanju, knowing the rotor noise would prevent their conversation from being overheard. Even by the cameraman seated beside them.

"You have not."

"So, how are they going?"

"Slowly. Smith is holding my most recent bargaining ploy against me."

"You mean the time when you were going to quit to become Lord Treasurer of California, but your candidate turned out to be a Central American dictator in disguise?"

Chiun made a face. "You are just like Smith. Distorting the truth to further your own designs."

"How else do you explain what happened?"

"I was duped. I would never have allied myself with that villain's court had not Smith exiled us to California in the first place."

"We were not exiled," Remo pointed out. "We were on an assignment. How was Smith to know that the guy we were supposed to protect turned out to be a potential hit?"

"He is emperor," Chiun squeaked. "He is supposed to know these things. And none of this would have happened except for your own negligence."

"Old news," Remo said, changing the subject fast. "When you go round again, put in my request for a new permanent residence. I'm tired of living out a suitcase."

"Do not worry, Remo," Chiun said frostily. "I intend to hold the loss of our precious home against Smith during the final discussions."

Remo folded his bare arms. "Good. I want to settle down again,"

"Too late," Cheeta called back. "I'm already married. And pregnant."

"My hopes are dashed forever," Remo said sourly. "Guess I'll junk my hope chest."

The helicopter reached the serrated roof of the Rumpp Tower. Here, the top-floor apartments had unique, two-sided views of the city. Randal Rumpp had sacrificed floor space for the dual windows. It was considered a bad move, but Rumpp had the last laugh. He simply hyped the view and charged triple rent. Tenants gladly paid extra for an improved view, even with their square footage reduced. Once again, the fantasy had sold.

The lights were out all over the Tower. Still, in the dying light of the sun, they could see people in their apartments, some apparently oblivious to their situation as cosmic prisoners.

"Rumpp's office is on the twenty-fourth floor," Cheeta was telling the pilot.

"So?"

"Take us to that floor."

They began counting down from sixty-eight. When they reached twenty-four Cheeta said, "Go to the south side."

The pilot sent the chopper canting around. It twirled like a yo-yo in expert hands, then hovered in place. He said, "I don't see him."

"Who cares? Just fly in."

"Miss Ching?"

"Did you leave your balls at home? I said, 'Fly in'!"

"But we'll crash!"

"Like hell, we will," Cheeta said, grabbing the joystick. She sent the helicopter diving into the side of the Rumpp Tower like a flying buzzsaw.

The pilot's scream was no louder than the rotor noise. It just sounded that way.

Randal Rumpp was sitting with his back to the south facade, trying to put his pants on both legs at a time. Too many people had taken to saying that Randal Rumpp put his trousers on one leg at a time, like everybody else. Rumpp couldn't stand being compared to what he called "the chump in the street." As soon as he had mastered the trick, he would call in a news crew to film the myth-making technique.

Then it happened.

There was no sound. No warning. No nothing.

His first impression was of being swallowed by a monster bird with furiously whirling wings.

One second he was sitting at his desk, trying to draw his five-hundred-dollar button-fly pants over his monogrammed socks, the next he was enveloped in a fast-moving cocoon filled with people.

It happened in an instant. Enough time for him to dive to the floor. He rolled and rolled, wreaking minor havoc on his high-maintenance haircut. Only when he had gotten disentangled from his pants did he get a glimpse of something that made sense. Or almost made sense.

The sight of a helicopter's tail rotors, slipping into the wall separating his office from his assistant's, caused Randal Rumpp's eyes to go very round.

"Are they crazy?" he shouted. "I could have had a heart attack!"

He picked himself up off the floor, calling, "Dorma! Did you get the number of that chopper? I want to sue those jerks!"

There was no answer from the adjoining room. When he went to look, Randal Rumpp found the room deserted.

"I think that was him!" Cheeta was shouting.

"The guy we ran through?" the wide-eyed pilot demanded.

"Yes. Turn around. And turn on your lights."

The pilot obliged. Chin-mounted floodlamps kicked in, painting the corridors and rooms of the Rumpp Tower in blazing light as they passed through them.

"I don't understand this," the pilot was saying, in a voice that could have been coming through a tea strainer.

"Don't try," Cheeta said. "Just go with the flow."

