"You do?"
"Da." He sneered. "I am even now seized by compulsion. Only mine does not urge me to steal. Only to break your thieving neck. I will make deal with you. I will smother my compulsion if you control yours."
"Deal," Rair Brashnikov said, gulping. The major's alcoholic breath filled his nose with fumes.
"Now, Brashnikov," Batenin said, straightening up, "I would advise you to get well soon. By dawn at very latest. You have important task before you."
"I do?"
"You are going back to place where Stealth tiles are made. You will obtain more."
"I did not obtain enough?" Brashnikov asked in a puzzled voice.
"If I have to explain, I may lose control of myself," Batenin warned. "And neither of us wish that-do we?"
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"Nyet, nyet," Brashnikov said, shaking his head.
"Good. Because until more tiles are in my hands, I cannot return to Moscow. And as long as I am stuck in embassy, your safety is in doubt. Are we in agreement on this, Brashnikov?"
"I feel much better already," Brashnikov told him. He cracked a lopsided, ingratiating smile.
14
Plant Forty-two of Northrop's high-security Palmdale facility was a completely windowless corrugated-steel building painted the color of the surrounding desert sands. No one who toiled within its fortresslike walls ever saw daylight during the working day. This unusual construction was necessary because of the number of special-access, or "black-budget," defense projects that were hatched within its austere confines; Spies both industrial and international were everywhere. And in today's world of high-tech espionage, a window was an open invitation to everything from a parabolic microphone to orbiting reconnaissance satellites.
The problem with having no windows was that while it inhibited opportunities for spying or invasion, it also made it more difficult to detect approaching threats.
"No windows," Remo said. "Great." He and Chiun watched the building from behind their rented car. It was parked on a lonely highway some distance from the barbed-wire-ringed facility. "We can get really close to the building without being seen."
They were out in a scrub-desert area of California. Telephone poles quaked in the brittle heat. In the distance were the sullen San Gabriel Mountains.
"Not necessarily," the Master of Sinanju said. "We are better off stationing ourselves far from this so-
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called plant. For it will not be our objective to prevent the Krahseevah from gaining entrance to this place, but to follow him after he leaves it."
"Isn't that risky?" Remo said. "What if he gets away with another batch of RAM tiles?"
Chiun shrugged as if it were an inconsequential matter.
"He will attempt to enter in this smokelike state," Chiun intoned. "We will not be able to stop him in that case. But if we allow him to leave unchallenged and, to his lights, unobserved, he will be less careful. Then we will follow him to his lair and catch him unawares, recovering any stolen artifacts."
"I like it," Remo said. "It's direct and simple."
"I tailored it for your mentality," Chiun told him. Before Remo could formulate a reply, the Master of Sinanju went on. "We will split up. I will position myself to the northeast, so that two walls are always in sight of my incomparable eyes. You, Remo, will take the southwest. Try to stay awake."
"Thanks a bunch," Remo said dryly. "You know we could be here for weeks."
"We will do what we have to do. That creature has angered me. I will take special delight in capturing and punishing it."
"Okay by me. Let's just hope something breaks soon. This isn't exactly my idea of the perfect place for an indefinite roost. I guess if you're taking northeast, and we happen to be parked southwest of the place, that means I get to wait in the car, huh?"
Chiun turned to Remo with his parchment features etched with disdain.
"Of course . . ." he began.
Remo grinned.
"... not," Chiun finished. "You will drive me to the northeast point of vantage and I will wait in the automobile."
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"And what am I supposed to do?" Remo growled. "Walk back?"
"You have something against walking, you who are young and smooth of skin, with unnumbered years stretching before you?"
"All right, all right," Remo said, getting behind the wheel. The Master of Sinanju settled into the passenger seat without a sound. The door closed like an infant's midnight exhalation.
Later, after Remo had parked the car in the shelter of a ridge, he picked his way through the triple ring of barbed wire and into the multibuilding facility. He secreted himself in an alley near a loading dock and crouched under the lip of a garbage dumpster. Fortunately, Remo thought, regulating his breathing so that the air came in too slowly to stir the scent receptors in his sensitive nose, this was an industrial area. Instead of smelling like dead fish, rotted cheese, and other rancid food smells, this particular dumpster reeked of hot plastic and acetone.
Remo had settled down to a long wait. An occasional security guard drifted by. Remo, in shadow, avoided them easily. The trick was not to catch their eye. Keeping still was a big part of it. Human peripheral vision picked up even the slightest movement, while a person looking straight on often missed the most obvious dangers because they did not act like threats.
Not watching an enemy was the other half of successful concealment. What the eyes missed, other senses often picked up. No one-not even Chiun-had ever satisfactorily explained human intuition to him, but Remo knew that even the worst-trained ordinary man could sometimes feel eyes on him. So he always looked away when the guards came by, confident that he would not be seen or sensed.
He was not.
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Long after midnight-Remo, who never wore a watch, knew it was exactly 3:44 A.M. because the last time he had happened to notice a clock it had been 10:06 and his biological clock told him that that was exactly five hours and thirty-eight minutes ago-he suddenly felt the air on his bare forearms lift in warning.
It was not cold, and even if it was, Remo should have been able to will his tightening flesh to relax. It would not. That meant an electrical phenomenon. Maybe the Krahseevah.
Remo slipped around behind the dumpster, looking for any sign of the creature.
The hair on his forearms grew stiffer. And the short hairs at the back of his neck rose up too. It was the identical sensation he had felt during his first encounter with the thing. Robin Green had reported exactly the same thing.
Remo was on his feet, staring up at the darkened edges of the surrounding buildings, when the Krahseevah walked by him as casually as a Sunday stroller.
Except that the Krahseevah was glowing like a misty moon with legs.
Remo faded back with alacrity. The speed and silence of the creature's abrupt appearance had taken even him by surprise. The Krahseevah had emerged from the steel tank of the garbage dumpster like an alien stepping out of the fifth dimension.