The hood slipped beyond the gleaming window of an apothecary shop. It turned up an alley and was gone.
Before the figure had disappeared, Chiun was off.
Pipe-stem legs pumped furiously as he bounded across the road in front of the hall.
The crowd seemed possessed by some reflexive instinct of preservation, for it parted as if connected to a single mind. The split formed across the park, beneath the giant statue's shadow and over to the distant street. And through the new-formed passage-a wall of human flesh on either side-flew the Master of Sinanju.
Sandals barely brushed sidewalk as he raced past the apothecary shop with its hanging crystals and jars of herbs. His path free of people and now at a full sprint, Chiun raced up the alley.
Hazel eyes searched for a face that mocked the grave.
The long alley was deserted. Chiun was a blur.
Past bundled trash bags and broken asphalt he ran. The Main Street alley fed into a narrower gap between a pair of two-story buildings. And on the street beyond, Chiun caught up with the fleeing figure.
The black hood was racing to a parked car. Upon exiting the alley, the Master of Sinanju stopped dead. The hems of his red silk kimono fluttered to angry stillness. Like a peal of furious thunder, his booming voice rang out across the empty street.
"Hold, deceiver of the Void!" Chiun commanded.
Chiun's tone was enough to freeze the black-clad figure in its tracks. Slender fingers clutched the handle of the driver's door.
With a few quick strides Chiun shed the shadowed mouth of the dark alley. He stopped behind the immobile figure.
"Why have you returned from the dead?" he demanded.
The hand finally slipped from the door handle. "I was never dead." Though the voice was soft, it was not apologetic. The shoulders remained proudly erect.
"My son thought you so, and so you were," Chiun said.
The figure turned slowly to him. The black hood hung low over eyes as cold as steel.
"Did you not think I was dead, as well?"
Chiun stomped his foot. "That does not matter," he insisted. "You were dishonest to make him believe you no longer lived. And now-at the most precarious time of his Masterhood-you return. Remo cannot afford you as a distraction. You will go. Now and forever. Leave this land and never return."
"You stop me only to order me to go?"
"Pah!" Chiun waved. "You were not going anywhere. You are on some fool errand for your Kremlin lords. Now that Remo has dispatched your men, you would be forced to lurch and blunder around yourself. I will not allow your path to cross my son's. I tell you now, leave not only this province, but this nation, lest you bear the wrath of the Master of Sinanju."
Two small hands reached up and the hood finally came down, revealing a short crop of honey-blond hair and a familiar high-cheekboned face.
"I cannot go. Not yet."
Chiun's expression began to harden when his sensitive ears suddenly detected swift footfalls behind him. With flashing hands, he grabbed for the door.
One bony hand clutched the handle, the other held firm to the cloaked figure's bicep when Remo came exploding from the alley mouth an instant later. The younger Master of Sinanju's eyes darkened when he spied his teacher.
"I've been looking all over for you," Remo groused. "Next time you badger me into snuffing out a Russian hit squad, I'd appreciate it if you did at least two seconds of actual work before punching off the clock for your afternoon rice break." Face still a scowl, he glanced at the figure Chiun was manhandling into the car. "Hiya," he added.
He looked momentarily back to Chiun. Then his face fell.
For an instant the world stood still. Remo's head snapped back around.
When his eyes alighted once more on the stranger's face, anything Remo might have wanted to say froze in his throat.
Eyes growing wide in shock, his jaw dropped open. He seemed desperate to speak, but could not. He looked the figure up, then down.
Remo wheeled on Chiun. The Master of Sinanju's wrinkled countenance was pinched into an unhappy knot.
"Chiun?" Remo asked, bewildered.
"Go back to the center of town and wait for me," the old man advised darkly. "No good can come of this, my son."
Remo spun back to the Institute director. "This can't be," he insisted.
With a frustrated hiss, the old Korean released his grip on the head of Russia's secret Institute. "Your eyes do not deceive," the Master of Sinanju insisted angrily.
The Russian agent nodded gentle agreement. There seemed a hint of shame in the movement.
