Ghost in the Machine td-90

by Warren Murphy

  Remo and Chiun stopped their struggle for television supremacy and looked at one another.

  "Owl-blasted?" they said. They began paying attention to the screen, as the camera pulled back and no other than Delpha Rohmer was revealed seated beside the boyish anchor.

  "Here with exclusive footage of the apparent haunting is Delpha Rohmer, official witch of Salem, Massachusetts," said the anchor.

  "Perfect," Remo groused.

  "First, Miss Rohmer," said the anchor, "can you explain the so-called 'event' on Fifth Avenue?"

  Delpha Rohmer parted her scarlet lips in a dry, empty smile. Her eye shadow had been replenished. It was an unappetizing color similar to canned mushroom soup.

  "It is not an event," she said in a vaguely sinister monotone. "It is the sign of the second coming of Baphomet, the Great Horned One. Soon all Fifth Avenue, then all of Manhattan, will become as the Rumpp Tower. More innocents will slip into the earth to roast in Baphomet's pitiless hellfires."

  "You're not serious?"

  Delpha's mushroom-hued lids settled, like an alligator's inner eye membrane. "It will be the fate of all who do not practice the craft of Wicca to fall into the Horned One's toils. Only by embracing the first religion can womankind be saved."

  "What about men?" Remo asked the picture tube.

  "What about men?" the anchor asked Delpha.

  "Men," retorted Delpha Rohmer, "can be saved only by wise women. If the women out in the audience wish to be saved, or desire to succor their menfolk . . ."

  "Here it comes," Remo said.

  "I have a toll-free number they may call for information," Delpha finished.

  "Actually, we don't have time for that," the anchor interjected hastily, "because we want to run that footage."

  At which point Delpha Rohmer flicked her fingers in the anchor's face, causing him to fall into a sneezing fit. While the camera cut back to her, in order to spare the continental United States the sight of a star anchor's nasal distress, Delpha tore open her dress front, exposing two pale but generous breasts over which was stenciled a 900 number.

  "A trick!" Chiun hissed, looking away. "I saw her fling some exotic herb!"

  "If you call pepper 'exotic,' " Remo said dryly.

  "To a Korean, Mediterranean spices are as alien as bubblegum." Chiun sniffed.

  "Shall I change the channel, or do you want to copy down the number?" Remo asked.

  "No! It is as the Book of Sinanju says: 'Never trust a mudang. Especially a white one.' "

  "So much for magic," said Remo, grabbing the remote. But before he could bring it into play, the footage captured by Cheeta Ching's cameraman rolled. His finger on the channel-changer, Remo froze. "Chiun! Check this out!"

  Chapter 22

  The long black Volga automobile carried former KBG major Yuli Batenin through the gates of a forbidding gray stone prison, causing his heart to leap with joy.

  In the good times, the KGB sometimes had operated from behind the impenetrable confines of Soviet state prisons.

  The Volga swept past the security gate and around to a rear entrance-another good sign.

  Batenin was marched in. His feet were glad. The oppressive weight of Democracy seemed to be lifted from his square shoulders with every stumbling step.

  He was taken into an office with only the modest legend SHCHIT on the pebbled-glass door.

  "There is that word again, 'Shield'," Batenin muttered.

  A hard truncheon jabbed him close enough to the kidney area to get his attention, but not near enough to cause blood in the urine.

  His grimace did not look like a smile, but he recognized the blow with pleasure. A good old-fashioned KGB blow. Not like the sissies in the new Federal Security Agency, a toothless organization designed to sound like the American FBI in a stupid compromise between national pride and good PR. It disgusted Batenin, the way the new leadership aped everything American.

  The door came open. Batenin was urged in.

  Seated at a substantial desk was a dour, thick-set man in a jet-black uniform he had never before seen. The man looked like a Khazakh. It surprised Batenin. Since the breakup, most ethnics had returned to their homelands-there to await the coming civil war, in Yuli Batenin's pessimistic opinion.

  "Sit," he was told.

  Yuli Batenin sat.

  "Batenin," said the officer-a colonel, according to his silver shoulderboards. The man looked like a Nazi, there was so much silver in his black uniform.

