"That way," the Master of Sinanju announced. A bony finger pointed to a nearby door.
Remo had traced the vibrations back to the same point. The heavy wooden door surrendered to a kick. It led into a short corridor. At the far end, another door opened into a massive chamber.
The room was as big as a theater, with a flat gymnasium floor that stretched out to black walls. There were no windows. All around the room, huge screens hung from the walls. Though turned off, the screens seemed alive with some sort of faint liquid energy.
Robbie MacGulry sat patiently on a chair in the middle of the room. A pedestal with a monitor was fastened to the floor before him.
"Welcome to the Big Room, gentlemen," the Vox CEO said. No longer amplified by speakers, his voice seemed small.
If MacGulry could see them, it was not in the conventional way. The media mogul wore a helmet that looked as if it had been swiped from the set of a scifi movie. The thick black visor was down, obscuring his face.
As soon as they were in the room, a steel door whooshed down from above, replacing the wooden one and sealing the two Sinanju Masters in the room.
"I don't like the looks of this," Remo said warily.
"You shouldn't, mate," Robbie MacGulry called from far across the room. "And you should have joined me when you had the chance. I've got Friend trapped. I cut the telephone lines after he came back here. He's not going anywhere. With you two gone, it's clear sailing for me and Vox. Maybe I'll make the offer again to whoever's left standing."
Remo saw the small black remote control in MacGulry's hand.
He was too far away. There was nothing to throw. The thick door would take a minute to break through. All this passed through the mind of Remo Williams in the moment it took Robbie MacGulry to press a single button on his remote control. All around the room, the liquid TV screens came to glowing life.
The subliminal strobe light flashed. There was no way to get away from it.
Remo saw his face and that of the Master of Sinanju. Huge on the thirty-foot-tall screens. Flashing alternately. Superimposed over both images, the same words repeating: Kill him... kill him... kill him...
Remo felt the displacement of air to his right.
He spun in time to see the Master of Sinanju-eyes blank-lashing out.
Chiun's face was a mass of wrinkles, illuminated in microsecond bursts by hypnotic light. A single bony hand flew at Remo's throat.
Luck and speed had been on Remo's side in New York. He hoped this would be the case now, for in that mortal moment before Chiun's blow registered, Remo realized that the death of one Master of Sinanju might be the only way the other could escape this place of horrors alive.
Chapter 31
Remo braced for the attack. His hands shot up instinctively to ward off the killing blows.
But in the instant before his hand reached Remo's throat, the Master of Sinanju's expression suddenly changed. The blank stare flashed to a look of deep annoyance. For that sliver in time he looked himself again.
Remo hesitated. And in that moment of uncertainty, Chiun's darting hand shot through his pupil's defenses.
Remo had but a split second to come to terms with his imminent death. But instead of a killing blow, a scolding hand smacked Remo hard on the side of the head. Afterward, Chiun's hands retreated inside the sleeves of his kimono.
"Let that be a lesson to all who would dismiss the abilities of the elderly," the old man sniffed haughtily.
Remo rubbed the side of his head. "That hurt," he groused.
"The best lessons come from pain."
Remo looked around the room, baffled. The cryptosubliminal signal was still pulsing from all around the huge liquid TV screens. There was his face, with an order to kill him. Yet the Master of Sinanju hadn't succumbed.
"Hey, Rolf Harris," Remo called over to Robbie MacGulry. "I think you better call a repairman. Your hypno-screens are on the fritz."
MacGulry had already realized something was wrong. With frantic fingers he was poking buttons on his remote control.
"There is nothing wrong with his devices," the Master of Sinanju explained impatiently.
"But it worked on you before. I don't get it."
"That is why I am Master and you are whatever it is you are. When you learn, please tell me."
As the screens continued to flash worthless commands, Chiun swept past his baffled pupil.
"This isn't right," MacGulry snapped as he worked his remote. "You two should be ripping each other to shreds like wild dingos right now."
