Though Chiun pulled, Remo remained in place. "Sorry, but I gotta go with Anna on this one, Little Father," he said. "Looks like Boris Badenov here has turned his boom-ray death device over to the Frostbite Falls granola set." He nodded to Zen.
Chiun's hands fell to his sides. "Of course," he said, his voice flat. "Why would I expect that you would ever take my side against this lying Russian hussy? As my heir and future Reigning Master of Sinanju, you could ask this one how he has come to know of us, perhaps to better help us advertise our services, but no. By all means worry about whatever it is she tells you to worry about. I only ask that once you are through doing her bidding, we may drive past the home she has cost me on our way out of town. I would like to take one longing look through the windows as the indigents and gypsies who are not me root through my cupboards and relieve themselves on my carpets."
Across the room, Feyodov's raised hands lowered an inch. "So you two still do not work for the Institute?"
"Institute?" Remo asked. "What the hell's the-?"
It was as far as he got before the explosion.
The bullet fired by Anna struck Oleg Shevtrinko hard in the shoulder. With a shocked expression, Feyodov's assistant spun halfway around before slamming solidly into the rear wall of the hall. As Oleg sank to the floor, a streak of blood staining the wall, Anna swung the gun back to Feyodov.
"Another word that is not about the Russian property you have stolen and you will be next," she said coldly.
Feyodov's hands shot back up high in the air. Any curiosity the general might have had about Remo and Chiun's current employment abruptly gave way to cowardice.
"It is here," the general volunteered quickly. Anna's face held no emotion. "Take me to it." Feyodov nodded sharply. Arms still high in the air, he began to step over his bleeding compatriot. Anna had taken but a single step to follow when she felt a hand suddenly grip her arm, holding her firmly in place.
Remo. He was fooling around again. He had always constituted an audience of one for his own childish antics. He was still behind her. With the traitorous Russians standing before her, she did not dare turn to look at him.
"Remo, let go," Anna urged.
His hand never wavered. Worse, his thick wrist flexed.
The pain was so sharp, Anna sucked in a gasp of air. She didn't have time to question him before he spoke. When he did, his voice sounded different than she'd ever heard it. Almost ...weak.
"Anna," Remo whispered.
The pain in her arm was white-hot. It was as if a vise had clamped hard, biting into flesh. His grip tightened. So strong was it, she nearly dropped her gun.
"Remo, you are hurting me," Anna said, wincing. "Something...something's not right," Remo gasped.
Up ahead, Feyodov and the others had stopped dead. A spark of hope was growing stronger in the general's eyes.
Since Remo was holding on to her gun arm, Anna was forced to transfer the weapon to her free hand. "Watch them," Anna ordered Brandy.
The FBI agent moved in front of Anna. "Hands up!" Brandy snapped.
Some of the Russians had been wavering. At the command they dutifully lifted their arms higher. Anna turned a wary eye on Remo. When she saw him, her pale skin blanched.
Remo looked as if he'd aged thirty years. His cheeks were sunken and his eyes were cavernous black hollows. It looked as though the life had been sucked out of him. Sapped of vitality, he had to hold on to Anna for support.
Behind Remo, the Master of Sinanju was in far worse shape. He seemed little more than an ambulatory skeleton.
Both men reeled in place.
"What's wrong?" Anna asked sharply.
"We have to go," Remo panted. "Now."
As he spoke, Anna felt a shuddering tickle, like ghostly fingers, across the downy hair at the back of her neck.
The sensation had been apparent for the last minute or so, but it had gotten worse in the past few seconds. It was as if some hidden switch had been flipped. And in the moment when the strange invisible touch reached its zenith, Anna Chutesov saw the impossible happen.
Remo and Chiun shot to attention. Arms snapped out, angled downward, fingers splayed. They stood like that for but an instant. Stiff, helpless and vulnerable.
As quickly as it came, it fled. And as Anna watched in shock, the life seeped visibly from the Master of Sinanju.
Chiun's fluttering eyes rolled back in their sockets. His frail old body went as limp as a wet rag, and he toppled over onto the hard floor.
Remo still stood. He reached a hand once more for Anna. This time he braced it on her shoulder for support.
"Remo, what is it?" Anna asked.
He shook his head. "Help me get Chiun," he gasped.
There was just a moment's hesitation before Anna did as she was told. Crouching, she helped drag the old man into Remo's arms. She had to pull Remo back to his feet.
There was not another word from him. Drawing on his last reserves of strength, Remo stumbled out the door, delicately cradling the lifeless body of his teacher.
Once he was gone, Anna dropped her voice low. "We must go," she whispered urgently to Brandy. "What about them?" Brandy said, nodding across the room.
Feyodov and the Russians were growing emboldened. Hands were lowering cautiously. None had yet moved for a gun.
"There are too many of them," Anna answered. "We do not know how many more there might be. We can't win. Not now."
The FBI agent seemed reluctant to follow the orders of a Russian agent. Yet she had no other backup on the scene and half of her team was apparently down for the count.
Brandy nodded crisply.
