Blue Smoke and Mirrors td-78 Read online

  "That gives you away right there," Robin said triumphantly. "We only wear uniforms when we're undercover. No one knows who we are-even our rank is secret."

  "Oh, yeah? What is your rank anyway? Major? Colonel? What?"

  "None of your business."

  "Maybe it's in these files," Remo said, taking a packet of folded sheets from his back pocket.

  Robin, noticing that they were copies of her official OSI report on the first LCF-Fox incident, blew up.

  "Where did you get these?" she said, grabbing them. "And don't feed me that crap about belonging to the

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  OSI. If either of us is caught with these, our goose is cooked."

  "Oh, I have my ways," Remo said casually, retrieving his ID card. "Just like I'm going to find the Krahseevah."

  "No chance. The trail's cold by now."

  "Not to me. Want me to let you off somewhere?"

  "You're not ditching me now."

  "Look," Remo said seriously. "You've just come through a serious accident. You're at the very least banged up. You're certainly in no shape to play tag with this guy. So why don't I let you off somewhere where you can get medical treatment? It's for your own good."

  "I can't. If I don't produce results, my plans will go up in smoke."

  "What plans?" Remo wanted to know.

  Robin fell silent. She leafed through the OSI files.

  "Come on, what plans?" Remo prompted.

  "If I crack this thing, maybe they'll let me join the Air Force for real," Robin admitted quietly.

  Remo pulled over to the side of the road. "Hold the phone," he said. "You mean you're a fake?"

  "No," Robin said levelly. She paused, took a breath, and went on shakily. "I've never admitted this to anyone before. I'm a service brat. Daddy didn't have any boys. Just me. I tried to enlist, to continue the family tradition."

  "No go, huh?" Remo said sympathetically.

  "I was rejected for a real chickenshit reason. They called it 'weight not in proportion to height.' The fatuous jerks!"

  "Why not try again? You look pretty trim now."

  "They weren't talking about my weight."

  Remo frowned. "Then what-?"

  "These aren't falsies, buster," Robin snapped, patting her breasts. "They're not detachable before induction physicals."

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  "Oh," Remo said, starting the car again. "That explains it."

  "Damn straight it does."

  "I meant the way you've been acting. Sensitive. Defensive. Trying to prove yourself. It all makes sense now. So how were you able to pass yourself off as an OSI agent?"

  "I am not passing myself off," Robin insisted. "I am OSI. They employ civilian agents too. I passed their damn physical with no sweat. I turned out to be a damn good special agent and my record was spotless until this mess started. Now all I want is a chance to keep it clean. Then maybe-just maybe-they'll loosen up their silly regs so I can wear the uniform officially, not just when I'm undercover. If only I hadn't been cursed with these monster knockers."

  "If you hadn't," Remo said dryly, "your face would right now be decorating the windshield of that wreck back there."

  Robin had no answer to that.

  "Tell you what," Remo said finally. "You do me a favor and I'll let you tag along until we catch this guy. Maybe we can work it so you get some of the credit."

  "What do I have to do?" Robin asked in a wary voice.

  "Simple," Remo said with a smile. "Just eat those reports."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "You heard me. I was supposed to do it myself^ but I forgot. They're perfectly digestible. Even the ink."

  "You're joking."

  "Take it or leave it. There's a town coming up ahead. I'll just drop you off at a gas station."

  Robin looked at the files in her hand and then at Remo's sober profile. She examined the files again. She nibbled on a corner experimentally. She swallowed. Her expression was quizzical.

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  "How about you take half and I take half?" Robin suggested.

  Remo thought about it, "Fair enough," he said. He put out his hand. They shook on it and then divided up Smith's files.

  When they were done, Remo asked, "Now, that wasn't so bad, was it?"

  "Not enough ink," Robin muttered. "You said you had a way of finding the Krahseevah."

  "See that telephone pole we just passed?"

  "No."

  "That's because it's lying on its side. That's the fifth toppled pole we've gone by."

  "And?"

  "You know how Indians used to snap branches to leave trails through the forest? Chiun is leaving a trail for me to follow."

