Ghost in the Machine td-90 Page 4

  The ashtray wobbled, tilted, and slowly began to sink. It tipped sand, and the sand seemed to melt into the cheerless gray pavement.

  It was a convincing demonstration-and saved several lives-but soon they ran out of ashtrays.

  Once, a brave fireman approached the Fifth Avenue entrance. By this time the block had been cordoned off with Public Works sawhorses and emergency vehicles. The fireman wore the black-and-yellow slicker and regulation fire hat of the Fire Department, which made him look like a sloppy yellow-jacket with an attitude. He carried a pole normally used to pick apart burning debris. He carried this like a blind man's cane, tapping the ground before him as if attempting to find a solid path through the apparently unstable concrete.

  A cheer went up when, apparently by chance, he found a solid patch of pavement.

  The door was thrown open for him. Hands reached out to shake his, to thank him, to touch the brave public servant who had defied an unbearable fate to rescue his fellow human beings.

  No sooner had the fireman set foot on the splotchy pink marble apron extending from the lobby than he slipped from grateful hands and began sinking into its gleaming surface.

  The fireman managed a stunned comment. "What the fuck!"

  People rushed to his side. "Grab him! Don't let him sink!"

  Gripping hands tried. They only slipped through the man's seemingly solid form. No one could touch him.

  When he saw the marble floor creeping up to his waist, he screamed. It was a long scream. It went on for as long as he continued to sink and a little while after.

  The last thing to go was his black fireman's hat.

  Wide-eyed shoppers shrank back from the spot where the poor fireman had last been seen. They could see him scream, but no audible sounds reached their ears.

  After that, those trapped in the lobby lost all hope and stared out the great windows like dull creatures in a zoo.

  The Master of Sinanju regarded the lines of frightened faces from a position behind police lines.

  He stood barely five feet tall, yet he stood out of the crowd like a lapis lazuli fireplug. This, despite the fact that several New Yorkers had crawled into their trick-or-treat costumes early.

  His blue-and-gold kimono shimmered like the finest of silks. He carried his hands before him, tucked into the garment's wide, touching sleeves. His face was a webwork of wrinkles, like a papyrus death mask upon which spiders had toiled delicately over centuries.

  In contrast to the stiffness in his visage, his young, hazel eyes looked out with a sharpness belying his full century of life.

  "Nice costume," said a red-faced ghoul at his elbow.

  "Thank you," Chiun replied in a chilly voice, not wishing to acknowledge the interruption.

  "Love the mask."

  Chiun's eyes narrowed. He looked up. The crown of his head, bald as an amber egg, wrinkled above the eyebrow line. There were two puffs of cloudy white over each ear. A tendril of similar color clung from his tiny chin.

  "Mask?"

  "Yeah. What are you supposed to be? Bozo the Chinaman, or what?"

  The steely eyes lost their hard glitter. They flew wide.

  "I am Korean, white!"

  "No offense. The mask looks Chinese."

  The Master of Sinanju's tiny mouth thinned even more. What manner of imbecile was this, who could look upon the sweet face of Chiun, Reigning Master of Sinanju, and mistake it for that of mask?

  "I wear no mask," he said frostily.

  "Ha-ha," laughed the ghoul. "That's so old, it's almost funny again."

  This was too much for Chiun, who slipped the toe of one of his sandals onto the man's instep. The man never felt any pressure when his toe bones impacted all at once, sending waves of searing pain up into his nervous system.

  This had a predictable result. The man screamed and began hopping in place.

  Inasmuch as this had taken place but minutes after the fireman had vanished in plain view of everyone, it was enough to ignite the low spark of hysteria.

  "The sidewalk! It's going here too!"

  In a mad rush, the area surrounding the Master of Sinanju and the hopping wretch who had had the misfortune to insult him was cleared. The fire trucks pulled back. Word that the instability in the sidewalk was growing raced about like wildfire.

  Normally, New York crowds have to be beaten back with mounted police and water cannon. But in this case, panic was enough to motivate even the stubbornest gawker.

  In less than twenty minutes, a four-block area surrounding the Rumpp Tower was clear to the last person. A new perimeter was hastily established.