Anna didn't find it necessary to say a word to Feyodov. Both of them understood her predicament. Whenever she was confronted with this sort of situation, she always left it up to the men to strut and preen and offer silly threats and warnings. She was content to escape with her life.
It disturbed the head of the Institute when Boris Feyodov found it unnecessary to say anything, as well. There was no bluster from the former general, no booming anger typical for a man. Just a superior smirk as she backed away.
And in that silent smile, Anna Chutesov felt new reason to fear. Guns raised, the two women slipped out the door.
As soon as they were gone, the Russians grabbed for their own weapons. When they ran after the four intruders, they found that Remo and the others had already gotten past the second set of doors. Though damaged, they were still in place. Remo had sealed them from the outside. The Russian soldiers quickly returned to the hall.
Zen was climbing nervously down from the stage. The other council members were coming out from under the table.
"What was that all about?" Zen asked. "Those guys ...what-what happened to those guys?"
In the rear of the hall, Boris Feyodov was glancing at his Swiss watch. As he suspected, Remo and Chiun's strange seizures had coincided precisely with the moment his precious particle-beam device would have been charged enough to fire.
The general looked up with only his eyes, a devilish smile on his fleshy face.
"Our secret weapon apparently boasts an interesting side effect," Boris Feyodov said knowingly. And in his tired, silent heart he found delight in the fact that the end of the world was proving to be even more entertaining than he'd ever dreamed.
Chapter 21
Cosmonaut Sergei Sagdeev's return to space had been a silent defeat.
Russia's space program was not what it had once been. For years it had been a testament to ingenuity, endurance and sheer stubbornness. The man was always less important than the mission. Back in the late 1980s, Sergei had been one of the cosmonauts selected to test the limits of how much time was humanly possible to spend in space.
Sergei had stayed aboard the space station Mir for just over three months. Ninety-eight agonizingly long days.
An eternity away from his native Yaroslavl on the banks of the Volga. Away from his wife, his little daughter.
Away from Earth.
> At first back then, the planet had seemed enormous, stretching wide beneath the fifty-two-degree inclination of the cramped station. As his time in space grew however, the planet seemed to shrink. With each passing day it grew smaller and smaller until it was little more than an insignificant speck against the greater backdrop of eternity.
Everyone he knew, everyone he would ever know. All the great figures both present and past had lived and would die on that same insignificant speck. Thanks to his time on Mir, Sergei Sagdeev had returned to Earth with a perspective on Man's place in the cosmos few people could appreciate. Sergei was one of the few human beings on the planet to understand just how tiny and worthless he truly was.
When he finally made it back home after his long ordeal, Sergei vowed never to return to space. His future work with the space program would be done only with solid ground beneath his feet. He had no desire to remind himself just how inconsequential he was.
It was a promise he could not keep.
The Russian space program had been flailing for a number of years. There was serious talk of scrapping it altogether. With no other training in a disaster of an economy, Sergei had begun to worry about his future job prospects. Things had looked bleak for some time when a private Netherlands-based corporation stepped in to help finance some of Russia's space program. In exchange for funding, they wanted the right to use the dilapidated old Mir station for commercial ventures. And they needed experienced cosmonauts to help them get their plans off the ground.
And so, in spite of the promise he'd made to himself, Sergei Sagdeev had, at the ripe old age of forty-seven, returned reluctantly to the endless black void of space.
This time he would be on Mir for only three weeks. Some minor work needed to be done on the dust collectors, and a few of the old data systems were getting an upgrade. A MirCorp rocket was on its way with fresh parts and supplies. It would be docking in minutes.
Alone in the crew habitat at the far end of the orbiting station as he watched the slivery needle that was the approaching rocket, Sergei pressed his hand against the cool insulated window. As he sat so far above the blue-green speck that was Earth, his heart was sick with longing.
He knew the actual distance from Mir to his small home. 360 kilometers. More than 220 miles.
The window fogged a silhouette of his hand. Windows. The more primitive Salyut series of stations had none. Here they were supposed to be an improvement. Sergei would have preferred no windows at all.
Through the thick pane he continued to watch the approaching Dutch rocket. His heart was heavy.
In Mir's tiny dining quarters, Sergei listened to his commander's gruff voice over the station speakers.
"Dyevit. Vohsim. Syem. Shest..."
The speaker system was old and muffled.
As the small manned rocket closed to dock, the Russian voice continued to count down.
Sergei watched the rocket float to a crawl. Unfiltered sunlight sparkled off the gleaming white surface.
He hardly heard the command for the rocket to use the docking port at station control.
A single tear rolled down the cheek of the lonely, insignificant cosmonaut.
It was the sight of the rocket that did it. It came from there. From home.
He would be going back soon. And this time nothing would compel him to return to this cold, eternal hell.
Through a window in the nose cone of the approaching rocket he saw one of the two-man team. The cosmonaut's white gloves were moving across the control panel.
Sniffling, Sergei hardly had time to focus on the shifting gloves when the rocket vanished from sight. It was impossible. One instant it was there; the next it was gone.
In the tiny galley the disappearance of the rocket had barely registered as an anomalous flash on the optic nerve of the seated Russian before it reappeared.