It was almost too much for Remo to take. A swirl of emotion, confusion, amazement, spiraled around him in a crazed, impossible kaleidoscope. For what seemed an infinite moment, he lost all voice, all reason. When he finally caught up with his swirling thoughts, it was as if the one word he spoke echoed up a ten-year-old tunnel that led to the depths of his very soul.
"Anna?" Remo Williams asked. His voice was small and faraway.
And with equal emotion, buried under a practiced veneer of cold rationality, Anna Chutesov nodded sharply.
Chapter 15
They stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity. It was Remo who finally broke the silence. "You're dead," he insisted.
"Obviously not," Anna replied. She shot an uncomfortable glance at the Master of Sinanju.
"Oh, no," Remo snapped. "No. You're not gonna worm out of this one. I saw you dead."
"Impossible," Anna said. "What you should ask yourself is, did you see me die?"
Remo opened his mouth to speak, his finger raised authoritatively. Sudden memory made him hesitate. "You see?" Anna said, nodding. "You remember. You did not see me die, nor could you have, because it is apparent that I did not."
"A situation easily remedied," offered the Master of Sinanju thinly.
"Back off, Chiun," Remo snapped. He was regaining his senses. The shock of seeing Anna Chutesov after so many years was worse than any physical blow. "But Mr. Gordons killed you," he said to Anna, some of the fight draining from him. "He was wearing your face when I kicked his mechanical ass years ago."
"Gordons," Anna nodded. "The android that was programmed by your space agency to take any form that would aid in its survival. He looked like me, you say?"
"He was you by way of Xerox and Lockheed-Martin," Remo said. "But, yeah, he looked like you when we zapped him."
"I suspected as much," Anna said, pleased with her deduction. "It determined that mine was a form that would aid its survival. It hoped to confuse you, a plan that I gather failed, given the fact that you both still live."
"Maybe it didn't fail," Remo said, suddenly cautious. "I took out its central processor." He took a step back.
"You did not," Chiun sniffed. "It was I who slew the mandroid that time."
"No, it was the amusement park that time, Little Father," Remo said. With narrowed eyes he studied Anna.
"I know where it was," Chiun said haughtily. "And we were not amused."
"No matter which one of us whacked the robot that time, we still met up with him twice. since then," Remo pointed out. "He's like the wind-up version of Freddy Krueger. He keeps coming back with a new Roman numeral tacked to his caboose. Who's to say this isn't him again?"
Chiun shook his head. "The machine man is dead," he said firmly.
"Yes, Remo," Anna begged. "Do not complicate this any further. I tried to shoot Gordons. When that had no effect, I determined that there was only one prudent course of action available to me."
"Which was?"
Anna shrugged. "I ran."
"And Gordons didn't follow?" Remo said skeptically.
"You were its enemy, not me," Anna said logically. "After I fled, it must have decided that since we were allies, it would muddy the waters by transforming itself into my likeness." She nodded appreciatively. "A strategy that I would probably take under the same circumstances."
"My point exactly," Remo said. "How do I know you'
re not wearing a set of tin-plated long johns under that Captain Marvel cape?"
Anna considered but a moment. When she lunged at Remo an instant later, he braced for an attack. He arrested the forward lethal movement of his own hand when-instead of striking him-Anna grabbed him by the shoulders and planted her lips firmly on his.
Remo tensed. After a few seconds he relaxed. A moment later his arms fell limp at his sides. Beside them the Master of Sinanju's wrinkled face tightened into a tangle of disgust.
"Stop that this instant," he snapped. "I endured my fill of this vulgar exhibitionism back when I did not have a heart condition." Though they were harsh, there was a worried undertone to his words.
Anna and Remo unlocked lips. Despite her best efforts, the Russian agent's pale cheeks were flushed.
"Okay, no android kisses like that," Remo admitted.
Embarrassed by her lack of physical control, Anna looked down, brushing wrinkles from her long, dark cloak.
"I am sorry to hear about your heart problem," she muttered to Chiun.
