Ghost in the Machine td-90

by Warren Murphy

  "My God!" she said, wide-eyed. "It happened again!"

  "We noticed that, too," Remo said, looking up at the building's face. The lights were going dim again. "We're back to square one."

  Cheeta, fuming and flaring her magnificent nostrils, climbed to her feet and complained, "It's not fair! This was my moment of triumph. What the hell's going on here?"

  "It is a puzzlement," Chiun said slowly, grasping his wrists firmly. His sleeves swallowed his hands.

  Delpha Rohmer drew near, like a professional mourner approaching a vertical coffin.

  "There is only one rational explanation," she said.

  Everyone looked at her, their faces reflecting their combined thought that a rational explanation would be very welcome at this particular juncture.

  "My magic worked, but it has now worn off."

  "You call that rational?" Remo said.

  "We must summon a greater magic to defeat these forces."

  "Yeah?"

  "We must join hands and form a circle around this building."

  Remo looked at Chiun and back at Delpha. "There are only four of us, and the base of this thing must be the size of a baseball diamond," he pointed out.

  "We will enlist others in our cause."

  "Like who? Houdini's dead."

  Delpha gestured to the line of barbed wire several blocks down Fifth Avenue. On the other side the huge crowd of gawkers, many dressed in Halloween regalia, stood watching. No one seemed to have any interest in approaching, not even the National Guard.

  Remo growled, "I think you'll have a tough time drumming up volunteers. They look more scared than the people inside the building."

  "I will appeal to their mystical natures," proclaimed Delpha Rohmer, throwing off her trailing garment.

  Remo quickly moved upwind. Chiun looked away.

  Delpha began chanting, "Sisters of the Moon, join us now! A mighty spell is needed to repair the rupture in our physical plane. Those who believe in the awesome power of womanhood unleashed, join hands with me now!"

  To Remo's eternal surprise, those people who believed in the eternal power of womanhood unleashed numbered at least a third of the people behind the police lines, including several police officers.

  They stampeded for the nude figure of Delpha Rohmer. Throwing her head back, she lifted her arms in thanks to the hunter's moon.

  Almost at once the air changed flavor, and half the stampede came to a dead halt and grabbed mouths and noses. A number retreated. Others pushed ahead through those who were reversing direction.

  They surrounded Delpha, whose voice rose from the pack.

  "Sisters, join hands with me now!"

  Hands grasped hands as a human daisy chain was formed. It wound, sinuous and fluid, toward the Rumpp Tower.

  As Remo and Chiun stepped out of their path and Cheeta Ching got her cameraman to record the display, the line of mystical convocation surrounded the Tower until its two ends, like a necklace joining at the clasp, completed the circle.

  Delpha called, "Repeat after me: 'Diana, Goddess of the Moon, symbol of our sacred womb . . .' "

  "Diana, Goddess of the Moon, symbol of our sacred womb . . ."

  "Wait! Wait!" Cheeta cried. "Make room for me. I'm a woman too."

  "That remains to be seen," Remo muttered.

  The chant was resumed.

  "Shine down your mighty light . . ."

  "Shine down your mighty light . . ."

  "So this shaft of misfortune is restored to sight!"

  "So this shaft of misfortune is restored to sight!"

  "Now," Delpha cried. "Move around it, closing the circle."

  The circle moved. Not everybody moved in the same direction. Not everyone had a clear grasp of the concept of "left," but they soon got organized. Delpha led the chant. "Repeat the following words of power over and over: 'Max Pax Fax.' "

  "Did they have faxes in olden times?" Remo asked the Master of Sinanju.

  "Hush! I must study this white magic. There may be something yet to be learned of value."

  "I've already picked up a magic pointer. Use triple-strength Right Guard."

  The circle went around once. Nothing much seemed to happen. It went around twice. The chanters grew hoarse.

  On the third go-round half the chanters were croaking like toads and frogs, and Delpha was no longer where she had been.

  "I do not see her," Chiun muttered, stroking his wispy beard.

  "I do not want to," Remo said.

  Altogether, the circle went around twenty times before the last voice gave out and people began collapsing on the cold pavement. Enthusiasm waning, the circle simply broke apart into clots of people standing around, breathing hard.

