Princippi licked his lips. "Can't you give it to me here?" he asked. He eyed the closed van door. "Stop the car and we'll have a little presentation ceremony right now."
"The gift we give you cannot be given by us," the man said. "I am Roseflower, by the way. If by knowing my name you will become more at ease."
"Roseflower, huh?" Princippi scoffed. "Is that the name your parents gave you or is it your Loonie name?"
The former governor seemed to have found the one thing that erased the smiles from the faces of the men around him. As one, the mindless grins receded into pale faces, replaced by expressions of pinched disapproval.
"That is not an acceptable term," Roseflower said
"What isn't?" Princippi asked. He racked his brain, trying to remember what he had just said. The gathered men did not seem to want to help him in any way. All at once, the light dawned. "Loonie!" he announced.
The expressions grew more dour. Seeing this, Princippi frowned, as well.
"We do not appreciate that appellation," Roseflower said stiffly.
"I thought that's what you were," Princippi said, his voice betraying uncertainty.
"The proper name is Sunnie," Roseflower insisted. "That other is a derisive designation created by the enemies of our leader."
"Okay, so you're Sunnies," Princippi conceded with a shrug of his slight shoulders. "Can I see a little more of the name reflected in your dispositions?"
The rest seemed to follow Roseflower's lead. His smile returned, thinner now than before. Bland grins appeared on the faces of the others.
"Are we friends again?" Princippi asked hopefully.
"Of course," Roseflower said. His idiotic smile widened. The others followed suit.
"Friends would do anything for one another, wouldn't they?" Princippi asked hopefully.
"I'm not going to let you go, Michael."
Dejected, Princippi's shoulders sunk even farther into his slight frame.
"Some friend you turned out to be," he grumbled.
He spent the rest of the long trip in gloomy depression.
THE VAN DID NOT STOP for several more hours. When it finally did, Princippi hoped it was at a gas station. The minute he heard the words "Fill it up," he planned to scream for all he was worth.
Hope gave way to despair when the rear doors of the van were at last pulled open.
Cool air and bland artificial light poured into the fetid interior. Princippi noted that the air smelled vaguely of gasoline and car exhaust.
His legs ached from alternately kneeling and sitting on the hard floor of the van. Helpful hands brought him to his feet and guided him down onto a cold, flat concrete floor.
It was a parking garage. Underground by the looks of it. Black oil stains filled the spaces between angled parallel white lines. A large red number 2 was painted on the wall near a set of closed elevator doors, and 2nd Basement Level was stenciled in cheery green letters beneath it.
His Loonie escort guided Princippi to the elevator. The doors opened as if by magic. He was whisked upward.
The elevator carried them from the subbasement parking garage up to the seventh floor. When the doors opened once more, they revealed a sterile corridor of eggshell white. Princippi was trundled out onto a rugged blue wall-to-wall carpet.
As he was hustled along the hallway, the former governor noted several large signs spaced along the walls that read Editorials, Features, Advertising and the like. Arrows below the names indicated the direction in which one might find each department.
He began to get a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach far deeper than the one he had felt all day. If this was what he thought...
Doors parted at the end of the corridor, and he was escorted into what was obviously the city room of a large newspaper. Unlike most papers this size, however, there was not a hint of staff on duty.
A row of huge sheets of opaque glass fined the entire far wall of the large room. The pink-robed men led him past rows of vacant desks with their attendant idle computer terminals to the single door that nestled amid the glass.
The name on the door gave Michael Princippi a chill: Man Hyung Sun, Publisher.
He barely had time to read the words before the door was opened for him. He was quickly ushered inside amid his phalanx of robed Loonies.
Princippi recognized Sun right away. The infamous millionaire rose from behind a huge gleaming desk, his face beaming.
The man was notorious. A cult leader from the 1970s who was thought to have been discredited, Sun had made a quiet, determined comeback in the past two decades, acquiring even more wealth and followers than he had controlled in the supposed heyday of his notorious cult. One of the baubles the Korean had purchased for his amusement was the foundering newspaper, the Washington Guardian. Princippi assumed that this was where he now was.
