Sole Survivor td-72

by Warren Murphy

  Chapter 8

  Anna Chutesov had met her match. There was no question about it. Over the years, she had hacked through the bureaucratic jungle of the Kremlin as if it were a golden staircase designed solely for her feet. Until today, she had never encountered a man who was immune to her wiles, her cool authoritative sensuality, her womanly praise, or-if all else failed-that most potent weapon, her withering scorn.

  The secret of her success was simple: never want anything from a man more than he wants something from you. Men desired her. She refused to acknowledge her interest in them. She had learned that lesson as a member of the Komonsol, the Soviet youth group. A political leader had recognized her brains. At the same time, he couldn't keep his eyes off her legs. The man had made Anna, then sixteen, a leering offer. One night of passion in return for a place in a Komonsol-sponsored trip to Sweden.

  Anna had accepted. The night was not the most enjoyable of her life. The man was a slobbering unwashed brute who combined the technique of an octopus with the equipment of a chipmunk. But she survived the experience.

  When, a week later, the man had all but ignored her at the political lectures, Anna cornered him in the back of the bustling indoctrination hall.

  "I have been waiting to hear about my trip," she asked low-voiced. In truth, she was ashamed to face the man. Ashamed of her actions as much as his own. But she wanted to see the world beyond her country, and such experience usually led to political advancement, which was her deepest desire.

  "Trip?" the brute had asked. His eyes were black and unreadable.

  "Yes, our deal. Surely you have not forgotten?"

  "Show me a piece of paper documenting this so-called agreement," the man said coldly.

  "You know there is none."

  "Then there is no agreement, is there?" And he had walked off, leaving Anna Chutesov clutching the Komonsol pin attached to the new sweater which she had purchased to wear in the Swedish capital, and quaking in cold rage.

  Anna Chutesov vowed never again to want something so badly that she betrayed herself to get it.

  Instead, she worked her way up the party ladder. It was surprisingly easy. If thwarted, she shrugged disinterestedly and tried another approach, transferred to another directorate. She found that if she betrayed no preference, asked no favors, and offered none, she was almost always promoted on merit. It was simply a matter of never letting the bastards know what you really wanted. They usually gave it to you anyway when they understood they could extort nothing in return.

  Even in her two encounters with Remo Williams, whose magnetic sexuality had thawed her long-suppressed yearnings for love, she had never surrendered. That was because Remo Williams had wanted her more than she had wanted him. Perhaps not by a great margin, but Anna had refused to let Remo know she desired him more than just casually.

  But now an eighty-year-old Korean with the manner of a babushka and the sex appeal of a tortoise had Anna exactly where he wanted her: in the passenger seat. "Slower," Anna shouted. "Drive slower."

  "How?" asked the Master of Sinanju, his head straining to see over the dashboard of the car they had borrowed from Dr. Smith. He sat on a pair of cushions.

  "Press the brake with your foot," said Anna. She closed her eyes as a light post whipped past the open window at nearly ninety miles an hour.

  "I cannot."

  "Why not?"

  "My foot is on the pedal that makes it go," Chiun said worriedly. "If I take my foot off, the vehicle will stop and those behind us will crash into the back end."

  "It doesn't work that way," said Anna Chutesov. "The brake will slow us first. Hurry! Before we are smeared all over the road."

  The Master of Sinanju switched to the other pedal. The car, slowing, began to careen crazily.

  "Stay in this lane!" screamed Anna Chutesov, vowing to herself that if she survived teaching the Master of Sinanju to drive, she would immediately return to Russia and for the first time in her life admit to failure. Even if she had to swim back to the Motherland.

  "Why should I stay on that side of the road?" Chiun said reasonably. "This other is not in use."

  "The cars come in the opposite direction on this side of the road," said Anna desperately. "The solid yellow lines mean do not cross."

  "When they see me coming, they will stop and get out of the way. American drivers are like that. Polite." The first American driver to come along swerved to avoid them and ran his vehicle off the road and into a thicket.