  From a place of concealment in the deserted B. Dalton's bookstore, the Master of Sinanju smiled thinly. With one blow, he had reprimanded an insolent idiot and created space in which to work without attracting undue attention or angering his employer, whom he believed was the secret emperor of America, known privately as Harold the Mad.

  Now all that remained was to learn the nature of this sorcery before Remo arrived.

  For not even in the five-thousand-year annals of the House of Sinanju, greatest house of assassins in human history, was there recorded any such magic as this taking hold of a building.

  And that, more than the quiet horror that had befallen the most opulent landmark on Manhattan's gold coast, was what troubled the Master of Sinanju's parchment face more than anything else.

  Chapter 4

  Word of the bizarre fate that had overtaken the Rumpp Tower reached the ears of Broadcast Corporation of North America superanchorwoman Cheeta Ching, while she was giving an interview in her office.

  "Don't bother me now!" she blazed, when her assistant poked her head in.

  "But Miss Ching . . ."

  All cameras and microphones turned from Cheeta's angry glare to that of her white-faced assistant.

  Realizing that she was courting a PR disaster, Cheeta slapped the angry lines from her face and put a little sugar in her tone.

  "All right. You may speak."

  "It's a story. A big one."

  Cheeta Ching had been in the midst of recounting her latest triumph. It was bigger than her Jell-O breast implant expose, or her four-part series on testosterone dementia, or the classic "Why Men are Bad."

  It was the culmination of her three-year campaign to become with child. From the moment word had gotten out, Cheeta, who had walked off Eyeball-to-Eyeball with Cheeta Ching to undertake "the heroic struggle," had become a celebrity in her own right. The ultimate career woman who was having it all.

  Even flush with biological triumph, she still wanted it all. All, in this case, meant the anchor chair at her network.

  "One moment," Cheeta said crisply, excusing herself. She moved quickly to the door.

  "What's this about a story?" one of her interviewers inquired nervously.

  "I'll find out for you," Cheeta said helpfully.

  She shut the door. The last sight they had of Cheeta Ching was of her treacly professional smile, set in a flat face so heavily made up it looked like a petri dish overwhelmed by mold spores.

  Then they heard the lock click. Shocked glances were exchanged.

  "She wouldn't . . . !"

  Then came Cheeta's loud, screeching voice.

  "Don't let them out until I'm on the air with this thing, whatever it is!"

  "That Korean shark!" a reporter screamed.

  Cheeta's next words were, "Does Cooder know about this?"

  "No," said her nervous assistant.

  "Perfect. Let me break it to him."

  She hurried down the corridor to Dan Cooder's office and poked her glossy head in. "Hi Don," she said sweetly.

  "Get lost!" snarled BCN anchor Don Cooder, not bothering to look up from his latest Nielsen standings.

  "Hear about the Lincoln Tunnel collapse?"

  "What!"

  "I'd take it myself, but I'm giving an interview on the state of my world-famous womb."

  "I owe you one," said Don Cooder, blasting past her like a
hurricane with hair.

  Ten minutes later, Cheeta Ching was piling out of a microwave van and tearing through the crowd like a bulldozer in high heels.

  "Who's in charge here?" she asked a cop.

  The officer pointed to a fire marshal. "The marshal is. At least, until the National Guard gets here."

  Cheeta thrust her flat face into the fire marshal's grizzled, weatherbeaten features. "Sheriff . . ."

  "Marshal."

  "Let's have your story."

  "No time. We're still stabilizing the situation. Now get back."

  "I will not get back," Cheeta hissed. "I demand my rights as a dual minority-female and Korean."

  "I am woman, hear me roar," the fire marshal muttered.

  Cheeta lifted her mike to his face. "What was that? I didn't catch that."

  "I said, 'Get back, please.' "

  Cheeta Ching turned on her cameraman, snapping, "Follow me."

  The cameraman meekly followed. Cheeta skirted the crowd until she found an opening.

  She reached back, found the cameraman's tie, and using it as a leash, yanked him through the opening.

  "Miss Ching! What are you doing?"