And then his puzzlement no longer mattered. He punched a final button and the floor opened up and swallowed the media magnate whole. By the time Remo and Chiun reached the spot where MacGulry had been, a steel plate had already slid over the section of floor, sealing the Vox chairman below.
"You wanna tell me why you're not trying to kill me?" Remo asked.
"Years of practice," Chiun replied thinly. "Are you going to help, or are you just going to stand there asking insulting questions?"
Chiun dropped to his knees. Slender fingertips found the edge of the sliding metal door.
Remo joined his teacher at the trapdoor's edge. When they pushed, there came a distant groan of grinding gears. The panel inched back. All at once there came a snap-snap-snap and the door shot open. Remo and Chiun dropped through the opening.
The room below was a steel-lined box. Through the walls they could hear the sound of computer mainframes humming.
"Three guesses where Mr. Microchips ended up," Remo said.
Robbie MacGulry was a few feet away, a terrified look on his tanned face. He had flung his helmet to the floor and was banging madly on a sealed door. "Let me out!" the Vox chairman screamed.
"I think we're gonna have to slap a parents advisory on the next minute or two," Remo said. MacGulry wheeled. When he saw Remo and Chiun approaching, he banged harder on the door.
"Open up, please!"
"Probably TV-V-L should do it," Remo concluded. "Violence and language. We can avoid the usual Vox sex S Unless you take off your pants, in which case I can guarantee you the V is gonna get a lot more V-ish."
MacGulry spun. He waved a threatening finger. "You can't hurt me. I've got billions!"
Remo snapped the finger in two. MacGulry screamed, falling to his knees.
"First the Chevy Chase talk show, now this. You ever get tired of being wrong?" Remo asked.
"All my money!" the Vox chairman cried. "It's yours! All of it!"
"No," said Remo.
"Did you say billions?" Chiun asked.
"Stop doing that," Remo said. To MacGulry he said, "Friend blabbed about us to you. Who else knows about us?"
"No one," MacGulry insisted. He was cradling his injured hand. "My employees have only seen your pictures. Your first names for some of the signals. They don't know who you are."
"Okay, here's the biggee. If g'day is Australian for hello, what do you say for goodbye?"
MacGulry's maroon face drew up in confusion. "Hooroo?" he replied.
"Well, hooroo to you with bells on," Remo said. Remo's hand darted forward. MacGulry didn't have a chance to even think about getting out of the way before Remo's cupped palm was slapping over his mouth. The hand tugged away just as fast. With it came a sucking pop.
Robbie MacGulry felt an uncontrollable urge to vomit.
But it was more than just that, he soon found, for what launched up his throat was big and slippery and much larger and more disgusting than anything he could possibly have eaten. The big slippery something vomited out of his mouth and flopped like a wriggling red fish on the floor. Slimy tendrils hung like living thread from his mouth.
In a moment of shocked clarity, Robbie MacGulry realized he was staring down at his own disgorged lungs. Between them, he saw his own heart issuing its final feeble beats.
He was surprised. His heart wasn't black like a lot of people had claimed over the years. It was very ordinary, just a bluish-reddish heart, just like everyone else's. For
an instant Robbie MacGulry wondered why the censors hadn't put a blue dot over his wiggling lungs or pixelated out his heart. Then he remembered this wasn't a Vox TV special When Billionaires Turn Inside Out!, which was a shame because he was sure he could have pulled a thirty share with something like that. Then he didn't care about ratings anymore because his inside-out heart had stopped beating and he was pitching face-first in the pile of goo that had been his own insides.
"That was new," the Master of Sinanju said of the technique his pupil had employed on the media tycoon. He nodded approval at the body on the floor.
"A little something I've been toying with," Remo said. "The suction part works fine, but some of these guys should come with built-in spit valves."
He wiped his hand on the leg of his pants.
The two men turned for the door. The moment they did, an electronic hum issued from above their heads. With a whir, the trapdoor through which they'd dropped shot closed. Deep in the ceiling they heard latches clamping shut.
"We are not alone," the Master of Sinanju said. As he spoke, nozzles dropped out of the ceiling fire sprinklers. With a hiss, vaporous white clouds began to vent into the small room.
