"It was your behavior that was inexcusable," Chiun accused, his hazel eyes burning. "And in front of Smith's lackey, no less. How do you expect to curry favor with him when your every word is an assault?"
"Hmm. Let me think about that one," Remo said, tipping his head in mock thought. "Oh, yeah. I don't."
Spinning, he marched out into the corridor. The Master of Sinanju flounced after him.
"Are you so resistant to change?" Chiun asked, bouncing along at his elbow. "You cannot be blind to Smith's age."
"You're a lot older than him and you do okay."
"Even you are not so stupid, Remo," Chiun said. "Everything that is not Sinanju is less than Sinanju. Smith, while an adequate emperor, is just a man. We need to think about a contingency plan if the unthinkable happens."
"Unthinkable means you don't think about it."
"One of us must think once in a while," Chiun said. "May the gods have mercy on us if that someone is you."
They were at the fire exit. Remo stopped dead. "Always the goddamn mercenary," he muttered. Chiun's back stiffened.
"I do what I must to feed the people of Sinanju," he sniffed. "And they are fortunate that they have me to rely on. If it were up to you, we would be sending the babies home to the sea, their bellies swollen with hunger."
"I got news for you," Remo said. "It already is up to me. Half the gold that goes to those fat-faced freeloaders is my paycheck. Anytime now they're gonna be all my responsibility, so back off."
For an instant, Chiun seemed to expect more from Remo, but the younger man merely turned away.
Remo slapped the fire door open, ducking into the stairwell. Chiun slipped through behind him.
"The coffers of Mad Harold are deep," Chiun argued, his voice growing subdued. "Given his health, we cannot afford to squander every opportunity to dance attendance on his heir."
"Tell you what. You dance-I'll sit this one out."
"If you cannot be pleasant at least remain silent," Chiun said. "I will curry favor with him."
On the ground-floor landing Remo paused. "You're amazing, you know that?" he laughed mirthlessly. "You're the one who's always beating me over the head with the scrolls of Sinanju. You're always going on about tradition this and the lesson-of-Master-that, but the minute your mood of the moment doesn't gibe with your so-called sacred history, you chuck five thousand years of Sinanju precepts into the fire in exchange for cold hard cash." He crossed his arms. "Or have you forgotten about Wo-Ti?"
The wrinkles of Chiun's face grew very flat. "What of him?" he said dully.
"'No Master of Sinanju shall serve a succeeding emperor,'" Remo recited by rote. "Wo-Ti got that from getting stuck serving two pharaohs in a row."
The flesh around the old Korean's mouth tightened. "I will not be given a lesson in Sinanju history by you," Chiun intoned, his voice steel.
"Why? Because I'm right and you're wrong? Wo-Ti's lesson has been passed down from Master to Master for centuries, but when the bank account gets threatened we just conveniently shove it to one side and slap on a set of blinders. Problem solved. But there is still a problem, Chiun, and you know it. What's more, I know it, because you're the one who hammered it into my skull." He exhaled hotly. "Just forget it. I'm outta here," he snarled.
His final word delivered, Remo spun away from his teacher. He shoved the outside door open and strode angrily out into the morning light. When the door slammed shut, the walls of the stairwell shook from the force.
Alone on the landing, the Master of Sinanju remained fixed in place. His face unreadable, he studied the door through razor-slitted eyes.
In another, younger time Chiun might have been furious at such an outburst from his pupil. But things were different now. Remo's emotions were not his own. The younger Master of Sinanju had encountered too much difficulty of late. And there was the promise of more looming just over the horizon. Remo's anger was in part due to his frustration. His spirit understood that something momentous was coming, but his mind could not yet see it.
This was only part of why the old Korean could not be angry at Remo for having the temerity to quote the lesson of Wo-Ti to him, the Reigning Master.
Chiun could not rebuke his pupil for his insolence because in his heart he knew that Remo was right. As Reigning Master, Chiun was custodian of the most sacred teachings of Sinanju. Yet in that moment Remo had proved himself the better guardian of the traditions of their ancient discipline.
In the wan light of the stairwell, Chiun's thin beard quivered. His hands were clenched impotently at his sides.
After a long moment he turned away from the door. Stone-faced, the old Asian padded down the stairs to the basement. To be alone with his troubled thoughts.
Chapter 6
It was a room without sunlight. Cold and shadowy. Four rows of weak yellow lights were caged by rusty steel grates. Many of the bulbs were burned out. The few that remained illuminated the water-damaged ceiling in uneven patches. The ceiling of the cavernous gymnasium was so high the lights hadn't been replaced. For years they'd been allowed to wink out, one after the other. A tiny galaxy of dull stars heading inexorably to extinction. To the utter, consuming dark of nothingness.
There had been windows at one time. But that was long ago. To see the sun now, imagination had to be employed to remove the bricks that had been stacked on the sills.
The perpetual night of this room was fitting, For the individual who sat alone on the dirty floor in that big, drafty space, there was no sun. For Anna Chutesov, there was only the darkness.
Somewhere in the distant bowels of the building, men worked. Anna could hear them from where she sat. Scratching like rats in the walls of the Institute.