"He doesn't have anything wrong with his heart," Remo said. He was still staring at Anna in disbelief.
"Yes, I do, O heartless one," Chiun disagreed. "And it is aggravated by proximity to aging Russian harlots. Go this instant," he instructed Anna, "lest your presence alone causes me to drop dead on this very street corner."
He pulled open Anna's car door. Remo slapped it shut.
"A clone," Remo announced. "Maybe the Russians grew another you in a test tube."
"Now you are being ridiculous." Anna scowled.
"Yes," Chiun agreed. "Russia has always produced more than sufficient numbers of prostitutes without having to resort to unholy means."
Anna pointedly ignored the old man.
"If I tell you something only I would know, would that satisfy you?" she asked Remo.
"I guess," he replied reluctantly.
Anna leaned in close to him. Her breath was warm on his ear as she spoke in a barely audible whisper. "Stop shouting," Chiun groused.
When Anna finished, this time it was Remo's face that was flushed. His ears burned red.
"Anna," he said, his voice soft with incredulity. Until that moment he hadn't permitted himself to fully believe. He looked at her now with new eyes.
The Russian nodded sharply. She tugged off the big black poncho she'd been wearing since arriving in Barkley that morning, tossing it through the open window of her car.
"It is a wonder the two of you got any work done at all, with all of your groping and grunting," Chiun huffed. He turned a stern eye on his pupil. "Remo, I have always kept to myself my opinions about the way you fritter your life away. Though presented with opportunities to criticize that were more numerous than the stars in the sky, always have I held my tongue. I have allowed you to stumble and bumble and rut like a mad donkey with every debauched hussy who invited you to share her bed. Never did I scold or complain or offer even a single sharp opinion."
Remo gave the old man a heavy-lidded stare. "Don't make me start doubting you're you," he said flatly.
Chiun pointed a long-nailed finger at Anna Chutesov.
"I never liked this woman," the old man insisted. He folded his arms angrily. "There. I have said it. And to speak this truth, I have been forced to break my steadfast and ironclad rule against meddling. Her fault, again."
The Master of Sinanju's words were like white noise. Numbly, Remo turned back to Anna.
"It's really you," he said. "I don't get it. Why didn't you tell me?"
His voice was small. In his eyes was the lost-little-boy gleam that had always stirred some long-repressed maternal instinct deep within Anna Chutesov's ice-princess heart. But she well knew her feelings for Remo had never been truly maternal.
"You know the answer," Anna said. "It was too dangerous for me. I was an outsider who knew of your organization. Dr. Smith had already expressed his desire to see me terminated. That loomed over my head for the year we worked together. Long before our encounter with Gordons, I had been working on a way to get away alive. Our last meeting presented an opportunity I could not resist."
"Never would have happened," Remo insisted, shaking his head firmly: "You were never in danger."
"Yes, Remo, I was. And if you already thought me dead, you would not have come to kill me. With so many deaths, I assumed I would be counted among the missing at the amusement park. When it was demolished afterward, so, too, was my existence as far as you and Dr. Smith were concerned. Because of my deception, I have lived the last thirteen years of my life in peace."
"Anna," Remo said. It still seemed so strange to speak her name. "I never would have killed you. Ever."
Her expression remained unchanged. "If not you, him," she said, nodding to Chiun.
"The day is young," the old man offered thinly.
"I wouldn't have let him," Remo said.
"You could not have stopped me," Chiun volunteered.
"Stay out of this, Chiun," Remo snapped. His flashing fury melted instantly. "Don't," he begged. "Okay? Just don't."
He turned back to Anna. "I loved you," he said softly.
Her expression hardened.
"That is not what you told me in Smith's office thirteen years ago," she said. "Or do you not remember?"
Remo thought back to the last time he'd seen Anna Chutesov. There had been a long gap between encounters. So long that in the intervening months Remo had gotten engaged to someone else.
