Ghost in the Machine td-90 Read online

  "I will be calling Moscow."

  "I cannot afford to call Moscow. You are mad."

  "I will call collect."

  "They have no more money for foolish telephone calls in Moscow than they do in Nizhni Novgorod."

  "Babushka, I will break down door," Batenin warned.

  Silence. A chain rattled. And a huddled, red-faced woman drew open the door and said, "Broken door will cost more than telephone call. Make call, Batenin. But if you cause me trouble, I will have landlord throw you out. That is one good thing about the new order. Tenants can be evicted."

  Yuli Batenin had difficulty getting through to Moscow. That was not unusual. With the current state of the collapsing Russian infrastructure, he would have had trouble calling a downstairs apartment.

  It also didn't help that he made his call with his eyes shut because even now, three years after the telephone phobia had seized him, he could not bear to look at one. He asked the local operator to put the call through. Dialing would have been too much for him. Just holding the instrument made his knees shake.

  Finally, he got someone at the number he called.

  "Is this KGB?" Batenin asked eagerly.

  "No. This former KGB. Once great spy apparatus. Now clearinghouse for secrets to highest bidder. You wish to buy?"

  "No. I wish to make you rich."

  "I am already rich. Today I have sold Stalin's diaries to American film company. It is to be miniseries. We are hoping Bobby will take part of Stalin."

  "Bobby?"

  "DeNiro. "

  "Idiot!" Batenin snarled. "This is matter of national security. Soviet property of greater value than anything in your files is in United States and must be recovered."

  "This is new?"

  "Is greater than the method of preserving Lenin's corpse."

  "Impossible! These is no such secret."

  "Okay. We stole it from Japanese."

  "That is better. Give me locator number. If we have not sold it, I will see."

  "Locator Number 55-334. I will hold."

  He held for over an hour, during which the babushka Biliandinova carried on something fierce, complaining bitterly of the cost. Yuli Batenin got so weary of it that he carefully laid down the telephone and brained her with her own wooden rolling pin, which she was waving threateningly. After she had hit the floor, he applied the hardest part of it to the back of her fat neck until he heard a satisfying crunching sound.

  Thereafter it was very quiet in the apartment, and Yuli Batenin, formerly Major Batenin of the KGB, could at last hear himself think. He closed his eyes again, amazed that he had summoned up the courage to use the phone at all. Perhaps he was getting over it.

  After a while, the voice came back. It sounded very impressed.

  "You have told truth," it said.

  "You have found file?"

  "No. File was moved to new ministry. It must be very important, because everything else abandoned."

  "What new ministry?"

  "I have number."

  Yuli Batenin called the number and got a crisp female voice that spoke only one word: "Shchit. "

  "Am I speaking to new ministry?" asked Batenin.

  "Who is asking, please?"

  "I am Yuli Batenin, formerly with KGB, calling on matter of gravest important to Soviet Union."

  "Idiot! There is no Soviet Union. Where do you call from?"

  "Nizhni Novgorod."

  "Where?"

  "Gorky."

  "Oh. Hold the line."

  "But-"

  The unmistakable sound of being put on hold came over the long miles between Nizhni Novgorod and Moscow. Yuli Batenin had no choice but to hold the line. If he was disconnected, it might be weeks until the lucky connection was reestablished. If ever, given the pitiful state of his once-proud motherland.

  He hummed "Moscow Nights" as he waited. Perhaps they would reinstate him. Perhaps he would no longer be required to live in disgrace in this dull city, which had once been the dumping ground for inconvenient traitors like Sakharov. Perhaps the clock would be rolled back and all of Russia would be reunited in socialism.

  Yuli Batenin had less time to wait than he had dreamed possible. And when they got back to him, it wasn't through a crisp female voice over hundreds of miles of rusting cable but by crashing in the apartment door and seizing him roughly.

  There were three of them. Plainclothes men. Very KGB.

  "Yuli Batenin?" the tallest of them asked stonily.

  "Yes. Who are you?"

  "You will come with us," the man said gruffly, as the other two dragged him by his elbows down the dingy apartment stairs and out into the sterile autumn cold of Sovno Prospekt.