The Institute. The greatest secret to be carried over from the ashes of the old Soviet Union.
For years it was not like this. Not only would strangers not be allowed to enter this, one of the most secure buildings in all of Moscow, but they would have been shot in the attempt.
All was different now.
Anna didn't bother to go check on the men who scurried from room to far-off room. There was nothing left to hide.
Well, that was not entirely true. But the most damning secrets left within the walls of the Institute were secure enough, hidden in two places. In the safe in her office and in the brain of Anna Chutesov herself. And so the men worked and Anna sat.
She was a stunningly beautiful woman. Her high-cheekboned features, eyes of ice-blue and a fringe of honey-blond hair were the perfect camouflage for the mind within. Anna's looks could draw men like moths to a flame, but it was her intelligence that kept them coming back.
Right now, Anna's keen mind was trained on but one thought. How long had it been since the world had collapsed?
Was it three days? A week? She couldn't even be sure precisely when it occurred. Couldn't pinpoint a moment. She only knew that it had happened during her ill-fated trip to the United States.
For a time in the last great days of the Cold War, Anna Chutesov had been one of the Soviet Union's top agents and adviser to a succession of Soviet leaders. Though professionally she had always been at the top of her game, she retired from active field duty under a very personal cloud. On her last mission some thirteen years ago, Anna faked her own death and went underground. After her return from the West, she assumed a top-secret post back in Moscow. She became head of the mysterious Institute.
And there she worked in darkness, squirreled away from the prying eyes of a world that thought her dead. But her years in seclusion didn't last. Despite her plans, circumstances forced her back into the field.
She recently journeyed to America to eliminate a former Russian general whose crazed actions threatened to expose one of the most dangerous and shameful secrets in her country's recent history. The mission was fraught with peril, and eventually brought Anna face-to-face with the very thing that had caused her to flee her former life.
While in California to track down General Boris Feyodov, An
na bumped into Remo Williams, an American agent with whom she had once had an intimate relationship.
Anna had always harbored a fear of seeing Remo after all these years. She assumed he would be unforgiving of, even hostile to, her deception. But to her surprise he was remarkably accepting. Especially given the fact that it was because of him she had feigned death so long ago.
Anna soon came to realize that Remo had changed in their years apart. It was a subtle thing that he himself probably didn't see, but he had a self-confidence that was absent before. He'd always been cocky. Aggravatingly so. But now he had the self-assuredness to back it up.
No, in her mission to stop Boris Feyodov, the worst thing wasn't seeing Remo again. The most terrible, frightening thing happened thousands of miles away-here, in Moscow. In the big concrete Institute building.
Upon her return, Anna found the building open wide. The chains that wrapped the main gates, which were meant to be locked in perpetuity, were cut.
Fortunately, the Institute had a reputation in the surrounding neighborhood of Kitai Gorod. It had sprung from the dying days of the Soviet empire when mobs demanding freedom had taken to the streets.
At that time all government buildings were coming under attack. Though the nature of what went on inside was unknown, the Institute would not be spared. But when angry crowds began to swarm the streets outside, demanding an end to seventy years of failed Communist rule, something strange began to happen. People started dropping dead.
There were no soldiers visible or bullets fired. The windows to the building were sealed, preventing the use of more exotic weapons by the faceless men hidden away inside. But still the bodies in the street piled up.
Some in the mob feared gas or some form of chemical weapon. Most dismissed this as unlikely, for whatever it was seemed to kill indiscriminately. A man would drop dead while his friends on either side were spared. And so an explanation was quickly decided on by the people of Kitai Gorod, The big sinister building with no windows and a chain around the only door was quite obviously haunted. During the days of civil unrest that brought an end to the Soviet era, the mobs began to cut a wide swath around the Institute and the deadly spirits that dwelled inside.
Anna had always found the superstitions embarrassing. Such ludicrous notions were the reason much of the world saw Russia as a backward nation. But when she returned three days ago to find the gates wide open to the street, she was thankful for the big ugly building's reputation. These days an open door in Russia was an invitation to looters and squatters and virtually everyone else in this crumbling, lawless society. Fear of the supernatural was the only thing that kept the people from sneaking in through the open door and stealing the nails from out of the very walls.
Not to say there was nothing to be afraid of at the Institute. It was only the fear of a building that she found ludicrous. After all, a building was just a building. For Anna Chutesov, the true thing to fear was that which had escaped into the world through that wide-open door.
After getting over her initial shock at the security breach, Anna realized she had to report this terrible news. On a good day it was a risky proposition to attempt to use the Moscow telephone system. On this day it could have been suicidal. Anna sped to the Kremlin.
She was ushered into a paneled conference room that would have been stylish in the early 1960s, but was now hopelessly out-of-date. She had left that old-fashioned room only one hour before. The president of Russia still sat at the desk where she'd left him, a celebratory vodka bottle at his elbow. His sharp eyes smiled up at Anna Chutesov.
"Ah, you have changed your mind," the president slurred. "You have decided to join me for a drink after all."
He fetched her a glass from a silver tray.
"No, sir, I have not," Anna had announced crisply. "I have come to report a danger. Perhaps the greatest threat to ever face our country."
