Blue Smoke and Mirrors td-78 Read online

  "What's the bad?"

  "The Krahseevah got away from us again. And I know how freaky this is going to sound, but you'll have to take it on faith. He got away through the phone system."

  "We must have a bad connection, Remo. I thought you just said-"

  "I did," Remo said, cutting him off. "He was holding an open line, turned on the suit, and he was gone like a milkshake through a drinking straw. Into the receiver."

  There was a long silence over the line. It hissed.

  "There is no way you could have been deceived?" Smith demanded at last. "No chance of trickery or optical illusion?"

  "No. I saw it. Chiun saw it. And Robin saw it."

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  "Robin Green?" Smith's voice was sharp. "How did she get there?"

  "Good question. I forgot to ask. Anyway, I think we'd better go after the embassy people."

  "No. Emphatically, no. You said something about good news."

  "Oh, yeah. The Krahseevah didn't have the tiles with him when he got sucked away. I don't know where they are, but he didn't have them."

  "They are in the mail," Chiun called from the next room.

  "Smitty, Chiun just said they're in the mail." Remo listened a moment. He put his hand over the mouthpiece. "Hey, Chiun. Smith wants to know if you addressed them to him."

  "No. I simply put them in a postal box."

  "Oh. Hear that, Smitty? . . . Sure, I'll get them back. So what do we do now?"

  "Return to Folcroft," Smith said after a pause. "We are facing incredible technology and we must stop it now."

  "Okay. We'll ditch Robin somehow."

  "No. Bring her. But make certain she sees nothing that will provide her with a trail back to CURE."

  "Gotcha," Remo said, hanging up.

  The first thing Robin Green said to Remo when he returned to the other room was, "Who is Smith?"

  "Look," Remo said, raising his hands. "Do us both a big favor. Pretend you never heard the name Smith. Okay?"

  "Not okay. I asked you a direct question. Who is Smith and what does he have to do with you two?"

  "Listen, I'm telling you that you'll be a lot better off if you don't know. Just, please, don't mention his name to his face, okay?"

  "To his face? Is he coming here?"

  "No, we're going to see him."

  "I'm not going anywhere without some answers first."

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  "Sorry," Remo said, edging closer. "I have my orders."

  Robin Green quickly backed away. "Wait a minute, buster. You just keep your chicken-plucking hands away from me."

  "Quickly, Remo," Chiun put in unconcernedly. "I wish to leave immediately."

  "Give me a sec, okay? Look, I'm sorry," Remo said to Robin, cornering her by a window. "This won't hurt a bit."

  "Hurt! Wait! Don't do anything you'll be sorry for later. My father is a full bird colonel. If you so much as lay a hand on me, he'll hunt you down. He'll-"

  Remo reached out and squeezed a nerve in her neck. Robin Green's eyes rolled up into her head. She exhaled a slow, summery sigh and slumped into Remo's arms. He carried her easily.

  "Excellent," Chiun said as he breezed out of the room. "Thus we will not have to listen to her on the trip back to Folcroft."

  "Did you catch what she said about her father?" Remo asked as they took the elevator down. "No wonder she's not up on charges. Her father's been protecting her."

  "And it is no wonder that she is named Robin," Chiun sniffed. "With a father who is a bird. What kind of depraved woman must her mother have been?"

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  Robin Green's vision cleared slowly. At first, everything was a blur. Her arms felt stiff. When she breathed, she inhaled her own exhaust. She felt enclosed, claustrophobic. And her ears rang, just like they would after a long flight.

  "Better get set," a familiar voice said through the ringing. "Looks like she's coming to."

  Into her blurred brown field of vision moved a vertical column of gray. It stopped before her. A man, she decided.

  Robin tried to speak, but her throat was clogged. She coughed to clear it. Her eyes watered. Surprisingly, that seemed to help. The gray blur grew more distinct.

  Robin realized that she was sitting down. There was a strange cottonlike smell in her nose. She squeezed her hands, but couldn't feel them. Panic started to mount in her throat. Had she been injured in the car accident more than she thought? Had any of the events that followed it actually happened?