  "See?" the Master of Sinanju said happily. "Politeness. It is an American national characteristic. That driver recognized that I am a novice driving a motor carriage and tactfully made way."

  "I hope he is not dead," said Anna, "almost as much as I hope we do not die on this road."

  The next driver had to swerve into the oncoming lane. He swung about and began chasing them, screaming at the top of his lungs and gesticulating obscenely through an open window.

  "What about him?" Anna asked.

  "He is driving a Japanese machine. All Japanese are like that. Rude."

  "He looks American to me," said Anna Chutesov, her head flying wildly from the imminent danger before them to the maniac in pursuit. "In America, they sometimes settle traffic disagreements with gunfights. I have read this in Pravda. Perhaps we should get rid of him."

  "Leave that to me," declared Chiun. "I have been driving for almost twenty minutes now and am nearly an expert."

  "That is not normally considered enough experience."

  "Oh, Remo gave me some pointers before he got bored and said he would teach me no more."

  "Oh, and what did he teach you?"

  "That there are two different kinds of drivers in the world. Those who can drive correctly, and those who are best avoided."

  "I could have told you that," Anna said.

  "But could you have told me how to differentiate between the specimens?"

  Anna clutched her seat belt. "No. How?"

  "Fuzzy dice," said Chiun resolutely.

  "Fuzzy-"

  "Avoid any driver who hangs fuzzy dice inside his vehicle. It is a certain sign of a shrunken brain. Thus spoke Remo Williams, the easily bored."

  Anna looked back at the pursuing driver. A pair of big pink furry dice bounced beside his head.

  "In that case, I think we should be especially careful with this one in back of us," she said worriedly.

  Still traveling south in the northbound lane, the Master of Sinanju bore down on the accelerator. Occasionally a car appeared ahead, and Chiun would weave into the proper lane until it passed. He avoided three cars in this fashion, the backwash whipping his facial hair each time.

  "Ah," breathed Chiun when he saw the Mack truck approaching.

  "Ah?" asked Anna.

  "Watch," said Chiun.

  The truck driver started honking his horn when he was still a quarter-mile away. The honking grew louder. In the rearview mirror, the pursuing driver was hunched behind the wheel, his eyes glaring hate.

  The Master of Sinanju waited until the last possible second, the instant that he saw the truck driver begin to turn into the other lane to avoid hitting Chiun's car head-on.

  Chiun slid into the lane first. The Mack truck wavered, then stayed its course.

  The car that had been following them did not have enough room to slide into Chiun's lane because the Master of Sinanju had cut in front of a long line of cars. The pursuing driver had a choice the Mack truck or the soft shoulder of the road. He selected the shoulder. And barely made it. His car hit dirt at such a high rate of speed that it rolled onto one side in a cloud of enveloping dust.

  "That will teach him to drive more carefully," said the Master of Sinanju smugly.

  Anna Chutesov sank into the passenger seat. She was beyond fear, beyond pain, and beyond caring. She only hoped that when the end came, she would not suffer. The Master of Sinanju would have continued driving at over one hundred miles an hour all the way to New York City, but up ahead the traffic thickene
d in both lanes.

  "I do not think I can stop in time," said Chiun, seeing the traffic as he came around a hairpin curve.

  "What?" said Anna dazedly.

  "These fools in front of me. They will not move out of the way," Chiun told her.

  "What fools?" asked Anna, looking up suddenly. Then she saw it. Traffic was tangled up at the next exit. It was backed up all the way from the bottom of the ramp, like a swarm of feeding locusts.

  Anna Chutesov suddenly cared. She cared about living. She cared about her mission. And most of all, she cared about not becoming the middle element in a chain-reaction highway crash.

  She dived for the floorboard, grabbed at the brake with her slim strong hands, and pressed hard. "Wheee!" cried the Master of Sinanju as the car began to slow. It came to a stop directly behind a convertible. A sheet of onionskin typing paper could have fit between its rear bumper and the front bumper of Chiun's car-but it would have to be worked down carefully so the paper would not tear.

  Anna Chutesov scrambled back into her seat.

