Ghost in the Machine td-90

by Warren Murphy

  "Sir?"

  "I can't get a dial tone."

  "Let me see."

  Soon, it became clear that none of the phones in Randal Rumpp's suite of offices was working.

  "Maybe . . . maybe the phone company cut service," Dorma Wormser ventured.

  "They wouldn't dare!"

  "They have been threatening to terminate if the bills weren't paid."

  "Call them. Tell them the check's in the mail."

  "How? The lines are all dead."

  "Go down to the corner and use a pay phone. Get it done."

  "Right away, Mr. Rumpp," said Dorma, hurrying into her coat and out the reception area.

  Randal Rumpp threw himself behind his massive desk, which looked like a cherry wood pool table without pockets, thinking that if he docked the broad for her time out of the office he not only wouldn't have to reimburse her the quarter, he'd come out half a buck ahead. These days, a businessman needed every cent.

  Dorma hadn't been gone long when suddenly every phone in the office began ringing. It was as if a starter gun had been fired. Every phone erupted into song at once. Some beeped, others warbled, and still others buzzed shrilly.

  Seated at his desk, Randal Rumpp goggled, wide-eyed, at the banks of insistent instruments. They sounded angry. Like electronic rattlesnakes.

  He decided not to answer any of them.

  Then the faxes started emitting warning beeps and whistles.

  "Incoming!" Randal Rumpp shouted, lunging to the table on which four fax-phones sat like circled wagons. Paper began rolling out in long white tongues. He hit the OFF switches. Just in time.

  The exposed sheets were all blank. He didn't know if it was legal to fax foreclosure notices, but there was no sense taking unnecessary chances.

  Back at his desk, the phones kept up their discordant accompaniment.

  Randal Rumpp worked his way down the bank, picking up receivers and instantly hanging up again. This helped not at all. The phones continued to compete for his attention.

  In desperation, he grabbed one up and shouted into the receiver, "Leave me alone!"

  To his surprise a weak voice responded. It said, "Help me. I am stuck in telephone."

  "Dammit! What's going on with these things?" Rumpp complained, slamming the receiver down. It resumed its annoying ringing. Only the cellular unit was silent.

  A moment later, his executive assistant stumbled into the office, glassy-eyed and white-faced.

  "Mr. Rumpp . . ." she began breathlessly.

  "I asked you to restore service, not test the electronics! What is this crap?"

  Then Randal Rumpp saw the ghostly pallor that had drained his executive assistant's face.

  "What's with you?"

  The woman took a deep, steadying breath. "Mr. Rumpp! I . . . never . . . left . . . the . . . building."

  "There goes my profit," he muttered. Aloud, he said, "Why the hell not?"

  "Because I didn't want to . . . fall in. Like the . . . others."

  "Fall into what?"

  She gulped more air. "The sidewalk, Mr. Rumpp. People were sinking into the sidewalk. It was awful. Like quicksand. They couldn't get out."

  Randal T. Rumpp had ascended to the pinnacle of his chosen field because he knew how to read people. He read his secretary now. She wasn't drunk. She wasn't high. She wasn't trying to scam him. She was frightened. She was serious. So no matter how inane it sounded, Randal Rumpp knew he would have to look into her story.

  "Are the people from the bank still down there?" he asked firmly.

  "Yes."

  "Did they see what you saw?"

  "I don't think so."

  "Did the guard?"

  "No, Mr. Rumpp."

  "Go back downstairs and tell the guard to throw them out."

  "But Mr. Rumpp!"

  "Out the main entrance. So I can see what happens."

  The secretary was in tears. "But Mr. Rumpp!"

  "Or I can go down there myself and have him throw you out."

  "Right away, Mr. Rumpp." She hurried off, sobbing.

  Randal Rumpp's executive assistant stumbled away. Rumpp went to the north wall, which was decorated with framed magazine covers depicting his own face. He opened the Vanity Fair portrait. It revealed a closed-circuit TV monitor.

  There were cameras concealed throughout the building. Rumpp hit the button labeled CAMERA FOUR. A clear picture appeared. It showed the atrium entrance and the Fifth Avenue sidewalk beyond.

  Randal Rumpp noticed that a crowd had gathered. Like at a fire. They were pressed close to the building facade, touching it curiously. He wondered why they were doing that.

