"First thing," said Earl Armalide, "I'd get the heck outta here."
Earl was immediately thrown off his feet as the Yurf Gagarin lurched into motion. The rising whine of jet engines filled the cramped airlock. Earl grabbed for a projecting bolt, but the bolt withdrew from his fingers as if it were alive. Then Earl remembered that it was alive. He threw himself spread-eagle on the smooth floor while the shuttle gathered speed. He felt the floor lift under his stomach, the shuttle's trembling power making his beefy face shiver. He shut his eyes.
When, minutes later, the ship leveled off, the voice asked him another question.
"What, in your expert opinion, would be my next survival maneuver?" it asked.
"You got me," answered Earl Armalide, his eyes pinched shut.
"Yes," said the voice. "I do have you." And the walls began to close in again.
"No! No!" screamed Earl. "Time! Give me time to think. "
"What is my next survival maneuver?"
Earl thought frantically, but his mind refused to work. In his fear, his eyes alighted on the title of the lead article of his Survivalist's Monthly, "Creative Camouflage."
"Camouflage!" he yelled.
"Define. "
"You blend into your surroundings. Meat machines-I mean people-paint their skin with plant and earth colors to move about unseen. You gotta blend in with your surroundings. People can't chase you if they can't see you."
"I do not fully comprehend. I landed in an area containing other aircraft. Why did I not blend in?"
"Because you're a damned Russian spaceship. The Russians are America's enemies. Americans will chase you as long as they think you're a Russian craft. Which you are. Sorta."
"Now I understand. It is then imperative that I assume another form?"
"Right. Another form. And could you let me off when you land in ... Where are you headed, anyway?"
"I am going to a place called Rye, New York."
"Never heard of it."
"I am following a radio signal. I have been following it ever since I was exiled into space years ago. The transmitter is attached to the enemy I mentioned earlier. His name is Remo. Perhaps you know him?"
"Never heard of him."
"The one called Remo is powerful enough to destroy me. He is often accompanied by an older meat machine, who is called Chiun. Both are dangerous. Both must die. Their deaths will ensure my survival because when they are dead I will be the most powerful thinking machine on this planet. Do you not agree?"
"Heartily," said Earl Armalide, watching the walls apprehensively. They had stopped with just enough room on all four sides for him to sit up. One of his rifles, lying on the floor, had been bent at the barrel, the carefully oiled mahogany stock split into wood chips.
Radar contact with the shuttle Yuri Gagarin was lost over Long Island Sound.
"What happened?" demanded Colonel Jack Dellingsworth Rader of the civilian controller.
"It went off the screen, sir. It just dropped out."
"Into the water?"
"No, I think it went down over land. But there's no airport in that area. It must have crashed."
"We'll get my crisis team to the crash site."
The NORAD crisis team found no trace of the wreckage of the Soviet shuttle.
Helicopters circled an area ten miles in diameter around the city of Port Chester, New York. By this time, it was dark and the helicopters swept the ground with searchlights. The National Guard, kicked out of the picture during the initial crisis at Kennedy Airport, joined the search. National Guard vehicles lumbered up and down every road and highway in the search area, finding nothing, but harrassing Air Force personnel at every opportunity.
By dawn, every square foot of the search area had been covered without turning up so much as a single heat-resistant ceramic tile off the shuttle's skin.
By the following afternoon, the land search was called off and the Coast Guard was brought in. Divers were dropped from rescue helicopters into the cold waters of Long Island Sound, on the theory that if the shuttle could not be found within the land portion of the search area, it must therefore have gone down in the water-the air-traffic controller at Kennedy notwithstanding. But no trace of the Yurt Gagarin was found in Long Island's waters, either. It had utterly vanished.
Chapter 7
Dr. Harold W. Smith was fascinated by the fact that the Soviet shuttle Yuri Gagarin had apparently come down not far from Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York.
The news sent him reaching for the bottom-righthand desk drawer, where he kept his emergency supplies. These consisted of a six-month supply of Maalox for his ulcer and an equal quantity of Alka-Seltzer for the times his ulcer was quiescent.
