The President's final words ringing in his ears, Smith gently replaced the red receiver.
"I guess I no longer need to tell you I think there's something bigger than a dust shower trashing all these satellites," Mark Howard said quietly as the CURE director closed his lower desk drawer.
Smith nodded. "That is the explanation that has garnered the most attention. With any luck the general public will never find out the truth."
"And sending the Army in might let The New York Times know something's up in Barkley," Howard said simply. Still standing beside Smith's chair, he was rereading the e-mail Boris Feyodov had sent to the White House.
Smith was surprised by the young man's deduction. It was one he had not mentioned to the President.
The greatest challenge for the CURE director had always been keeping a lid on various crises. Complete ignorance of events was always preferable, but sometimes problems were so big they could not be contained. And to have every dire predicament to face the nation suddenly and mysteriously solve itself would point to something unknown operating behind the scenes. Therefore, for those events that could not be concealed from the public, cover explanations like the one now being posited for the damage in space had always been acceptable to and, at times, encouraged by the CURE director.
Beside Smith, Howard was just finishing Feyodov's note.
"Sounds like this guy is the real deal, Dr. Smith," Howard concluded bleakly. "You said he and the particle weapon are in Barkley, California, right?"
Smith fidgeted uncomfortably. "Yes," he said. "At least there is no record of him leaving the country. Of course, he could have used an alias and had someone else send his messages from the Barkley address at a preordained time."
Howard straightened. "If he's sticking around town, he's running a big risk telling the Russians all this. He must know they'll be itching to erase their involvement. If he's still there I'd say the guy's got a death wish."
"I concur," Smith said. "Now, please excuse me. Given the circumstances I have much to do."
"I know it's my first day and all, but I am supposed to be your assistant," Mark pointed out. "Isn't there anything I can help with?"
Smith hesitated.
The CURE director was still reluctant to let Howard in on all the details of the organization. As it was, he had given his new assistant access to only a fraction of the CURE database. In spite of the events taking place in California, Smith had spent a chunk of the morning doing a hurried background check on the young man. So far, Howard seemed to be an acceptable candidate for CURE. Still, presidential appointment or not, it was far too soon to open the organization wide to an outsider. Harold Smith always erred on the side of caution.
"It isn't wise at the moment to involve you deeply," Smith said carefully. "I would prefer a calmer atmosphere to get you acclimated to your duties here. For now I will handle this situation as I have in the past."
"It's your call," Howard nodded. "Still, since you haven't given me any responsibilities yet, I'll keep an eye open from my office. Maybe I'll catch something you miss."
Mark was heading across the room when he suddenly paused. Taking a deep breath, he turned. "You said to the President that you've got some field operatives on the scene," he exhaled. "I should tell you that I think I met them already."
Across the room, Smith had been leaning back over his computer. Glancing up, he raised a dubious eyebrow. "That is unlikely," he assured the young man.
"It was a couple of weeks ago during that Raffair business," Howard pressed. "I was still with the CIA. I bumped into them in Miami. That's where I got this." He raised his arm. The cast jutted from his sleeve, wrapping around his hand between thumb and forefinger. "An old Asian and a young Caucasian, maybe a few years older than me."
Smith was stunned by Howard's words. The young man had indeed encountered Remo and Chiun.
The CURE director's uneasiness with the topic was evident. With everything else that was going on, he had not given much thought to how he would introduce this young man to Remo and Chiun. Like most things involving the two Sinanju Masters, he doubted it would go easily.
"You will meet them soon enough," the older man said, clearing his throat.
"I figured," Howard said knowingly. "All you've got are those two guys. You couldn't have squads of men roaming the country without someone finding out. Especially men like them. Oh, and for the sake of full disclosure, I should mention that we sort of met once, too, Dr. Smith. A while back you called Langley looking for an analyst to check some satellite data for you. You needed to find a missing boat in the Atlantic. I was the guy you spoke to."