  Then, through the main entrance, came one of his black-coated guards, escorting a man in gray flannel and another uniformed person. These would be the bank officer and the sheriff.

  They had taken no more than four steps beyond the brass-and-pink-marble confines of the atrium lobby when all three men threw up their hands, as if losing their balance. They twisted on their feet like surfers trying not to go under, faces incredulous.

  Randal Rumpp watched curiously.

  Then, they began sinking into what was apparently solid pavement.

  It was a slow process. The crowd recoiled from the sight. Some scattered, as if afraid that the ground under their feet was going to swallow them, too.

  But only the three men were affected. The video monitor captured no sound. Randal Rumpp fiddled with the volume control without success. All he got was the desultory gurgle of his eight-million-dollar atrium waterfall.

  The way the three sinking men's faces and mouths worked was enough to convince Randal Rumpp that he would rather not hear their screams of terror anyway.

  They were up to their waists within a minute and a half. They started to beat at the sidewalk with their fists. Their fists simply dipped into the ground. They yanked them back, undamaged, eyes astonished.

  When their chins were only an inch or so above the pavement, the bank officer began to cry. The tower guard just shut his eyes. The sheriff was flailing his arms like a panicky blue bird. His arms appeared and disappeared, as if he were sinking into calm gray ice water.

  At one point, he found something solid. The apron of marble lobby floor that projected beyond the entrance doors. His fingers slipped and slid along the edge. Hope leaped into his eyes. Then, inexorably, the weight of his sinking body was more than his strength could overcome, and he lost his grip.

  The unforgiving line of the pavement crept up to their noses, past their wide eyes, and closed over their heads. Their hands were the last to go, clutching like those of drowning men.

  Then they were gone. The sidewalk was empty. Everyone was gone.

  Randal Rumpp stared at the bare sidewalk where three human beings had disappeared, in defiance of all natural law. He blinked. He looked to his desk calendar. It read: "October 31." Halloween. Then he blurted out the personal mantra that had exalted him to the heights of business success and dashed him back onto the rocks of near-bankruptcy.

  "There's gotta be a way I can hype this disaster as a positive!"

  Chapter 2

  His name was Remo, and he was attending the twentieth reunion of the Francis Wayland Thurston High School, Class of '72.

  The reunion was being held in the Pickman Neighborhood Club, outside Buffalo, New York, a white mansion of a place built by a turn-of-the-century industrialist that had been reduced to a function rental.

  At the door, Remo gave the name he had been told to give.

  "Edgar Perry."

  The woman looked up from the list, blinked, and said, "Eddie! It's been ages!"

  "Forever," Remo agreed. He looked at her name tag. "Pamela."

  "Pam, remember? Here, let me get your photo badge."

  As Remo waited patiently, Pamela dug into a folder in which splotchy photocopies of the 1972 class yearbook portraits had been clipped and then inserted into separate laminated badges. She handed Remo one that showed a bland face with staring
eyes and the name "Edgar Perry" printed underneath.

  "Yep, that's me," Remo said, clipping on the badge.

  The face that stared out from the laminated holder in no way resembled the face of Remo Williams. Not in shape, head contour, or bone structure. Had it been in color, the eyes wouldn't have matched either.

  "It sure is," Pamela agreed, giving Remo a smile that probably had been dazzling back in 1972 but was just teeth in a too-pink mouth today.

  "Lewis here yet?" Remo asked casually.

  "Lewis Theobald?"

  "Yeah."

  "Oh, now he's really changed. You'd never in a million years pick him out of the crowd."

  Remo looked over the main function room. It was done in smoky brick and boasted an ancient fireplace that was as cold as the air outside. There was no need for a crackling fire, the room being warmed by the combined body heat of nearly two hundred "thirtysomething" people. Had his eyes been closed, Remo could have accurately counted the exact number of attendees just from the BTUs. Remo had no idea how much heat made a British Thermal Unit, but long ago he had learned how to sense the exact number of lurking enemies in a dark room from the heat radiation. He remembered the steps he had been taught. The rewards, which were few, and the punishments, which were many, before he could do it every time without thinking. Gradually he lost the specifics of that learning experience. All that remained was instinct. Now he just walked in, felt the heat, and a number popped into his head.

