Ghost in the Machine td-90 Read online

  "Miss Ching. This is Gunilla."

  "Right. How are you?" said Cheeta, having no idea who Gunilla was.

  "They say you're willing to pay five hundred dollars for information on that witch lady."

  Cheeta brightened. "You know where she is?"

  "Yes. I'm her maid."

  "Maid?"

  "At the Rumpp Regis. Her room number is 182. But you'd better hurry. The IRS has taken over the place."

  "The check's in the mail."

  "But you don't know my-"

  Cheeta Ching hung up and stormed from her Park Avenue penthouse.

  Moments later, she burst out of a yellow cab in front of the Rumpp Regis Hotel, and stormed up the palatial steps toward the revolving doors.

  She noticed a heavyset man in the revolving door. He was pounding on the brass-bound glass, as if he were somehow stuck.

  Delpha Rohmer was doing phoners when a demanding knock came at her door. She tried to ignore it. She was speaking to a talk show in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, and judging from the hysterical tones of the callers, witch awareness was reaching new heights.

  The knocking continued.

  When the talk-show host called for a commercial break, Delpha excused herself and hurried to the door. She threw it open.

  The sight of a plump maid with a red worried face was not exactly what she'd expected.

  "Can't this wait?" Delpha huffed.

  "No, ma'am. Sorry, ma'am. My name is Gunilla, and I want to warn you that Ching woman is on her way right now. And she knows your room number."

  If it had been possible for Delpha Rohmer to become more pale than her normal state, she would have done so. As it was, the only outward sign of her fright was a darkening of her mushroom eye shadow.

  "Thanks," said Delpha, grabbing her coat. She thrust a five-dollar bill in the maid's plump hand and raced to the elevator, cursing the MBC news director, who had promised her absolute anonymity.

  Remo Williams was trying to keep the beat on the stupid drum and at the same time avoid the bear hugs of various IRS revenue collectors.

  Avoiding their clumsy grabs was easy. He barely had to pay attention. They tried to circle him, but he ducked and retreated effortlessly. They might as well have been wearing lead diving shoes while attempting to bear-hug a flock of doves.

  Keeping time with the Master of Sinanju's jingling and caterwauling, however, was not easy. If there was a rhythm, Remo couldn't find it. If there was a beat, he couldn't keep it. So he just pounded on the stupid drum until the Master of Sinanju had finished his ceremonial spirit-chasing.

  Then, suddenly, four strange and unexpected things happened at once.

  First, Remo felt wrong. It was a kind of wrongness that was difficult to describe. His teeth hurt. His vision blurred for a microsecond, almost too quickly for an ordinary person to detect.

  Chiun stopped in mid-warble.

  "Remo!" he squeaked. "Something is wrong!"

  "I know. I feel it, too."

  They looked around. All seemed normal. Except for the persistent IRS operatives.

  Then Remo noticed Delpha Rohmer hurrying from the elevator banks.

  Simultaneously, the Master of Sinanju spied Cheeta Ching clopping in off the street.

  Delpha and Cheeta were both headed toward the same thing: the revolving door.

  They reached it simultaneously. Cheeta noticed Delpha, and Delpha spotted her mortal enemy. In between, the trapped revenue collector pounded futilely for release.

  He, at least, got his wish granted.

  Cheeta took a run at the door. Delpha, in the act of entering the revolving door, hesitated. Cheeta bulled through. Literally through. She passed through the door as if it were a brass and glass mirage.

  The sight of that was enough to start the IRS man's adrenaline pumping. Like a slave lashed to a grinding wheel, he kept pushing the stubborn revolving door, forcing it to squeal and groan.

  The door surrendered. The rubber weather stripping slapped and squeaked as Delpha, caught by surprise, was swallowed up and carried between two sheets of brass-bound glass.

  The revolving door ejected the revenue collector onto the steps. He was so happy that he didn't realize he was sinking into cold concrete until he had reached the sidewalk and found he had no traction.

  Delpha Rohmer saw the man standing-apparently-on his ankles, then looked down at her own feet and clutched for a brass awning pole, moaning, "O Ishtar, save your daughter!"

  She was on the last step. It seemed solid.