  "Just keep your eye to the viewfinder and the tape rolling. I'll get you through the rest. Trust me."

  The cameraman swallowed hard. He had no choice. Cheeta Ching could have a man hired and fired on the spot. It was rumored she had eaten her last cameraman alive when he'd screwed up. Not chewed him out, but actually cannibalized him. At least, that was the way he'd heard it. If the story had been about anyone but the Korean Shark, he would have laughed it off.

  Cheeta worked her way to Fifth Avenue and boldly strode up to the sidewalk before the brass-framed Rumpp Tower entrance. Under the huge letters RUMPP TOWER, anxious faces stared out.

  "Pan along the building," she directed. "I want every gut-churning, scared-white face on the six o'clock news."

  "Yes, Miss Ching."

  The cameraman began to pan. Evidently some of the trapped recognized the unmistakable features of Cheeta Ching.

  They waved and seemingly called her name. But their voices didn't penetrate the thick glass.

  "What're they saying?" Cheeta asked, frowning.

  "I dunno. Can't hear them."

  "Peculiar."

  "What is?"

  "They're supposed to be trapped, but it looks to me like a person could just walk right out the front door."

  "Then why don't they?"

  The moment the words were out of his mouth, the cameraman knew he had made a mistake. There were two kinds of mistakes a cameraman working for Cheeta Ching could make: recoverable ones and irrecoverable ones.

  The cameraman understood, as if by divine revelation, that he had made a mistake of the irrecoverable variety.

  His fears were confirmed by Cheeta's next orders.

  "Go up to the door and ask them."

  He gulped. "Is it safe?"

  "I'll let you know," Cheeta said flatly.

  "Miss Ching, we're already in violation of the fire marshal's orders."

  Cheeta whirled, teeth flashing. "What's your problem? Are you leaking testosterone out a pinhole in your scrotum? This could be your chance to become a hero."

  The cameraman wasn't concerned about his heroism. He was just hoping to live through the assignment. All he had been told was that there was a big story at the Rumpp Tower. From the looks of it, it was a terrorist thing. Someone had wired the tower and was holding its occupants hostage, or something.

  "Miss Ching," he croaked. "I'd rather not. Please."

  Cheeta Ching got around in front of him. She was in stiletto heels, which made her almost as tall as the cameraman, who stood five-foot seven. Cheeta Ching slowly rose up on her heels, like a creeping yellow vine. As she came up to his exact eye level, her poisonous red mouth broadened to expose her too-perfect teeth.

  "Has anyone ever told you how . . . tasty you look?" she asked in a glittering tone.

  Suddenly the cameraman had no fear of terrorists or high explosives or any ordinary threat to his bodily integrity. He was staring right into a flat, predatory face with dark, glittering eyes and excessively sharp incisors. If human evolution could be traced back to sharks and not apes, he thought, the face of Cheeta Ching would represent the highest state of mankind's long evolutionary climb.

  "For God's sake," the cameraman pleaded, "I have a family!"

  Cheeta grinned wickedly. "I'll bet the baby would taste just great microwaved."

  The cameraman's eyes rounded perfectly. "But-but you're going to have a baby yourself!" he stammered.

  "More oxygen for my baby, if yours stops breathing."

  The cameraman reacted as if a brick had knocked him between the eyes. He took a faltering step backward. Then he turned woodenly, like a man ascending the scaffold to the hangman's noose. Except that he was heading straight for the Rumpp Tower.

  A police officer stationed within shouting range spotted him and yelled for the cameraman to stop.

  He walked on, oblivious, his footsteps as leaden as a sponge diver's.

  Cheeta Ching had taken possession of his camera and now had it up on her padded shoulder, tape running.

  "Pick it up, will you?" she said spitefully. "I don't want to run out of tape."

  Someone had a bullhorn, and he began exhorting the cameraman to turn back. Inside the tower, the trapped grew panic-stricken. They tried waving him away. A man picked up a clothes rack in a famous clothing store and rammed it toward the glass, in an attempt to frighten the cameraman into changing his mind.

  He didn't know his own strength. The heavy rack went through the glass, shattering it.

