In the back five council members whimpered in fear. Behind the wheel Gary Jenfeld somehow managed through Herculean effort to keep his chocolate-and-ice-cream-packed bowels from releasing into his boxers.
"Is this some sort of Patty Hearst-in-reverse thing?" Gary whined. He pictured a brainwashed version of himself weeks from now being caught on blurry bank video, clean-shaven, dressed in a suit and withdrawing money to finance campaigns to get endangered spotted owl on the menu at the next RNC fund-raiser and build nuclear reactors in seal pods.
"Shut up and drive," Anna ordered.
Prodded at the point of her gun, Gary Jenfeld drove into the heart of Barkley. They passed beneath the great shadow of Huitzilopochtli. Anna sank back in her seat and watched the statue as they sped along. Her own face was stone by the time they circled the building and parked in a rear lot.
Anna forced the council members to surrender a few articles of clothing. When they climbed down from the van moments later, her blond hair was wrapped in a concealing bandanna. A bulky, genderneutral jacket hid her natural curves. If one looked quickly, she could be mistaken for a council member. She kept her hand on the butt of her gun as she slipped it in her pocket.
"I don't like this," said Gary, who had decided that this was probably more an assertive-feminist thing than a brainwashing thing. "I understand your desire to express your gender superiority in this male-dominated environment, but what about that guy who knocked down all the doors and killed all those guys at Buffoon Aid? I know he's only a man, but he does have that whole upper-body-strength thing going for him. Let's go back and get him."
"Get me in to Feyodov," Anna said evenly. Gary's rounded shoulders sank.
The ice cream man took the lead, steering the small group up the rear steps of the building.
An electronic lock was affixed to the wall. Gary's laminated security pass deactivated it. Once they'd gained entry to the city hall, they quickly headed down the first-floor hallway. Anna kept to the center of the small group, using their bodies as camouflage. The back route led them up to the council chambers. Farther down the hall, Anna saw the backs of the second set of doors Remo and Chiun had knocked through. The thick steel was buckled around the locks, but they still stood. They were closed now, secured on the inside by a metal beam. In spite of the fact that she had led them all here, Anna felt like a prisoner. All that kept her going was the gun in her pocket and the hope that she could end this before anyone learned the real truth.
As the group passed inside the council chamber they ran head-on into a trio of Feyodov's black market cronies.
"Oh!" Gary said, startled. "We didn't ...that is, um..."
In the center of the crowd, Anna clenched her teeth.
The fool was panicking, spluttering like an imbecile in front of men who were already growing suspicious.
Anna shrank into herself. She was beginning to ease her gun out of her pocket when Gary struck on an idea.
"We caught one!" Gary cried. Wheeling, he aimed a pudgy finger directly at Anna Chutesov. The other council members quickly picked up the thread. Before she could free her gun, they grabbed Anna roughly by the arms. One tore the bandanna from her head.
She tried to struggle, but it was no use. The men swept in. A quick search turned up her gun. After that, the Russians themselves took hold of her. "We've got another one in the van," Gary Jenfeld volunteered, backing quickly away. "Much worse than this one. A real secondhand-smoke-producing, hate-criming, Christian Coalitioner. Too dangerous for you guys. Tell you what, I'll go get him myself while you handle this one."
If the Russians heard him at all, they didn't seem to care. As Gary stumbled out the door, the black marketers were hauling Anna away from the remaining frightened Barkley officials. They headed for the back of the auditorium.
And with all hope of a simple resolution evaporating with every step, Anna Chutesov could do nothing but allow herself to be dragged helplessly along.
BOMB BUILDING was apparently to the Barkley city council what riding a bicycle was to the rest of the world. It took the two men and one woman scarcely an hour to tape, snip and wire together four makeshift bombs.
"These should pack enough of a wallop to knock it out of commission," Brandy Brand told Remo as she stuffed the last of the devices inside one of the big khaki duffel bags they had picked up at the hardware store. "But I still don't know how you think you're going to get them inside."