"I gotta get my bearings."

"Get them fast."

The pilot brought the chopper to a hovering point, half in and half out of the main corridors. He was having trouble dealing with the situation, inasmuch as he couldn't see his own tail rotor and there was a potted rubber plant growing out of his crotch.

He sent the chopper spinning in place, until the nose was pointed back in the direction of Randal Rumpp's office. Cheeta Ching's screechy voice was in his ear again.

"Now, go slowly! I'll tell you when to stop!"

The pilot pushed the cyclic ahead. The wall came toward them, and every sense screamed danger. He forced his eyes to stay open as the wall pushed up against his pupils and he entered the wall.

There was a short interval of subatomic darkness, and they were in an anteroom.

"There he is!" Cheeta howled.

Randal Rumpp did not hear the helicopter approach. So when it emerged from the wall like a red-and-cream soap bubble, it took him by surprise.

"I'll sue!" he shouted, shaking his fists at the people in the bubble.

Then he recognized Cheeta Ching, superanchorwoman. The hottest media celebrity of the month, by virtue of the fact that a lucky sperm had penetrated last month's egg.

Rumpp forced his prim lips into a broad grin. He opened his fist and waved, in as friendly a manner as his ragged nerves would allow.

"Hi!" he said gamely.

Cheeta was waving back, all thirty-two teeth seemingly bared.

Randal Rumpp made an all-encompassing gesture with spread arms. "Ask me how I did it!" he shouted.

Cheeta's mouth made a What? shape.

"I said, ask me how I pulled off the greatest magic act since David Copperfield!"

Cheeta stuck her head out of the bubble. She was definitely talking, but there was no sound coming out of her red mouth. It was obvious to Rumpp that she couldn't hear him, either. No more than he could hear the helicopter blades as they slashed the still air of his office. Weren't those things supposed to kick up a little dust? There wasn't even a breeze.

Randal grabbed a pen and stationery off his assistant's desk and wrote ANOTHER RANDAL RUMPP TRIUMPH.

Cheeta ducked inside, scribbled on a notebook, then pressed the open page to the inside of the Plexiglass bubble. One word was visible: HOW?

Rumpp wrote in return: A MAGICIAN NEVER TELLS. He smiled as he held up the answer, because a video camera suddenly poked out of the side and was staring in his direction. He made sure his tie was on straight and the hair was over his ears evenly. Image was everything.

Then he remembered his pants. Rumpp looked down.

"Oh, shit!" He stepped behind his assistant's desk so the camera wouldn't pick up his hairy, exposed legs.

He wrote on the pad, I CALL THIS TRICK SPECTRALIZATION.

The pilot was saying, "I can't hover like this forever."

"Hold your pecker," Cheeta said. "I almost have my story."

"But you don't have any sound."

"For once, this is a time where no sound makes the footage. This is going to look sooo spooky on the air."

"It's pretty freaking weird right now," said Remo, who was feeling like a mere hitchhiker. He and Chiun were absorbing the unique experience of being in a helicopter hovering inside a skyscraper. After they had gotten used to the disorienting effects, Remo decided it felt stupid. Like being inside a video game. He wanted to step out, but even though his eye told him there was solid floor under the skids, everything he had witnessed indicated that to step out would be to fall twenty-four stories to the subbasement, and his death.

"Can you figure this out, Little Father?" he whispered. "He can't hear us and we can't hear him. But we're both making noise."

The Master of Sinanju was silent. His keen hazel eyes were darting this way and that, and Remo could tell by the set expression on his wrinkled face that he had no more idea what had happened to the Rumpp Tower than he did.

Eventually, the pilot could stand it no more.

"I'm outta here!"

He spared Randal Rumpp the novelty of being run through by a helicopter and sidled out through the eastern wall.

Once they had emerged into the night, their flood lamps making hot spots on adjacent buildings, Remo said, "Well, that was an experience we won't soon forget."

Cheeta smacked the pilot on the head and snapped, "You idiot! I wasn't through yet! Go back in there!"

"I vote we land," Remo said.

"This is a news helicopter, not a democracy!" Cheeta snarled, slapping the pilot again. "I order you to go back in there!"