  The expensive bronze solar panel didn't shatter in a normal fashion. It cracked apart. But there was no crystalline sound of breaking glass. There was no sound at all.

  And because there was no noise, the cameraman, his dull eyes fixed on the looming entrance, completely failed to notice what happened to the glass.

  Cheeta Ching noticed. With instinctive speed, she swung the videocam lens over toward the action. The camera recorded the glass falling and striking the ground.

  The big triangles and trapezoids of solar panel might have been raindrops, or glass spun of candy cane touching a moist surface. The glass immediately melted into the broad sidewalk.

  Cheeta blinked and brought the camera off her shoulder, a stupefied look on her heavily pancaked features.

  "Am I seeing this?"

  Under the circumstances, it was an intelligent question. Cheeta thought briefly of commanding her hapless cameraman to walk over to the mysterious spot and investigate, but decided that getting one of the hostages to speak on camera was more important. The chump could do that later.

  The cameraman was almost to the door now. Inside the lobby, a security guard and several others were trying to hold the doors shut.

  The cameraman's body blocked Cheeta's view, so she didn't really catch what happened next.

  It appeared that the cameraman had reached for the door handle of polished brass. His hand jumped back, as if it had received a shock.

  His voice was shocked, too.

  "I can't touch the door!" he screamed.

  "Try kicking it," Cheeta shouted.

  "You don't understand! I can't touch it!"

  "Yum-yum, baby!" Cheeta called.

  If the cameraman hadn't already been frightened out of his wits, he never would have attempted what he next attempted to do.

  He stepped back and, lifting his right foot, drove it toward the unyielding door.

  He went through the glass door like light through a screen. Literally. The glass remain intact. He kept going.

  Inside, trapped shoppers recoiled.

  And the cameraman fell into the floor and kept falling. He twisted, as if in quicksand. His mouth was making horrible shapes. Oddly, no screams reached Cheeta Ching's pointed ears. Or worse, her directional mike.

  Keeping the camera balanced, Cheeta tried to get hi
s attention with a waving hand.

  It worked. The horrified cameraman looked imploringly toward her. His eyes were wounded. It was as stomach-churning a sight as any ever captured on halfinch tape.

  Cheeta shouted encouragement.

  "Scream louder! I'm not getting a sound level!"

  Chapter 5

  Because of the nationwide cutback of military bases, Remo Williams was forced to catch a commercial flight out of Buffalo for New York City.

  That was bad enough. Since nearly two-thirds of the nation's airlines had slipped into bankruptcy, there were no direct flights to Manhattan, and Remo was forced to change planes in Boston.

  At the Boston gate, unmistakable signs that it was Halloween were apparent. The lounging stewardesses wore paint masks. A passing pilot lent a ghoulish air with his plastic skull face.

  Remo noticed the passenger in flowing black especially.

  It was hard not to notice her. She was tall and willowy, with jet-black hair parted down the middle of her pale scalp, lashes that resembled hair on a tarantula's legs, and a lipsticked mouth that might have been caked with blood.

  Her gown made her look like she had been dragged through a mixture of coal dust and old cobwebs. All she needed was a conical black hat and broomstick to complete her ensemble.

  The moment Remo entered the passenger waiting area, her eyes went to his lean body. Remo had shucked off his coat, shirt, and tie, leaving only a white T-shirt above the waist and exposing his wiry, understated musculature and unusually thick wrists.

  The woman in black was looking at his wrists in particular. Women sometimes did that. It was not the wrists themselves that attracted them, but an indefinable something that made Remo what he was. A combination of perfect balance and coordination that was as alluring to the opposite sex as animal musk.

  Remo found the attention as boring as playing gin rummy with blank pasteboards.

  He found sex even more boring. The techniques of Sinanju extended to sexual ones. Just as Remo had learned the myriad arts of the silent assassin, he had mastered perfect sexual technique. Unfortunately, for Remo, perfect sexual technique was as mechanical as changing a flat.

  Remo pretended not to notice the weirdly pale woman. It wasn't easy. Everyone else was staring at her, which only made Remo's feigned indifference all the more obvious.