  She clutched at herself. Her breasts felt tender. She remembered the smashed steering wheel.

  "Can you hear me?" she asked the gray blur.

  "Yes," replied a male voice, dry and bitter as a week-old lemon peel. "Please do not exert yourself until the bandages are removed."

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  Robin gasped involuntarily. "Bandages? Am I okay?"

  "Sure," another voice said from behind her. "The X rays were all negative. Now, just sit still a minute." It was that first voice. Remo whatever-his-name-was.

  Then it all came back in a rush of memory. The car crash. The fight at the motel. Remo's hand reaching out to her, and then . . . oblivion.

  "What . . . what did you do to me?" she sobbed, reaching for her face. She couldn't feel her face. She couldn't even feel her fingertips. They were swathed in fabric. Or was it her face? Then her vision cleared.

  Robin realized she was in a small room. The walls were odd. Not covered with paint or wallpaper, but Naugahyde or something similar. Like overstuffed upholstery. Padded and . . . Padded . . .

  "Oh, God," she gasped. "I'm in a padded cell."

  Then she saw the man. He was all in gray. A handheld mirror shielded his face. The mirror side reflected Robin's own face. It was the face of a Hollywood mummy. Only her stark and staring blue eyes showed through the winding gauze.

  "Please calm yourself," the gray man said from behind the mirror. "The procedure is quite painless, I can assure you."

  Robin felt a strong hand-presumably Remo's-take the top of her head, and the tiny snippings of surgical scissors began. She looked down and saw her bandaged hands clutching the armrests of a chair.

  "Am I ...?" Robin choked out. "Will I be ... disfigured?"

  "Nah," Remo said. "The bandages were so we could get you onto the airline flight while you were unconscious."

  "What?" Robin barked indignantly.

  "I asked Remo to bring you here," the gray man said. "It was necessary that you not see anything that could lead you back to Remo or myself. You were transported as a catatonic burn patient."

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  "Smith! Are you Smith?" Robin demanded. "Because if you are, you're in big trouble, buster."

  The gray man gasped involuntarily. "Remo," he said in a shocked voice.

  "Sorry, Smitty. Your name slipped out. But don't worry. Robin's on our side."

  "The hell I am," Robin shouted. Suddenly the bandages fell away. Her mouth hung open. Her reflection stared back at her. Except for a few bruises and a cut near her hairline, it was normal-if paler than usual. She breathed a sigh of relief.

  "See?" Remo said brightly, coming around the front. "Good as new."

  "Step aside," Robin told him acidly. "I want to talk with your boss."

  "And we want to talk with you," the man Robin took for Smith said matter-of-factly. "So please try to calm yourself."

  "Calm myself!" Robin cried, pushing herself from the chair. "This loon just kidnapped me. I'm an Air Force investigator. You can't get away with this crap."

  "Allow me, Emperor," a squeaky voice said from behind her left ear. And a hand with long curved fingernails reached up behind her hair and took the nape of her neck.

  Robin felt her legs suddenly go numb, as if they had gone to sleep. She fell back into the chair.

  "What is this?" she demanded. And then she noticed for the first time that she was sitting in a wheelchair.

  "Oh, dear Lord," she said weakly, the fight going out of her.

  "The paralys
is is only temporary," Smith told her. "Chiun will restore the use of your legs after we have the answers we seek."

  Chiun stepped into view, his face placid.

  "You bastard," she hissed at him. And the old Oriental's face took on an injured expression.

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  "Perhaps if you continue to insult me, I will forget how to realign your spine," Chiun warned her.

  "He doesn't mean that," Remo put in quickly.

  "Yes, I do," Chiun snapped.

  "Please, please," Smith said. "Miss Green, if you will just answer my questions, we can be done with this interview."

  "Why don't you put down that stupid mirror first? I can see that my face is fine, thank you."

  "This mirror is not for your benefit," Smith told her. "It is so that you cannot see my face for later identification."

  "Then could you please turn it around? You can stare at your own face for a change."

  "This is a two-way mirror. I can see you from this end. If I turn it around, ray features will be visible to you."