  "Yes, Tovarich Colonel?"

  "I am not your comrade," the colonel spat.

  And former Major Yuli Batenin's face fell. Since the failed coup, the term "comrade" had fallen into disfavor. But to Batenin, it spoke of the days of pride in the motherland, now shattered and fighting amongst itself.

  "You will address me as 'Colonel,' " the black colonel said. His desk was T-shaped, and bare but for a phalanx of offyellow official telephones.

  "Yes, Colonel."

  The colonel in black shoved a manila folder across the green felt blotter.

  Batenin recognized the KGB seal and the stark words, in Cyrillic letters, that were stenciled on the front.

  UTMOST SECRET TO BE STORED FOREVER

  "It is the file of which I attempted to warn the Kremlin," Batenin said.

  "You mean the White House," said the colonel.

  "Yes. Excuse me. The White House. I had forgotten."

  It was another public relations humiliation. In order to appeal to rich Americans, the Russian Parliament had renamed the parliament building "the White House." With all the bronze Lenins being torn down, Batenin half expected statues of Washington and Jefferson to one day sprout in their place.

  The colonel in black went on speaking.

  "This file contains report on Operation Nimble Spirit. What do you know of this?"

  "I was case officer," admitted Yuli Batenin.

  "It was your assignment to see that the agent in the field . . ." The colonel consulted the file. ". . . Brashnikov, fulfilled his duties to the motherland." The use of the honored phrase made Yuli Batenin blink. These men sounded genuine. But who were they? And what was meant by "Shield"?

  "I performed my duty to the best of my ability," Batenin said stiffly.

  "Which is why you were exiled to Gorky," the colonel said contemptuously.

  "You mean, Nizhni Novgorod," Batenin corrected.

  "If Shield fulfills its mission, it will be Gorky once more. And St. Petersburg will again be Leningrad, and the people will eat once again," the colonel said flatly.

  Yuli Batenin's eyes became startled coins. "You are KGB?"

  "No, Major Batenin."

  Major! They were calling him "major"! Why?

  "We are Cheka," the colonel said flatly.

  "Cheka?"

  "Then, VCheka. After that, OGPU, NKVD, NKGB, MGB, MVD and more recently, KGB. Now we are simply Shield. The name is no more than the fashion of the day. Our purpose remains the same: Protection of the Motherland, Holy Russia."

  "You are good communist?"

  The colonel only glared with his narrow black Khazakh eyes.

  "I am Colonel Radomir Rushenko, and I offer you an opportunity to be reinstated at your former rank with your former pay, in our organization."

  Major Batenin almost leaped to his feet with joy. In fact his knees started to straighten, and the patched seat of his pants actually left the hard oak chair for a moment.

  Then he remembered an important detail.

  "A hummingbird could not live on my former salary, today."

  "We pay in dollars, not rubles," said Colonel Rushenko.

  "If you paid in nickels it would be better than rubles," Batenin admitted sadly. "But why me?"

  "We have watched the same newscast as you did, Batenin," Colonel Ruskeno said firmly. He extracted a number of color photographs from the folder and slid them to Batenin's side of the desk.

  Batenin took them up. They showed a manlike creature, all in white, with a smooth, bulbous hea
d. A white cable looped up from sockets mounted on each shoulder, to disappear behind the creature's back.

  The last photograph showed a black-haired Georgian, with shifty bright eyes and the sharp face of a ferret.

  "This is Captain Rair Nicolaivitch Brashnikov, a special operative for KGB," the colonel said flatly.

  "Nyet. This is Rair Brashnikov, who is thief. He ruined entire Operation Nimble Ghost. He cost me my career. And worse, he caused me to tremble at the very sound of-"

  The telephone rang.

  Major Yuli Batenin shot out of his hard chair and found refuge under the spread legs of a guard. Batenin had his hands over his eyes and was trembling from head to toe.

  Colonel Rushenko let the telephone ring three times before picking it up. With cool dispassion, he noticed that each shrill ring had the same effect on the cowering major's body as would two live copper wires from a portable generator.