  The Master of Sinanju looked at her approvingly. "That was very good," he said. "Remo did exactly that same thing before he inexplicably lost interest in teaching me."

  "I think I should take the wheel for a time," Anna Chutesov said abruptly.

  The Master of Sinanju clutched the steering wheel possessively. "Remo said those words too. Exactly those. And once I surrendered the wheel to him, he refused to let me have another turn."

  "Why do you want to learn to drive?" Anna asked.

  "I told you. So I can become like an American."

  "You no more want to become an American than I do."

  Chiun's face darkened. "Are you suggesting that the Master of Sinanju is speaking an untruth?"

  "I suggest no such thing. I speak it plainly."

  "You are direct. Normally, that is a rude trait, but I notice that Americans are also direct, so I will consider it as possibly a good thing, although it pains me. Very well, I will speak to you the truth. I wish to learn all things American so that Remo will agree to stay in this country with me."

  "When a child grows up, it is better to let him go rather than to cling to him," Anna Chutesov said gently. "It is an old Russian saying."

  "Suitable for old Russians, I am sure," Chiun said bitingly. "But do not waste your Russian wisdom on me. I am the Master of Sinanju."

  "And it will be a long time before you are a Master of the Automobile."

  "I am learning," sniffed Chiun. "Already you have taught me many important driving tricks, as was our agreement. "

  "Our agreement was that I would teach you a little driving and you would tell me where I can find Remo."

  "Remo is away on important matters that concern only him."

  "I only agreed to teach you to drive if we stayed on this road," Anna went on firmly. "It was in this area, according to Smith, that a possibly drunken man saw what might be my country's spacecraft come down."

  "And we have seen no Russian ship," said Chiun.

  "Granted. But I wonder if this traffic congestion has anything to do with my search?"

  "Why would it?" asked Chiun.

  "I don't know," Anna Chutesov said slowly, "but perhaps I can find out."

  Anna got out of the car and walked up to the convertible in front of them. A young man in a tank top and the tan of an old shoe sat behind the wheel listening to what Anna recognized as "metallic" music, which was becoming popular in her homeland. The Americans called it heavy metal, but as Anna saw it, by any name it was garbage.

  "Excuse me, comrade," Anna asked, "what is the meaning of this blockage?"

  "What?" asked the boy. He wore a T-shirt that said, "Scrambled Debutante World Tour."

  "I asked what was the meaning of this stopped traffic."

  "What?" asked the boy, tapping the steering wheel with blunt fingers. He made noises with his mouth in time to the music that reminded Anna of her grandmother who was in a people's nursing home. She sat by the window all day and made similar sounds. The only difference was that her grandmother did not need raucous music to inspire her. She had suffered a brain injury during the Great Patriotic War.

  Anna reached in and lowered the volume. "Huh?" said the boy.

  "Can you hear me now?" asked Anna.

  "I'm not deaf, you know," said the boy.

  "Not yet. Why is the traffic stopped? Has there been an accident?"

  "No, babe. This is the line."

  "What line?"

  "The line to the car wash."

  "But this is a major highway. I see no car washer."

  "Car wash. It's at the bottom of the ramp. The next exit. "

  "I do not see what is so wonderful about a car wash-whatever that is-that it would back up the traffic like this."

  "Hey, babe, it don't have to be wonderful. It's free."

  "So?" asked Anna. In Russia, many things were free. Usually they were not worth crossing the street for, except possibly the free medical coverage every Soviet citizen received. That was worth crossing the street for. The trouble was, after treatment it wasn't always possible to cross back.

  "Free is free," sang the boy, turning up the volume again.

  "Why do you listen to that junk?" Anna asked.

  "What?" asked the boy.

  "Why do you listen to that?" Anna screamed into his ear, pointing at the tape deck.

  "It helps me to concentrate," the boy screamed back. Anna Chutesov walked back to the car. Two things struck her simultaneously. One was the thick rubber burn marks in the middle of the road. She hadn't noticed them before. Rubber burns were common on American highways. But these were too big, the tires too fat, even for the big freight trucks that plied the roads.