  "The little guy did that?" Robin said, pointing to a dramatically leaning telephone pole coming up on their right.

  "Without even trying. My guess is he spotted the Krahseevah while you were playing chicken and took off after him."

  "And I suppose he just happened to forget to bring his car along?"

  "Chiun doesn't like cars much. He says they're too slow."

  "I'll believe it when I see it," Robin said huffily, folding her arms. She winced. Her ribs hurt. And her breasts felt like two humongous throbbing bruises.

  Noticing her reaction, Remo asked, "You think you're up for this?"

  "I'll be fine once I catch that Russian."

  The lights of a desert community appeared up ahead. And in the solemn glow, a palm tree abruptly shook, shivered, and fell over.

  "We're getting close," Remo said, pushing the accelerator to the limit.

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  Rair Brashnikov slowed down when he approached the town. Once he had changed his flat tire, he did not plan to stop again until he reached Los Angeles International Airport, but neither did he wish to attract the attention of the California authorities by driving too fast.

  A neon sign on the left side of the road caught his eye. It said "Orbit Room Motel." As Rair drove past it, he saw that it was a low stucco building with an attached bar. The bar was dark but in the window rows of fine liquor bottles gleamed invitingly. Good American liquor was at a premium on the Russian black market.

  Rair drove more slowly. Checking the rearview mirror, he saw no sign of pursuit.

  He executed a careful U-turn and pulled into the Orbit Room parking lot, thinking: What harm could there be in it?

  The Master of Sinanju left the palm toppled and sprinted on down the highway toward the lights of a town. He hoped that Remo was behind him. He could not understand what had happened to him.

  Back at the place where they had waited for the Krahseevah, Chiun had been sitting in the car, his eyes keen and unwavering. He did not see the Krahseevah enter the building that for some reason was called by whites a plant, and did not see him leave it.

  But it happened that his magnificent eyes spied his pupil, Remo, atop a building away from his post. Chiun recognized from Remo's crouching body language that he was stalking someone.

  That was enough for the Master of Sinanju, who burst from the car like a blot of blackness. He circled the building, searching with his eyes.

  The faint glow of the Krahseevah became visible crossing an open stretch of highway. Hearing the sound

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  of a car motor start up, Chiun knew that the Russian was going to attempt escape by vehicle.

  Seeing Remo sprint for the car, Chiun decided that Remo had the situation in hand. But just in case, he would take the low road and be prepared to join Remo in the chase.

  Chiun waited in the middle of the road, his sleeves linked, his face resolute, for the big car to turn the corner.

  It never did. Instead, its headlight glow swept above Chiun's head and past him. The Cadillac had taken the ridge road.

  Annoyed that Remo had allowed this to happen, Chiun flounced around and, sandals slapping the blacktop silently, streaked after it. He stayed on the low road, knowing that the two roads ran parallel for several miles before diverging.

  When the ridge
road flattened, Chiun saw the Cadillac moving rapidly. There was no sign of Remo. Chiun frowned. What could have happened to him?

  Chiun crossed over a strip of desert to the other road and fell in behind the Cadillac. He maintained a decorous pace, keeping the car's taillights always in view, but never allowing his night-black kimono to be visible. Every few hundred yards he paused to fell a telephone pole.

  Now the Cadillac was slowing as it came to the city limits. Dawn was turning the east pinkish-orange.

  And as Chiun rounded a turn in the road, he saw the Cadillac pull into a combination motel/bar called the Orbit Room Motel.

  Chiun dropped to a trot, and his arms ceased their steady pumping. He glanced over his shoulder. But there was still no sign of Remo. It was puzzling.

  As Chiun drew up to the neon Orbit Room sign, he was no longer running. He was flitting from mailbox to palm tree, a patch of shadow that no human eye could perceive.

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  Chiun saw the Krahseevah leave the big car. He wore an overcoat so that only his white boots showed. He carried the car battery and the collapsed bladder-like helmet under one arm. The tiles were not in his possession. He went around to the back of the bar.

