The telephone rang.
Major Yuli Batenin shot out of his hard chair and found refuge under the spread legs of a guard. Batenin had his hands over his eyes and was trembling from head to toe.
Colonel Rushenko let the telephone ring three times before picking it up. With cool dispassion, he noticed that each shrill ring had the same effect on the cowering major's body as would two live copper wires from a portable generator.
Ignoring Batenin, he listened to the voice at the other end of the telephone. Then he hung up.
"Your plane is ready, Major Batenin."
Batenin looked up. "Plane? What plane."
"The plane that will take you to America, where you will liquidate the renegade Brashnikov and recover the vibration suit that will restore the Union."
It was the most terrifying sentence Major Yuli Batenin had ever heard. Still, he found the strength to rise and salute.
"I am proud to accept this assignment," he said sincerely.
"You will be dead if you botch it," said the colonel, not bothering to return the salute.
And the cold, dismissive tones of Colonel Rushenko made Yuli Batenin's KGB-trained heart warm in response.
It was almost like being back in the USSR again.
Chapter 23
Remo and Chiun stared at the image on the TV screen.
It was a floating white figure, with cables looping up from its shoulders like the transparent wings of a fly.
"It can't be," Remo said.
"The fiend," Chiun rasped.
"I don't believe it," Remo growled.
The sniffling anchor was saying, "This footage was shot from a helicopter, and purports to show a supernatural being inhabiting the Rumpp Tower."
As they watched the white figure, visible through a darkened pane in the southwest corner of the Rumpp Tower, it rolled in midair like a drowned corpse.
Probably no one watching the tape could make out the blocky object that hung in the white webbing knapsack on the back of the floating figure. It was too indistinct. The letters on the back of the boxy object were too faint to be read by normal eyes.
But the eyes of the only two living Masters of Sinanju were not ordinary.
And they knew exactly what to look for.
A logo that said: SEARS DIEHARD.
"I believe it," Remo said unhappily.
"The Krahseevah," hissed Chiun, making tiny yellow mallets with his bone-hard fists.
"Mystery solved." Remo said glumly, snatching up the telephone. He got Smith immediately.
"Smitty. Turn on Channel Four. Right now."
"One moment."
A moment later Harold W. Smith's surprised voice came back, saying, "What should I be looking for?"
"It shiny and white and trouble."
"All I am getting, Remo, are two rhinoceroses copulating."
"Your Channel Four must be different than ours. Try MBC News."
The sound of Smith's breathing went away. Then there came a hoarse, "Oh my God."
"Look like the Krahseevah to you?" Remo asked.
"I do not know. I have never seen this creature."
"Well, Chiun and I have. And it's the Krahseevah all right. I thought you call-wasted him."
"By all rights, Remo, the Krahseevah, as you call him, should have been atomically scattered through the nation's telephone system, after we tricked him into teleporting himself to a dead phone here at Folcroft. "
"Well, he's loose in the Rumpp Tower. And five will get you ten, he's responsible for what's going on down there."
"I wonder," Smith said.
"Wonder what?" Remo asked.
"Remo, do you recall reading of system-wide telephone difficulties over the last few years?"
"Sure. Once La Guardia was shut down for over an hour, because flight-tracking information is carried between airports through Ma Bell's lines."
"These service interruptions date back approximately three years."
"Yeah. About that."
"The same length of time since we tricked the Krahseevah into, we thought, destroying himself."
"You don't think . . . ?"
"The Krahseevah, you will recall, possessed the ability to make himself insubstantial. This enabled him to steal into high-security installations throughout the nation and make off with valuable technology for his Russian superiors. It was one of the last-gasp efforts of the former Soviet Union to achieve technological parity with the U.S., before their system finally collapsed of its own backwardness."
"Don't remind me," Remo said sourly, glancing at the footage of their most aggravating opponent as it was replayed.