  The IRS man looked up to her with a beseeching expression on his wide face. "Help me!"

  When Delpha recoiled, he grabbed for one of her pale wrists. Delpha tried to kick him. She lost her balance and fell into the sidewalk.

  Delpha Rohmer had wanted to be a witch since she was a little girl. Witches were her role models. As she crouched on the intangible sidewalk, staring at her hands slipping into the gray concrete, her mind flashed back to childhood.

  "Help me!" she screamed in a high, skittery voice. "I'm melting! Oh, I'm melting!"

  In a matter of seconds, she was a pair of legs sticking up from the pavement and collecting a horrified crowd.

  Oblivious to the fact that she had walked through solid glass, Cheeta Ching stumbled into the lobby yelling, "You'll rue the day you met me, Hortense!"

  Seeing no sign of her prey, Cheeta stopped, her eyes raking the lobby.

  She started sinking into the floor almost at once.

  Chiun shrieked, "Cheeta! She is sinking!"

  "We lost Broomhilda, too," Remo said. "What the heck's going on?"

  The Master of Sinanju didn't reply. His face a knot of concern, he bounded for the helpless figure of Cheeta Ching.

  "Do not fear, child. I am here."

  Cheeta seemed not to hear. She was staring at her legs as they vanished into the lobby marble, taking the rest of her with them. Her arms were lifted high. They trembled.

  The Master of Sinanju reached out to help her. His thin fingers grasped solid flesh, only to come away empty.

  "Remo!" Chiun said in a horrified voice. "I am helpless!"

  Remo jumped to his side, but found he could no more touch Cheeta Ching than the Master of Sinanju. He said, "Get down to the basement and catch her there."

  Chiun flew off. Remo hit the revolving door. It was as solid as it looked. So were the steps. He took them in one leap.

  At the last step, Remo reached out for the crying IRS man. He accepted Remo's outstretched hands gratefully. Remo pulled him to solid ground, then got down on his knees.

  He was too late. Delpha Rohmer's kicking feet vanished like popped soap bubbles.

  "Damn!" he muttered, rising again.

  Along Fifth Avenue, passersby gawked and shouted. They made the same sound as silent movie actors. Which is to say, none.

  "What in God's name is happening?" the IRS man moaned.

  "Halloween decided to stick around an extra day," Remo said, pushing the man back up the steps.

  Back in the lobby, Remo left the man to his fellow agents and went in search of the stairs to the basement.

  On the way down, he felt weird again. His teeth chattered briefly, and his vision blurred. The sensation reminded him of the vibrating floor-plates in carnival fun houses he had visited as a boy.

  "Now what?" he growled.

  IRS agent Gerard Vonneau had gone through the thirteenth floor twice without finding the hidden office. On his third run-through, he decided to be scientific about it.

  He located a suite where the phone sounded loudest. In the adjoining suite, it was equally loud. He stormed across the hall. Softer. Definitely softer.

  So Vonneau went back to the first suite. Then it hit him. There was probably a connecting suite. Sure enough, what he had taken for a closet door opened on the most immodest office Vonneau had ever seen in a twenty-year career of auditing large corporations.

  The telephone was a sophisticated model. He raced to it, snatched up the receiver, and
shouted "Hello?" before the entire universe turned white and his right ear was filled with a roar that made him dream of diesel locomotives crackling with static electricity.

  It was twenty minutes before the shock wore off.

  By that time the floating, white, manlike thing had merged with the ceiling, like a melting ice cream bar. His dangling wrists and limp fingers were the last things to disappear from sight.

  Yuli Batenin was seated on the wide, warm bed in his fourteenth-floor suite, watching the latest bulletin with his fellow Shield operatives.

  The American anchorman Don Cooder was framed in the screen, looking, to Batenin's eyes, like a wellbarbered water buffalo.

  "As yet there has been no explanation for the mysterious reversing of the Rumpp Tower situation. Less than twenty minutes ago, a sharp-eyed National Guard helicopter pilot noticed what no one else had-that his rotor blades were causing the trees decorating the lower building to sway. A team of rescue firefighters braved possible death to enter the building and liberate the people trapped on the ground floor. Efforts are now under way to evacuate the entire building before the uncanny events of Halloween Eve can recur. Of the man at the heart of the controversy, Randal Rumpp, omninously, there is no word."