It was huge and white and blotted out the planet below. It flew sideways, faster than any propulsion system yet devised could have delivered it. And, faster than the mind of Sergei Sagdeev could reconcile what had happened, the runaway rocket collided with Mir.
Inside the fragile shell, Sergei hit the floor of the dining area in a shower of food trays and equipment. With a groan a stress-fracture cracked up the hull, splitting wide the side of the buckling station.
On his back, Sergei finally saw the face of the gloved cosmonaut who had been working the rocket's controls.
The man's eyes were wide and glassy. The rocket had been thrust forward at such a great velocity that his skull had cracked open against the headrest of his seat. Flecks of blown-out red spotted the interior of his helmet visor.
Sergei saw all this in an instant. And in the same instant he knew that the only way he could see the man so clearly was because the rocket had pierced the delicate shell of the orbiting station.
In it came, huge and heavy. Splitting the station and blasting anything that wasn't strapped down out into the cold void of space. One of those things was cosmonaut Sergei Sagdeev.
Mir creaked and vibrated and burst into two fat, jagged halves. The sections spiraled away, propelled by the same invisible force that had overwhelmed the supplies rocket.
Silent screams issued from the pressurized command module.
And through all the panic and destruction that started in space but would end on the Earth below, a lone cosmonaut floated off into peaceful, eternal repose.
An insignificant speck in an endless black sea.
Chapter 22
With sirens blaring and lights flashing, the motorcade sped through the frozen streets of Moscow toward the Kremlin.
Traffic pulled quickly to the side of the street, allowing the police cars to pass. In the midst of the official automobiles was one unmarked car. In the back seat of the black bulletproof sedan, Director Pavel Zatsyrko of the SVR clutched a manila envelope tightly in one hand.
A hasty call over the radio while they were still a mile away opened the old Spassky Gate. The SVR director did not have time to wait in line to be cleared through the gates.
Barely slowing, the motorcade raced inside the Kremlin. His car hadn't even come to a complete stop before Zatsyrko jumped from the back. Envelope in hand, he raced up the steps to the Grand Kremlin Palace. His shoes clicked urgently on the polished floor as he ran to the gilded door of the special conference room. He found the president of Russia waiting for him at a large table inside.
The president was a slight, balding man with clear eyes and a frowning face. He did not rise when the perspiring SVR head entered the room. At five feet four inches, Russia's leader was self-conscious about his height. To mask his diminutive stature, he stood only when absolutely necessary.
The men had been associates years ago. They had worked together back in the days of the KGB. Both men had been stationed in East Germany during those terrible days just before the Berlin Wall trembled and fell.
"What is so urgent that we could not speak on the phone?" the president asked his old comrade. Russia's leader wore a grim expression. He had only just learned of the destruction of Mir.
So far there was no explanation among the world's scientific community for all that had been happening in space. Some were saying that a cloud of stellar dust particles had intersected with Earth, wreaking havoc on all orbiting devices. Others blamed increased solar activity. In spite of Anna Chutesov's opinion on the subject, the president of Russia still hoped that one of these theories was true.
Pavel Zatsyrko slapped the envelope down in front of the seated president.
"This was just received at my office," the SVR man said breathlessly. "I dared not show it to anyone else."
The envelope was light. When the president tore it open, he found just a single sheet of white paper. As soon as he pulled it out he saw that it was a printed copy of an e-mail.
When he read who had sent the note, the color drained from the president's face. The line just below today's date read [email protected]. His worried eyes darted across the lines
of text.
Greetings, Little One:
By now you are aware that your space station has been destroyed. The weapon used to accomplish this is yours, but it is currently deployed on the West Coast of the United States. Since your precious Institute director is otherwise occupied at the moment and cannot do your thinking for you, I volunteer my services to help you sort through the predicament this presents to you.
Since it is no longer in your country, the Americans can conceivably be blamed for what has happened to Mir. Retaliation in this case could be justified. Of course, since it is a rogue group and not the American government itself in possession of the weapon, such an attack would be seen by Washington as unprovoked. They in turn will retaliate. To further complicate your dilemma, I have already sent word to the American president that it is a Russian weapon on his soil that is responsible for the random destruction of the past few days. I have also mentioned that the secret test conducted fifteen years ago from Sary Shagan was done with this very weapon by order of the then-general secretary. Given this information, he might well attack you first. After all, the Americans prize their toys. And this event, while many years old, could be construed as an act of war. Of course, passions have cooled on both sides, so the urge to retaliate might not be with the Americans as it would have been immediately following the event. Given this fact, time could work in your favor. That is, assuming you make your decision quickly.
That is my analysis of the situation. I am terribly sorry that I cannot help you reach a decision. Perhaps we can use this as a test, to see if you are big enough for the challenges of grown men.
I am curious to see if the embers still burn on either side as once they did.
Yours,
Boris Feyodov
When he was finished reading, the president crumpled the paper into a tight ball. Before the conference table, Pavel Zatsyrko studied the Russian leader's face. It was clear to Pavel that this had not been a wasted trip.
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