  Remo's deep-set brown eyes roamed the sea of heads. None of the faces was familiar. He knew that Lewis Theobald's would mean nothing to him, either. But he wasn't looking for a face. He was looking for ears.

  "That's him," Remo said, pointing at an animated, blond-haired man whose small ears had almost no lobes.

  Pamela asked, "Which one? Come on, be specific."

  "The blondish guy with the reddish mustache," Remo said confidently.

  "You're right! You're absolutely right! You must have a fantastic memory. How did you do that?"

  "I have a fantastic memory," said Remo, who just hours before had been shown pre-plastic surgery photographs of his target. There were no post-plastic photos available. But that wasn't a problem. There was no such procedure as an 'earlobe augmentation.' Remo had recognized the shape of Lewis Theobald's ears as if they had played basketball together every day since graduation.

  Remo pushed through the crowd, ignoring a waitress in a vampire outfit who offered orange-tinted champagne in tiny glasses, slipped up to the man who wore Lewis Theobald's ID badge, and slapped him on the back hard enough to pop his contact lenses.

  "Lew!"

  The man with the Lewis Theobald name tag turned from his conversation and looked at Remo's face with a mixture of shock and surprise. His startled eyes went from Remo's familiar grin to his name tag. He absorbed the name and quickly grabbed Remo's hand. "Edgar! How'd you recognize me?"

  "Your ears," Remo said, smiling thinly.

  "Huh?"

  "A joke," Remo said. "Long time no see. What's it been-almost twenty years?"

  "You tell me," said the man wearing Lewis Theobald's name tag, pointedly ignoring the person whom he'd been talking to. The other man soon drifted off.

  "Twenty years. You haven't changed a bit," said Remo.

  "Neither have you, Eddie. My God, it's great to see you. Just great."

  "I knew you'd say that," said Remo. "Hey, remember that time in biology class when we had to dissect the frog?"

  "How could I forget?"

  "And you took the scissors, cut off its head, and dropped it into Mrs. Shields' coffee?"

  "That was great!" said Lewis Theobald, forcing a hearty laugh. He slipped one heavy arm over Remo's shoulder.

  "Listen, Eddie. I can't tell you how relieved I am to see you. I've been in Ohio since '77, and I've lost touch with everyone."

  A redhead with too much sun in her lined face slipped up and said, "Eddie! How nice to see you again!" She gave him a peck on the cheek.

  Remo said, "Remember Lew?"

  The blonde looked over the supposed Lewis Theobald, went momentarily blank, and finally forced a smile of recognition. "Lewis! Of course. So nice to see you!"

  "Same here."

  She slipped away, saying to Remo, "Let's catch up, shall we?"

  "Count on it," Remo said straight-facedly. It was working. Just as Upstairs had said it would. Twenty years is a long time. People change. Hairlines recede, or change color. Beards come and go. Poundage settles in for the long haul. No one suspected that Edgar Perry wasn't Edgar Perry, who happened to be serving twenty to life on a manslaughter beef down on Riker's Island, and whose reunion invitation had been intercepted before it reached his prison post office box.

  It had been a lucky break that the only living member of the Class of '72 who couldn't make the reunion happened to have the same hair color as Remo Williams, who had never heard of the Francis Wayland Thurston High School until a few weeks ago. Lucky for Remo. Not so lucky for the man trying to pass himself off as Lewis Theobald.

  "Listen, Eddie," said the man who wore Lewis Theobald's name tag, "I've been out of touch a long time. Catch me up on some of these people. A lot of them don't remember me as well as you. it's awkward."

  "No problem," said Remo, smiling to a pert brunette who blew him a kiss and mouthed the words "Hello, Eddie." No doubt the incarcerated Perry's once-and-future prom date. Remo picked a man at random, who had hair like a Chia pet, and said, "Remember Sty Sterling?"

  "Vaguely."

  "Sty's been dry three, four years now. On his second wife and third career change. He used to be a computer programmer for IDC. Now he not only owns Hair Weavers Anonymous, he's their best client."

  "The economy brings them down, doesn't it?"

  "And that's Debby Holland. Her LSD flashbacks finally settled down after she had the two-headed baby."

  Lewis Theobald made a face. "Our generation has seen its trials, hasn't it? What about you?"