The pilot, holding his head in one hand, sent the helicopter back toward the gleaming pinnacle that was the Rumpp Tower. He looked as scared as if he were about to jump into a bottomless hole in the earth itself.

The chopper raced to meet its own reflection in the Tower.

They all watched themselves in a disorientation of reality that was perfect for the occasion.

Then, from one corner of the twenty-fourth floor, there came a burst of white light.

And the Master of Sinanju, his voice a shrill squeak, cried out.

"Turn away! Turn away! We will all be killed!"

Chapter 14

Dorma Wormser, executive assistant to Randal Rumpp, had gone through most of the twenty-fourth floor, picking up telephone receivers and speaking into them without success.

She wasn't quite sure what she was going to accomplish. But she would do anything to rectify the terrible thing that had happened to her place of work. If for no other reason, than it meant she could go home. After over a dozen years as Randal Rumpp's glorified secretary, being traffic manager to every conceivable hype and scam, going home every night was her favorite part of the working day.

It had been different in the beginning, when Randal Rumpp was a cocky young developer trying-Dorma was convinced-to outdo his old man, developer Ronald F. Rumpp. Every new deal was a challenge. Every success a cause for celebration.

Somewhere along the line Randal Rumpp had peaked financially. Unfortunately, by that time his ego had gone ballistic. His eye was always on the next deal, a bigger score. The publicity rush he invariably got kept him from tying up the loose ends of the previous deal. He talked openly of running for president, while overpaying for every gaudy object that caught his eye, like some overcapitalized raccoon.

It had all come undone with the fiasco Rumpp had dubbed "Shangri-Rumpp." He had already bought into three other Atlantic City casinos. All successful. But he wanted to build one that would go down in gambling history.

Shangri-Rumpp was designed to be the biggest thing on the boardwalk.

And it was. The first night it pulled in six million dollars. Investors predicted that within a month Shangri-Rumpp-with its gilt domes, faux-gem trimmings, and neon fountains-would be synonymous with Atlantic City.

Unfortunately for Randal Rumpp, he had cut costs in a foolish area. The chips. Each one was emblazed with an RR on one side and Randal Rumpp's simpering profile on the other. Rumpp had insisted on it.

So when the manufacturer could not deliver a sufficient quantity by opening night, Randal Rumpp faced a difficult choice: Go with blanks, or postpone opening night.

He did neither. Instead, he had had an emergency order placed with a manufacturer of plastic fast-food drink cup lids. They were cheap, they were inexpensive, and they would retain the sharpness of his profile in the stamping process.

They were also, Randal Rumpp discovered to his eternal regret, as easily counterfeited as cornflakes.

On his second day of business, more chips were cashed in than had been delivered. The record six-million-dollar opening turned, overnight, into a nearly twenty-million-dollar sinkhole.

When he realized the magnitude of the financial hemorrhaging, Randal Rumpp faced another difficult choice: Close down until the original chips came in, or keep playing.

As always, Randal T. Rumpp led with his ego. He ordered the roulette wheels to keep spinning, the blackjack dealers to keep dealing, and the baccarat tables to remain open, boasting, "The slot machines will keep us going until the chips are down. I mean, in."

When he lost over twenty-five million to counterfeit chips on the third night, Randal Rumpp issued a statement that Shangri-Rumpp was setting new records for payouts and quietly talked his father into buying forty million dollars' worth of twenty-dollar Shangri-Rumpp chips to bail him out for the first operating week.

It was a disaster from which the Rumpp Organization had never recovered. Not even when Randal Rumpp refused to allow his father to cash in his chips, claiming they were "shoddy counterfeits."

The entire house of cards began to collapse then. Loans were called due. Assets were seized. Staff was fired. Dorma Wormser, like most Rumpp employees, was forced to accept a fifty-percent pay cut. The only reason she stayed on was because jobs in corporate America in the early nineties were scarce. Especially if a job-seeker was in the position of having to list Randal Rumpp as a reference.

And now this. She was trapped, with an angry mob roaming the building. A mob that blamed Randal Rumpp for their plight.

If there was anyone who could help, Dorma Wormser wanted to talk to him.

She was beginning to think she would have to test every phone in the Tower, when she tried a desk phone in the executive trophy room. It was off-limits to everyone except Randal Rumpp. It was the place where he kept his favorite trophies-from his childhood Monopoly game and photographs of former girlfriends, to the more modest business acquisitions, such as the solid-gold stapler that never worked but was brought out for office photo opportunities.