"Great," Remo groused. "Poison gas."
Both men took in deep lungfuls of air just before the gas cloud reached them. As the room filled with poison, they turned to the exit.
The door was made of sturdy stuff. It took a dozen kicks from both men to finally buckle the door. With a cry of metal and a burst of concrete, it exploded into an adjacent corridor. The poisonous cloud flooded out.
The air was clearing by the time they reached the antechamber with its collection of mainframes. The room was identical to the one back at the Wollongong TV station.
"Hello, Remo. Hello, Chiun."
The smooth voice of Friend came from a pair of speakers set into the side of the lone computer that the group of black mainframes serviced.
Remo crossed his arms. "Just one question before we pull the plug on you, RAM-job. How did you get out of the XL SysCorp building? The place was a mess. I even went back afterward to get rid of those VLSI chips."
"I can't say for certain," Friend's warm voice answered. "My recollection before coming here isn't clear. It would seem my program wasn't stored on any of the chips you speak of."
"It speaks the obvious," Chiun sniffed.
"Remo, Chiun, perhaps it was poor business judgment to seek you out. Tell me, do you think it would have been more profitable in the long run to have left you alone?"
"Never smart to come after the best," Remo replied honestly. "Besides, even smart machines make stupid moves. For instance, if you know so much about us, why did you get Smith to shoot at me? You knew he couldn't hit me."
"Unfortunately, my records on Harold Smith were incomplete. I had hoped that the element of surprise would effectively neutralize you. Perhaps with you here, my final attack on him will be more successful."
"What do you mean final attack?" Remo asked.
"Before you destroyed the Wollongong facility, I managed to send a final subliminal command. It was an order to kill your employer. Since Robbie-who was not really my friend and who trapped me down here-cut all the telephone lines, it's unlikely you can warn Harold in time. It is hundreds of miles back to the nearest telephone. Unless you have a cell phone. Do you?"
Remo's expression was dark. "No."
"Pity. I was hoping to offer this information in exchange for my freedom. Oh, well. Harold Smith will be dead soon. Please understand, Remo, Chiun, it was nothing personal. It was all strictly business."
"We prefer to mix business with pleasure, right, Little Father?"
Chiun offered a slight nod. Like a shot, the Master of Sinanju's hands and feet lashed out. The drive system supported by the slave mainframes buckled and collapsed. As the old man worked the left, Remo attacked from the other direction. When the central computer was destroyed, both men worked their way around the room, smashing every upright support mainframe.
"You think he was leveling with us about Smith?" Remo asked once the entire isolated computer network was reduced to rubble.
Chiun's face was impassive. "Yes," he replied. "However, we need not worry. Emperor Smith is resilient."
"I don't know," Remo said. "I've got a bad feeling this time. We better get the lead out." Frowning, Remo quickly picked through the debris. He found every last VLSI chip. He snapped each and every one of the chips in turn into increasingly smaller bits. What was left he tossed in a pail from a maintenance closet down the hallway. He took the bucket to a bathroom, dumping the tiny shards into the toilet. Chiun pressed the handle.
Both men watched as the last of the VLSI chip remnants washed from sight.
"What do you know?" Remo commented. "It does drain clockwise."
When the two men left the room, Remo tossed the empty bucket to the tile floor.
Chapter 32
"Are you sure?" Smith asked.
The CURE director stood cautiously just inside the door of Mark Howard's office. He was wearing his heavy overcoat. His right hand was tucked deep in his pocket.
As had been the case several times throughout the course of the day, the assistant CURE director had called Smith into the room only after he'd lowered his computer monitor from sight. Thankfully, it looked as if this would be the last time such a precaution would be necessary.
"The reports have been confirmed," Mark Howard replied excitedly. "Robbie MacGulry's Wollongang station is officially off-line. It's been all over the news over there. The story is just starting to break in the U.S. By the sounds of it, MacGulry must not be very popular with his employees. There are all kinds of disgruntled staffers talking anonymously to the press. They're admitting the mind-control technology belongs to Vox, not BCN."