  Cheeta came out of the group, checked her cameraman, and approached Remo and Chiun.

  "It didn't work," she panted.

  "Gee. Wonder why?" Remo said airily.

  "Maybe Delpha knows," Cheeta said vaguely, looking around. "Where'd she go?"

  Remo shrugged. "Search us. She disappeared on the second doe-see-doe."

  Cheeta's dark eyes went to the spot where Delpha Romher should have been standing. But she was no longer there. She was no longer anywhere on the broad, empty stretch of Fifth Avenue, where old newspaper fragments skittered along the gutters, impelled by gusty winds.

  Cheeta's quick brain registered the absence of Delpha Rohmer. Her exquisitely made-up face quirked in surprise. Her bloodred lips puckered in astonishment.

  But from her mouth there came only these words: "My tape! That bitch ran off with my tape!"

  Remo asked, "Don't you mean 'witch'?"

  Cheeta turned like a angry lioness. "I mean bitch with a capital B! Do you realize how much that tape is worth?"

  "What's the sweat? You still have the second tape."

  "Of over a hundred New Yorkers making fools of themselves. Me included." She shouted over to her cameraman. "You! Erase that tape. Right now, buster!"

  The cameraman obediently popped the tape. Instead of trusting his machine's eraser head to fulfill Cheeta Ching's instructions, he smashed the tape under his pounding heel until loops of tape squirmed beneath his feet, like a nest of flattened brown worms.

  For good measure, he kicked the tangled mess into an open sewer grate.

  Chapter 18

  Remo Williams found a pay phone, put a quarter in the slot, and promptly lost his coin.

  The next three NYNEX pay phones also ate his quarters. It finally cost him a dollar twenty-five to reach the long distance operator, who promptly asked him for an additional two dollars and sixty-five cents for the first five minutes of his long distance call to Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York.

  When Harold Smith's lemony voice came over the telephone, Remo said, "Bad news, Smitty. The Rumpp Tower is still an intangible asset of the Rumpp Organization. "

  "You can uncover nothing?"

  "It's there, but it's not there. We went in, fell into the subbasement, and had to dig out again."

  "Did anyone see you?"

  "Only Cheeta Ching."

  Smith's voice went stiff as a graham cracker. "Miss Ching is there?"

  "Yeah, and she and Chiun have picked up where they left off."

  Smith groaned. "Oh, no. Has security been compromised?"

  "It's worse than that," Remo said cheerfully, enjoying getting a rise out of the colorless Harold Smith. "She has Chiun convinced that they are expecting their first child."

  "My God! Chiun is the father. Do you know what this means?"

  Remo rolled his dark eyes. "Do I ever. The rest of my life is going to be ruined by that lemon-faced shark. "

  "Remo," Smith said urgently, "I want you to get Chiun away from that woman. Away from the Rumpp Tower. Regroup. We will look into this from other angles. "

  "You calling us back to Folcroft?"

  "No. Find a hotel. Contact me after you register."

  "I'll give it a try, but Chiun's got Cheeta calling him 'grandfather.' This could be long
-term problem."

  "Is there anything else?"

  "Did I tell you about the witch?"

  "Witch?"

  "Delpha Rohmer. Name excite a memory chip?"

  Remo heard Harold Smith's fingers making hollow clicking sounds on his ever-present computer keyboard.

  "I have her as the official witch of Salem, Massachusetts."

  "You have her right."

  "What is her role in this?" Smith asked sharply.

  "As far as I can see, professional glory-hound. She ripped off one of Cheeta's precious videotapes."

  "Is there anything on it that should concern the organization?"

  "Not unless the thought of white night-gaunts running loose freaks you out."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Just witch talk," Remo said. "If I read Delpha right, it won't be long before she and that tape are on Horrendo Riviera or Nancy Jessica Repunsel."

  Smith said, "Find a quiet out-of-the-way hotel and contact me directly, Remo."

  "Gotcha," Remo said, hanging up. The phone immediately rang, and on impulse, he picked it up.

  "This is the operator. Please deposit an additional seventy-five cents."