"Governor, I trust you are well?" Sun said as he stepped out from behind his desk. Unlike his followers, Sun wore a well-tailored conservative business suit. His face was bright and guileless. The cult leader was approaching eighty but looked a good fifteen years younger.
"Not really," Princippi said. "What do you want from me?" Though it disturbed him to do so, he took Sun's offered hand. The grip was firm.
"Right to the point," Sun said, pleased. "I like that. They called you a technocrat during the presidential race. As if it is an offense to be punctilious."
The man's cheery attitude was infectious. Princippi was beginning to forget he had been knocked unconscious and dragged unwillingly through five states by the cult leader's mindless followers.
"Yes," the former governor agreed, casting a glance at the line of men behind them. Bare arms crossed over pink-and-white-robed chests. They seemed quite harmless now. Princippi nodded amiably. "I agree. It's too bad there aren't more Chinese in America. You people understand precision." He smiled cheerily.
"I beg your pardon," Sun said, hooded eyes abruptly dead.
Princippi got the sudden sense that he had said something desperately wrong. He bit his cheek. "Aren't you Chinese?" he asked weakly.
As had happened with his followers in the van, Man Hyung Sun's smile evaporated. "Korean," he said flatly.
Princippi hunched further in on himself. He glanced at the Loonies behind him. They were no longer smiling, either. Pink had started to appear quite menacing once more.
The ex-governor resisted the urge to say "What's the difference?" Instead, he mumbled an embarrassed apology. This seemed to mollify Sun. The smile returned, cracking the wide moon face of the cult leader.
"We should not squabble," Sun said. "For this is a great moment. A truly momentous meeting. There has been a turning point in the great cosmic cycle." He closed his eyes. A change appeared to come over the Korean. The smile in his fat face grew wider and settled into lines of great contentment. "Do you not sense it?" Sun asked.
Princippi glanced over his shoulder at the line of Loonies. "Um, yeah," Princippi agreed uncertainly.
"I am glad," Sun replied. "For it has spoken to me, as well. It told me to seek you out." He inhaled deeply and exhaled loudly. "Your mere presence stirs it to greater life within me. My mind and heart thrill in you."
Princippi started to get an even worse feeling than any of the ones he had experienced so far today.
Being bashed on the head by his own Volkswagen hood was okay. Kidnapping? Not a problem. Getting hauled in before a notorious cult leader? Piece of cake. There were far worse things that could happen to a would-be presidential candidate. He hoped one was not about to.
Mike Princippi cleared his throat. He glanced at the line of smiling men behind him. Men being the operative word there. There was not a single female face beneath a shining chrome dome.
"Er, is this some sort of gay thing?" Princippi asked nervously. He quickly held up his hands. "Which is perfectly all right if it is, don't get me wrong. Some of my best friends ...you know? It's just that it's not my cup of herbal tea." He chuckled weakly.
Again, Su
n's smile faded. This time, however, it was not a look of disapproval but one of mild confusion.
"You have felt it, have you not?" the cult leader asked.
"Only when I go to the bathroom," Princippi said. "And never around other guys." He shrugged to the Loonies: "Sorry," he added to the silent line of men.
"The presence," Sun guided. "In your mind?"
Princippi turned away from Roseflower and his friends. Something had begun to tingle in the back of his mind. Something dreadfully familiar. Something that he always tried to ignore.
"What are you talking about?" he said, trying to appear innocent. Inwardly he was alarmed.
"Do not lie to me," Sun said. "It is there now. I can feel it, as well."
Princippi tried to suppress the weird sensation in his brain. It was a gentle, persistent stinging. As if rogue synapses had begun to spark and fire like faulty wiring in a set of tangled Christmas-tree lights.
"This is getting a little too weird for me," Princippi said. "May I go now?" He smiled weakly.
Sun shook his head. "You have fought it for too long," he said. "It was wrong of you to do so. It has kept us apart. And without you, I cannot be whole."