  Captain Igor Gerkoff turned to Batenin, his bulldog face dully curious.

  "What does this mean, Batenin?"

  "I do not know, but we must watch carefully. All channels."

  "There is more than one channel on American TV .

  Batenin nodded. "There are hundreds."

  And the men of Shield laughed at the hilarious joke. Until Batenin began running up and down the dial with sure clicks of his remote control.

  A Russian muttered thickly, "It is no wonder we lost Cold War."

  Gerkoff slapped him and Batenin settled on another channel, saying, "Go to other room and watch other televisions. They will bring Brashnikov out. That is when we will strike."

  "By then it will be too late."

  "No. We could not hope to succeed. There are too many people. Too many cameras."

  "So? We kill them all. We have bullets."

  "No. It cannot work. We will allow Brashnikov to show himself, and we will find him later. This is a socalled open society. It will be easy."

  "I am in charge here, Batenin."

  "And I am only one who is certain to recognize Rair Brashnikov when he shows his face."

  Captain Gerkoff jumped to his feet angrily. Batenin stiffened where he sat.

  The agents of Shield arrayed about the room perked up. Their two senior officers were about to settle a dispute over operational seniority. They licked dry lips, hoping to see blood spilled.

  Instead, Major Yuli Batenin suddenly grew a third hand in the middle of his chest.

  The hand was white, blurry, and seemed to sprout from the center of Yuli Batenin's breastbone.

  Major Batenin, stiffening in anticipation of the fight of his life, seemed unaware of the phenomenon. The hand grew a wrist and, like some fast-growing, leprous vine, continued to emerge from the unaware ex-KBG major's person.

  "Sukin syn!" Gerkoff swore, his eyes growing wide.

  They had to point to the thing coming from Batenin's chest before the petrified major looked down and saw the phantom appendage.

  The howl Batenin gave was like a hot needle piercing their eardrums. He scrambled off the bed as if it were afire, became tangled up in the loose bedding, and thrashed around on the rug.

  "Brashnikov!" he screamed. "He is here!"

  Of that, there was no doubt. A luminous white figure, its limbs spread like a crippled white starfish, continued to rise out of the mattress. It was still as death.

  "What do we do, Batenin?" Gerkoff sputtered.

  "We must capture him."

  This proved difficult. They threw blankets on the slowly rising figure. They fell flat on the bed without impeding the thing in the least.

  Each Shield man carried a white silk strangling scarf under his shirt, which was imprinted with key commands in Russian and translations in the major NATO languages. They pulled these out and tried to ensnare the stiff limbs of the ghostly corpse of a thing.

  They might as well have been attempting to capture moonbeams.

  Gerkoff looked back, his face twisted in anger and superstitious fear. "Batenin, what do we do?"

  "We pray."

  "Why?"

  "Because there is nothing we can do, and if Brashnikov's power is drained while he is in contact with physical object, it will be just like Chernobyl, but much worse."

  This galvanized the men of Shield. They drew Tokarev handguns, P-6 silent pistols, and short-barreled AKR submachine guns from hidden holsters and opened fire on the untouchable apparition.

  "Nyet nyet nyet!" Batenin screamed over the din. "You will awaken entire hotel and ruin mission!"

  But the Shield men didn't hear. Or if they heard, they didn't care. They peppered the thing that threatened them with nuclear disaster, as if the sheer volume of their fire could affect this untouchable thing they could not understand.

  Chapter 29

  The lowermost floor of the Rumpp Regis Hotel was the storage subbasement. It was crammed with the historical castoffs of the nearly century-old hotel. Everything from old brass mantel clocks to spittoons littered the dusty shelving.

  It was dark. Remo closed his eyes and listened for the sound of a heartbeat he knew better than anyone's on earth. Chiun's.

  He zeroed in on it and simply moved in the direction his ears indicated, oblivious to the solid-looking obstacles he breached with each step.

  He passed through antique highboys and turn-of-the-century dining tables like a phantom wading through the history of furniture.

  His bare arms felt the body warmth of two people.