  Chiun drifted up to the Cadillac. He peered into the interior. There was a cardboard box in the back seat. The door was locked, but that did not deter the Master of Sinanju. He tapped his fingernails against the rear window. He tapped steadily, insistently, until the glass suddenly radiated cracks. It crystallized into nuggetlike pieces. Laying his palm against it, Chiun pushed in the window glass like a piece of soft cardboard. It plopped onto the seat with a mushy sound.

  Chiun extricated the cardboard box and undid the flaps. The box contained over a dozen black tiles. Pleased, Chiun took the box to a mailbox and sent it sliding down the chute for safekeeping. He did not want them damaged in the conflict to come.

  Then he marched for the front door of the bar. He vowed to himself that this time he would leave no walls for the Krahseevah to conceal himself in.

  Remo almost drove past the Orbit Room Motel without noticing the parked Cadillac.

  He finally spotted it when he executed a sharp U-turn and pulled into the parking lot.

  "I hope this doesn't mean what I think it means," Robin Green said unhappily. She was looking at the motel's stucco face. Or rather, what was left of it.

  For the Orbit Room Motel looked like a piece of white cheese that had been nibbled on by rats. Scablike chunks were falling from great holes even as Remo pulled into a spot. When he got out, his car door banged the one parked next to his. Remo noticed that it was a Cadillac. He checked the rear license plate. It matched the number of the Krahseevah'^ machine.

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  But Remo didn't have time to consider that. He had spotted the Master of Sinanju.

  Chiun leapt from a gaping cavity in the stucco corner. Whirling, he attacked the face of the building, his long fingernails working like scores of high-speed clippers. Stucco flew like broken teeth.

  From the entrance, hotel personnel and guests in their nightclothes and underwear poured out screaming. They piled into cars and drove off in a mass exodus of confusion.

  "Chiun, hold up," Remo called.

  The Master of Sinanju turned, his clawlike hands poised.

  "Remo! What kept you? Never mind. Come help me. The white thing is inside this building. We must root him out." And Chiun slashed a long horizontal line across the cracked stucco as he ran the length of the building's face.

  "You'd better stay here," Remo told Robin in a solicitous tone. "Okay?"

  "Are you kidding?" she said. "I had a tough enough time explaining one wreck of a hotel without being involved in another."

  "Good girl," Remo said, starting off.

  Robin watched him go. "What am I thinking?" she said, cocking her automatic. "He's going to blow it again." She squeezed out and limped after Remo.

  When Remo stepped up behind Chiun, the Master of Sinanju turned on him, his face furious.

  "Do not merely stand there like useless baggage," he shrieked. "I have followed that dastard here, no thanks to you, and I- "

  Chiun's hazel eyes narrowed at the sight of Robin Green limping up.

  "How did she get here?" he hissed explosively.

  "I pulled some strings," Robin informed him.

  Chiun blinked. "Strings?" he asked, approaching her. "Tell me of these strings. Are they part of the

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  blue smoke and mirrors? I do not remember you saying 'blue smoke, mirrors, and strings.' What kind of string is employed?"

  "What's he jabbering about?" Robin asked Remo.

  "Look, let's save this for our old age, shall we?" Remo said. He turned to Chiun. "You say the Krah-seevah's inside? Fine. Let's dig him out and we'll sort out the pieces later."

  Robin Green opened her mouth to say something, but her gaze was caught by something above and behind them. Her mouth froze in the open position.

  Remo and Chiun turned just in time to see the Krahseevah's featureless face emerge from the stucco wall above their heads.

  Robin sent two rounds into its face. Two spiderweb holes shattered the textured stucco. The face withdrew.

  "It's on the second floor," she yelled.

  Remo grabbed her gun.

  "No wild shooting," he hissed. "We don't know if there are still people up there."

  "Not after your friend, the Eastern earthquake, started in on this place," Robin said.

  "I resent that," Chiun said.

  "Both of you just put it away. C'mon, let's hit the second floor."

  They went in together. The lobby was deserted. At Remo's suggestion, they split up. Robin followed him up a flight of stairs. Chiun took the elevator.

