Look Into My Eyes td-67 Page 2

  "Look, my friend," said Krimenko. "I know I can't stop you. And since I can't stop you, maybe you will tell me something before you leave."

  "Will you people never leave me alone?" said Rabirrowitz.

  "Certainly. Just tell me, Vassily, if we are ready to give you everything, anything you want, why on earth do you have to leave? What is there to leave for?"

  "Do you really want to know?"

  "I am not here with an army at my back for my health," said Krimenko. He was careful to show Rabinowiiz he was making no threatening moves. He knew Rabinowitz operated so quickly the average human mind could not keep up with him.

  He had first met this wizard of the mind when he had a vicious toothache and was complaining that he did not want to undergo the pain of Russian dentistry so late in his life. A Politburo member had told him about Vassily Rabinowitz. He had flown to the special village in Siberia and had gotten an immediate appointment along with a warning not to bother the hypnotist with questions.

  "Is he just a hypnotist? I have been to hypnotists. They don't work with me," Krimenko had said.

  "Just go in, state your problem, and leave."

  "I am sorry I came so far just for a hypnotist," Krimenko had said.

  Rabinowitz was sitting in an armchair by the window, reading a prohibited American magazine. It was one famous for its artistic photographs of nude women. Rabinowitz had a large black crayon. He was checking off the women. He hardly looked up.

  "Yes," he called out.

  "I have a bad tooth. Incredible pain. It's abscessed and rotting."

  "Okay, and I'd like the redhead first, an Oriental maybe at the end of the month. Sometimes I like to stay with the redheads." He handed the magazine to Kimenko and went back to his window.

  "What am I supposed to do with this?"

  "Hand it to the man at the door. Those are who I want today. "

  "But what about my toothache?" asked Krimenko.

  "What toothache?" asked Rabinowitz. He was smiling. Krimenko reached for his jaw. Blessedly, it was free of pain. Just like that.

  "How did you do it?"

  "That's why I'm here. The redhead first, please."

  "This is wonderful," said Krimenko.

  "You can eat candy on it right away. Won't hurt you. But I'd have it pulled if I were you. The abscess can kill you. Don't worry about Russian dentists. No pain. You won't feel a thing. If you want, I can make you have an orgasm while the dentist is butchering your mouth. Some people like that," Rabinowitz had said.

  He had looked so fresh there in that room, and so tired now coming to the bridge. Krimenko actually felt sorry for him.

  "You want to know what I want? I want you people to get out of the way."

  "I would do that, but these men won't. Come, let us just talk somewhere. Let us find a cafe, and we will talk. Just a bit. Then you can leave."

  Shots rang out in Krimenko's ears. The men behind him were firing. Ugly sharp bits of pavement ricocheted up from where Rabinowitz was standing. Rabinowitz fell and his body continued to be riddled by automatic fire, bullets shredding it like a Chinese cleaver. And then another Rabinowitz appeared and he too was shot down, and Krimenko felt the sharp, hot, burning slug hit his back and throw him to the pavement, where he became so much shredded meat on the bridge where East and West trade spies.

  Less than a day later, in New York City's Kennedy Airport, a customs officer saw the strangest man standing at his counter.

  Here was a Russian-sounding fellow without a passport, unshaved and looking very seedy, and smiling at Luke Sanders as though he were going to let him through.

  "You don't have a passport. You don't have identification and you're a Russian to boot. So I'm going to have to hold you, fella."

  "Nonsense, son. Here's my passport. You know me," said the man, and sure enough, Luke knew him. He was his brother. He asked his brother what he was doing coming in on a German flight, when Luke thought he was back home in Amarillo, Texas.

  "I've come to get a bialy and maybe a shmear of cream cheese," said Luke's brother.

  "What's a bialy?" asked Luke.

  "It's a Jewish roll. And I want one."

  "Then you've come to the right city," said Luke, who tried to find out where his brother was staying in New York because he sure as shootin' wanted to meet him that night. He passed him through with a handshake, a laugh, and a hug.

  "Not so tight on the hug, already," said Luke's brother. In Moscow Krimenko's death was not the disaster. Nor were the deaths of twenty-two other KGB officers. The real disaster was that none of the bodies picked up on the bridge was Vassily Rabinowitz.

  The question that haunted everyone was, what if the Americans should get hold of him? There was even talk of launching a first nuclear strike immediately. Better to take a chance on survival than to be sure of losing.

  But cooler heads prevailed. First, Russia had not been able to conquer the world using Vassily, although he was incredibly useful in training people for so many special missions.

  Nor was there any guarantee that the Americans would be able to capture him and use him.

  The only, and therefore the best, solution was to alert every agent in America to be on the lookout for him. Every mole, every counterintelligence operator, every secret police operative was to divert all efforts to the finding of that man.

  And most important of all, America was not to know what might be within its borders. No one who looked for Vassily Rabinowitz, late of the Soviet Union, would know why he was looking.

  Someone mentioned the risk of such a blatant, all-out effort. The Americans were sure to spot the activity. How many agents would be risked? How many moles who had worked so hard to penetrate into the belly of the American beast might expose themselves to capture? Just what was Moscow willing to pay to stop America from getting Rabinowitz?