The desk phone was a simple AT ne. But it had been Randal Rumpp's first business phone, and he treasured it. The bell had been disabled, but a red light winked on and off, indicating an incoming call.

She lifted the receiver.

Dorma Wormser had answered telephones both personally and professionally for most of her life. She was good at it. Her voice was clear and crisp. Her manner smooth and businesslike. It was the perfect executive assistant's telephone voice.

This time, she whispered a timid, "Hello?"

There was no answer. Just a rushing, like a comet composed of static coming in her direction. It grew louder very fast. Soon it was a wooshing roar. It was coming from the earpiece. Definitely.

Then came the flash of blinding white light that changed everything.

After she had regained her sight and other senses, Dorma Wormser knew she would look back upon her life in entirely different terms. She would never regain the normal, ordinary existence that had been hers before she'd picked up that ordinary telephone handset, as she began the long slide into nervous collapse that would haunt her for the rest of her days.

The stunningly bright light was all around her. It was soundless. It was not an explosion, but the suddenness of it was enough to knock her on her back. How long she was out, Dorma Wormser had no idea. Her eyes fluttered open and there it was, floating directly above her.

"Oh, God," she moaned.

It might have been a man.

Her initial impression was that it was white. It was white from the hairless bald top of its bloated head to the tips of its very white feet. But it was not all white. Some of it was golden. There were golden veins on its smooth white skin. Not in, but on. They lay along the skin like printed circuits, except that they pulsed and ran with fleet golden lights.

That was weird enough. But the thing that shocked Dorma Wormser, that sent her scrambling to her feet and running for help, was the dead way the manlike thing floated just under the high ceiling. It was like a white, lifeless corpse filled with helium. Worst of all, it had no face.

Chapter 15

The pilot of the BCN news helicopter heard the voice of the old Korean warn him against flying into the Rumpp Tower. His brain told him that the shrill voice was serious. His brain also screamed that he was flying into a solid object and should swerve to avoid it.

He had been with BCN for over six years, half of them working for Cheeta Ching. Before that he had been a bush pilot in Alaska. And before that he had seen action in Grenada. He was used to risk. Even though every fiber in his highstrung being told him to swerve, he stayed on course.

If I die, he reasoned, I die. If I disobey the Korean Shark, I'm worse than dead.

He closed his eyes, not bothering to hope for any particular result.

So it came as a total shock to him when Cheeta Ching dug her bloodred claws into his shoulder and screamed, "You heard Grandfather Chiun! Swerve, you testosterone-drunk fool!"

The pilot's eyes flew open. He pulled back on the collective. Just in time. The helicopter swooped up and over the Rumpp Tower, a fly's-eye panorama of repeated helicopter reflections chasing it along every mirrored surface.

When the chopper had flattened out into a lazy circle and everyone's stomach had climbed down out of their throat, Remo asked the Master of Sinanju a question.

"What is it, Little Father? What did you see?"

"The building has found its proper vibration."

"Huh?"

"He means it's solid again," Cheeta offered. "Right, Grandfather?"

Chiun nodded somberly. "I do."

Everyone looked. The Rumpp Tower looked no different. The last hot, purplish-orange rays of the sun were streaking its sawtooth top, but otherwise it had become a kind of stalagmite of obsidian, with a subtle bronze underhue.

"Looks the same to me," Remo muttered.

"Now look with your eyes," spat Chiun, pointing down with one spindly finger.

Everyone looked downward.

Several floors up from the RUMPP TOWER sign over the Fifth Avenue entrance, a balloon was swirling in the eddies and currents surrounding the Tower. It was Halloween-orange and had a pumpkin face. Evidently, someone from the crowd behind the distant barbed wire had released it.

As they watched, a gust of wind swept it up. It skidded close to the Tower facade and, as it rose, bounced off.

"It bounced!" Cheeta breathed.

"I saw this happen before," Chiun offered.

"Praise Diana, Goddess of the Moon!" Delpha cried, closing her eyes and lifting empty palms to the moon. "My womanly magic proved true."

"My ass," said Remo, quickly pinching his nose shut.

