"I don't think a tank would fit on the freight elevator. "
"Then it is not tank. It is American agents come to liquidate our asses."
Something that sounded like a hull plate of a battleship clanged to the floor. The entire floor shook.
Randal Rumpp stiffened. The paperweight dropped to the carpet. He didn't know what to expect, never having been liquidated-in any sense of the word-before.
Then two strange figures appeared at the door, moving fast. One was a tiny wisp of an Oriental and the other a lean American not exactly in business dress.
They split off. One came toward Randal Rumpp and the other toward the Russian, who had snatched up his cellular. The other hand was going to his belt buckle.
"You are mine!" the Oriental screeched.
Randal Rumpp didn't see what happened next. He was staring at the approaching eyes of the tall skinny guy. His eyes were as dead as a loan officer's. A hand came up and took him by the throat and kept going.
Randal Rumpp was slammed into the big picture window behind him.
"You," said the cold voice of the dead-eyed man, "have caused enough trouble."
"Urkkk."
"What?"
"I made it all up!" Rumpp said breathlessly. "I didn't make any of this happen! I lied! You can't liquidate my ass over a lie!"
"That's the biz, sweetheart," said the man, as he gave Randal Rumpp a harder push. The back of his sandy head banged the wobbly glass.
"But I didn't-" Randal Rumpp attempted to say. The hand constricted, choking off the words. Randal Rumpp wanted to tell the man that it had all been a scam. That he had not caused any of this to happen. He had just taken advantage of events to engage in a little creative restructuring of his debt load.
But the man wasn't listening. He was using his free hand to manipulate Randal's Rummp's helpless limbs. He forced Rumpp's left arm against his side, his palm flat with his thigh so they formed a straight standing line. Then he crooked Rumpp's right arm at the elbow and set his fist on his hip. Lastly, he made his right leg stick out straight at an angle from his pelvic bone.
Randal Rumpp's couldn't see what he was doing, but when the man was done Rumpp was standing on one leg, frozen in the awkward pose.
"Guys like you," the dead-eyed man was saying, "used to have the courtesy to jump out of their offices when things went bad."
The man's hand rose. Randal Rumpp's polished shoes left the floor.
Then he was being forced out through the bronze solar window glass. It made a sudden crack, but strangely didn't shatter as it should have.
Randal Rumpp flew twenty feet straight out, and saw why.
His nerve-stiffened body had punched out a perfect silhouette. It was in the shape of a six-foot letter R.
Rumpp smiled. It was perfect. A classy touch. The guy was a real pro. He wanted to salute the guy on his taste, but his arms were still stiff and gravity was starting to exert its inexorable influence.
As the ground zoomed up to meet him, Randal Rumpp's life flashed before his eyes. It was such a kick to relive it all that he completely forgot about his predicament-until he went splat on the sidewalk in front of the mangled letters RUMPP TOWER.
Remo Williams waited until the pulpy sound had reached his ears before turning to check on Chiun's progress.
The Master of Sinanju was using a delicate sandal toe to kick apart the cherry wood desk that dominated the cathedral-like office.
"Missed, huh?" Remo asked.
"The fiend resorted to his machine trickery again."
"Well, I got mine."
Chiun sniffed. "The unimportant one."
"The big cheese. Rumpp was the big cheese," Remo said, picking up the fallen receiver.
He put it to his ear. The line was still open. He heard voices shouting and screeching in confusion at the other end.
"Here, check this out."
The Master of Sinanju snatched the handset from Remo's grasp and listened, fuming.
He made a face.
"Pah! It is nothing," he snapped.
"What makes you say that?"
"It is only Japanese complaining."
"Just the same," Remo said. "Let's take this phone to Smitty."
"Yes," Chiun said bitterly. "Let us take the evidence of our ineptitude to Mad Harold. No doubt he will wish us beheaded for our miserable failure."
A relentless pounding continued to come from down the hall. Remo indicated it with his head.
"Think you can keep it down, until we can slip out of the building the same back way we got in?"
"Who could detect us over that racket?"
Harold Smith was very interested in the telephone. He looked up from his shabby oak desk at Folcroft Sanitarium later that day, his gray, pinched face thoughtful.
The cellular unit had been partially disassembled and was now connected to his computer system.
"According to the memory chip," he said, "the last number dialed was that of the Nishitsu Corporation in Osaka."
"Nishitsu?" Remo said. "Weren't they the ones behind that crazy invasion of Yuma, Arizona, a few years ago?"
Smith nodded. "A rogue operation. Or so it was claimed. But recall, Remo, that before that we had intelligence on an event at Nishitsu Osaka which was laid at the KGB's doorstep."
"Right. You thought that the suit was a Japanese invention, and that was how the Soviets got hold of it.