The Korean stepped up to Princippi. The exgovernor, though not a tall man himself, was almost as tall as the cult leader.
Princippi realized that the strange stimulation in his brain grew stronger the closer he came to Sun. He tried to quell the fire, but knew from experience that it would not do much good. Not when it was this strong.
Sun raised his hands to the sides of Princippi's head. When the former governor balked, he felt strong arms grab him from behind. The Loonies had clamped hold of him.
The sparking in his brain exploded in a crescendo. It was like the dying moments of a fireworks display played out behind Michael Princippi's eyes. But the crescendo did not end. As Sun rubbed at the ex-governor's face, the pops of brilliant light continued to ignite steadily. For some reason, they were all lit in flaring shades of yellow.
"What is this supposed to be? Some kind of mind meld?" Princippi asked. He tried to make it sound like a joke, but the truth was he was deathly afraid. Sweat beaded on his pasty forehead, dripping in rivulets down his face and around Sun's pressing hands.
"He told you to come to me. To seek me out. Why did you not?" Sun asked. His eyes were closed.
Through the haze of yellow that danced across his retinas, Princippi looked over at Sun. The Korean seemed almost to be in a trance. "This is crazy," he said.
A hand withdrew from his face, only to return sharply. Mike Princippi felt the stinging force of the slap against one gray cheek. The yellow clouds of fire burned more brightly, reveling in the pain inflicted.
"Tell us!" Sun demanded. When he opened his eyes to peer accusingly at Princippi, the former governor recoiled.
Something had happened. It must have been a strange optical illusion. The result of the bursts of light before his own field of vision. That was the only logical explanation.
The Korean's irises appeared to have taken on a bright yellow hue. They were like twin beacons of glowing yellow fire, boring through to his very soul. And the words spilled out before Princippi even knew he was speaking them.
"I thought you'd think I was insane," he blurted, not knowing on what level he had even thought this. He only knew that somewhere in the darkest depths of his repressed mind, it was true.
"And so you kept me from him? Him from me?"
"I didn't know," Princippi begged. "I thought it was like a Son of Sam thing. You know, the dog telling me to go out and kill, or some crackpot junk like that. It all sounded too nuts."
"In spite of what you have already been through?" Sun demanded.
"Especially after that," Princippi said, knowing exactly what it was Sun was referring to.
All at once, Sun pulled his hands away from Princippi's head. The flashes of fire burst one last time and then collapsed inwardly, into a pit of great darkness. For the first time in a long time, the schizophrenic sensation of someone else sharing his mind was no longer with Michael Princippi. It gave him a feeling of great relief. And, oddly, an equal mixture of intense loneliness.
The demonic yellow glow in the eyes of Sun grew weak, as well. It died momentarily, like twin vanishing embers in a spectral fire.
Sun looked away from Princippi, across one of the governor's weak shoulders. "The Boston Museum of Rare Arts," he said sharply. "Greek room. Not on display. It is in a rear chamber with other artifacts. Go."
Roseflower and two of the other men left wordlessly. The rest stayed.
The former governor and presidential candidate knew precisely what it was Sun had sent the men to retrieve. He had donated it to the museum himself. Somehow, Sun had gleaned this from his own thoughts.
"Now we wait," Sun said. He walked back around his desk, settling into his chair.
Princippi spoke freely now, without reservation. "You know the people who were involved with this before are either dead or aren't talking. No one wants to be linked to the Truth Church or the crazies who ran it. It's over." He said this last bit as a warning.
"That is where you are wrong, Governor," Man Hyung Sun announced with certainty. He folded his hands with calm precision on the surface of his gleaming mahogany desk. "It has only just begun."
Sun gave him a smile so disconcerting it made Princippi want to dash for the nearest urinal.
Chapter 4
The truck careered wildly down Kantstrasse. The Theater des Westens soared past on the left as Remo floored the big vehicle. He aimed for the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.
"Hold on!" he yelled.
