"I'm-" she started to say. Her jaw clenched. "You do not need this anymore." Flustered, she picked up the old porcelain bowl, taking it over to the bureau.
Remo watched her for an uncomfortable moment. Although just shy of her fortieth birthday, she looked much the same as she had when he'd known her. Her hair was a little shorter, and there was a faint crinkling at the edges of her eyes. But her beauty was timeless.
"I'm not wearing a ring because I never got married," he announced all at once. His tone was soft. Anna had wrung out the facecloth and was hanging it over the lava lamp to dry.
"Really?" she said, feigning bland disinterest. "I had assumed there was some Sinanju rule forbidding you from wearing jewelry."
"Actually, there is," Remo admitted. "Throws off the body's natural balance. Master Lom learned that the hard way when he accidentally strangled himself with his own necklace during an exhibition in front of Nebuchadrezzar." Still sitting at the edge of the mattress, he shrugged. "Anyway, I figured you should know about that whole marriage thing."
She had her back to him. When he finished speaking, he saw her shoulders sink. "There is something you should know, as well," she said quietly. She did not turn.
Her deeply serious tone instantly sent up a red flag.
He suddenly had a mental image of a little runny-nosed version of himself tearing around some Russian playground bending the monkey bars in his bare hands and pulling all the girls' pigtails.
"I didn't knock you up, did I?" he asked worriedly.
"No," Anna said somberly.
"Whew," Remo exhaled. "Dodged a bullet there."
At this stage in his life, Remo had already had more than his fill of those sorts of surprises. "Remo, what I am about to tell you directly violates a standing order from the highest levels of the Kremlin. I am risking my life by divulging this information, but it is necessary for you to know so that you understand the urgency of the situation here. Before it was brought here, the weapon Feyodov stole was test fired. It was only one time and it was many years ago." She finally turned to face him, "My government is responsible for the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger."
It was like admitting a personal disgrace. Yet through her shame, Anna's eyes never left Remo's. By this point Remo thought he was beyond shock. He was wrong. Her words brought him to his feet. Any residual lethargy he was feeling evaporated like morning mist.
"Who did it?" he asked coldly.
"Feyodov had charge of the weapon," Anna said. "The order to fire came to him directly from the Kremlin. It was a stupid, stupid thing to do. Stupid men fearful of the future, lashing out in some insane attempt to prove their virility."
"Dammit, Anna, everything about guys isn't measured from the lap," Remo snapped. He was thinking rapidly. "Who was in charge over there back then? Was it the guy with the caterpillar eyebrows and the Edward G. Robinson bottom lip?" He shook his head unhappily. "Can't kill him, he's dead," he complained to himself.
"No," Anna said. "And that does not matter."
"Not to you, maybe," Remo said. He snapped his fingers. "I know who it was. It was that chrome dome with the Rorschach forehead."
"Remo, please," Anna pleaded. "I only told you this so you would understand how desperate this situation was before the attack on Mir. It has only gotten worse now. We must figure out a way to end this to the satisfaction of my government before the idiots in charge decide to resort to yet another insane face-saving measure."
"Right now, sweetheart, I'm not that all-fired worried about what satisfies your government," Remo snarled. "I've gotta find Chiun."
He flung open the door and marched into the hallway.
For a moment it was up to Anna Chutesov to worry about her government and the foolish decisions it made. Including the one, as yet unspoken, that she had hoped for ten years Remo would never learn of.
Cursing silently the testosterone-fueled madness that always seemed on the verge of destroying the human race, the head of Russia's top-secret Institute hurried out the door.
Chapter 25
Theodore Schwartz of AIC News-Wallenberg marched briskly off the elevator and onto the thirtieth floor of the AIC News-Wallenberg Building in midtown Manhattan.
The towering glass building was home to what was inarguably the greatest telecommunications empire of the twenty-first century. And as CEO of ANW, Ted Schwartz was master of his domain. As he strode like a modern-day Midas down the gleaming executive hallway with its high-tech black surfaces and space-age silver accents, all eyes were glued to his powerful frame. Every face he encountered, he owned.