  They flung him into a waiting car and, as the car sped off, Yuli Batenin found himself weeping with a mixture of pride and nostalgia. He himself had seized dissidents in just this fashion during the days of his youth.

  "Is just like old days," he blubbered. "I am so happy."

  They slapped him to quiet him, but he only smiled harder.

  Chapter 21

  The Master of Sinanju was ignoring the prattling whites.

  As he sat on a tatami mat before the hotel room television, with the incessant honk and blare of city traffic permeating the room, he bided his time, waiting for the glorious face of Cheeta Ching, his Cheeta Ching, rosy-cheeked with child, to appear.

  The whites prattled on, disturbing his thoughts.

  "I got it all figured out, Smitty," Remo was saying.

  Over the miles of phone wiring, the brittle voice of Harold W. Smith buzzed. Its noise offended the ears of the Master of Sinanju above all.

  "Yes, Remo?"

  "It's a hologram."

  "Pardon me?"

  "The Rumpp Tower is a hologram," Remo repeated. "You know, one of those 3-D gimmicks."

  Chiun snorted derisively. The whites prattled on, unheeding.

  "What about the people trapped inside?" Smith asked.

  "Holograms too," Remo said. "It's the only thing that makes sense."

  "So far, you are not even making that," Smith buzzed.

  "Follow my train of logic," Remo said, looking over to the bright television screen. His face was reflected in a wall mirror for the Master of Sinanju to see. His round white eyes grew interested in the image they beheld.

  The Master of Sinanju casually reached up to change the channel.

  Remo looked away with a frown and resumed speaking.

  "Listen," he said. "Rumpp is about to be shut down. He's got an ego bigger than Lee Iacocca. He can't handle it, so he arranges for a hologram of his Tower to appear, to fool everyone who tries to evict him."

  "Not likely," Smith said.

  "And to make it really, really look good," Remo went on, "he has holograms of people planted so that when they seem to step outside, they fall into the ground."

  "Explain how you and Chiun fell through the atrium lobby."

  "Simple. Rumpp had the marble ripped up and laid down a hologram floor. We couldn't stand on it, because it was just light. The hologram people didn't fall through because they weren't solid either."

  "Not plausible," Smith said sharply.

  "Yeah? You got a better theory?"

  "No," Smith admitted.

  "Then let's go with mine until you do."

  "There's only one thing wrong with your theory, Remo."

  "What's that?"

  "If the present Rumpp Tower is a three-dimensional illusion, where is the real thing?"

  Remo's confident expression fell in like a black hole with a white face. He wrinkled his forehead unhappily. He pulled on an earlobe and scrunched up his right eye and that side of his face.

  Remo snapped lean fingers. "Simple. He moved it."

  The Master of Sinanju snorted and attempted to return to his meditations. But he knew there would be no peace unless these whites were allowed to indulge their mania for trivia.

  "Remo, it is not possible to simply move a sixty-eight-story office tower,"
Harold Smith pointed out in a firm voice.

  "Maybe it was on jacks, and he just sent it dropping into the earth," Remo said with less confidence than before.

  "Hardly."

  "Okay, there are some weak links in my logic chain. But I still say the only rational scientific explanation is a hologram scam."

  "Perhaps we should not be looking for a rational scientific explanation," Smith said slowly.

  "What other kind is there?"

  "What has Chiun to say about this matter?"

  "Who knows? I'm still trying to get a handle on this baby situation."

  "I spoke with Chiun earlier," Smith said.

  Across the room, the Master of Sinanju cocked a delicate ear while feigning disinterest.

  Remo brought the receiver closer to his mouth and lowered his voice. "Yeah? What'd he say then?"

  "We did not get to the matter at hand. It seemed that the Master of Sinanju expects me to become the baby's godfather."

  "Uh-oh. "

  "I told him it was quite impossible, for security reasons. He-er-hung up in a huff."

  "Well," Remo said guiltily. "You know how Chiun gets these ideas into his head. It'll pass."

  "It will not, liar!" Chiun hissed.

  Remo, noticing something on the TV screen that interested him, grabbed the remote unit off the dresser and pointed it at the cable control box. He eased the volume up.

