"No. I wish to make you rich."
"I am already rich. Today I have sold Stalin's diaries to American film company. It is to be miniseries. We are hoping Bobby will take part of Stalin."
"Bobby?"
"DeNiro. "
"Idiot!" Batenin snarled. "This is matter of national security. Soviet property of greater value than anything in your files is in United States and must be recovered."
"This is new?"
"Is greater than the method of preserving Lenin's corpse."
"Impossible! These is no such secret."
"Okay. We stole it from Japanese."
"That is better. Give me locator number. If we have not sold it, I will see."
"Locator Number 55-334. I will hold."
He held for over an hour, during which the babushka Biliandinova carried on something fierce, complaining bitterly of the cost. Yuli Batenin got so weary of it that he carefully laid down the telephone and brained her with her own wooden rolling pin, which she was waving threateningly. After she had hit the floor, he applied the hardest part of it to the back of her fat neck until he heard a satisfying crunching sound.
Thereafter it was very quiet in the apartment, and Yuli Batenin, formerly Major Batenin of the KGB, could at last hear himself think. He closed his eyes again, amazed that he had summoned up the courage to use the phone at all. Perhaps he was getting over it.
After a while, the voice came back. It sounded very impressed.
"You have told truth," it said.
"You have found file?"
"No. File was moved to new ministry. It must be very important, because everything else abandoned."
"What new ministry?"
"I have number."
Yuli Batenin called the number and got a crisp female voice that spoke only one word: "Shchit. "
"Am I speaking to new ministry?" asked Batenin.
"Who is asking, please?"
"I am Yuli Batenin, formerly with KGB, calling on matter of gravest important to Soviet Union."
"Idiot! There is no Soviet Union. Where do you call from?"
"Nizhni Novgorod."
"Where?"
"Gorky."
"Oh. Hold the line."
"But-"
The unmistakable sound of being put on hold came over the long miles between Nizhni Novgorod and Moscow. Yuli Batenin had no choice but to hold the line. If he was disconnected, it might be weeks until the lucky connection was reestablished. If ever, given the pitiful state of his once-proud motherland.
He hummed "Moscow Nights" as he waited. Perhaps they would reinstate him. Perhaps he would no longer be required to live in disgrace in this dull city, which had once been the dumping ground for inconvenient traitors like Sakharov. Perhaps the clock would be rolled back and all of Russia would be reunited in socialism.
Yuli Batenin had less time to wait than he had dreamed possible. And when they got back to him, it wasn't through a crisp female voice over hundreds of miles of rusting cable but by crashing in the apartment door and seizing him roughly.
There were three of them. Plainclothes men. Very KGB.
"Yuli Batenin?" the tallest of them asked stonily.
"Yes. Who are you?"
"You will come with us," the man said gruffly, as the other two dragged him by his elbows down the dingy apartment stairs and out into the sterile autumn cold of Sovno Prospekt.
They flung him into a waiting car and, as the car sped off, Yuli Batenin found himself weeping with a mixture of pride and nostalgia. He himself had seized dissidents in just this fashion during the days of his youth.
"Is just like old days," he blubbered. "I am so happy."
They slapped him to quiet him, but he only smiled harder.
Chapter 21
The Master of Sinanju was ignoring the prattling whites.
As he sat on a tatami mat before the hotel room television, with the incessant honk and blare of city traffic permeating the room, he bided his time, waiting for the glorious face of Cheeta Ching, his Cheeta Ching, rosy-cheeked with child, to appear.
The whites prattled on, disturbing his thoughts.
"I got it all figured out, Smitty," Remo was saying.
Over the miles of phone wiring, the brittle voice of Harold W. Smith buzzed. Its noise offended the ears of the Master of Sinanju above all.
"Yes, Remo?"
"It's a hologram."
"Pardon me?"
"The Rumpp Tower is a hologram," Remo repeated. "You know, one of those 3-D gimmicks."