At the moment that wasn't worrying Remo.
He and Chiun had heard a vehicle arrive outside the flophouse a moment before. For the past few seconds Remo had been listening to a frantic, muted conversation downstairs.
After the speaker was done, he had hurried upstairs.
Brandy was in the process of closing up the bag around the last bomb when the sound of panting breath and pounding feet became audible to the others in the room. When the frantic, sweating man thundered inside the room an instant later, Brandy immediately whipped out her gun. With screams of "narc" and desperate denials of youthful ties to the Weather Underground, the three panicked Barkley bomb makers jumped for cover under the soiled mattress.
Gary Jenfeld recoiled at the sight of Brandy's gun. "Don't shoot!" the ice cream man yelled. With cringing cupped hands and one upraised knee he formed a standing fetal position.
Remo and Chiun had both determined who the intruder was long before Gary raced into the room. Though Remo strained his senses, he detected no one trailing behind the lone council member. "Where's Anna?" he asked.
Gary peeked anxiously out from behind his hands. "It's not my fault," he begged. "She made me do it."
He shrank more from the look Remo gave him than he had from Brandy's gun. Voice quavering in fear, Gary quickly told Remo of the events leading up to Anna's capture.
"She went all Helen Reddy macho on me," the ice cream man said in conclusion. "I blame the whole male-dominated hierarchical society that makes every woman feel they have to overcompensate for their innate superior femaleness."
"I blame the fact that you wet your pants and turned her over to them," Remo said coldly.
"Well, there is that, if you want to get technical," Gary admitted. "Let's just split the difference and say the unfeeling patriarchy was at play here, too."
"You're two seconds away from getting your difference split," Remo snapped. As Gary cringed once more, Remo frowned. "We have to get her out of there."
"Why?" Chiun sniffed. "Not only has she always been a nuisance, but if we are to believe this one, her capture is a result of her own actions. I say good riddance."
"No," Remo said firmly. "We can't just leave her."
"You mean leave her as she left you?" Chiun suggested with an impatient scowl.
"That's not fair, and you know it," Remo said. "Anna did what she thought she had to do back then to survive."
The angry lines of the old man's face softened. "Think of our survival," the Master of Sinanju said. "And of the survival of our House." He pitched his voice low enough that the others couldn't hear. "It is too dangerous for you to risk your life at such a time as this, Remo. Or have you forgotten the reason for my dead son's visitation?"
The words and the urgency with which the old man spoke them took Remo aback. "I haven't forgotten," he admitted.
"Then understand that this is one of the hardships you must endure," Chiun pleaded. "This woman you say you loved has come back to you, and now must die. Perhaps she is dead already. In either case you thought her so, lo these many years. If it makes it easier for you, pretend you never saw her again and leave her to her fate."
Remo considered his teacher's words. After a long moment he finally shook his head.
"Can't do it, Little Father," Remo said. "Sinanju has its traditions, but I have mine. And I can't just leave Anna hanging out to dry like that."
"Why not?" Chiun demanded.
Remo's eyes were level. "Because it's wrong."
A bony hand swatted the words angrily from the air. "Why
do I waste my breath? Right, wrong. Even after all these years you cling to the childish concepts taught you by those carpenter-idolizing spinsters." He thrust his hands up his sleeves. "Very well. We will risk life and limb to retrieve your Russian harlot. But I am warning you, Remo Williams, if I die as a result of this fool's errand I will haunt you for the rest of your natural days."
"You shouldn't come, Chiun," Remo said seriously. "After what happened last time it's too dangerous."
But the old man's mind was made up. "If you die, then Sinanju lasts only until I draw my last breath, for it is far too late in life for me to train another," the Master of Sinanju said. "In that case, what good will a few more years of life do my village? We go together."
Remo could see that there would be no arguing. With fresh concern for his teacher's safety, he turned to Gary.
"Okay, pinhead," he said to the ice cream man. "Where exactly would they take her?"