  And the men who had seen him work answered, "Everything. "

  Chapter 2

  His name was Remo and he couldn't count the number of men he had killed, nor did he want to start. Counting was for people who thought numbers meant something. Counting was for pepole who didn't understand what they were doing so they needed numbers to reassure themselves they were doing well.

  Counting was for people who wouldn't know which side won if there wasn't a score. In Remo's game he always knew who won.

  He was going to kill three men who could count. They could count transistors and microchips and all the electronic devices that kept them invulnerable to surveillance. They could count on their lawyers who had made them invulnerable to conviction. They could count on all the people they bought along their way, and they could count on the American drug users to make them rich.

  Perhaps the only thing they couldn't count was all the money they had made, hundreds of millions of dollars. They controlled two or three South American governments where coca leaves grew and were made into the white crystals Americans liked to suck into their noses to rot out what was left of their brains after all the other chemicals had gotten to them.

  Remo wasn't counting. He sensed the strong cold of the damp clouds and the harsh wind pressing his body against the metal. He could smell the special chemicals used to polish the metal he pressed his body into, could feel the metal carry the vibrations of the engine, and was prepared for the only real danger. If the pilot should dive suddenly and Remo allowed an air current between him and the roof of the plane, he would be sheared off like confetti and plunge thirteen thousand feet to the jungle floor below the luxury Lear jet.

  The scant oxygen at those heights was more than enough for him, although if he needed to he could always put a hole in the airtight skin of the jet, forcing the pilot to dive lower, where his passengers could breathe without the use of oxygen masks.

  That wasn't necessary. There was more than enough oxygen at these heights if the body used it properly, but people tended to use it like drunks, burning vast quantities in uncontrolled gulps. People did not know their bodies, did not unders
tand the powers they were capable of but refused to allow to develop.

  It was this loss of balanced use of oxygen that made people pant from running, come up after only a minute underwater, three at the most, and hold their breath when frightened.

  Scientists had yet to discover that holding of the breath when frightened was a weak attempt to energize the body for flight. It didn't work because the only breathing that unlocked the power of humans was controlled breathing, giving the process up to the rhythms of the universe and in so doing becoming part of all its powers. One didn't fight gravity or wind or weight, one worked with them, like a piece pressured into the roof of the cabin of a Lear jet at thirteen thousand feet, closer than the paint that had only been sprayed on, closer than the wax that had only been spread on. The controlled body made itself one with the alloyed metal of the jet, and if Remo did not allow any air to disrupt the bond, he would remain attached tighter than a rivet.

  It was the only way to break into the protected realm of Guenther Largos Diaz of Peru, Colombia, and Palm Beach.

  Guenther had done wonderful things for himself with the profits from the coca plant. He had made friends everywhere, this man who could count. He helped supply the communist guerrillas, and in exchange they guarded his fields. He helped finance retirement programs for government troops and now they acted as his stevedores.

  And in those American centers where cocaine was distributed, Guenther Largos Diaz had played havoc just as easily with the policemen earning twenty-five thousand dollars a year as he did with policemen earning five thousand dollars in pesos.

  This handsome South American with a German mother and a Spanish father knew how to bribe, knew, as they said south of the border, how to reach a man's soul. He had every man's price, and so, after he had met the prices of many men, it was decided that it was no use losing more good men to Guenther Largos Diaz. He was so good, so competent, that he would have to die.

  Remo felt the plane change pitch. It was going to land. It came down out of the sticky, wet, cold clouds into the sharp air of the Andes and continued to descend. At this height he could not tell what country was below them. He saw a river sparkling like tinsel under the sun off to the east, but he had no idea what river it was.

  He didn't care. Of course, if he didn't know where he was, there might be a problem getting back. But he was sure someone in the plane would know. The trick was not to kill that person. Remo didn't want to be left with a bunch of peasants who thought wherever they were was the center of the world and knew only vaguely how to get outside. Also, he didn't want to walk through hundreds of miles of jungle.

  He had to remind himself not to lose concentration, because the moment his mind and body separated, so would he, from the plane.

  The airstrip was surprisingly modern for such a backward-looking area. There were no major roads leading to this strip, just small tree-lined single-lane asphalt strips. And yet the runway could accommodate big jets, and when the wheels touched down in that screaming burst of rubber, Remo could see sensors implanted into the strip every ten yards. Moreover, the runway was dyed a color that most human eyes would not recognize as asphalt from above, a dark color that sparkled in the sun so the landing strip looked like part of a river that began nowhere and ended in a bunch of trees. The control tower looked like a pile of rocks.

  Remo did not know how upstairs knew this was headquarters. He didn't understand how computers worked or how the minds of people who understood computers worked.

  But when someone went to the trouble of disguising the place, someone who was vastly shrewd, then the place had to be his real home.

  As it was said in the histories of Sinanju, home is where a person feels safe, and a man like Guenther Largos Diaz could never feel safe in one of his exposed mansions.

  From the disguised control tower, people came running, pointing guns and yelling. The door to the jet swung open and someone beneath Remo waved the guards back.