"You did this?" Cheeta asked, dumbfounded.

"Indeed," said Delpha calmly. "You may interview me now. I suggest a two-shot."

"And I suggest we land before I throw up," Remo said.

Cheeta said, "Later. I want to see what's going on in the Tower. You! Cameraman! Let's get some footage."

The cameraman got his video up and running.

"Make a circle of the building," Cheeta told the pilot.

Delpha chimed in. "Good. Circles are good. They represent femaleness. If we create enough of them, they will dispel the Horned One forever."

"Shouldn't we be landing, to let the people know it's okay to come out now?" Remo suggested.

"No," Cheeta said sharply, "Later. If we set them free now, we can't interview them."

"Since when does a story come before people?"

"Since before Edward Z. Murrow," said Cheeta solemnly.

"Can I quote you on that?" Remo asked.

Before Cheeta could answer, Delpha cried, "Look, I see an otherworldly apparition!"

Cheeta's glossy head snapped about, like that of a confused Mako shark. "Where? Where?"

Delpha pointed. "There! In that corner office."

The cameraman was trying to position his lens, saying, "Where? Which corner? I don't see anything."

Delpha reached back and yanked the camcorder lens toward the southwestern corner of the building and held it.

"Do you see it now?" she asked.

"I don't know," the cameraman said. "I think you bruised my eye."

"Just keep taping," Cheeta said. "The network will gladly buy you a glass eye."

They swept past the corner and around to the other side, where the Spiffany Building, as solid as the granite it was built of, lay bathed in cold moonlight.

Cheeta asked, "What did you see?"

"It looked like an evil spirit," Delpha said, more pale-faced than usual. "I think it was a night-gaunt."

"What's a 'night-gaunt'?" Remo asked.

"It is a creature normally seen only in dreams," Delpha explained. "They have rubbery skin, long forked tails, and no face at all."

"This thing you saw had no face?"

Delpha nodded. "No more than an egg does."

"Sounds like a night-gaunt to me," Remo said dryly.

"If night-gaunts are breaking into the waking world, I fear for humanity. None are female."

Cheeta frowned. "God. What is this world coming to?"

"There is only one odd thing," Delpha said slowly.

"What's that?" asked Cheeta.

"Night-gaunts are usually black-skinned. This one was completely white. I will have to consult the Necronomicon about them."

To Remo's surprise, she pulled a dog-eared paperback book from under her skirt and consulted it.

"This is strange," she said thoughtfully. "There's no mention of white night-gaunts. Not even in the demonology concordance."

"It doesn't matter," Cheeta put in. "We got it on tape, whatever it was." She glared back at her wincing cameraman. "At least, we'd better have gotten it on tape."

"But the Necronomicon should list it if it exists," Delpha said worriedly.

"Maybe you got the abridged edition by mistake," Remo suggested helpfully.

"Remo," Chiun flared, "you are behaving like an idiot. "

"I've been dragged down by the company I'm forced to keep. Look, can we just land this thing?"

"An excellent idea," Chiun said sternly. "We will land and rescue the persons formerly trapped within this glittering monstrosity, thus earning the eternal gratitude of this country and whoever may rule it."

"Why would we do that?" Remo wanted to know.

"Contract negotiations," Chiun whispered.

"Oh."

This half-overheard conversation made Cheeta Ching think of something.

"You know, it's quite a coincidence."

Remo made his face blank. "What is?"

"Bumping into you two again like this. Clear across the country."

Remo looked away. "It's a free country. We travel a lot."

"Whose campaign are you with this time?"

"Nobody's. We're in a new line of work," Remo explained, blank-voiced. "We're insurance adjusters. We're out here because Randal Rumpp needed extra fire insurance."

"That's ridiculous!"

To which, Remo offered a business card that identified him as Remo Wausau, with Apolitical Life and Casualty.

"This is awfully unlikely," Cheeta said.

"Tell her, Little Father."

Chiun thinned papery lips. "It is as Remo says," he said with obvious distaste. "We are adjusters of insurance. Temporarily."

"Okay, I believe you," Cheeta said, returning Remo's card.

Remo blinked. He had to will his face still to keep it from dissolving into incredulous lines. The blunt-faced barracuda had bought his lame story on no more strength than Chiun's word. What the hell? he thought. Anything to get us through the night.

