The Master of Sinanju turned, his clawlike hands poised.
"Remo! What kept you? Never mind. Come help me. The white thing is inside this building. We must root him out." And Chiun slashed a long horizontal line across the cracked stucco as he ran the length of the building's face.
"You'd better stay here," Remo told Robin in a solicitous tone. "Okay?"
"Are you kidding?" she said. "I had a tough enough time explaining one wreck of a hotel without being involved in another."
"Good girl," Remo said, starting off.
Robin watched him go. "What am I thinking?" she said, cocking her automatic. "He's going to blow it again." She squeezed out and limped after Remo.
When Remo stepped up behind Chiun, the Master of Sinanju turned on him, his face furious.
"Do not merely stand there like useless baggage," he shrieked. "I have followed that dastard here, no thanks to you, and I- "
Chiun's hazel eyes narrowed at the sight of Robin Green limping up.
"How did she get here?" he hissed explosively.
"I pulled some strings," Robin informed him.
Chiun blinked. "Strings?" he asked, approaching her. "Tell me of these strings. Are they part of the
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blue smoke and mirrors? I do not remember you saying 'blue smoke, mirrors, and strings.' What kind of string is employed?"
"What's he jabbering about?" Robin asked Remo.
"Look, let's save this for our old age, shall we?" Remo said. He turned to Chiun. "You say the Krah-seevah's inside? Fine. Let's dig him out and we'll sort out the pieces later."
Robin Green opened her mouth to say something, but her gaze was caught by something above and behind them. Her mouth froze in the open position.
Remo and Chiun turned just in time to see the Krahseevah's featureless face emerge from the stucco wall above their heads.
Robin sent two rounds into its face. Two spiderweb holes shattered the textured stucco. The face withdrew.
"It's on the second floor," she yelled.
Remo grabbed her gun.
"No wild shooting," he hissed. "We don't know if there are still people up there."
"Not after your friend, the Eastern earthquake, started in on this place," Robin said.
"I resent that," Chiun said.
"Both of you just put it away. C'mon, let's hit the second floor."
They went in together. The lobby was deserted. At Remo's suggestion, they split up. Robin followed him up a flight of stairs. Chiun took the elevator.
They reached the second floor simultaneously. Virtually every door was wide open, thanks to the mass evacuation caused by Chiun's attempt to bring the hotel down around the Krahseevah's head.
"This should be easy," Remo said as he passed from door to door.
"Look," Robin put in, pointing to a closed door. "Care to bet if he's in that room?"
"You're covered," Remo said. "Come on."
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"Can I have my weapon back?" Robin whispered as they closed in on the door.
"No," Remo and Chiun said in different degrees of vehemence.
Rair Brashnikov knew he had a problem. He could easily slip out of the hotel in his incorporeal state, but he could not drive off without turning off the suit. He knew from his experiences with the white man and the little Oriental that they were more than human. It was very strange. They possessed no electronic augmentation, but they did things no human could possibly accomplish. They would follow him no matter where he went, tireless and inexhaustible-which was more than Rair could say for the battery pack that powered his vibration suit. It was advertised as a sixty-month battery, good for over five hundred cold cranking amps for all-weather starts. But that guarantee held only if it was hooked up to a car. The suit usually drained it after twelve hours' continuous use.
There was only one thing to do. He turned off the suit and picked up the room telephone. He hit the outside-line button, and got a dial tone. Quickly Brashnikov dialed the Soviet-embassy number he had carefully committed to memory now that it represented his ultimate trump card in the game of espionage.
The phone rang. Once, twice. Then the door crashed open and Rair Brashnikov reached for the belt rheostat, steeling himself for the ordeal of fiberoptic cable teleportation.
They all saw the Krahseevah, his outline sharp and clear, poised, receiver in hand.
"Got him!" Remo exulted.
"No, he is mine!" Chiun cried.
They both swept into the room like black-clad demons.
Then the Krahseevah touched his belt. His sharp
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outlines blurred. He glowed hike the moon seen through fog.
Then, a strange thing happened. The Krahseevah's blurred outlines shifted and wavered. Remo was almost upon him when it happened.
The Krahseevah congealed like a luminous mist. It collapsed, and, like smoke, was drawn into the hovering receiver. It looked like a special-effects film run in reverse. The last bit of him to go was the hand that held the receiver. When that was gone, the telephone plummeted to the rug.
Remo caught it, one step ahead of Chiun.
Robin screamed.
"Oh, my God," she cried. "What happened to it?"
Remo, his eyes staring, looked at the receiver with a dumbfounded expression.