"By then it will be too late."
"No. We could not hope to succeed. There are too many people. Too many cameras."
"So? We kill them all. We have bullets."
"No. It cannot work. We will allow Brashnikov to show himself, and we will find him later. This is a socalled open society. It will be easy."
"I am in charge here, Batenin."
"And I am only one who is certain to recognize Rair Brashnikov when he shows his face."
Captain Gerkoff jumped to his feet angrily. Batenin stiffened where he sat.
The agents of Shield arrayed about the room perked up. Their two senior officers were about to settle a dispute over operational seniority. They licked dry lips, hoping to see blood spilled.
Instead, Major Yuli Batenin suddenly grew a third hand in the middle of his chest.
The hand was white, blurry, and seemed to sprout from the center of Yuli Batenin's breastbone.
Major Batenin, stiffening in anticipation of the fight of his life, seemed unaware of the phenomenon. The hand grew a wrist and, like some fast-growing, leprous vine, continued to emerge from the unaware ex-KBG major's person.
"Sukin syn!" Gerkoff swore, his eyes growing wide.
They had to point to the thing coming from Batenin's chest before the petrified major looked down and saw the phantom appendage.
The howl Batenin gave was like a hot needle piercing their eardrums. He scrambled off the bed as if it were afire, became tangled up in the loose bedding, and thrashed around on the rug.
"Brashnikov!" he screamed. "He is here!"
Of that, there was no doubt. A luminous white figure, its limbs spread like a crippled white starfish, continued to rise out of the mattress. It was still as death.
"What do we do, Batenin?" Gerkoff sputtered.
"We must capture him."
This proved difficult. They threw blankets on the slowly rising figure. They fell flat on the bed without impeding the thing in the least.
Each Shield man carried a white silk strangling scarf under his shirt, which was imprinted with key commands in Russian and translations in the major NATO languages. They pulled these out and tried to ensnare the stiff limbs of the ghostly corpse of a thing.
They might as well have been attempting to capture moonbeams.
Gerkoff looked back, his face twisted in anger and superstitious fear. "Batenin, what do we do?"
"We pray."
"Why?"
"Because there is nothing we can do, and if Brashnikov's power is drained while he is in contact with physical object, it will be just like Chernobyl, but much worse."
This galvanized the men of Shield. They drew Tokarev handguns, P-6 silent pistols, and short-barreled AKR submachine guns from hidden holsters and opened fire on the untouchable apparition.
"Nyet nyet nyet!" Batenin screamed over the din. "You will awaken entire hotel and ruin mission!"
But the Shield men didn't hear. Or if they heard, they didn't care. They peppered the thing that threatened them with nuclear disaster, as if the sheer volume of their fire could affect this untouchable thing they could not understand.
Chapter 29
The lowermost floor of the Rumpp Regis Hotel was the storage subbasement. It was crammed with the historical castoffs of the nearly century-old hotel. Everything from old brass mantel clocks to spittoons littered the dusty shelving.
It was dark. Remo closed his eyes and listened for the sound of a heartbeat he knew better than anyone's on earth. Chiun's.
He zeroed in on it and simply moved in the direction his ears indicated, oblivious to the solid-looking obstacles he breached with each step.
He passed through antique highboys and turn-of-the-century dining tables like a phantom wading through the history of furniture.
His bare arms felt the body warmth of two people.
Remo opened his eyes to see the frantic figure of the Master of Sinanju, bending over the prostrate figure of Cheeta Ching.
Apparently, Cheeta was drowning on the concrete floor. At least, that was the impression her body language gave Remo. She had landed on her back, and now strained to keep her mouth and wildly flaring nostrils above the level of the floor. Her hands threshed the air, and when her mouth came up above the floor level, it made shapes Remo mentally called "inarticulate."
Remo looked down at his feet. The floor supported his feet perfectly. It gave Remo a creepy feeling.
The Master of Sinanju was fussing helplessly.
"Remo! I cannot help Cheeta!"
"Tell her to stand up," Remo told Chiun casually.
"I did!" Chiun squeaked. "Cheeta cannot hear me!"
Remo folded his arms. "Oh, that's right. We can't hear them and they can't hear us. In this case, it's a blessing."
Chiun stood up. His wizened face was beseeching. "Oh, Remo, what do we do?"
"Look, she's not going to drown. She just thinks she is. Give her time. She'll figure it out."
Chiun stamped an angry foot. "Heartless one!"
At that moment, Remo felt the vibration again.
"Oh-oh. Don't look now, but the building's becoming glued again."
"Quickly! Cheeta will be trapped. Help me!"
"Help you how?"