  They reached the second floor simultaneously. Virtually every door was wide open, thanks to the mass evacuation caused by Chiun's attempt to bring the hotel down around the Krahseevah's head.

  "This should be easy," Remo said as he passed from door to door.

  "Look," Robin put in, pointing to a closed door. "Care to bet if he's in that room?"

  "You're covered," Remo said. "Come on."

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  "Can I have my weapon back?" Robin whispered as they closed in on the door.

  "No," Remo and Chiun said in different degrees of vehemence.

  Rair Brashnikov knew he had a problem. He could easily slip out of the hotel in his incorporeal state, but he could not drive off without turning off the suit. He knew from his experiences with the white man and the little Oriental that they were more than human. It was very strange. They possessed no electronic augmentation, but they did things no human could possibly accomplish. They would follow him no matter where he went, tireless and inexhaustible-which was more than Rair could say for the battery pack that powered his vibration suit. It was advertised as a sixty-month battery, good for over five hundred cold cranking amps for all-weather starts. But that guarantee held only if it was hooked up to a car. The suit usually drained it after twelve hours' continuous use.

  There was only one thing to do. He turned off the suit and picked up the room telephone. He hit the outside-line button, and got a dial tone. Quickly Brashnikov dialed the Soviet-embassy number he had carefully committed to memory now that it represented his ultimate trump card in the game of espionage.

  The phone rang. Once, twice. Then the door crashed open and Rair Brashnikov reached for the belt rheostat, steeling himself for the ordeal of fiberoptic cable teleportation.

  They all saw the Krahseevah, his outline sharp and clear, poised, receiver in hand.

  "Got him!" Remo exulted.

  "No, he is mine!" Chiun cried.

  They both swept into the room like black-clad demons.

  Then the Krahseevah touched his belt. His sharp

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  outlines blurred. He glowed hike the moon seen through fog.

  Then, a strange thing happened. The Krahseevah's blurred outlines shifted and wavered. Remo was almost
upon him when it happened.

  The Krahseevah congealed like a luminous mist. It collapsed, and, like smoke, was drawn into the hovering receiver. It looked like a special-effects film run in reverse. The last bit of him to go was the hand that held the receiver. When that was gone, the telephone plummeted to the rug.

  Remo caught it, one step ahead of Chiun.

  Robin screamed.

  "Oh, my God," she cried. "What happened to it?"

  Remo, his eyes staring, looked at the receiver with a dumbfounded expression.

  "It was sucked into the phone," Remo said slowly. "I think."

  "Oh, do not be ridiculous," Chiun snapped.

  "You got a better explanation?" Remo retorted.

  "It was like he was made of smoke," Robin said in a stunned voice.

  "Hah!" exclaimed Chiun. "Then there is truth behind those inscrutable words, blue smoke and mirrors. Now, where are the mirrors? I see no mirrors. Or string."

  Remo put the receiver to his ear experimentally. There was a great deal of static, but through it he heard a voice. A Russian voice. It was saying, "Oh, no, not again! Brashnikov, you idiot!"

  Then the Russian voice screamed and Remo heard a flurry of frantic shouting and activity.

  Seeing Remo's absurd expression, Chiun demanded, "What is it? What do you hear?"

  "Russians. I think the Krahseevah's in the line somewhere."

  "He will not escape us so easily," Chiun declared,

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  leaping to the baseboard. He began pulling the telephone wire free like string from soft butter.

  "No, Chiun," Remo said, stopping him. "Hold up. We've got an open line here, let's not lose it." He handed Chiun the receiver. "Here, you keep listening."

  Remo plunged into the next room, got an outside line, and called Dr. Harold W. Smith.

  Smith's answer was sleepy.

  "Remo. What is it?"

  "Can you trace a line for us?"

  "Yes, of course. One moment, I'm speaking from my briefcase phone. Let me take it to the next room, where I won't wake my wife."

  A moment later, the sound of Smith keying his portable briefcase computer came to Remo's ears. Swiftly Remo gave him the hotel name and the room number the Krahseevah had used.

  "It's the Soviet embassy again," Smith told him after a long silence.

  "Well, I've got good news and bad news for you, then."