Smith hesitated, his gray eyes switching nervously from one supply to the other. He took a bottle of each and hurriedly filled a paper cup of spring water from the office dispenser.
Smith dropped two tablets into the water and waited for them to fizz. He brought the bubbling brew to his lips, barely tasting its sterile tang. His stomach heaved once. He put the cup down and reached for the Maalox. He opened the tamper-proof cap and, without benefit of paper cup, drank a third of the white plastic bottle's chalky contents.
When the familiar soothing sensation had sunk into his stomach, Smith relaxed slightly. Then his stomach jumped again.
Smith downed another Alka-Seltzer greedily.
He settled back into his cracked leather chair. The morning light beat through the big picture window of his office at the edge of Long Island Sound.
Smith turned to the window. Somewhere under those dancing waves, according to the latest news reports, the Yuri Gagarin lay in a watery grave. If that were true, there would be no problem.
But Smith did not think it was true. In fact, he had excellent reason to suspect that the shuttle had not crashed at all. His computers had told him so.
Harold Smith was director of Folcroft Sanitarium. But Folcroft Sanitarium was not what it was supposed to be. Ostensibly an institution for the mentally impaired, it was in fact a cover for CURE, America's ultrasecret bulwark against threats to national security.
Smith, a spare man with a tart face and a disposition two degrees to the bad side of Ebenezer Scrooge, had run CURE since it was created in the early sixties. He had grown old manning the CURE information-gathering computers through the days when CURE had a former cop named Remo Williams for an enforcement arm.
But then CURE's contract with Chiun, the aged Master of Sinanju, had finally expired and, in return for Chiun's help in a major crisis with the Russians, Smith had reported to the President that Remo had been eliminated-leaving CURE operating without an enforcement arm. It was great while it lasted.
Then the Master of Sinanju had reappeared. Because of a technicality in his contract, Chiun had insisted that he owed CURE another year's service, and Smith had reluctantly agreed. Soon after, Remo had arrived, having followed his mentor back from Korea, and the two of them had helped Smith defeat an enemy from his OSS past.
Six months had passed. Six quiet months. Smith had settled back into the calm routine of running Folcroft with one hand and managing CURE's data-gathering functions with the other. The Master of Sinanju had taken up residence in Folcroft, along with an unhappy Remo, until the year of service was over.
Dr. Harold W. Smith had begun to entertain the hope of things staying relatively quiet until Remo and Chiun finally returned to Sinanju forever. But the penetration of United States airspace by the Soviet space shuttle had dashed his rising hopes.
When the Gagarin landed peacefully at Kennedy Airport, the problem looked like an Air Force matter. But when the shuttle lifted off again, Smith had hunkered down behind his desktop computer terminal, tapping the main CIA and Defense Intelligence computers. When he tapped into the report that the shuttle had gone down not far from Rye and Folcroft, Smith's nervous stomach had gone into convulsions.
The Gagarin's strange behavior was one thing. Its landing near Rye was more wor
risome. Only four people were supposed to know of CURE's existence. Smith was one. The President was another. Remo and Chiun, its former and present enforcement arms, were the others.
But there was one other person who did know about CURE-a Soviet agent. She had worked with Remo on two past missions. The first time was when a renegade Russian parapsychologist had come to America. Smith had met her on that occasion. He respected her. He thought he could trust her.
That didn't stop him from ordering Remo Williams to eliminate her as a potential security threat to CURE. Remo had refused. Partly because Remo, too, respected the woman. But mostly, Smith believe, because he had slept with her.
Smith grudgingly allowed Anna Chutesov to live. It had been a wise decision because she had been instrumental in quelling a second crisis involving a worldwide outbreak of brushfire wars. She had even visited CURE's sanctum sanctorum, Folcroft, at the conclusion of that mission. Smith had had deeper misgivings, and again suggested to Remo that she had to be dealt with. Again Remo had refused. He and the Russian woman had disappeared for several weeks. When Remo finally returned, flushed with more pleasure than Smith had ever seen in him, Remo informed him that Anna had definitely been taken care of.