  Chiun reached up and changed the channel manually.

  Remo changed the channel back.

  The Master of Sinanju, in response, lowered the sound.

  "Chiun! Cut that out! That looked like a report on the Tower thing coming on."

  "The only news that could be of interest will come from the divine lips of Cheeta Ching," he intoned.

  Remo offered the receiver. "Here, Smith wants to know your theories about what happened tonight."

  Chiun refused to move. "I will have nothing to do with a person who would turn away an innocent child."

  "He, she, or it hasn't been born yet!" Remo called over. Cupping his hand over the mouthpiece, he added in a whisper, "Think how many points you can score with Smith if you can solve this mess for him. The President's on his back."

  The Master of Sinanju hesitated between opportunity and stubbornness.

  "And it'll sure make up for the way we screwed up our last assignment," Remo added hopefully.

  "I screwed up nothing!" Chiun flared, leaping to his feet. "Your failure to dispatch the dictator allowed him to seize one of Smith's outermost provinces! No blame is mine."

  Remo suppressed a grin. Last time out, Remo had been assigned to assassinate a deposed Central American dictator. Remo thought he had done the job, but weeks later, the man had resurfaced in an new identity as an office-seeker in the California governor's race. Chiun had been seduced into joining the campaign by a promised post as Lord Treasurer. When the truth came out the Master of Sinanju was embarrassed, and ever since he had been determined to restore himself to Smith's good graces.

  "Tell that to Smith," Remo suggested.

  Chiun grasped the telephone and brought the ugly device to his parchment face.

  "Emperor Smith. The truth here is very simple, O all-seeing one."

  "Yes?"

  "The idiot Rumpp built his ugly tower on a cursed spot."

  "Cursed?"

  "All Koreans understand that one does not merely set a building down in any old place. There are lucky places and unlucky places in the earth. Restless spirits roam. Unmarked graves abound. This is why we employ mudangs to seek out efficacious places first."

  "Mudangs?"

  "He means witches!" Remo called over.

  "Oh," said Smith, disappointment in his tone. "I do not think we are dealing with witchcraft here, Master Chiun."

  "What other explanation is there? Even your white witches have emerged from their places of hiding to brave the hangman's noose to behold the awesome sight."

  "I've been trying to explain about the Salem witch trials!" Remo called over. "Somebody forgot to tell him dunking stools went out with the Spanish Inquisition."

  "Master Chiun," Smith went on. "Have you no ideas? This matter is beyond my ability to cope with it."

  Chiun stroked his wispy beard, one eye narrowing thoughtfully. "White magic has obviously failed. It is time for yellow magic."

  "Yellow?"

  "Emperor, I have a certain trunk for situations such as this. Had I known more of this matter I would have brought it with me."

  "You require it now?" Smith asked.

  "You have it safe, do you not?"

  "Yes, along with most of your other trunks."

  "It is a sad thing not to be in possession of one's most treasured belongings," Chiun said, voice quavering, "but when one is homeless in a foreign land, one must sacrifice for the good of one's employer."

  "I have been in search of a suitable property for you and Remo," Smith said quickly.

  "I vote for the Bahamas," Remo chimed in.

  "I will sign no contract until this unresolved matter is settled," Chiun said sharply.

  "I will have the trunk shipped immediately. Which one is it?"

  "The green-and-gold one. And take care, Smith-its contents are very powerful. Allow no lacky to manhandle it."

  "The trunk will arrive intact, I promise," said Smith, hanging up without another word.

  The Master of Sinanju padded back to his tatami mat. Remo had claimed it. Chiun cleared his throat in warning.

  Instead of vacating the mat with alacrity, as was proper, Remo asked a question.

  "Why does the green-and-gold trunk sound familiar?"

  "Because it is familiar," Chiun sniffed. "Sitter-on-mats-which-are-not-his."

  "Huh? Oh, sorry." Remo got up and made way.

  The Master of Sinanju settled onto his mat and fixed his hazel eyes on the television screen, his expression expectant.

  "Waiting for Cheeta, huh?"

  "It should not concern you, offerer-of-false-hopes."