Without shifting gears, he whipped around the sharp corner and out across Kurfurstendamm. Cars driving in both directions slammed on brakes or swerved from the path of the seemingly out-of-control truck.
From around the facade of the huge church, dozens of tiny police cars soared. Bumping into one another, grinding paint on paint, they bunched up again. Like a swarm of angry wasps, they roared in the direction of the runaway truck, lights and sirens flashing and wailing.
Remo had taken the curve too sharply. The right wheels of the truck bounced once against the curb and began rising slowly into the air. The world took on a weird angled look as the vehicle began to tilt onto Remo's side.
"Lean over!" Remo commanded. Still holding the wheel, he flung himself toward the Master of Sinanju.
"Do not get too familiar," Chiun complained as the back of Remo's head popped into his field of vision. He tipped his own head to see around it.
"Dammit, Chiun, lean!" Remo commanded. Still on two wheels, they had managed to cross over to Tauenzienstrasse.
"You told me to hold on," Chiun pointed out. Though they had been outrunning the police for more than ten minutes, he was still as calm as a crystal pool.
"It was a figure of speech!" Remo yelled. "Lean!" He felt the van moving farther over. Another few seconds and they would be flat on one side and skidding at a hundred miles per hour.
Chiun sighed. "Very well." He tilted toward his door.
The Master of Sinanju's ninety-pound frame seemed to do the trick. With his weight added to Remo's, the truck collapsed back onto all four wheels, settling in an angry bounce of tires and grinding shocks.
Something broke free from beneath the truck. In the side-view mirror, it seemed to skip back into their wake and beneath the tires of one of the leading police cars.
As it bounced over the long strip of twisted metal, rubber erupted in hot bursts from both sides of the police cruiser. The car did a perfect 180-degree turn into the nose of another oncoming cruiser.
The crash was spectacular. A dozen police cars slammed into one another, buckling and crumpling like paper cups. The rest skipped around the huge crash site, driving even more determinedly after Remo.
"I hope they've got air bags," Remo commented as the horrid scene faded to a rapid speck behind them.
"They eat a diet of pastry and pork," Chiun
explained indifferently. "Germans are their own air bags."
"You realize if they catch us they're going to find him in the back," Remo said. He jerked his head over his shoulder to indicate where various body parts of the dead Burg police officer were even now bouncing around amid the remnants of the Nibelungen Hoard.
"They had better not catch us," Chiun warned.
"I'm doing my best," Remo said, irritated.
He swerved in and out of traffic as he drove wildly down the wide street. Cars seemed to move almost instinctively out of his way. Those that did not were batted by the fenders of the truck. The metal was already a crumpled mess.
"That cop's brother must have ratted us out," Remo said, narrowly avoiding a collision with a van that was pulling out of a side street. The other vehicle slammed on its brakes. "Either that or somebody saw us at the cop car."
"I was nowhere near the constable's vehicle," Chiun pointed out. "I am innocent in that matter."
"Yeah, you only killed him," Remo snapped sourly.
"Oh, of course," Chiun sniffed. "Blame me for the dead highwayman. How like you, Remo."
"You killed him!" Remo snapped.
"A technicality," Chiun said dismissively. "Do not assault my delicate ears with trivialities."
"I've got another triviality for you," Remo said. "Your buddies aren't going to be too happy to see us show up with all of this going on around us."
"Do not concern yourself with them," Chiun said with certainty. "They will do as they are told."
"You hope," Remo said.
He cut around another sharp corner, more slowly this time. The truck's tires remained firmly on the street; however, the pursuing police cars seemed to leap dramatically ahead. They buzzed around the corner and into Remo's wake.
"This road appears closed," Chiun mentioned.
Remo had gotten the same impression. There was no vehicular traffic on the long thoroughfare. It hadn't been this way during any of his other trips. Far up ahead, Remo thought he saw why.
"Is that what I think it is?" he said anxiously.
"Where?" Chiun asked, peering through the windshield like a Gypsy looking into the heart of a crystal ball. "Before the line of parked police vehicles or after it?"
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