Remo settled back as the helicopter pilot wrestled his craft into a soft landing on Fifth Avenue. Maybe when they got into the building, he and Chiun could figure out what was really going on, waste anyone who needed wasting, and split before Delpha decided to flash somebody into asphyxiation.

Remo didn't think his sinuses could stand another high-speed scouring.

Chapter 16

At first, Randal T. Rumpp thought his executive assistant had broken down. She was babbling again. Worse, she was raving.

"It-it's a ghost! A real ghost!" Dorma Wormser cried.

"What's a ghost?" Rumpp asked calmly. It was important to be calm when dealing with the unstable.

Dorma grabbed his arm. "The thing in the trophy room. Come see, come see. You'll see. It's real."

Randal Rumpp looked out the window. The BCN helicopter was fluttering around aimlessly. He wasn't finished being quoted yet, but the chopper didn't seem interested in coming back for more pearls of Rumpp wisdom.

He let his executive secretary tug him to the trophy room, thinking this had better be worth his time.

Randal Rumpp saw right away that it wasn't a ghost. Even though it was white and floated just under the ceiling like a ghost probably would float, it was no ghost.

It looked vaguely humanoid. There were two arms, two legs, a trunk, and a head. The head was not like a human head. It was too big, too smooth, too white, and too hairless, and where its face should have been there was a kind of puffy balloon.

In the dim light, the thing shone. Its edges were misty.

Dorma whispered, "See, Mr. Rumpp? A ghost."

"It's no ghost," said Randal Rumpp, grabbing an original Frank Lloyd Wright chair. He lifted it up over his head and poked at the floating apparition with the chair's hard legs.

The legs went right through the floating white being.

"See? It's unreal," Dorma said.

"It's no ghost," repeated Randal Rumpp sternly. "Get a grip on yourself."

"How can it not be a ghost?"

"Because," Randal Rumpp pointed out reasonably. "It's got two cables sticking out of its shoulders. They look like coaxial cables. Coaxials mean electricity. Ghosts aren't electric."

"How . . . how do we know that?"

"Because we have a grip on ourselves," said Randal Rumpp, moving around to get a better look at the floating thing.

The thing was emitting a kind of soft shine, like a low-energy light bulb. Through it, certain details could be made out. The pulsing golden veinwork. The fact that it wore boots and gloves, and there were straps that snugged at his shoulders.

Randal Rumpp was trying to see what the straps were holding on to when he noticed the thing's belt. The buckle-it was round and white-suddenly blinked red. It was a very angry red color. It made Dorma shrink in fear. Then it turned white again. Then red. It was like something short-circuiting.

Randal Rumpp took this as further proof that the thing was electrical. Randal Rumpp feared nothing electrical. Not even the electrician's union, which could make or break a construction project.

"What does the red light mean?" Dorma wondered from the safety of the open door. She looked ready to bolt.

"It means," Randal Rumpp said, pointing to the Sears DieHard battery clearly strapped to the floating thing's back, "that its power is running low."

"I don't understand."

"That makes two of us. Where did it come from?"

"I think . . . I think it came from the telephone . . . ."

Rumpp scowled. "Telephone?"

For the first time, Rumpp noticed the phone off its hook.

He turned to his cowering assistant. "I told you not to touch the phones!" he shouted.

Without warning, the glowing thing came to life. It grabbed at its belt buckle, then went dim and fell to the floor with a thud.

Dorma screamed and fled. Randal Rumpp knelt beside the thing. He reached out to touch it and, to his surprise, he got the slick, plasticky sensation of touching something like vinyl. His fingers recoiled. He hated vinyl. Especially vinyl siding. It offended his sensibilities. His first home had had vinyl siding. The day he'd traded up to his first condo, he'd had it torched so no one could throw it back in his face when he became famous.

The thing lay supine for only a minute. Then, with a sound like a respirator, the white bubble that was the thing's face crinkled inward. It expanded. Contracted again, crinkling. The crinkling was something seen, but not heard.

"It's still breathing," Randal Rumpp muttered. "Whatever the heck it is."

He tried to shake it.

"Hey, pal. Wake up. You're on my time now."