  At that, Chiun sidled up to Smith, his face craning up at the mirror. He examined it from front and rear. "May I borrow that when you are through with it?" he asked curiously. "It may be what I have been looking for."

  "Later," Smith said testily.

  "What do you want to know?" Robin said quietly, her face flushed.

  "How did you happen to be on the scene when the Krahseevah, as Remo has styled him, reappeared?"

  "You know, I could ask the same of you."

  "Simply answer the question."

  "All right. Did Remo-if that's really his name- tell you about the gas-station owner who saw the guy without his helmet?"

  "Yes," Smith said, voice puzzled.

  "Well, after I was ditched by your friends, I had a hard time explaining the demolished Holiday Inn, but fortunately, I have friends in high places."

  "We know your father has been protecting you. He's been informed that you are well and not to

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  worry. And just to be certain we have no problems from that quarter, I had him shipped off to a NATO base in Europe. He will not interfere."

  "Oh," Robin said, subsiding. She swallowed and went on. "Anyway, strings were pulled and I was allowed to stay on the case. I rounded up Ed, the gas-station owner, his brother Ned, and the Holiday Inn desk clerk and had them describe the Russian's face for an artist I hired. We came up with a great likeness. Since then, we've had Air Force personnel watching airports and train stations all over the country. When someone who looked like our guy showed up at Los Angeles International Airport, I flew out there. I tracked him as far as the Northrop plant. Then he slipped into the suit and got away from me. I kept his car under surveillance, waiting for him to return. When he took off, I took off after him." She turned to glare at Remo. "I would have had him, too, but Remo Roadrunner here screwed things up."

  "Me?" Remo said hotly. "I was on his tail first. You're a Robin-come-lately as far as I'm concerned."

  "That's it?" Smith asked in a disappointed voice. "That's the lead you followed?"

  Robin defiantly shook red hair out of her eyes. "What did you expect? That he called, asked for a date, and gave me his phone number?"

  "That much we know," Smith said dryly. "He operates out of the Soviet embassy in Washington."

  "Well, back to square one," Remo said. "Sorry, Smitty. I thought she'd have a better story than that."

  "I thought it was a pretty sound piece of investigation," Robin muttered. "Why didn't any of you think of it?"

  "She's got us there, Smitty," Remo admitted.

  "Never mind," Smith said.

  "Look," Robin said. "This was my investigation before it was yours. I know you guys aren't what you claim to be. I can live with that. But thanks to Punch

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  and Judy over there"-Robin indicated Remo and Chiun with a disdainful toss of her head-"I'm probably AWOL from the scene of yet another demolished hotel. If I don't bag this Krahseevah, my career has flown south forever. Help me, and I'll help you. I'm in so deep even my father can't pull me out of this mess."

  "We do not need you," Chiun told her pointedly. "You, who think that blue smoke and mirrors can explain anything your feeble mind cannot trouble itself to understand."

  Robin just stared at the Master of Sinanju uncom-prehendingly.

  "We have recovered the RAM tiles," Smith said slowly. "There is a chance that the Krahseevah will return to Palmdale, but it's doubtful he would dare to anytime in the near future. He knows we would expect that. Given his past pattern of infiltration and theft, he could strike anywhere in our military-industrial complex. We cannot afford to wait. He must be captured and neutralized as soon as possible."

  Remo stepped forward. "But how, Smitty?" he said. "It was bad enough when we just couldn't lay hands on him. But now that we know he can just dive into any handy telephone at the first sign of trouble, I don't see what even Chiun and I can do."

  "I suggest we descend upon the Russian embassy," Chiun proclaimed loudly. "We will take hostages. We will force them to deliver the Krahseevah to us and then we will kill him and every other Russian as a warning to their leader not to send any more such as him to America's well-protected shores."

  "No," Smith said. "The principle of diplomatic immunity is important to our side too. We cannot jeopardize that privilege. It is out of the question."

  "What is this faintheartedness I am hearing?" Chiun asked Remo sotto voce. "Smith never used to be like this."

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  "Relations with Russia have warmed," Remo whispered back. "Smith doesn't want to rock the boat."