As usual, the staff cut him a wide swath. Grown men and women panicked and ran into offices to avoid him.
Their reactions usually brought him a silent thrill. The king who inspired fear in his subjects.
This day, however, was different.
Though as usual he was the eye of a gossipy hurricane, with tongues wagging and eyes flashing nervously in his direction, Ted paid no mind to the attention he attracted. He had more weighty issues to deal with than the endless nattering of his company's many proles.
In his corner office suite he passed through the outer room of secretaries without slowing.
Unlike most mornings, the many phones were silent. Bike messengers and FedEx men had apparently been delivering urgent letters since daybreak. The secretaries were tearing like mad through stacks of sealed shipping envelopes.
Notes from his rivals in the television and information business. Pleading for his assistance. They were turning on their TVs and finding dead air where their own networks should be. When they switched through the channels, the only thing they found were the News-Wallenberg networks.
His rivals wanted to know how he'd survived so long into the devastating storm that had crippled their industry. But without phones, they couldn't very well call. Hence the letters pleading to be let in on Ted Schwartz's secret.
Though it was exactly as he'd planned, at the moment he didn't have time for the sniveling pleas of his peers.
Ted's private secretary tried to stop him as he strode into her anteroom and swept over to his office door.
"Good morning, Mr. Schwartz," the shapely young woman announced nervously. "Scott Crouse already called twice today. He wants you to call him. He says it's urgent."
Ted Schwartz felt a blush of anger touch his cheeks.
That idiot Scott Crouse had been abusing special phone privileges like a madman, calling Schwartz's office a dozen times the day before.
Crouse had been chairman and CEO of America Internet Connection, the largest Internet service provider in the world. AIC had recently merged with the massive News-Wallenberg conglomerate. With the merger AIC gained access to the vast array of media outlets controlled by News-Wallenberg, which included hugely popular magazines, cable television networks, the Wallenberg Boys movie company and Wallenberg Music. But as a result of their recent business alliance, Crouse had been forced to take a back seat to Ted Schwartz. In spite of several months of abuse by the CEO, intended to either bring him in line or force him to quit, the young man had still not figured out the merger had reduced him to little more than a glorified mail clerk.
"I'm busy," Ted announced angrily. "And tell him if he uses anything other than the normal phone system once more, I'll tie a T-1 line so tight around his neck they'll be scraping eye juice off the screen of his Power Mac."
Flinging open his office door, the CEO slammed it shut in the face of his startled secretary.
He didn't need to talk to Crouse to know why the young man was calling. Ted Schwartz already knew. Thanks to the disruptions in the satellite network, AIC customers all around the country were having an impossible time dialing online. It was a minor, anticipated glitch in an otherwise perfect plan. Besides, Ted thought to himself, AIC subscribers were used to getting busy signals.
Though the morning sun was crawling up between Manhattan's skyscrapers, the big office was bathed in gloom. The blinds were draw
n tightly over mirrored windows.
Behind his broad desk, Schwartz scooped up the phone. The familiar buzz of a dial tone hummed in his ear. Unlike most of the phones in America this day, Ted Schwartz's worked. If it hadn't, Ted would have been pissed.
This was one of the most private lines in existence. At the moment only a handful of News-Wallenberg's top men had access to the top-secret satellite through which it passed. The satellite itself was installed with scrambling technology so sophisticated no intelligence service-either foreign or domestic-had any hope whatsoever of decrypting it.
Scott Crouse was wasting time on that selfsame satellite to whine about the phone-line disruptions that were preventing his teenaged AIC customers in flyover country from getting online to download their daily dose of Internet porn.
"You're not long for News-Wallenberg, Scotty boy," Ted muttered to himself as he stabbed out an eleven-digit number.
He had the number memorized. No way he was going to put this one on the speed dial.