  "Only if you refund the buck-twenty I lost to all your non-working pay phones."

  "I cannot do that," the operator said primly.

  "Then I cannot deposit additional funds."

  "Then I must charge the receiving caller."

  "His name is Smith, and he loves paying my bills," Remo said, hanging up.

  The Master of Sinanju was not pleased at the instructions he was given.

  "I will not abandon Cheeta in her hour of torment," he said tightly.

  "Her hour of torment began the day she was born, and has poisoned everyone she ever came into contact with, not the least of whom is us," Remo said hotly. "Smith says we lie low. So do we lie low, or do we kiss off our current contract negotiation?"

  "We lie low," Chiun said bitterly. "But if Cheeta refuses to speak with me after this incident, I will hold it against Harold the Smith forever."

  "Gee, I was just talking to him, and he has his heart set on being the godfather."

  Chiun's wispy facial hair trembled with surprise.

  "Really, Remo?"

  Chapter 19

  When Delpha Rohmer, Official Witch of Salem, Massachusetts, President of the Sisterhood for Witch Awareness, swept into the lobby of the Multinational Broadcast Company's New York headquarters, the Purolator guard looked up, frowned, and sighed.

  "Aren't you a little old for trick-or-treat, lady?"

  "I offer no tricks," she said haughtily.

  The guard dug out a handful of butterscotch candies he kept behind the desk for his own use. "Okay," he said grudgingly, "put out your bag."

  "You fail to understand, man-mortal. I have come bearing a prize that your news director will covet greatly."

  "Covet?"

  "Be good enough to inform him that Delpha Rohmer has footage of the haunting of the Rumpp Tower."

  "Haunting?"

  "Baphomet has declared it his domain on earth. And I have proof that Randal Rumpp is in league with the Great Horned One." From out of Delpha's cleavage came the black videocassette.

  The guard looked at it. He recognized that it was no home VCR cassette, but a half-inch-tape cartridge. He picked up the lobby desk phone and said, "Mr. Graff. I have a . . . witch here to see you. Says it's about the Rumpp Tower thing. She says it's haunted and she has tape to prove it."

  The guard listened a moment, then said, "Let me just say that she sounds serious."

  Knute Graff thought Delpha Rohmer looked serious, too. He accepted her business card, winced, and swallowed his impulse to laugh. He said, "Come with me," and turned swiftly so he could relieve the stress of the moment with a half-repressed smile.

  In the MBC viewing room, he ran the tape through.

  "Who shot this?" he asked.

  Delpha said, "Does it matter? I am offering it to you."

  The news director watched as Cheeta Ching came on.

  "Wait a minute!" he exploded. "I can't run this! That Korean Shark would eat me alive!"

  "The most dramatic footage has nothing to do with her," Delpha pointed out, in a toneless voice that made the man think of sucked-dry flies in an old spider's web. Dead.

  Graff watched the footage of Randal Rumpp claiming credit for the dematerialization of Rumpp Tower incident, and his eyes went wide. Then he came to footage that he could not explain.

  "What is that thing?" he blurted.

  "It is a negative night-gaunt," he was told.

  "Looks more like a positive one."

  "A positive night-gaunt would be black," Delpha explained. "This unholy creature is white."

  "I can see that. But where the heck is its face?"

  "It has none. This is how I know it to be a night-gaunt. "

  Eyes still wide, Knute Graff swiveled his chair around and looked at Delpha Rohmer.

  "You know, if I use this tape, it might be called a gross breach of journalistic ethics."

  "Yes?"

  "On the other hand, that Korean Shark once shafted me good. How much do you want?"

  "Ten thousand dollars. And as much exposure for myself and my religion as you can deliver."

  "Religion?"

  "Wicca was recognized as such long before the Burning Times," Delpha said in her sonorous voice.

  "Exactly how long ago was that?"

  "Before Christ was a corporal," she said flatly.

  "You were an eyewitness to what's going on uptown?" Graff asked, switching the subject as fast as he could.

  "I was."

  "Deal." Knute Graff picked up the phone and made a quick series of calls.

  "Payroll? Draw a check for ten grand. Payee: Delpha Rohmer."