Chapter 30
Boris Feyodov's eyes sparkled with malicious glee. He could scarcely believe it when his men brought the despised woman, Anna Chutesov, down to him. Without his glasses he had not seen her very well during her earlier assault on the town hall. She had been far away then. All the way across the auditorium. A ghost of a figure from another time. Now she was close enough to reach out and touch. A beloved, hated vision from his past.
She was exactly as he remembered her. Beautiful, proud, antagonistic. The look of disdain she gave him as the black market soldiers forced her into a chair was priceless. It was a calculated contempt that made his bitter heart soar.
Although the men held her in place, Anna didn't try to fight. She just sat there in the rock-hewn tunnel beneath Barkley's city hall. Staring up at her traitorous countryman, her eyes were cold pools of iceblue scorn.
Looming above the Russian agent, Boris Feyodov tipped his head knowingly. "You have not changed a bit since we last met," he said. Pausing, he held his hands out apologetically to either side. "I wish that I could make the same boast. However, the years have not been so kind to me."
The look of disdain never left her face. "We've met?" Anna Chutesov asked blandly.
A smile spread across the flabby features of the former Red Army general. "Do not make me think your reputation is undeserved," Feyodov said. "You remember it well." The smile fled and his voice grew chilly. "I certainly do."
With great care he took a seat across from her. Dull eyes looked to his men.
"Release her," Feyodov commanded.
The black market men instantly did as they were told. Snapping to attention, they took a step back from her chair. Their hands never left their weapons.
Leaning back, Feyodov casually crossed his legs. "It was April when we met," he said, his eyes growing distant. "I had been director of the Institute for only a few months before I was relieved of duty. All because of you. You and some great secret you brought back with you from America. You barely acknowledged me that day you took command, just a glance and a nod as you carried your precious bag into your office. Into my office." He took a deep breath. "That was the day we became enemies, you and I," he confided.
Anna finally had enough. Brow dropping low she shook her head firmly. "Please keep your delusions to yourself," she said. "I am not your enemy, you are. You hate your own cowardice and incompetence. You are a military man who had to live his entire career in the shadow of his own father. The one time you were put to the test, you failed yourself, your country and the men under your command. You are a tiny little failure and you have invented pathetic phantoms to blame for your own weaknesses."
Since his humiliation in Chechnya, the accusation of cowardice was one that always brought swift anger from Feyodov. The reports were all clear on this.
Given the circumstances, Anna hoped to provoke him into granting her a swift end. But instead of rage a knowing smile cracked the sagging face of the old general.
"'Phantoms.' An interesting choice of words." Feyodov nodded thoughtfully. "Oh, and I am not going to kill you. At least not yet. For all their faith in you, you are really not as clever as they think you are. For instance, the first thing you should have done when you took over the Institute was change the combination on my office safe."
This drew a reaction. Nothing dramatic. A single thin brow arched almost imperceptibly on her forehead.
The general leaned forward, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "You left for a few hours that first day. It was before you had changed any of the security systems. I waited for you to leave, and then I snuck back inside." His whispered voice became a rasp. "I saw what you brought back with you." Exhaling, Feyodov leaned back in his chair. "Of course, I heard the rumors after that. When the dark days came and Moscow fell to the capitalists, I heard whispers of how the Institute alone was safe from the mobs. I always assumed I knew why. Until yesterday."
Feyodov would have said more, but at that moment a black market soldier came marching up the tunnel.
His arm bandaged tightly where Anna Chutesov had shot him, Oleg Shevtrinko glared hatred at the Institute head. After the events of the previous day, he now wore a bulky bulletproof vest, but it seemed to be doing little more than irritating his injuries.
"They have reached the five-minute mark, general," Oleg announced, shifting the weight of his vest.
Feyodov nodded silent understanding. With a wave of his hand he sent Oleg back up the tunnel. "The Americans are about to launch a rescue attempt of the men on Mir," the former general explained to Anna. "While they count down, so do we. Soon the world will know the truth of what happened at Sary Shagan." He tipped his head, considering. "Fate is a powerful thing," he mused. "The weapon that brought you here is the same thing that finally drew the men from Sinanju to me." A thought occurred to him. "You were aware that when I was given my appointment at the Institute, they were supposed to come work for me?"
