"Exactly how long ago was that?"
"Before Christ was a corporal," she said flatly.
"You were an eyewitness to what's going on uptown?" Graff asked, switching the subject as fast as he could.
"I was."
"Deal." Knute Graff picked up the phone and made a quick series of calls.
"Payroll? Draw a check for ten grand. Payee: Delpha Rohmer."
"Editing? I have some tape you won't believe. I want it to lead our seven o'clock report."
"Security? Triple the guard. And if you see any sign of Cheeta Ching, fire a warning shot into the air. If she doesn't back off, shoot to wound. And don't miss."
Graff hung up and turned to Delpha Rohmer. "Lady, you're about to become the most famous witch since Elizabeth Montgomery."
Delpha Rohmer's smile was like moonlight falling across a row of tombstones.
"Fame is precisely what I want," she said hollowly.
Chapter 20
The Rumpp Tower footage went out over the air at exactly seven o'clock Daylight Savings Time. It was repeated on the seven-thirty New York satellite feed to local affiliates in the western time zones.
CNN picked it up, and once they had it the entire world saw it. Literally.
ITAR-the Russian Information Telegraph Agency, once called TASS-ran it in the middle of the night, which, because they were on the other side of the international date line, was November 1 in the Russian city of Nizhni Novgorod.
Nizhni Novgorod was a grim industrial city, once known as the closed city of Gorky. A place where dissidents were exiled. It was very cold in Nizhni Novgorod. And it was especially cold in the apartment of Yuli Batenin, formerly charge d'affaires with the former Washington embassy of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
These days, Yuli Batenin baked bread for thirty thousand rubles a day in an aging bread factory, which was enough to pay for a cold-water walk-up on Sovno Prospekt, but not to heat it. Even if there had been any fuel oil on the open market.
Yuli Batenin sat in his overstuffed sofa chair, trying to keep the loose spring from popping into his rectum, and shivered in a threadbare camel-hair blanket, which when he slept on a fold-down cot kept him no warmer than it did when he was awake.
The television reception made him shiver even more. There was so much snow he could only think of the coming Russian winter and shudder endlessly.
He was watching the news when the footage of the strange events in downtown Manhattan came on. The commentator was talking about an obscure American holiday known as Halloween.
The spring was worming itself into his left cheek, so Yuli shifted carefully. He was barely paying attention to what the commentator was saying. Under his breath he cursed the spring, the sofa, the apartment, the new Russia, and most of all the series of events that had turned him into a non-person.
It had been better in the old days. Before Gorbachev. Before Perestroika. Before Glastnost. When Yuli Batenin had enjoyed the privileges of being a major in the KGB at the same time as he enjoyed living among the comforts of the West. He didn't know which he missed most, the old Russia or the West.
Yuli Batenin happened to look up as the footage of the Western ghost came on.
Even through the snowy reception, and despite the fact that the tape had been duped several times and was as blurry as a Moscow drunk's speech, Yuli Batenin recognized the ghost.
He stood straight up and swore, "Chort vozmi!"
He put his face to the screen, as if to make out every detail, and fumbled with the broken contrast knob.
"Nyet, nyet, nyet," he moaned. "It cannot be!"
As the picture resolved itself, a low curse of a breath escaped Yuli Batenin's curling lips.
"Brashnikov!" he hissed. "You miserable thief! You are alive."
Yuli Batenin stood up, like a man who has seen his own ghost. He stared at the screen until the picture was replaced with footage of the latest food riots in Omsk.
"Alive," he repeated.
Then a twisted smile crossing his lips, he added, "But not for long."
There was no phone in Yuli Batenin's apartment. Even if he had been a millionaire in American dollars, there still would have been no phone in Yuli Batenin's apartment. Yuli Batenin had acquired an incurable fear of telephones during his last posting. The very sight of one made him shudder uncontrollably.
At first Yuli Batenin's upstairs neighbor, Mrs. Biliandinova, did not want to let him use her telephone.
"This is joke, da?" she asked suspiciously.
"This is joke, nyet. I must use telephone."
"You are afraid of telephone!" spat old Mrs. Biliandinova. "So you tell me countless times. I am forced to muffle bell because it frightens you so."
Batenin made his voice firm. "Babushka, you will let me use telephone. I am former major."
"In defunct Red Army. There is no more Red Army. And I will not let you use telephone unless you first tell me who you will be calling."
"I will be calling Moscow."
"I cannot afford to call Moscow. You are mad."
"I will call collect."
"They have no more money for foolish telephone calls in Moscow than they do in Nizhni Novgorod."
"Babushka, I will break down door," Batenin warned.
Silence. A chain rattled. And a huddled, red-faced woman drew open the door and said, "Broken door will cost more than telephone call. Make call, Batenin. But if you cause me trouble, I will have landlord throw you out. That is one good thing about the new order. Tenants can be evicted."
Yuli Batenin had difficulty getting through to Moscow. That was not unusual. With the current state of the collapsing Russian infrastructure, he would have had trouble calling a downstairs apartment.
It also didn't help that he made his call with his eyes shut because even now, three years after the telephone phobia had seized him, he could not bear to look at one. He asked the local operator to put the call through. Dialing would have been too much for him. Just holding the instrument made his knees shake.
Finally, he got someone at the number he called.
"Is this KGB?" Batenin asked eagerly.