"You liquidated her?" Smith had asked.
"Actually, she was more like jelly than liquid when I saw her last," Remo said with a smirk.
"Which was where?"
"Dressing for the flight back to Moscow."
"Oh," said Smith, suddenly understanding.
That was the last any of them had heard of Anna Chutesov. The crisis with the Soviet government had occurred later, but Smith knew that the beautiful Soviet blond would have had nothing to do with that matter.
Now Smith suspected that Anna Chutesov was somehow involved with the Gagarin incident. The landing of the Soviet shuttle could mean anything.
Smith returned to his desk. On the computer screen a news digest blazed in glowing green letters. Smith, a veined hand on his throbbing stomach, read it again.
The digest reported the arrest of Daryl Doone, a salesman. Doone had been arrested when his car was spotted weaving on Interstate 95, just south of Rye. The state trooper who took him into custody reported that Doone had registered .21 on the Breathalyzer test-well over the legal limit.
Daryl Doone had admitted that he had been drinking. Admitted it freely. But he swore that he had not started until after he saw the ghost.
According to Doone, he had been driving along a particularly deserted stretch of the highway when a space shuttle came in for a landing. The shuttle swooped down just ahead of Daryl's car, narrowly missing the car roof.
Daryl followed the craft as it taxied down the highway. He lost it in the backwash of its tail jets. When he finally came to the end of the burned rubber landing tracks, there was no trace of the shuttle.
As he explained it to the state trooper, the shuttle had obviously rolled down the nearby exit ramp. But there was no sign of it at the end of the ramp-just trees and an abandoned car wash where the tracks stopped dead.
Daryl Doone had an explanation for the apparition, however. He was convinced it was the ghost of the destroyed American shuttle Challenger. It was the only answer. He had pulled the Scotch bottle kept for medicinal purposes only-from his glove compartment and drunk it dry to stop his hands from quivering. He had never seen a ghost before. Especially one that big.
Harold Smith did not believe for a moment that Daryl Doone had seen a ghost. Harold Smith did not believe in ghosts.
But Harold Smith knew that at the time of night that Daryl Doone had claimed to see a space shuttle descend on Interstate 95, the matter of the Yuri Gagarin had not been broken to the press. It was too much of a coincidence. Therefore, Smith reasoned, Doone had seen the shuttle land, apparently intact.
It was too much of a coincidence, Smith also thought, that the Soviet craft would land so close to Rye and Folcroft. It meant something. But what?
At that moment, the intercom buzzed. Smith tripped the switch.
"Yes, Mrs. Mikulka?" he asked his secretary. "You have a visitor, Dr. Smith."
"I recall no appointment at this time."
"I told her that, but Ms. Chutesov says she's sure you'll see her anyway."
"Ms. Chutesov is correct," Smith said grimly. "Send her in."
Anna Chutesov closed the door behind her.
"You are not surprised to see me?" she asked. Smith's lack of expression puzzled her, this cool Russian beauty who was so seldom surprised at anything anyone did. Especially men. She understood men. She understood that they were really boys, and that is how she treated them. Surprisingly, they seemed to like it.
"Not at all," said Smith.
"Then do you also know why I am here?"
"No," admitted Smith. He looked at her coldly.
"Oh! You admit it," said Anna Chutesov, taking a seat and crossing her long legs provocatively. "I admire a man who admits his ignorance. So few men do. It is some macho thing with them."
"Please get to the point," Smith said warily. He was unarmed. He did not imagine that this young woman with the Kewpie doll face would barge into his office to assassinate him, but it was possible.
"I am here to recover the property of my government. I know your government would enjoy the stupid propaganda coup that capturing the Yuri Gagarin would bring. Let me assure you that it is not worth it. Our shuttle is no different from yours."
"We don't have the Gagarin," Smith said flatly.
"But you will do your utmost to locate it. You will probably send your best man to recover it. You will send Remo."
"Remo doesn't work for me anymore," said Smith.
