Major Batenin's suspicious eyes lost their narrowness. "That was you?"
"In disguise," said Remo.
"I was inside the machine," sniffed Chiun.
"We switched bags," Remo added. "You got one filled with junk."
"It was not Brashnikov's fault?" Batenin said bleakly.
"It was us. But enough ancient history. You said you were with the KGB. Everybody knows they went the way of the Berlin Wall. Who are you with now?"
"I will not say."
The fingernails bit into his earlobe again, and Major Yuli Batenin screamed, "I am Shchit! I am Shchit!"
"You got that right," said Remo, killing the Russian by the simplest means at hand. By killing his brain. Remo's steelhard right index finger went in through the forehead bone and came out clean.
"Not bad, huh?"
Chiun made a disgusted face. "Check under your fingernail for brain."
Remo looked injured. "There's no brain under my nail."
"Did you check?"
"I don't have to check. That was a perfect stroke."
"Your elbow was not aligned perfectly."
"Are you saying it was bent? It was not bent!"
"I did not say bent," Chiun sniffed. "I said not perfectly aligned. It is not the same."
"It wasn't bent," Remo insisted.
"It was not perfect, either."
"Never mind. Let's finish up our business here."
The eyes of the two Masters of Sinanju looked up toward the helplessly floating figure of the thing Remo had years ago dubbed "the Krahseevah," and which they now knew was a Russian named Captain Rair Brashnikov.
Behind his expanding and contracting face membrane, Rair Brashnikov looked down at the pair of deadly eyes and came to a bitter conclusion.
"I am not dead. I am worse than dead."
His choice was as simple as it was stark. Turn off the vibration suit and be delivered into the hands of the same American agents that had tricked him into a purgatory of fiber-optic cables and American telephone cross-talk, or hope that the suit stayed powered long enough for him to float out into the clear air and drop to his certain death.
Rair Brashnikov was not a brave man. He was, in his heart of hearts, a common thief. It was his kleptomania that had gotten him cashiered from the old KGB in the first place, and the same uncontrollable urge that had compelled his old KGB superiors to reinstate him and unleash him, virtually untraceable in the vibration suit, upon the technological candy shop that was America.
He reached for the buzzing rheostat and gave it a twist. The buzz cut out.
His teeth suddenly hurt, and his vision went blurry.
Gravity took hold and Rair Brashnikov crashed to the carpet, taking a chunk of wall with him.
"I am surrendering peacably to you," he said, as swift hands more strong than Soviet leg irons took hold of his wrists. He was hauled to his feet unceremoniously.
"Gotcha!" said the Caucasian American agent.
"Your ugly head will be set before my emperor by sundown," threatened the Oriental American agent.
"I would like to be keeping head," Rair said thickly.
"That'll be up to our boss," the Caucasian said. "I'd better call him. Here, Chiun, hold both hands so he doesn't pull a fast one."
The Oriental took the wrist the Caucasian surrendered. Rair Brashnikov looked down at the old man through the transparent inner lining of the permeable face membrane, which enabled him to breath in dematerialized oxygen when he was in his bodiless state.
The old man looked impossibly ancient. His arms were like twigs coated by animal hide. He looked frail enough to snap under a kneecap's pressure.
But the strength in his long-nailed hands was anything but frail. And so Rair Brashnikov remained very, very calm. He had seen these two destroy whole buildings with their bare hands when attempting to seize him, and perform other dazzling feats. They were very dangerous.
And it was always better to lull a dangerous foe in the hours before one vanquished him.
The Caucasian was speaking into the telephone.
"That's right, Smitty. We just captured the Krahseevah."
Brashnikov cocked his featureless head in surprise. "Krahseevah?"
"You are misnamed, ugly one," spat the Oriental, tightening his grip. Brashnikov bit the inside of his cheeks to keep from crying out in pain. His shoulder was on fire, and he remembered the single blow that landed on him during their last encounter had struck there.
The Caucasian was asking, "What do you want us to do with him?"
Rair Brashnikov attempted to listen, but he could not hear the other side of the conversation. The conversation that was no doubt deciding his very fate.
"It's what?"
The Caucasian clapped a hand over the telephone mouthpiece and called over to his comrade.
"Smitty says there's new trouble over at the Rumpp Tower. It's sinking."
"Sinking?" asked Rair Brashnikov. "My tower?"
"Yours?"
"Randal Rumpp gave it to me."