  "Me?" said Remo Williams, looking the man directly in the eye. "I did a tour in Nam, in between pounding a beat."

  Lewis looked his disbelief. "You're a cop?"

  "Not anymore. I moved up. Work for the government now."

  "Doing what?"

  "Hunting weasels."

  The man calling himself Lewis Theobald locked gazes with the man pretending to be Edgar Perry. Neither man flinched.

  Finally Theobald said in a cool, toneless voice, "Weasels?"

  "Yeah. The human kind. Guys who can't be caught any other way."

  "I don't follow . . . ." Theobald said, his voice edgy.

  Remo shrugged nonchalantly. "Serial killers. Whitecollar types. The big bad guys even the Feds can't touch. Supersecret stuff."

  "FBI?"

  "Not even close," Remo said.

  An overweight woman wearing too much Chanel No. 5 dragged a balding, bespectacled husband over and said, "Eddie! Eddie Perry! Pam said you'd shown up! How are you?"

  "Young as ever," Remo quipped.

  "Go on. You look ten years younger than the rest of us."

  "More like twenty," Remo quipped.

  The overweight woman smiled through her confusion, and Remo said, "You remember Lew."

  "Lew?"

  "Lewis Theobald."

  The supposed Lewis Theobald smiled hopefully.

  "Did you go to school with us?" she asked doubtfully.

  "I've been in Ohio since '77," Theobald said, flushing. "I'm the one who chopped the head off the frog in Biology."

  "Do tell."

  The woman dragged her compliant husband off.

  "Where were we?" Remo said.

  "Discussing your work. With weasels."

  "Right. I'm the top weasel-catcher for Uncle Sam."

  "Why have I never hear of you?"

  "Only weasels ever hear about me. And when they do, it's already too late for them."

  The supposed Lewis Theobald took a sip of pumpkin-colored champagne and smiled knowingly. "Who w
ould have thought that Edgar Perry would go to work for the Central Intelligence Agency?"

  Remo smiled back. The smile, under his deep-set dark eyes, made his high-cheekboned face resemble a death's-head. He was rotating his hands absently. It was a habit he had when he was about to zero in on a hit. The unaccustomed shirt cuffs chafed his thick wrists. He hated wearing jacket and tie, but this was a class reunion. Besides, Upstairs was especially nervous about excessive exposure. Especially after Remo's most recent plastic surgery.

  Let Manuel "The Weasel" Silva think he worked for the CIA. It wasn't true. And Manuel the Weasel was not known to be afraid of the CIA. He was not known to be afraid of anything.

  Here, at the Class of '72 reunion, no fear showed in the eyes of the man pretending to be Lewis Theobald. He had no reason to suspect that the person he thought was Edgar Perry was anyone other than who he claimed to be. To think otherwise would have been too unbelievable a coincidence.

  Ever since the Gulf War, and the collapse of his main patron, Soviet Russia, Manuel "The Weasel" Silva had become a human hot potato. The most feared and successful terrorist of the last twenty years, responsible for masterminding a horrific string of hijackings, political murders, and bombings, Manuel had been kicked out of Syria several times. Usually to Libya. The Libyans, who had more to fear from U.S. intervention than the Syrians, invariably kicked The Weasel back to Damascus. Even Baghdad didn't want Manuel the Weasel.

  Finally, Manuel disappeared on his own. He had been traced to Montreal, traveling on a falsified Australian passport. There, the trail had disappeared. Washington put its security forces on a higher state of alert, fearing a direct attack by Silva. None had come.

  Upstairs, through his vast computer network, had picked up a few clues. Nothing definitive. But through careful work, a pattern had emerged. A bizarre one.

  Manuel had not entered the U.S. to commit random acts of terror. He had come to assume a new identity.

  The identity of Lewis Theobald, who was found dead in his Akron, Ohio, apartment, his spinal cord severed by a thin, flat blade that had entered through the back of his neck.

  It had been a trademark of The Weasel to assassinate his victims in that way. It was the first solid clue Upstairs had gotten. And when Lewis Theobald's parents were both found murdered in the same way in their Miami condominium, Upstairs recognized what no law enforcement agent in the nation could have: The Weasel was erasing anyone who could prove that Lewis Theobald was no longer Lewis Theobald.