  Ignoring Batenin, he listened to the voice at the other end of the telephone. Then he hung up.

  "Your plane is ready, Major Batenin."

  Batenin looked up. "Plane? What plane."

  "The plane that will take you to America, where you will liquidate the renegade Brashnikov and recover the vibration suit that will restore the Union."

  It was the most terrifying sentence Major Yuli Batenin had ever heard. Still, he found the strength to rise and salute.

  "I am proud to accept this assignment," he said sincerely.

  "You will be dead if you botch it," said the colonel, not bothering to return the salute.

  And the cold, dismissive tones of Colonel Rushenko made Yuli Batenin's KGB-trained heart warm in response.

  It was almost like being back in the USSR again.

  Chapter 23

  Remo and Chiun stared at the image on the TV screen.

  It was a floating white figure, with cables looping up from its shoulders like the transparent wings of a fly.

  "It can't be," Remo said.

  "The fiend," Chiun rasped.

  "I don't believe it," Remo growled.

  The sniffling anchor was saying, "This footage was shot from a helicopter, and purports to show a supernatural being inhabiting the Rumpp Tower."

  As they watched the white figure, visible through a darkened pane in the southwest corner of the Rumpp Tower, it rolled in midair like a drowned corpse.

  Probably no one watching the tape could make out the blocky object that hung in the white webbing knapsack on the back of the floating figure. It was too indistinct. The letters on the back of the boxy object were too faint to be read by normal eyes.

  But the eyes of the only two living Masters of Sinanju were not ordinary.

  And they knew exactly what to look for.

  A logo that said: SEARS DIEHARD.

  "I believe it," Remo said unhappily.

  "The Krahseevah," hissed Chiun, making tiny yellow mallets with his bone-hard fists.

  "Mystery solved." Remo said glumly, snatching up the telephone. He got Smith immediately.

  "Smitty. Turn on Channel Four. Right now."

  "One moment."

  A moment later Harold W. Smith's surprised voice came back, saying, "What should I be looking for?"

  "It shiny and white and trouble."

  "All I am getting, Remo, are two rhinoceroses copulating."

  "Your Channel Four must be different than ours. Try MBC News."

  The sound of Smith's breathing went away. Then there came a hoarse, "Oh my God."

  "Look like the Krahseevah to you?" Remo asked.

  "I do not know. I have never seen this creature."

  "Well, Chiun and I have. And it's the Krahseevah all right. I thought you call-wasted him."

  "By all rights, Remo, the Krahseevah, as you call him, should have been atomically scattered through the nation's telephone system, after we tricked him into teleporting himself to a dead phone here at Folcroft. "

  "Well, he's loose in the Rumpp Tower. And five will get you ten, he's responsible for what's going on down there."

  "I wonder," Smith said.

  "Wonder what?" Remo asked.

  "Remo, do you recall reading of system-wide telephone difficulties over the last few years?"

  "Sure. Once La Guardia was shut down for over an hour, because flight-tracking information is carried between airports through Ma Bell's lines."

  "These service interruptions date back approximately three years."

  "Yeah. About that."

  "The same length of time since we tricked the Krahseevah into, we thought, destroying himself."

  "You don't think . . . ?"

  "The Krahseevah, you will recall, possessed the ability to make himself insubstantial. This enabled him to steal into high-security installations throughout the nation and make off with valuable technology for his Russian superiors. It was one of the last-gasp efforts of the former Soviet Union to achieve technological parity with the U.S., before their system finally collapsed of its own backwardness."

  "Don't remind me," Remo said sourly, glancing at the footage of their most aggravating opponent as it was replayed.

  "A side effect of this property was that if he energized the suit that provided him with this ability while holding an openline telephone, his unstable, dematerialized atoms and molecules would be sucked into the phone lines, much the way electrons travel as electricity, only to reintegrate, intact and alive, on the other end."

  "Yeah," Remo said bitterly. "He was a human fax. Chiun and I couldn't touch him, catch him, or stop him."

  "Until I devised a foolproof plan to destroy him," said Smith.

  "So much for foolproof," Remo pointed out.

  Smith's harsh voice softened, as if he were reliving the entire operation.