  "Editing? I have some tape you won't believe. I want it to lead our seven o'clock report."

  "Security? Triple the guard. And if you see any sign of Cheeta Ching, fire a warning shot into the air. If she doesn't back off, shoot to wound. And don't miss."

  Graff hung up and turned to Delpha Rohmer. "Lady, you're about to become the most famous witch since Elizabeth Montgomery."

  Delpha Rohmer's smile was like moonlight falling across a row of tombstones.

  "Fame is precisely what I want," she said hollowly.

  Chapter 20

  The Rumpp Tower footage went out over the air at exactly seven o'clock Daylight Savings Time. It was repeated on the seven-thirty New York satellite feed to local affiliates in the western time zones.

  CNN picked it up, and once they had it the entire world saw it. Literally.

  ITAR-the Russian Information Telegraph Agency, once called TASS-ran it in the middle of the night, which, because they were on the other side of the international date line, was November 1 in the Russian city of Nizhni Novgorod.

  Nizhni Novgorod was a grim industrial city, once known as the closed city of Gorky. A place where dissidents were exiled. It was very cold in Nizhni Novgorod. And it was especially cold in the apartment of Yuli Batenin, formerly charge d'affaires with the former Washington embassy of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

  These days, Yuli Batenin baked bread for thirty thousand rubles a day in an aging bread factory, which was enough to pay for a cold-water walk-up on Sovno Prospekt, but not to heat it. Even if there had been any fuel oil on the open market.

  Yuli Batenin sat in his overstuffed sofa chair, trying to keep the loose spring from popping into his rectum, and shivered in a threadbare camel-hair blanket, which when he slept on a fold-down cot kept him no warmer than it did when he was awake.

  The television reception made him shiver even more. There was so much snow he could only think of the coming Russian winter and shudder endlessly.

  He was watching the news when the footage of the strange events in downtown Manhattan came on. The commentator was talking about an obscure American holiday known as Halloween.

  The spring was worming itse
lf into his left cheek, so Yuli shifted carefully. He was barely paying attention to what the commentator was saying. Under his breath he cursed the spring, the sofa, the apartment, the new Russia, and most of all the series of events that had turned him into a non-person.

  It had been better in the old days. Before Gorbachev. Before Perestroika. Before Glastnost. When Yuli Batenin had enjoyed the privileges of being a major in the KGB at the same time as he enjoyed living among the comforts of the West. He didn't know which he missed most, the old Russia or the West.

  Yuli Batenin happened to look up as the footage of the Western ghost came on.

  Even through the snowy reception, and despite the fact that the tape had been duped several times and was as blurry as a Moscow drunk's speech, Yuli Batenin recognized the ghost.

  He stood straight up and swore, "Chort vozmi!"

  He put his face to the screen, as if to make out every detail, and fumbled with the broken contrast knob.

  "Nyet, nyet, nyet," he moaned. "It cannot be!"

  As the picture resolved itself, a low curse of a breath escaped Yuli Batenin's curling lips.

  "Brashnikov!" he hissed. "You miserable thief! You are alive."

  Yuli Batenin stood up, like a man who has seen his own ghost. He stared at the screen until the picture was replaced with footage of the latest food riots in Omsk.

  "Alive," he repeated.

  Then a twisted smile crossing his lips, he added, "But not for long."

  There was no phone in Yuli Batenin's apartment. Even if he had been a millionaire in American dollars, there still would have been no phone in Yuli Batenin's apartment. Yuli Batenin had acquired an incurable fear of telephones during his last posting. The very sight of one made him shudder uncontrollably.

  At first Yuli Batenin's upstairs neighbor, Mrs. Biliandinova, did not want to let him use her telephone.

  "This is joke, da?" she asked suspiciously.

  "This is joke, nyet. I must use telephone."

  "You are afraid of telephone!" spat old Mrs. Biliandinova. "So you tell me countless times. I am forced to muffle bell because it frightens you so."

  Batenin made his voice firm. "Babushka, you will let me use telephone. I am former major."

  "In defunct Red Army. There is no more Red Army. And I will not let you use telephone unless you first tell me who you will be calling."