  The other thing that struck her was a memory. Dr. Smith had briefed her that the drunken driver, Daryl Doone, had claimed to see the shuttle disappear near a car wash. Air Force investigators had combed the area. The only car wash they had found was abandoned and empty.

  Possibly the very car wash up ahead, Anna reasoned. Only now it appeared to be in business. She hurried back to the car.

  "Do you know what a car wash is?" she asked Chiun. She smiled sweetly, as if talking to a child.

  "I have seen them," Chiun said doubtfully. He knew from past experience that when Anna Chutesov turned on the charm she wanted something. He made a mental note that whatever it was, he would not give it to her without a fight-or without getting something very special in return.

  "I have never been in one, but I would like to," Anna smiled. "All those cars in front of us are waiting in line to see this one particular car wash. It must be extraordinary. Don't you agree?"

  "How can washing a car be extraordinary?"

  "I don't know, but I would like to see the car wash that is causing such traffic," said Anna Chutesov.

  "But I would not," said Chiun firmly.

  "I will teach you more about driving," Anna promised. Ahead, the convertible surged ahead. The line was moving.

  "You are already obligated to teach me all you know," replied the Master of Sinanju. "You cannot bargain with what you have already bartered away."

  Anna said nothing. The Master of Sinanju was right. The line of cars inched forward while Anna thought. "It is important to my country that I recover our lost shuttle," she said.

  "I am glad it is important to someone," Chiun sniffed. He sent the car bouncing forward. This time he braked with nearly two milimeters to spare between his bumper and the convertible's. He was very pleased.

  Anna Chutesov folded her arms angrily. She was not going to get angry, she told herself. She was not going to betray her need. And most of all, she was not going to give in.

  Then she saw the sign. It was a rude wooden sign, a piece of plywood nailed to a railroad tie and planted in the dirt at the roadside. A legend was scrawled on the board with what appeared to be sloppy blue paint: YURI GAGARIN

  FREE CAR WASH NEXT RIGHT

  "I must see that car wash," An
na Chutesov pleaded. "Name your price."

  "Help me hold on to my son," said Chiun instantly.

  "Done," agreed Anna Chutesov. "It is the next right," she added.

  "I know. I had already decided to go there anyway," said Chiun. "Heh, heh. Too bad you were not more patient. "

  Chapter 9

  The car wash was constructed of aluminum and white tile, as if it had been designed by an architect who had practiced by building municipal lavatories. The sign over the entrance port read YURI GAGARIN FREE CAR WASH in neat black lettering. The building stood at the bottom of the exit ramp, in a blacktop oasis surrounded by high grass and weeds. It was doing a booming business. Every minute or two, another car rolled in one end and came out the other, glistening as if new.

  Anna Chutesov examined the building critically as the Master of Sinanju sent their car jouncing along until they were third in line at the entrance.

  "There is something wrong with this place," Anna said aloud.

  "I agree," said the Master of Sinanju, watching a fly buzz the windshield.

  "You do?"

  "Yes. This free business. It is very wrong. It is un-American. "

  "I was referring to the name over the entrance. Yuri Gagarin."

  "A Russian name," said Chiun distastefully. The fly alighted inches from his face and began rubbing its forelegs together. Chiun hit the windshield-wiper switch. The fly took off just ahead of the sweeping blades.

  "Ah, now you understand."

  "Of course. Only a Russian would offer something good for nothing. I told you it was un-American." Chiun stopped the wipers in mid-sweep.

  "Yuri Gagarin was the name of the first cosmonaut shot into outer space."

  "What did he do wrong?" asked Chiun, watching the fly as it returned to its former spot, next to one of the motionless blades.

  "Nothing. Being shot into space is considered a great honor for a Soviet citizen."

  "In the days of Caligula, having your head dipped in a vat of cooling tallow was considered an honored way to depart this world also," said Chiun, hitting the switch again. The fly looped off just ahead of the lazy wiper blade. "Especially when compared with the more common practice of being torn apart by lions."

  Anna Chutesov sighed. "Yuri Gagarin was killed in an aviation accident in 1968."