  "We set it up perfectly. A lure on an Air Force base."

  "I remember. We had a stealth plane that didn't exist. It was a hologram."

  "Designed to make the Krahseevah, when he turned off his suit in order to steal the prototype model, doubt the status of his molecular state."

  "It was good enough for me to get a good shot in."

  Chiun squeaked contrarily, "A proper blow, and we would not be having this problem!"

  "So? I only winged him. It happens."

  "Your repeated failures will go against us at the next negotiation!" Chiun said loudly. "But at least no blame will attach itself to our emperor. His head will be spared by the President, whoever that person will be this time."

  Remo said, "I think Chiun's trying to brown-nose you, Smitty."

  Smith ignored the outburst and went on: "The Krahseevah reacted as I thought he would. He went to the nearest phone and dialed the Soviet Embassy in Washington, from which he apparently operated. But the phone was programmed to dial only one number. That of a Folcroft phone."

  "Which you disconnected," Remo pointed out. "You said it would scatter the guy into a million dial tones."

  "The only explanation is that the Krahseevah has been caught up in the telephone system, wreaking havoc, and somehow emerged through one of the Rumpp Tower lines," Smith said.

  "Talk about a wrong number," Remo remarked glumly.

  "And I am responsible for it," Smith said, his voice aghast.

  "Okay, we know what's up. Now we just have to figure out how to stop this jerk."

  "There is more to it than that, Remo," Smith said slowly.

  "Yeah?"

  "Recall that Randal Rumpp had claimed credit for the events of this night. We have every reason to believe that Rumpp and the Krahseevah have joined forces."

  "So? Chiun and I are running a two-for-one Halloween special. We'll take them both out."

  "Not until we better understand the situation. Sit tight. I will get back to you."

  "Do not forget my trunk!" Chiun called, just as Smith hung up.

  Remo snapped his fingers. "Now I remember. That trunk! It was full of your shaman junk. The stuff you used to exorcise that missile base, before we knew we were dealing with a Russian sca
m and not poltergeist."

  Chiun gave his kimono skirts a resolute hitch. "We were dealing with dark forces. This time, we will deal with them intelligently and atone for our past failures."

  "Chiun, this is science, not magic. We gotta fight it scientifically."

  "White ignorance," Chiun scoffed.

  The TV began scrolling vertically. Absently, Remo stuck out his two outer fingers and folded back the middle pair and his thumb. He pointed them at the rising black transmission line and said, "There's no such thing as magic."

  The line followed Remo's fingers when he lifted them.

  "Machine-worshipper," Chiun spat.

  "Bulldookey," said Remo. The transmission line slipped back just before it got to the top edge of the tube and Remo caught it again. This time it followed his fingers until the picture was perfect once more.

  "When Emperor Smith instructs us to seek out this enemy," Chiun said firmly, "I will have my herbs and bells and you may attack it with a turbocharged hotcheese blaster, and we will see which is more effective."

  "There is no such thing as a turbocharged hotcheese blaster," Remo pointed out.

  "By morning, some greedy white tinkerer will have invented one. You may be first in line to purchase the worthless thing. Heh heh heh."

  Ignoring the dry cackling of the Master of Sinanju, Remo went to the hotel window.

  The Rumpp Tower was visible only a few blocks away. It was as dark as Remo's mood.

  "This is not going to be easy," he muttered unhappily.

  Chapter 24

  The Aeroflot flight that carried Major Yuli Batenin of the supersecret Russian organization known only as "Shield" out of Russia had to refuel in Minsk because of insufficient fuel. And again in Warsaw, Oslo, Reykjavik, and Halifax, Nova Scotia, because Areoflot's credit standing was so poor no airport was willing to fill the Ilyushin jet's fuel tanks.

  Inasmuch as few would accept Russian credit cards, they had to dig into their hard currency reserves at several stops.

  This left them with seriously reduced operating expenses by the time the wheels touched down at Kennedy International Airport, chosen not only for its geographical proximity to the operations field but because it was more open to illegal entry than the Texas border.

  "We must pool funds," Batenin told the captain in charge of the operation, whose name was Igor Gerkoff.