It finally hit Smith. He thought he had recognized Howard's name when he read Mrs. Mikulka's Postit note the previous day. He had dismissed it as a common-sounding name. Now he realized he had indeed heard it before. He was surprised it had not occurred to him during the background search he had conducted earlier in the day.
Smith's eyes were flat behind his clear glasses. "Did the President suggest it might be me, or did you surmise this on your own?" he asked evenly.
"I figured it out myself," Howard said.
"You did not share this information with anyone?"
Howard gave a lopsided smile. "No way," he promised, shaking his head. "I'm not like this Feyodov. I don't have a death wish, Dr. Smith. I just thought you should know."
Smith pursed his gray lips. "Your candor is appreciated," he said. "That will be all."
Nodding, Howard turned once more. His hand had closed around the doorknob when he glanced back one last time.
Smith was hunched over his computer. The glowing screen was reflected in his owlish glasses. "One more thing," the new assistant CURE director said. For the first time there was hesitation in his youthful voice. "I think there's something else at play here. It's somehow connected to this whole satellite thing. It's not really big. Something small, behind the scenes. But it's the catalyst that set all the rest of this in motion."
Smith's gray face betrayed minor intrigue. "What makes you say that?" he asked, his tone curious.
Mark bit the inside of his cheek. "I don't know," he said, shrugging. "Just a feeling, I guess." Before he could be pressed further on his hunch, the young man slipped quickly from the Spartan office. The door closed behind him with a soft click.
Chapter 24
It was sleep without dreams. A great, oppressive blanket of black numbness the likes of which he had not experienced since before his earliest Sinanju training. When the darkness finally fled for Remo Williams, it was replaced by a blob of amorphous white and a nerve-numbing weariness that leached deep into bone. An eternity passed as the clot of shapeless white resolved into a more familiar environment.
He was in a room. By the looks of it, it was some sort of flophouse. A grimy lava lamp sat on a warped bureau. Behind it, a faded Jerry Garcia poster concealed tears in the fuzzy striped wallpaper.
Remo was in a bed.
No. As his senses returned, he realized it was lower than a bed. It couldn't have been more than just a mattress on the floor. A foul mustiness created by thirty years of human odors flooded up from the squeaky springs.
At first he had no idea how he had come to be there. It struck him all at once.
Something had happened back at the Barkley city hall. Something he had never encountered before. It was as if the air itself had drained the life from him. From him and-
His heart stopped.
He couldn't raise his head to look around the room.
"Chiun," Remo croaked. Though he tried to call out, his voice was barely a whisper.
When last he saw him the old Korean appeared to be dead. At least Remo had never seen him so drained of life.
Once the enervating sensation struck, Remo's own system had gone so haywire he couldn't sense any life signs from his teacher. He had drawn on reserves he did not have just to get them both to safety. After he had barred the door to prevent the Russians from following, he had collap
sed.
There was no memory after that. No knowledge of how he had gotten from there to here. No way of knowing if his adopted father was...
"Chiun," he called again, his voice louder this time.
A concerned face appeared above him, blocking out the cracked, water-damaged plaster ceiling. For an instant he thought he was dreaming. Then he remembered that Anna Chutesov had come back from the dead.
The Russian agent gazed down on him as she had in days long forgotten, a vision of beauty from another time.
"How's Chiun?" Remo croaked weakly. He braced himself for the worst.
When the reply he dreaded came, he felt the world drop out from beneath him.
"He's gone," Anna replied simply.
The words were like a dagger in his heart. Blood pounded through his veins, ringing in his ears. Remo closed his eyes, too exhausted for tears. His worst fear of the past few months had come to pass.
On the trip to Africa during which he had inadvertently taunted the gods into leveling a lifetime curse of Master's disease, Remo had been visited by the spirit of Chiun's son.
The little Korean boy with the sad eyes had prophesied a future of hardship for Remo. Ever since that time, Remo had harbored the secret fear that the Master of Sinanju himself would be part of the suffering he was destined to endure.