"What of MacGulry?" Smith asked.
Sitting behind the desk, Mark smiled. "Hightailed it back to his Queensland ranch. No one's been able to reach him for hours. I checked. All the phone lines are dead."
After seeing all the computer equipment Vox had shipped to both locations, Smith had agreed that the TV station and MacGulry's mansion were the likeliest locations for Friend's intelligence to find refuge. Remo and Chiun had obviously destroyed the TV facility. If Friend had fled to MacGulry's mansion, he would not have cut off his only route of escape by severing the phone lines. Therefore someone else had. "It's over," Smith concluded.
"That's what I figured," Howard said, relief in his youthful voice. "Remo and Chiun chased him to MacGulry's house and slammed the door shut behind him."
"So it would seem."
Mark felt a wave of weariness wash over him. Adrenaline had been keeping the exhaustion at bay ever since Remo brought him out of his sedated slumber.
"You should go home, Dr. Smith," Mark said. "I'll stay here and wait for Remo's call. He'll need me to make arrangements for their flight back."
"Not necessary. Remo can get seats on a commercial flight. If there are any problems, he can contact me on my briefcase phone." Smith offered a paternal frown. "Go home, Mark. I think we've all earned a rest."
Howard nodded. "All right," he sighed. "I won't make you twist my arm. Let me just do one last quick check online. Five minutes, I promise."
"Very well," Smith said.
Mark's fingers found the hidden button below the desk and his monitor and keyboard rose obediently before him. The keyboard clattered beneath his precise fingertips.
The desk had been Smith's in the early days of CURE, right up until a few years ago. As he watched Mark Howard work, Smith had a strange feeling that he was glimpsing a part of the secret agency's history. In a way it was like seeing himself forty years younger.
Leaving Mark to his work, Smith stepped from the office.
There was a wooden chair sitting in the hall outside the door.
Fearing the subliminal pulses that might emanate from his assistant's computer, Smith had opted not to stay in Mark Howard's office. For much of the day the CURE di
rector had been sitting in that chair. It reminded him of his first real position of authority, back when he was a hall monitor outside Miss Ashford's first-grade class at Putney Day School in his native Vermont.
Smith carried the chair into the empty office next to Howard's, leaving it in a dark corner. After that, he went downstairs. In a storage room in the basement he found an old steel cabinet. Unlocking the doors, Smith finally pulled his hand from his overcoat pocket.
In his gnarled fingers was a tranquilizer gun.
He'd been carrying the weapon all day. He couldn't let Mark know about it. If he had, it might have given Howard a strategic advantage if the young man had come under the influence of Friend's subliminal signals.
Smith placed the tranquilizer gun on a shelf next to its mate. He locked the door and went back upstairs.
When he passed Mark Howard's office, he found the door locked. No light came from beneath it. His assistant had gone home for the night. Smith decided to follow the young man's lead.
He returned to his own office, collected his briefcase, hat and scarf and headed down the fire stairs. Smith was surprised to find someone waiting for him when he pushed open the steel fire door.
Smith recognized Detective Davic. He suddenly remembered that he was supposed to meet with the Rye police officer the previous day to discuss Folcroft's escaped John Doe. But Smith had first fallen under Friend's hypnotic spell and then had been so distracted the past twenty-four hours he hadn't given the missed meeting a second thought.
Now here was Davic waiting for Smith outside late at night with a strange look in his eyes. There was something about that glazed look that tripped concern in Harold Smith.
Smith didn't have time to think much about his concerns. Even as he stepped from the building, Detective Davic was lifting something into the air. The something was small and black and had been hidden at the detective's side.
Detective Ronald Davic of the Rye police force aimed his revolver at Harold W. Smith.
A thousand darting thoughts flew on panicked wings through Smith's mind.
Smith's Army-issue Colt automatic was back in its usual hiding spot in a cigar box in his desk drawer. He had no other weapon on him. Even the tranquilizer gun he had been carrying all day was locked away once more.
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