"Then either you are lying to me or Remo is dead," said Anna Chutesov suddenly. "Which is it?"
"Neither," said Smith in a voice as short as the Russian's.
"The Remo I knew was a patriot. He would never stop working for you, for America."
"A year ago. I would have agreed with you, Ms. Chutesov," Smith said in a less brittle tone. "But Remo has changed. I don't understand it myself, but he appears to have absorbed his training until he's more Korean than American now. Or he thinks he is."
"Than you have no one to track the missing spacecraft?" asked Anna Chutesov disappointedly.
"Chiun is still with us," said Smith. "Officially, that is."
"You mean unofficially, do you not?" And she smiled.
"Well, yes, unofficially, then. I mean that Chiun still works for me."
"I see. And Remo? Where is he?"
"Remo has agreed to remain in America with Chiun for the duration of the Master of Sinanju's current contract. I don't control him anymore."
"Remo has always been unpredictable, especially for a male. But perhaps we can work something out."
"I don't understand."
"I think you do, but you wish to draw me out before committing yourself. Very well, let me lay my cards on the table. I am here-unofficially, of course-to recover the Gagarin. That is your task too. But the Master of Sinanju, powerful as he is, is not exactly suited for this kind of assignment. He is more your infallible arrow. All you need do is point him and he will hit the bull's-eye each time. But if you cannot give him a clear target, he might as well be a rampaging elephant-powerful, unstoppable, but ultimately useless."
"You understand my problem perfectly, but I doubt that you could point Chiun in the right direction-unless you already know where the Gagarin is."
"I do not. And I think you are beginning to realize this."
Smith nodded wordlessly, and Anna Chutesov sensed that she was finally getting through to the dry-as-dust bureaucrat.
"I agree that I cannot command Chiun, but I do have a certain, shall we say, influence over Remo. This is what I offer you."
"You'll . . er . . influence Remo to help you locate the Gagarin, is that it?"
"And in return for my help in proving to you that the craft has inadvertently strayed into your airspace, you will allow me to recover the Gagarin
for my country. Quietly."
Smith shook his head. "I cannot make that guarantee. I am under orders."
"Bosh! An organization like yours could not function if it were orderable, like the CIA. You have autonomy, Smith. Do not deny this."
Smith leaned back in his chair. His brow wrinkled like an old blanket and his lips became a bloodless line behind which his teeth clamped tightly. The nutlike hardening of his jaw muscles betrayed his dilemma.
Anna Chutesov was correct, in all of it. She could, Smith imagined, convince Remo Williams to aid in the search for the Yuri Gagarin. It would solve many problems, and solve them quickly. Smith, at first worried that the shuttle's landing was a Soviet thrust against CURE, now had only one more concern.
"You are an honorable person, Ms. Chutesov. I will ask you for your word on something before I agree to this."
"Ask. "
"Give me your word that the Gagarin's landing is not a hostile act against either America or CURE."
"To the best of my knowledge, neither is the case," replied Anna Chutesov truthfully.
"Accepted," said Smith.
Smith reached for his intercom.
"Mrs. Mikulka, could you have Mr. Chiun sent up here?"
"That nice patient who insists upon calling you Emperor Smith?" asked Smith's secretary.
"Yes, that Mr. Chiun," Smith said tiredly.
"Immediately, Dr. Smith. He's such a sweet little dear. It's too bad about his problem."
"Yes," said Smith. "It is too bad."
Anna Chutesov cocked a slim eyebrow at Smith. "Problem?" she inquired.
"For security purposes, Chiun is on the books as a Folcroft patient. The staff believes he's suffering from Alzheimer's disease. It covers most of his inexplicable behavior, such as boasting to the other patients that he is the sole defender of the American Constitution."
"Does it ever worry you, Dr. Smith," Anna Chutesov asked plainly, "that the greatest secret of your young nation is entrusted to a man who would babble it away to anyone who would listen?"
"Yes," said Smith. "It bothers me. It bothers me a lot." And he asked Anna Chutesov to excuse him as he downed the rest of the bottle of Maalox.
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