Lying in that squalid room, he had never felt so alone.
The loss of his home was nothing to him now. Everything else in life was dross. The one thing that mattered to him more than anything else in the world was gone.
"I have to see him," Remo said.
There was strength now in his hollow voice. Already he was wondering in which of his fourteen steamer trunks the Master of Sinanju kept his funeral robes.
Anna was sitting on a stool next to the mattress. She seemed unmoved by his loss.
"In a little while," she said as she squeezed out a damp facecloth into a cracked antique chamber pot on the floor. "You have been unconscious for hours. You need rest."
When she leaned over to wipe his brow, Remo grabbed her wrist, holding tight.
"I need to see him now," he insisted.
"You cannot," she said. "He and the FBI woman went out for food. They won't be back for a while yet."
A weight lifted from Remo's chest.
"He's alive?" he asked, scarcely daring to speak the words aloud.
Her response sent his soul soaring. "Of course," Anna said. When she realized what he had assumed, a spark of weary mirth came to her eyes. "I know he is like a father to you, Remo, but let us be realistic. If he ever did die, where would he go? Heaven does not want him and hell would not take him. May I have my arm back now?"
His heart singing with joy, Remo released her wrist. When he closed his tired eyes this time, they burned with invisible tears.
"Don't be too sure Chiun won't be the big man on campus of the afterlife," he muttered, trying to hide his great relief from Anna. "Most of the Masters of Sinanju I've met have been even bigger pains in the ass than he is."
There was a sudden trip in her voice. "There are other Masters of Sinanju?" she asked. "It was my understanding that the two of you were the only living practitioners of your martial art." The words sounded almost too casual.
Curious, Remo opened his red eyes.
Her face was etched in stone. Sitting on her stool, holding her soggy facecloth, she seemed utterly indifferent to his interest. There was no visible reason to think she was making anything more than idle conversation.
"Long story," He sighed. "We're the only two alive. Well, the only two alive if you don't count the psycho-coma one who wants to kill us. Which I didn't for a long time until two days ago." His head sank back tiredly into the grimy mattress. "Ever wish you could take a vacation from living such an interesting life?"
"My life has not met your definition of interesting for many years," Anna replied. "My last active field mission was the one we shared. If not for the recklessness and avarice of the fool Feyodov, I would have happily lived out the rest of my life in anonymity."
"Yeah, renegade Russian generals with stolen doomsday devices do have a tendency to piss out the candles on the birthday cake." Remo struggled to his elbows. "How was Chiun when he left?"
"As usual he was concerned about you," Anna replied. "But physically he seemed fine."
"Really?" Remo said. His face clouded. He felt as if he'd been through the wringer. And Chiun was over one hundred years old. "I'm never gonna live this down," he sighed.
Anna understood his meaning.
"If you are worried that you should be more resilient, you need not be," she said. "You forced yourself to fight the neural disruption while Chiun did not. In fact, I doubt he could have at his age. He succumbed quickly and his body shut down, thus sparing him the effects of prolonged exposure."
"Okay, I actually got the end of that," Remo said. "But what was that neural diddle-daddle you parked out front?"
"Your special training has rewritten your entire nervous system to a heightened degree," Anna explained. "You see, feel and hear better than the average human. For lack of a better explanation, your senses are tuned to the harmonics of your surroundings, absorbing the vibrations of your whole environment."
"If this is going somewhere that's gonna make my head hurt more, I'm lying down," Remo exhaled. He pulled his elbows away, dropping flat on his back.
"It might," Anna said somberly. Her face was grave. "The weapon gathers protons from its surroundings during its charging phase. When it is fired, the protons are expelled in a particle beam, the energy from which disrupts the environment within a limited radius. Normal people within this field feel it as no more than a dissipating electrical charge. Apparently you and Chiun are affected more greatly. And since it is being used continuously now, the air around it would be polluted to someone with your skills."