At the time Remo-the perpetual outsider, the orphan with no real roots-had been determined to get married. He wanted to force happiness on his life if it killed him. In the end it was not Remo who was the victim. His single-minded quest for the elusive normal existence enjoyed by the rest of the world had claimed but one life. Mah-Li, Remo's Korean bride-to-be, had paid the ultimate price for the life he led. Killed by the Dutchman, Jeremiah Purcell.
Before Mah-Li died, Remo had met Anna for one last joint mission. It was then that he had told her of his intention to marry someone else. Always cool, always in control, Anna believed that it was she who had the upper hand in their relationship. But the news of Remo's plans to wed another had been worse than any physical blow.
At the time she pretended it didn't matter. But it was a lie. The truth was, in the end, she had been shocked to learn that she loved Remo more than he loved her.
Anna had used the first opportunity that presented itself to flee. Her claim that her disappearance was motivated by concern for her personal safety was only partly true. Yes, she wanted to live. But the act had as much to do with emotional self-interest as physical. Given all that had happened between them, she needed to stay away from Remo.
Remo had accepted the lie, assuming Anna dead. Not long after, Mah-Li had died, as well. After that loss, Remo had thrown himself into his work, allowing little room for emotional contact. In the past decade he had come to realize that his marriage to Mah-Li had been more for his sake than for hers. A selfish desire for a life that could not be. But Anna...
Anna had always been another story. Remo wasn't really sure what it was he felt for her. Was it emotional? He didn't know. It was certainly physical. He didn't know if he could possibly still love her. At the moment all else had been short-circuited by the shock of discovery and his anger at her deception.
"Remo?"
The voice sounded far away. Remo was numbly aware of a pair of slender fingers snapping in front of his face, like a hypnotist trying to bring a subject out of a deep trance.
He blinked hard once, looking down into the beautiful upturned face of Anna Chutesov.
"As much as I would like to stand out on this sidewalk for the rest of the day, we should go," Anna said.
The Master of Sinanju was already scurrying into the back of Anna's car. Sitting in the center of the seat, he folded his billowing kimono neatly around his bony knees.
"Why can't anything ever be easy?" Remo exhaled quietly.
"There is a saying in my country," Anna
said as she slid efficiently behind the wheel. "Simplicity is for children, fools and the dead. Did you kill all my men?"
"An even half dozen," Remo confirmed as he got into the passenger's seat.
"What about Koskolov, the man they were after?"
"Dopey-looking gay? Partial to Russian stand-up comics?" Remo said. "The big guy who looked like one of the dancing bears from the Moscow circus shot him."
"Idiots," she muttered, jamming the key angrily into the ignition. "They killed our only lead to the lunacy that is going on here."
Yet another surprise for Remo. "So this isn't just Smith getting us out of the house?" he asked. "You wanna fill me in on what's really going on here?"
When she looked at him, her blue eyes were charged with sparks of dark concern.
"The end of the world," Anna Chutesov replied ominously.
Twisting the wheel of her rental car, she pulled carefully away from the curb and into the pot-holed street.
Chapter 16
For Harold W. Smith, the end of the world had begun after midnight the previous evening. His impending personal Apocalypse loomed large and full in the gloomy gray hours before dawn. With the rising of the cold winter sun, the threat did not fade, but grew greater still.
As the tired sun swelled from bleary red to bright yellow, the light spilled through the one-way picture window at Smith's back. The shafts of widening sunlight stabbed across the room, illuminating the figure that slept on the sofa of his Folcroft office.
Mark Howard was using his coat as a blanket. It was tucked up under his chin as he slept. Howard was oblivious to the old man who was staring at him from across the room.
Smith had remained awake the entire night. Though exhausted, his eagle's gaze had not once shifted.
Smith's lower desk drawer was ajar. The lid of the cigar box that was ordinarily tucked far in the back was open. Inside the box Smith's old service automatic sat atop his cracked leather shoulder holster.
His first concern after his shocking encounter in the parking lot was that this was some sort of trap. Some individual, agency or government had learned of CURE.
But upon rapid consideration he realized that the means by which such an enemy would announce himself would almost certainly have been different.
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