  Remo opened his eyes to see the frantic figure of the Master of Sinanju, bending over the prostrate figure of Cheeta Ching.

  Apparently, Cheeta was drowning on the concrete floor. At least, that was the impression her body language gave Remo. She had landed on her back, and now strained to keep her mouth and wildly flaring nostrils above the level of the floor. Her hands threshed the air, and when her mouth came up above the floor level, it made shapes Remo mentally called "inarticulate."

  Remo looked down at his feet. The floor supported his feet perfectly. It gave Remo a creepy feeling.

  The Master of Sinanju was fussing helplessly.

  "Remo! I cannot help Cheeta!"

  "Tell her to stand up," Remo told Chiun casually.

  "I did!" Chiun squeaked. "Cheeta cannot hear me!"

  Remo folded his arms. "Oh, that's right. We can't hear them and they can't hear us. In this case, it's a blessing."

  Chiun stood up. His wizened face was beseeching. "Oh, Remo, what do we do?"

  "Look, she's not going to drown. She just thinks she is. Give her time. She'll figure it out."

  Chiun stamped an angry foot. "Heartless one!"

  At that moment, Remo felt the vibration again.

  "Oh-oh. Don't look now, but the building's becoming glued again."

  "Quickly! Cheeta will be trapped. Help me!"

  "Help you how?"

  "Take one precious hand."

  "If you insist . . ."

  Remo reached down. Chiun did the same. Their fingers attempted to capture the incapturable.

  In a flash of a second, the insubstantial hands of Cheeta Ching grew palpable. Remo and Chiun each grabbed a flailing bunch of fingers.

  "Now!" Chiun cried.

  They heaved. Cheeta came up out of the floor. They set her on her feet.

  In the darkness, Cheeta Ching swayed like tightrope walker.

  "You okay now?" Remo asked.

  "What? What? What?" Cheeta gulped. "Who's there?"

  "It's me," Remo said.

  "Frodo?"

  "She's okay," Remo said.

  "She is not!" Chiun flared. "She has been traumatized by machines. Cruel, white, oil-drinking machines."

  "Fi
ne," Remo said, starting off. "You comfort her. I'm going to look around."

  "I am coming with you."

  "You bring that barracuda, and there will be complications," Remo warned.

  "Chico, don't leave me!" Cheeta pleaded.

  At that, the Master of Sinanju rendered Cheeta Ching insensate with a simple application of pressure to a neck nerve. She collapsed with a rattly sigh.

  Bearing the limp figure, Chiun followed Remo Williams back up to the lobby level.

  "In her hour of need, she spoke your name!" he hissed.

  "Technically, no," Remo pointed out.

  "I am humiliated."

  "Wait'll she names the baby."

  "Argh!"

  They found the Rumpp Regis lobby in an uproar.

  The desk clerk was screaming at the IRS men, saying "They're shooting up the fourteenth floor! Do something!"

  "Call the police," suggested one IRS man.

  "But you're government agents!"

  "Yeah, but we're tax collectors, not enforcers. We don't carry guns. Call the police."

  Remo turned to Chiun. "The Russians are up on the fourteenth floor."

  "Then that is where they will perish," said Chiun, placing Cheeta on a divan. She immediately rolled over and began snoring.

  "There they are!" one of the IRS men shouted. It was the one Chiun had imprisoned in the revolving door. "You, stop!"

  "Let's go, Little Father!" Remo urged. "The last thing we need now is tax trouble."

  "Woe to him who touches the Master of Sinanju's trunk!" Chiun hurled back.

  They flashed to the elevators, Remo racing and the Master of Sinanju floating along in an effortless series of leaps.

  Three revenue collectors hit the closing elevator doors and bounced off like ping-pong balls.

  Remo and Chiun piled out on the fourteenth floor and ran into a wall of frightened hotel guests, who pushed past them in a blind panic and commandeered the elevator.

  "They will surely hinder pursuit," Chiun remarked, as the elevator started down.

  "Follow me," Remo said grimly. "I know exactly what door to knock on."

  Captain Rair Brashnikov floated in the middle of a bullet storm. He knew it was a storm, because all around him the fine gold-leaf molding and framed pictures were cracked and coming apart as assorted Soviet-made ammunition took their toll.