It took seven rings for someone to answer. When a lazy voice finally said hello, Ted Schwartz was drumming his fingers furiously on the buffed glass top of his desk.
"Get him on the phone now," Ted ordered hotly. It took less than a minute for a new voice to arrive on the line.
"Yes, sir," Zen Bower said, panting. He had obviously run all the way to the phone.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Schwartz demanded.
"What do you mean?" Zen asked vaguely.
"Don't think you can pull that hippie-flashback-blackout bullshit with me," Ted snapped angrily. "You know goddamn well what the hell I mean. I gave you SPACECOM charts to follow. Dammit, there are only seven hundred satellites up there. You knock out some LEOs and a GPS to make it look good, then move on to the geostationaries. Bing, bang, boom, we're in business. Now tell me, moron, where in there did I tell you you could blow up the goddamn Russian space station?"
Zen took a deep breath. "See, there's a funny thing about that," he began timidly. "You know that Russian general I hired? Well, as you know, I fronted for you just like you asked. I took the money you gave me and turned it over to him. No problem with that. He got the weapon here and got it assembled and everything. It was all going along just like we planned. But-"
Zen paused, fearful to go on.
"First off," Ted Schwartz interrupted, "we did not plan. I planned. You were just some cockamamy Commie-loving retired ice cream pitchman when I found you. You were on the skids after your company had been bought out. You were blabbing like a baby to a reporter in one of my L.A. stations about how you wanted to break Barkley away from the United States and how you knew about some killer secret Russian weapon but that your black-market pal was asking way too much for it. I happened to be at the studio that day. You were delusional, but I decided your delusions were useful to me. I found you. I used you. Like everyone else in my life, you are nothing but a stupid, worthless employee. I own you. You pay the Russian with my money. I own him. Now, what's my Russian doing, and why'd he blow up his own goddamn space station?"
"Um, that's the thing," Zen said. "I really don't know. He just sort of went nuts and took over the particle gun. I think he might have issues, you know?"
In the artificial darkness of his high-rise office, the CEO of News-Wallenberg placed his hand flat on his desk. The glass surface was cold to the touch.
"Here is what's going to happen," Ted Schwartz said, his voice far colder than the tempered glass beneath his palm. "You are going to salvage this situation. You are going to pull the plug on that Russian, and you're going to go back to the original plan. I have billions invested in this. If you fail, so help me I will strap you to the front of that gun that I bought with my money, and I will personally pull the cord that'll blast your ass from here to Pluto."
Zen's gulp of fear was audible over the crystal clear line. "I understand, sir," the ice cream man said.
"Good," Ted said. Pulling his free hand into a fist, he shook his head. "Maybe the Russians won't give a damn," he grumbled to himself. "That station was in worse shape than their economy. Besides, no one's on to this yet. Thanks to some gentle massaging by me behind the scenes on CNC and HTB, the media's gobbling up the idea that this is some naturally occurring phenomenon. Course, if the shit hits the fan, we might have to go with the cover plan."
"Cover plan?" Zen queried.
Ted seemed annoyed to hear a voice coming from the other end of the line. This plan had been so top secret for so long he had gotten used to talking only to himself about it.
"Yes, moron," Ted snarled thinly. "The one where you announce to the world you've got a weapon of mass destruction that you've been using and will continue to use until the U.S. allows you to secede from the Union. You and the rest of that council of yours get a lot of press coverage, the likes of which you radical types just love. You take the fall for everything that's happened, become folk heroes, get Bob Dylan to write a song about you and Ed Asner and Danny Glover to protest for your release from prison. Then, when the dust settles in a couple of months, I use the best team of lawyers thirty billion dollars of annual corporate profit can buy to get you all set free." He clamped the mouthpiece to his chest. "Fat chance," he muttered.
When Ted brought the earpiece back to his ear, all he could hear was the sound of Zen Bower's nervous breathing.
"That was the cover plan?" the ice cream man said anxiously. "You sure that wasn't the actual plan?"
Ted Schwartz's face grew as rigid as a death mask.