  "What's going on?" came a voice from inside the cabin.

  "I don't know, they're crazy. They've been radioing that someone is on top of the plane."

  "Are they using the product? If they are, we've got to stop it now."

  "There's no product allowed in here, sir."

  "Then why do they claim they see someone on top of the plane? We just landed. We were flying at thirteen thousand feet."

  "They're aiming their guns, sir."

  "Cut them down," came the calm voice from inside the cabin, and suddenly bright yellow flames danced from the door of the plane. Remo saw the light first, heard the shots second, felt the slight impact of the backfire third, and finally saw each bullet land on its target on the runway, sending shiny bursts of reflective coloration dancing along the landing material designed to imitate a river to nowhere. On the open landing strip, the men from the tower were easy game. The slugs dropped them like laundry sacks. Apparently the marksmen inside were competent because there was not the wild, continuous fire one saw in soldiers who would use a machine gun when a slap would do, and artillery when a gun would do, and a bomb when artillery would do until they earned a reputation as a professional army.

  "Has someone taken over?" came a voice from inside.

  "They're reporting everything is all right," answered another voice. "They say there really is a man on the top of the cabin."

  "That can't be."

  "They're saying it's so, sir."

  "Tell them to get us a visual, but don't trust it entirely. This could be some trick."

  "By whom? They're all our men."

  "Anyone can be bought," came the voice.

  "But we are the experts. We would have spotted something. No one knows better how to buy people than you, sir. "

  "Still, check the visuals. Have them give us a camera angle."

  "Or we could just look," said the man at the open door.

  "No. Shut the door."

  The door clanked shut with such force that the jet trembled on its rubber tires.

  Remo could still hear them talk.

  "If someone is really up there, we will take off again and do maneuvers."

  "'But if he lasted the flight, how are we sure the maneuvers will shake him off?"

  "Because we flew smooth before. It certainly is worth a try, wouldn't you say?"

  "Yes, Mr. Diaz."

  So Diaz was aboard. Remo hadn't known that. He was just told that since a large amount of money was being transported, Diaz had to be close by. That was how counters worked. They counted where people would be.

  Remo had climbed on the roof just before takeoff. He had dressed as a ground mechanic, and then as soon as the blocks were removed from the wheels, he had slipped onto the roof at the tail, carefully compressing himself so the sudden weight wouldn't shake the plane and alert those inside. During the takeoff he hid himself on the far side of the plane's skin. Out of sight of the control tower. He had known the money was inside, but not that Diaz was. Until now.

  That was really all he needed. As the people inside the plane worked the electronics to receive the television signal from the tower, Remo pressed the fingerpads of his right hand into the alloy skin of the plane. The metal, still cold from the flight at thirteen thousand feet, became sticky and warm under the increasing pressure from Remo's fingerpads. Pressure that flowed with the very atoms of the metal itself in rhythms with the electrons moving around the nuclei, collecting the metal within itself until the skin of the plane melted like ice cream on a hot day. As the hole enlarged, vaporized metal rose into the air in a cloud. Remo peered down into the airplane.

  "Hi, I'm up here. Don't settle for the replay. I'm live from America."

  "Who are you?" said one of the bodies ducking away from the hole, as others scrambled to the cabin or aft. Remo tore off a bigger piece of the cabin and slid down, removing a firing automatic along with the wrist that fired it. He threw the garbage out of the plane as the bodyguard collapsed from shock.

  "Would you believe the spirit
of Christmas Past?" asked Remo. Which one was Guenther Largos Diaz? You couldn't tell the millionaries nowadays because they dressed in jeans and leather jackets like teenagers.

  In fact, it was very hard to tell who was who, although Remo did assume that the man behind the instruments was the pilot. He was going to have to save him. That might be difficult because there were lots of bullets going off now from all directions. Apparently Christmas Past was not the answer these people wanted.

  Remo saw the source of each bullet flash while he used other bodies as sandbags. It might have been more confusing if he didn't see everything so slowly, if he had not slowed the world and all its actions to a drowsy universe by slowing himself. The secret of speed, as athletes knew, was being able to slow down the perceptions of the world. A flash could be seen and recognized much faster than the bullet, signaling that the bullet was on its way, announcing it as a matter of fact, and then the bullet would be there.

  Of course, one did not duck, because that was the easist way to put the body into a receiving position for death. One had to let the body understand its role, and to do that, one moved alongside one slug while deflecting another with lesser bodies. Those were the bodyguards.

  Someone was screaming "Stop" long before the trigger-happies stopped, or, to be more precise, before Remo stopped them.

  The cabin was filthy with blood and torn metal.

  One man in a once-white suit stood proudly at the cockpit door, unyielding.

  "Excuse me, Christmas Past, but my men panicked. I assume you are of sterner stuff. Sit down."

  "Where?" asked Remo. "This place is a mess."

  "It would have been much neater if you hadn't torn your way inside and dismembered my employees."

  "I didn't know they were your employees. I was looking for you."

  "Well, you've found me. How can I be of service?"

  "Actually, Mr. Diaz, you don't have to do a thing. I do everything. I kill you. No work on your part whatsoever." Diaz was cool to the marrow.