"Makes storming the Bastille kind of hairy for us."
"I would say next to impossible," Anna suggested. "After you collapsed it was all we could do to get the two of you to my car. Fortunately, Feyodov has limited forces in this town. We were able to get you to safety in this boardinghouse. However, they are doubtless looking for us. It is just a matter of time before we are found."
"Not a problem," Remo said. He pushed up to a sitting position. His strength was flooding back. "We're outta here."
Anna seemed surprised. "You are not leaving?"
"You bet, baby," Remo said, swinging his legs over the edge of the mattress. "It's time to call in the marines. Or the Air Force. That portable-beam whatsit must be near the city hall somewhere. I'll get on the horn to Smitty and have him send a couple of bombers to boil their bong water."
"The phones do not work," Anna argued. "Your communications network is failing." She jabbed a thumb to the corner where an old black-and-white Magnavox TV sat on an overturned wicker basket. "I saw on the television that the remaining satellites have been overwhelmed by the demand. It could take you hours to get through, if ever. The damage they will cause between now and then is incalculable."
Remo sighed deeply. "Swell," he groused. "Wait a minute. The phone's out but the TV's working?"
"Just a few channels," Anna explained. "I was watching the network that was running the stupid comedian fund-raiser."
"Home Ticket Booth is still on?" Remo frowned.
Anna shook her head. "That does not matter," she dismissed. "What matters is that they have been covering the events taking place in space."
"What do you mean?" Remo interrupted. "Covering as in 'covering the news' covering?"
"Yes," Anna said impatiently. "Is that not what they do?"
"No, actually," Remo answered. "They pretty much just do movies. One good one on Saturday night, and then six days and twenty-two hours of Earnest Licks a Lamppost broken up by a half hour Making of Earnest Licks a Lamppost documentary midweek."
"Well, they are doing news now and it is not good," Anna said. "Feyodov has let his idiot employers destroy the
Mir space station." Her expression was deadly serious.
Remo's brow furrowed. "So what?" he said. "Didn't you people abandon that floating Tinker Toy?"
"Only for a time," Anna said grimly. "It is back in service now. Or rather was. There were six cosmonauts on or near Mir at the time of the attack. Two that were on a capsule scheduled to dock with the station are presumed dead, as is one who was in the crew quarters. The other three are trapped in the command module. It is unlikely that a rescue effort can be mounted by my country in time to save them."
Remo tapped a thoughtful finger on the threadbare edge of the mattress. "Don't wanna seem like the coldhearted bastard that I am, but whoop-de-do. You're the clowns who gave General Feel-you-up a fistful of rubles and a pat on the fanny before setting him loose on the white elephant table at the Cold War carnival."
Anna's eyes pleaded understanding. "Don't you see, Remo?" she asked. "This attack has come from America. My government knows that. It does not matter who is in control of the weapon or whether Washington even knows of its existence. Up until now the random attacks have largely been against American technology, since America dominates space. If my nation begins to suffer losses as yours already has, it will not long tolerate them."
"Hold the phone. Are you actually saying those borscht-slurpers in Moscow would nuke us because they let one of their own jerkwad generals swipe the only hunk of hardware they ever built that works?"
Still sitting on her stool, Anna placed her hands firmly on her knees.
"These are the same men in charge who for seventy years claimed the fruits of the Revolution were always around the next corner, this while people were starving in the streets and slave laborers were being forced to erect fences to keep the entire population from fleeing. You tell me, Remo, what they will do."
Remo's face sagged and his shoulders slumped. "This is all your fault, you know," he muttered. "If you just had the decency to stay dead like a normal person, none of this would be happening."
He had no way of knowing how true his words were. Eyes downcast, he studied the floor.
As he stared at the space between his loafers, Anna reached out absently, brushing a short lock of dark hair off his forehead. It was a casual movement, more an impulse stirred by memory than a conscious thing. The instant she realized what she was doing she pulled her hand away.
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