  "I have been doing some research," Smith said carefully. "It seems that three years ago there was an event at a Nishitsu Corporation plant in Osaka. Several top physicists perished and the matter was hushed up. Prior to that there had been leaks from Nishitsu of an incredible superconductor breakthrough involving atomic matter. Not energy, but matter. If, as I suspect, this was a KGB 'wet-affairs' operation, we can deduce that the suit now in Soviet hands is not a product of their limited technology, but a Japanese prototype. In other words, I doubt there is another Krahseevah waiting in the wings."

  "So if we capture our Krahseevah" Remo said, "the problem is solved. Right?"

  "I assume so."

  "But how? He's like the little man who wasn't there. We can see him, but we can't touch him."

  "Except when the suit is off," Smith pointed out.

  "Yeah. But he never has his hands far from his belt-buckle control. He sees us coming and he's covered."

  "I have been thinking about this suit," Smith told them. "I believe I understand the telephone phenomenon. It is a kind of teleportation, which physicists have long theorized as possible. You, Remo, have described how the Krahseevah stuck his head out of the Palmdale motel to observe you. Yet he had the suit off moments later when he used the telephone. It was only when you arrived that he turned it back on."

  "That's right," Remo admitted.

  "We know we cannot touch him while the suit is on. The reverse, therefore, must be true. The Krahseevah has to turn the suit off before he can physically touch something he intends to steal. Then he must reactivate the suit, and the object somehow becomes, as he is, noncorporeal."

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  "What does his military rank have to do with this?" Chiun snapped, feeling left out of all this white mumbo-jumbo.

  "He said 'noncorporeal.' Not 'noncorporal,' " Remo told him. "It means 'insubstantial.' "

  "I knew that," Chiun said, not wishing to appear foolish. Why did these Americans have to have so many names for the same thing? he wondered. They were worse than the old Romans.

  Smith went on. "If we know the Krahseevah's next target, we can be waiting for him. In the few seconds the suit is not operating, either you, Remo, or Chiun might be able to take him. You're fast enough."

  "Definitely," Chiun said with confidence.

  "But how do we figure out where he's g
oing to turn up next?" Robin wanted to know.

  "We are going to set a trap for him," Smith told her. "And you, Miss Green, are going to be the bait."

  And suddenly OSI Special Agent Robin Green wasn't as anxious to be freed from her wheelchair imprisonment as she had thought.

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  Major Yuli Batenin grabbed the edge of his desk when the phone rang. Even from beyond the closed door, the shrill, insistent sound went through him like a hot needle.

  "Answer that damned thing!" he shouted into the intercom.

  There was no telephone in Major Batenin's embassy office anymore. He had had the line removed to the reception area. Never again would Major Yuli Batenin answer a telephone as long as he lived. Not after what Brashnikov had done to him. Again.

  It had not been as horrendous an experience, having Rair Brashnikov explode from the receiver a second time. At the warning roar of static, Batenin had thrown the receiver away and dived under his desk.

  When he emerged, after the flash of white light faded, Brashnikov was not to be seen. Frantic, Batenin called in his staff and instituted a thorough search. The embassy was put on yellow alert. Every staff member, from the now-furious ambassador to the lowliest clerk, rushed about the embassy searching for him.

  It was getting so that the existence of the vibration suit could not be kept secret much longer. Even the cleaning staff whispered about it.

  They found Brashnikov in the office directly under Batenin's. Or rather, they found his feet.

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  For Rair Brashnikov's gold-veined white boots were sticking up from the floor as if cut off at the ankles and placed upside down by a ghoulish prankster. And of course, they were sinking into the floor.

  This realization sent everyone scrambling down another floor, where they discovered Brashnikov hanging from the ceiling like a great white bat.

  Brashnikov's face membrane was in an expanded position, Batenin saw. Then the red belt light winked on and half the staff cleared the room in mute panic. The half that stayed had not known the significance of the red light. Batenin took careful pains to explain it to them.

  After he had finished, others began to edge toward the door. Batenin was about to warn them of the consequences of not obeying him, when someone pointed at Brashnikov.