The president's thin eyebrows rose skeptically. "Russia has faced down many threats," he said. "The Tartars, the Troubled Times, the Narodnaya Volya. The worst threat ever was stopped by you yourself just this week."
Anna didn't bother to explain to him that the things he had named from Russia's history were far worse than the recent events that had occupied her in America.
He waved his empty glass. Anna noted how small his fingers were. Like a child's.
"If this is your attempt, Anna Chutesov, to increase funding to the Institute, I am sorry to say that it is not possible. There is no more money to be found in all of Russia. Despite your stellar work in this crisis, you already receive a generous part of the secret budget."
Anna shook her head. "This is not about money," she insisted. "Only an idiot would use a crisis of this magnitude to attempt to extort a budgetary increase."
The president neglected to mention that he was forever hearing complaints from cabinet officials, each one declaring a greater crisis than the last, each assuring the president that this whatever-it-was crisis could only be solved by more money. Directed, of course, at each official's own agency.
He didn't say any of this because he was speaking to Anna Chutesov, one of the brightest minds he had ever encountered. Not only would she already know all this, it wasn't in her nature to state anything other than cold, hard facts. That was part of her appeal as an adviser.
Despite his earlier reservations, the president sat up straighter. He set his glass to his desk with a click. "What is wrong?" he asked.
"Only the worst crisis to befall our country since our earliest wars with the Byzantine Empire."
As those dire words were sinking in, she quickly informed him of her discovery at the Institute.
"I scoured the entire building before coming here," she concluded urgently. "They were nowhere to be found."
At last beginning to grasp the nature of the problem, the president of Russia touched his tongue to his thin upper lip.
"As I understand it, you kept them confined for years. Perhaps they have gone to visit friends or family members. It is possible they will be back."
"No," Anna said firmly. "They were not prisoners. They were allowed several weeks of leave every year. And they knew where the special entrance was. The fact that they did not use it is not insignificant. Furthermore, the fact that the chain was broken and the gate was left open was a sign."
"From whom?" the president asked.
Anna shook her head gravely. "I do not know," she replied. "For security purposes there were no cameras inside, so I don't know what happened during my absence. I only know that which I found upon my return. And it puts not only me in danger, but you and the previous two occupants of your office, as well, for they knew of this. It is not an understatement, sir, to say that with them on the loose, our nation is at risk like never before."
But although the president appeared to understand the problem, he did not-could not-grasp its full enormity.
"World War II, Anna Chutesov," he said, shaking his head. "There were Germans within spitting distance of Moscow. That was a true threat to Russia. This cannot possibly be compared to the great dangers of our history."
But Anna's ice-blue eyes never wavered. "If that is your attitude, Mr. President," she insisted ominously, "you do not truly understand the peril we now face."
And with no further way to impress the gravity of this situation on the president of Russia, Anna gave up. She returned to the empty Institute building to sit in the shadows on the floor of the musty old gymnasium and listen to the workmen far away.
As she was staring into the dusty corner, she heard the sounds of voices approaching. Two men came into the gym from the dark hallway. They carted with them an old dresser lying atop a rusted bed. Another man followed in their wake. The pushcart he rolled before him was stacked high with eight surplus Red Army footlockers. The wheels of the dolly squeaked as it rolled past Anna.
"Are you certain of this?" one of the men carrying the old bed asked Anna. He was no more than fifty, but looked eighty. Such was the toll tak
en on the human body and spirit in the modern Russia. The veins in his swollen nose were broken from years of too much drink.
Anna didn't even look up. She was staring somewhere near their shoes. She nodded.
"All of the beds, bureaus, nightstands. Take it all," she said darkly.
Anna didn't bother to tell them that she had removed and burned anything incriminating from the footlockers. Nor would they care. She had picked these men at random from the streets and offered them all of the furniture inside the Institute free of charge. They were eager to get the pieces out of the building and to the bazaar before she changed her mind.
Hurrying through the gymnasium, they headed out the far door. It led to the underground parking garage, which fed out to the street through the gate that was no longer locked.
As they were carting their prizes away, another man entered from the interior door.
He didn't move like the men with the furniture.
There was no huffing and puffing and stomping of feet. He walked with a more confident glide, like that of a ballet dancer. Indeed, he had been drafted from the ranks of the Bolshoi.
When he stopped before her, Anna's eyes rose reluctantly to meet his. He was thin and short, with delicate features and a slightly receding hairline.
"I may have found something," the man offered hopefully.
Anna didn't bother to mention how unlikely that was. It was too soon. No one-not even a man-would be fool enough to show his hand this quickly. "Yes, Sergei?" she asked with a reluctant sigh.
"It is a news story from the Internet. A number of men have turned up dead in Alaska. Oil pipeline workers and soldiers. Their killers are unknown."
Anna considered his words. As she was thinking, the three men returned from the street. They wheeled the empty dolly into the gymnasium.
"More, Sergei," Anna said. "We need more than that."
The young man seemed to want to say more, but the three men with the cart were passing by. Sergei kept his mouth shut until they had squeaked back through the door into the main building. Once they were gone, he turned back to Anna.
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