There was no point in lying. "Of course," Anna spit.
Feyodov nodded. "But then fate intervened, and they remained in America. As I said, given the reports I heard in later years, I assumed they had finally come to work for Russia. For you. It seems now that was never the case. Not that it matters. I possess the means to render them impotent. They share the blame with you for the life I now lead. Therefore, when they come to rescue you, they will die."
Anna Chutesov shook her head. "They will not come," she said firmly. "Those two are many things, but unlike you they are not fools."
Standing, the former Red Army general offered a tiny shrug of his shoulders.
"Then I will have to settle for your death and the annihilation of America and Russia," he said. "I suppose no plan can be perfect."
A thoughtful frown erasing his glimmer of a smile, the tired old soldier offered her his back. Leaving Anna Chutesov with the two guards, Boris Feyodov strolled down the tunnel. To watch history repeat itself.
A PAIR OF black market soldiers guarded the entrance to the city hall. They had been at their post for hours without incident. The streets of Barkley were empty. Its citizens had been ordered to stay in their homes.
The sun rose high and warm on the eerily calm scene.
It was just after 8:00 a.m. when one of the city hall guards felt a sudden light tapping on his shoulder. Startled, he wheeled for the source.
Someone was standing beside him on the high steps. A pair of deep-set eyes offered dark disapproval.
"No wonder you Commies lost the candy store," Remo Williams said. "You listen the same way you create systems of government. Shitty."
Another voice chimed in beside the second soldier, this one a high singsong.
"They stopped listening because no one in Russia has said anything worth listening to since the last tzar," Chiun squeaked. "I would turn a deaf ear, too, if I had to endure seven decades of bushy noses telling me why their hands were always in my kimono pockets."
Quickly gathering his wits about him, the guard near Remo grabbed for his gun. He found to his horror that he had nothing
to grab with. His arms ended in bloody stumps.
"Sorry, but we need 'em for the next five-year plan," Remo said, tossing the man's hands into the bushes beside the steps. "But I'll see about requisitioning you a spare set of feet. Should be in the mailbox by May Day."
He finished the man with a punishing palm to the temple.
As the first man fell, the soldier next to Chiun tried to get a bead on the old man. Whipping his gun up, he squinted one eye. His eye was still squinting as his head bounced down the city hall steps and rolled under a shrub.
Remo and Chiun hopped over the pair of bodies and swept inside the big building.
The main door that they'd wrenched off in their previous assault on the town hall was still lying on the floor. It had been too heavy for the Barkley council to lift. Remo and Chiun bounded across it and raced up the hallway.
The second set of doors was warped around the handles. A pair of thrusting heels snapped a barricading bar and sent the battered doors screaming off their hinges. The two men raced along in their wake, slipping through the door to the auditorium. In the back of the hall they found a door precisely where Gary had said it would be. The room it fed into was small and windowless. Portraits of Marx, Mao, Lenin and other heroes of the Revolution hung on the walls.
A glass display case with a wide base sat in the middle of the floor. In it was a half-complete Barkley constitution that Zen Bower had started to write in a fit of delusional optimism. At a glance, Remo saw three misspellings and a dozen Wite-Out splotches in the preamble alone.
He didn't have time to read it in full. Grabbing one side of the case, he pushed. It rolled to one side, revealing a long set of stairs.
Remo shot a glance at the Master of Sinanju. "One of us really should stay out here," he said.
Chiun nodded crisply. "Agreed," the old man said. Hiking up his kimono skirts, he started for the stairs.
"Whoa, Nellie," Remo said. "I meant you."
"Who is Reigning Master?" Chiun sniffed.
They were both surprised by Remo's answer. "Me," he said firmly. It was an instant before he realized he'd misspoken. "I mean you," he corrected. "But you can't always be pulling rank like that all the time."
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