"What did you do?" the News-Wallenberg chief executive officer demanded in a voice like cracking ice.
Zen swallowed again. "I, um...well ...that is, I might have already sent a teensy little note to the President demanding that Barkley be allowed to secede from the Union."
"You what!" Ted bellowed.
He could almost see Zen's wincing face.
"It's okay," the ice cream man said quickly. "He never got back to me. Probably too busy approving new killer strains of CIA-produced anthrax to release on inner-city slums or loosening the emission standards for SWs. Who knows? Maybe they don't check their e-mail at the White House."
"Of course they check it," Ted Schwartz snapped.
His mind was reeling.
There wasn't any buzz at all about the Barkley threat. With the ongoing crisis he had practically cornered the market on news, and he hadn't heard squat. Either Zen was right and the electronic note had gotten lost somehow, or the government already had something planned.
Billions of dollars. His entire kingdom on the line. Eyes wild, the ruler of the mighty AIC News-Wallenberg telecommunications empire gripped the phone.
"You fix this thing," he said to Zen, his voice a primal growl of low menace. "You fix it now or so help me..."
He let the threat hang in the air. Teeth grinding, Ted Schwartz slammed down the phone.
Chapter 26
Anna's rental car was pulling up to the curb as Remo stepped off the porch of the seedy Barkley boardinghouse. The Master of Sinanju and FBI Agent Brandy Brand were just getting out when another vehicle pulled up behind them.
The battered VW van looked as if it had spent the sixties carting Vietcong through a Hanoi minefield. When the side panel doors creaked open, Remo's hard expression grew darker.
A cloud of smoke rose into the gray morning air. In its wake a dozen people climbed out onto the sidewalk.
The men and women looked like tattered heroes from idyllic days, long gone, of the People's Park Barkley riots, when Tom Hayden and his Barkley Liberation Program had tried to enlist guerrilla soldiers as an army that could offer armed resistance against the local police.
They were tired, tie-dyed and bell-bottomed as they clustered together near their open van door. Brandy steered away from Remo and Anna, hurrying over to the new arrivals.
With a frown of deep annoyance, the Master of Sinanju stepped away from them, moving to intercept Remo.
"What the hell?" Remo asked as
he watched Brandy join the crowd of aging hippies.
Anna had hurried down the stairs behind Remo. As she caught up to him, her pale face reflected deep suspicion.
"Those are members of this city's ruling council," Anna Chutesov observed, her tone wary. Remo studied the crowd on the sidewalk. The only time he'd seen them, they were nothing but a row of dirty feet sticking out from under a tablecloth. "I'll take your word on that," he said dryly. "We better see what they're doing here."
"Do not waste your breath," Chiun griped as he padded up to them. "These rag wearers are here only to prevent an old man from getting simple sustenance. When they approached us in the restaurant parking lot the female-who-acts-like-a-man thought important some nonsense they were babbling. While I was left to starve, she led them back here."
A warning signal went up in Remo's head. Thinking his senses weren't yet properly attuned to sense a trap, he quickly scanned the shadowy boardinghouse bushes in search of any skulking Russian black marketers. He found none.
Having just been through the same draining experience as his pupil, the Master of Sinanju understood Remo's instinct to second-guess his own senses.
"You are fine," Chiun waved. "If you must know, in addition to forcing an elderly homeless man to waste away to skin and bone, these dirty people said something about seeking an alliance with us. However, if you wish to hear the details you will have to ask them yourselves, for I could not hear their words over the grumbling of my poor empty belly."
Remo looked over at the small group with greater interest. "Don't know about you," he said to Anna, "but it's got me curious."
Taking the lead, he preceded Anna and Chiun to the sidewalk. When he stopped beside Brandy, the FBI agent's youthful face was flushed with excitement.
"They say they want to help us," Brandy said to Remo.
Remo cast a skeptical eye at the crowd. "And we're now going to start trusting the senior-citizen contingent of the Black Panthers because... ?" he asked leadingly.
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