  "Are you saying that I fibbed when I told you Smith wanted to be godfather to the brat?"

  "I am not saying that."

  "Good," Remo said in relief.

  "The tone of your lying voice is saying that."

  "Bulldookey."

  Chiun lifted a gnarled hand. "Silence! Cheeta appears."

  In fact, it was the harried face of BCN anchorman Don Cooder that appeared on the TV screen.

  "Good evening," he said. "Tonight, all New York is agog as one of its most famous-some say infamous-skyscrapers has reportedly been spectralized."

  "Spectralized?" Remo muttered.

  "For more on this breaking story, we turn now to our junior anchorwoman, our own fountain of fecundity, Cheeta Ching."

  Cooder turned in his chair to face the floating graphic of the Rumpp Tower, which expanded and became the repressed-with-fury face of Cheeta Ching. She was surrounded by ordinary New Yorkers, some dressed for trick-or-treating.

  "Dan, I'm standing behind police lines surrounding what may be the Halloween spooktacular of the century." Cheeta stepped aside, disclosing the brassy Rumpp Tower. A scarecrow slipped up behind Cheeta and made a two-fingered rabbit-ears behind her glossy head. Cheeta elbowed him hard, and after he'd doubled over in pain, pushed his head below the camera frame and held it down with one foot.

  The other trick-or-treaters moved away with haste.

  Cheeta went on with her report, every so often grimacing and jumping slightly as the scarecrow attempted to get out from under her heel.

  "Over my shoulder can be seen the Rumpp Tower, where tonight perhaps thousands of residents and office workers are trapped by the latest gambit in the titanic financial struggle between Randal T. Rumpp and his legion of creditors."

  Don Cooder jumped in. "Cheeta. What exactly has happened to the Tower? We can see it there, plain as day. Looks fine. What's the story?"

  "The story, Don, is that Randal Rumpp is claiming to have turned his prime architectural trop
hy into an insubstantial asset. It is literally untouchable."

  "I understand, Cheeta, that you've spoken with Rumpp this evening."

  "That's right, Don, I-"

  "Any footage?"

  Cheeta Ching's face colored. Her bloodred lips thinned, and her black eyes snapped with fury. She muttered something under her breath that, out of the millions watching the broadcast, perhaps only Remo and Chiun, who both understood Korean, picked up on.

  "Did she just call him a bastard?" Remo asked Chiun.

  "Hush!"

  Cheeta went on. "Don, whatever dark forces are at work here, obviously it affects videotape. My exclusive interview was ruined."

  "Too bad."

  Cheeta smiled through set teeth. A guttural fragment of sound emerged, too.

  Remo asked, "Did she just call him a prick in Korean?"

  "Be still!"

  "But," Cheeta added, lifting a notebook into camera range, "I can quote precisely several of the things Rumpp had to say." She began reading off the pad. "According to the real-estate developer himself, the Rumpp Tower has been 'spectralized.' That is, made insubstantial to human touch. Rumpp declined to explain why he had resorted to this unique approach to protecting his assets from seizure, but it's widely believed in banking circles that this is the last, desperate act of a desperate man, a man who, only a decade ago-"

  "That's fine, Cheeta," Don Cooder cut in, "but we have a follow-up report to get to."

  "But-"

  The angry face of Cheeta Ching winked out and Don Cooder turned to face his audience, saying,

  "Spectralization. What is it? Can it happen to your home? Here with a full report is BCN science editor, Frank Feldmeyer."

  The Master of Sinanju stabbed the OFF switch angrily.

  "Hey, I wanted to see that report!" Remo protested.

  "There is a saloon in the lower regions of this building," Chiun said. "I am certain if you cross his palm with silver, the saloonkeeper will oblige you."

  "Crap," said Remo, turning on the TV again. Chiun retreated to the dresser and seized the remote. He stabbed the button.

  A competing newscaster appeared. The anchor was explaining, as if it were a perfectly ordinary occurrence, how the Rumpp Tower had been "dematerialized."

  Remo switched back to BCN.

  Chiun ran the channel selector to another broadcast.

  This particular anchor, in referring to the Rumpp Tower, called it "owl-blasted."