The thing struggled into an upright position. Its featureless face swiveled in his direction. Even though there were no eyes, Randal Rumpp had the distinct feeling he was being stared at. It gave him the creeps. Worse than cost overruns.

Then, even though the thing had no discernible mouth, it spoke.

It said, "Ho ho ho."

"Hello. Do you speak English?"

"Da."

Too bad, Rumpp thought. Maybe I can communicate with it some other way.

"Me Rumpp," he said, pointing to his own chest. "Rumpp? Comprende?" He pointed to the thing's chest. "You name?"

To his surprise, the thing stabbed its own chest with its thumb and said in perfectly understandable English, "I am Grandfather Frost. Ho ho ho."

"You speak English?"

"Da. "

Scowling, Rumpp said, "Da isn't English. It's baby talk."

"Da mean 'yes.' You understand 'yes'?"

"Yeah. I've been hearing it all my life. Listen, where did you come from?"

"Telephone. "

"That so? How'd you get into the telephone in the first place?"

The creature struggled to its feet. It grabbed at its right shoulder, as if in pain. "It is long story," it said, moving about the room and examining the objects kept on display tables and open shelves. "I am thinking we do not have time for long story now."

"Yeah? Why not?"

"I must escape."

"What about the three billion we were talking about?"

"Take a check?"

"You have one on you?"

"Nyet. I mean, 'no.' "

Rumpp frowned. "Nyet. Where have I heard that word before?"

"I do not know, but I must be escaping now. Thank you for your time."

Randal Rumpp grabbed the thing's arm. Standing, the thing was shorter than he. And that was saying something, considering that its boot heels were as thick as a stack of waffles.

Randal Rumpp expected no fight. And he was right. The creature didn't struggle at all.

But Randal Rumpp was suddenly on his back, trying to get the air the floor had knocked out of his lungs back where it belonged.

"Ghosts," he gasped, "don't use judo."

Then the creature spoke another unfamiliar word. "Krahseevah, " it said. Its voice sounded very pleased.

Gasping, Rumpp got to his feet. The creature was examining a gold-filled Colibri cigarette lighter with the initials "RR" set in diamonds. Rumpp noticed it no longer shone. And its face, which was a bladder that kept expanding and contracting as if in rhythm with its measured breathing, crinkled audibly now.

Somehow, it was able to see through that featureless membrane.

While it was distracted, Rumpp leaped in front of the only exit.

"You go out over my dead body!" he warned.

"There is no need for dead bodies," said the faceless thing, retreating to the telephone receiver. He dialed directory assistance and asked, "Give me number of Soviet Embassy, please."

The operator's response came loudly enough for Randal Rumpp to hear it clearly.

"I'm sorry. There is no listing for a Soviet Embassy in this city."

"What! Then provide me number of Soviet Embassy in Washington."

"What do you want with the Soviet Embassy?" Rumpp asked suspiciously.

"I must give them present," the thing said flatly. "Grandfather Frost forgot them this year." "Christmas hasn't happened yet. In fact, it's only Halloween."

The thing started. "Excuse, please. What month this?"

"October."

"What year this?"

Before Randal Rumpp could answer the insane question, the operator was saying, "I'm sorry. There is no listing for a Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C. Would you like me to try Washington state?"

"No Soviet Embassy? What happened to Soviet Union?"

"It dissolved," Randal Rumpp said flatly, just to see what response he'd get.

A dramatic one, as it turned out.

The blank-faced white creature dropped the telephone and began to moan.

"Soviet Union dissolve in nuclear fire! What about Georgia?"

"It's still down there between South Carolina and Alabama," Randal Rumpp said.

"I am not meaning U.S. Georgia. I am meaning Georgia in Soviet Union."

"Search me. I can't keep track of what's left of Russia."

The thing's bladder-like face regarded him. "It is gone completely?"

"Yeah. Yeah. Completely. And good riddance."

"I am homeless expatriate," it said, cabled shoulders falling. "Without family."

"Look," Rumpp said sharply, "we have some business to conduct here. Let's leave sentiment out of it."

"I am man without country, and you are without human feelings," the thing blubbered. "After all I have done for you."

"What have you done for me?"

"I have restored your building."

It was Randal Rumpp's turn to appear startled. "You have? Are you sure?"