"You want to know what I want? I want you people to get out of the way."
"I would do that, but these men won't. Come, let us just talk somewhere. Let us find a cafe, and we will talk. Just a bit. Then you can leave."
Shots rang out in Krimenko's ears. The men behind him were firing. Ugly sharp bits of pavement ricocheted up from where Rabinowitz was standing. Rabinowitz fell and his body continued to be riddled by automatic fire, bullets shredding it like a Chinese cleaver. And then another Rabinowitz appeared and he too was shot down, and Krimenko felt the sharp, hot, burning slug hit his back and throw him to the pavement, where he became so much shredded meat on the bridge where East and West trade spies.
Less than a day later, in New York City's Kennedy Airport, a customs officer saw the strangest man standing at his counter.
Here was a Russian-sounding fellow without a passport, unshaved and looking very seedy, and smiling at Luke Sanders as though he were going to let him through.
"You don't have a passport. You don't have identification and you're a Russian to boot. So I'm going to have to hold you, fella."
"Nonsense, son. Here's my passport. You know me," said the man, and sure enough, Luke knew him. He was his brother. He asked his brother what he was doing coming in on a German flight, when Luke thought he was back home in Amarillo, Texas.
"I've come to get a bialy and maybe a shmear of cream cheese," said Luke's brother.
"What's a bialy?" asked Luke.
"It's a Jewish roll. And I want one."
"Then you've come to the right city," said Luke, who tried to find out where his brother was staying in New York because he sure as shootin' wanted to meet him that night. He passed him through with a handshake, a laugh, and a hug.
"Not so tight on the hug, already," said Luke's brother. In Moscow Krimenko's death was not the disaster. Nor were the deaths of twenty-two other KGB officers. The real disaster was that none of the bodies picked up on the bridge was Vassily Rabinowitz.
The question that haunted everyone was, what if the Americans should get hold of him? There was even talk of launching a first nuclear strike immediately. Better to take a chance on survival than to be sure of losing.
But cooler heads prevailed. First, Russia had not been able to conquer the world using Vassily, although he was incredibly useful in training people for so many special missions.
Nor was there any guarantee that the Americans would be able to capture him and use him.
The only, and therefore the best, solution was to alert every agent in America to be on the lookout for him. Every mole, every counterintelligence operator, every secret police operative was to divert all efforts to the finding of that man.
And most important of all, America was not to know what might be within its borders. No one who looked for Vassily Rabinowitz, late of the Soviet Union, would know why he was looking.
Someone mentioned the risk of such a blatant, all-out effort. The Americans were sure to spot the activity. How many agents would be risked? How many moles who had worked so hard to penetrate into the belly of the American beast might expose themselves to capture? Just what was Moscow willing to pay to stop America from getting Rabinowitz?
And the men who had seen him work answered, "Everything. "
Chapter 2
His name was Remo and he couldn't count the number of men he had killed, nor did he want to start. Counting was for people who thought numbers meant something. Counting was for pepole who didn't understand what they were doing so they needed numbers to reassure themselves they were doing well.
Counting was for people who wouldn't know which side won if there wasn't a score. In Remo's game he always knew who won.
He was going to kill three men who could count. They could count transistors and microchips and all the electronic devices that kept them invulnerable to surveillance. They could count on their lawyers who had made them invulnerable to conviction. They could count on all the people they bought along their way, and they could count on the American drug users to make them rich.
Perhaps the only thing they couldn't count was all the money they had made, hundreds of millions of dollars. They controlled two or three South American governments where coca leaves grew and were made into the white crystals Americans liked to suck into their noses to rot out what was left of their brains after all the other chemicals had gotten to them.
Remo wasn't counting. He sensed the strong cold of the damp clouds and the harsh wind pressing his body against the metal. He could smell the special chemicals used to polish the metal he pressed his body into, could feel the metal carry the vibrations of the engine, and was prepared for the only real danger. If the pilot should dive suddenly and Remo allowed an air current between him and the roof of the plane, he would be sheared off like confetti and plunge thirteen thousand feet to the jungle floor below the luxury Lear jet.
The scant oxygen at those heights was more than enough for him, although if he needed to he could always put a hole in the airtight skin of the jet, forcing the pilot to dive lower, where his passengers could breathe without the use of oxygen masks.
That wasn't necessary. There was more than enough oxygen at these heights if the body used it properly, but people tended to use it like drunks, burning vast quantities in uncontrolled gulps. People did not know their bodies, did not understand the powers they were capable of but refused to allow to develop.
It was this loss of balanced use of oxygen that made people pant from running, come up after only a minute underwater, three at the most, and hold their breath when frightened.
Scientists had yet to discover that holding of the breath when frightened was a weak attempt to energize the body for flight. It didn't work because the only breathing that unlocked the power of humans was controlled breathing, giving the process up to the rhythms of the universe and in so doing becoming part of all its powers. One didn't fight gravity or wind or weight, one worked with them, like a piece pressured into the roof of the cabin of a Lear jet at thirteen thousand feet, closer than the paint that had only been sprayed on, closer than the wax that had only been spread on. The controlled body made itself one with the alloyed metal of the jet, and if Remo did not allow any air to disrupt the bond, he would remain attached tighter than a rivet.
It was the only way to break into the protected realm of Guenther Largos Diaz of Peru, Colombia, and Palm Beach.
Guenther had done wonderful things for himself with the profits from the coca plant. He had made friends everywhere, this man who could count. He helped supply the communist guerrillas, and in exchange they guarded his fields. He helped finance retirement programs for government troops and now they acted as his stevedores.
And in those American centers where cocaine was distributed, Guenther Largos Diaz had played havoc just as easily with the policemen earning twenty-five thousand dollars a year as he did with policemen earning five thousand dollars in pesos.
This handsome South American with a German mother and a Spanish father knew how to bribe, knew, as they said south of the border, how to reach a man's soul. He had every man's price, and so, after he had met the prices of many men, it was decided that it was no use losing more good men to Guenther Largos Diaz. He was so good, so competent, that he would have to die.
Remo felt the plane change pitch. It was going to land. It came down out of the sticky, wet, cold clouds into the sharp air of the Andes and continued to descend. At this height he could not tell what country was below them. He saw a river sparkling like tinsel under the sun off to the east, but he had no idea what river it was.
He didn't care. Of course, if he didn't know where he was, there might be a problem getting back. But he was sure someone in the plane would know. The trick was not to kill that person. Remo didn't want to be left with a bunch of peasants who thought wherever they were was the center of the world and knew only vaguely how to get outside. Also, he didn't want to walk through hundreds of miles of jungle.
He had to remind himself not to lose concentration, because the moment his mind and body separated, so would he, from the plane.
The airstrip was surprisingly modern for such a backward-looking area. There were no major roads leading to this strip, just small tree-lined single-lane asphalt strips. And yet the runway could accommodate big jets, and when the wheels touched down in that screaming burst of rubber, Remo could see sensors implanted into the strip every ten yards. Moreover, the runway was dyed a color that most human eyes would not recognize as asphalt from above, a dark color that sparkled in the sun so the landing strip looked like part of a river that began nowhere and ended in a bunch of trees. The control tower looked like a pile of rocks.
Remo did not know how upstairs knew this was headquarters. He didn't understand how computers worked or how the minds of people who understood computers worked.
But when someone went to the trouble of disguising the place, someone who was vastly shrewd, then the place had to be his real home.
As it was said in the histories of Sinanju, home is where a person feels safe, and a man like Guenther Largos Diaz could never feel safe in one of his exposed mansions.
From the disguised control tower, people came running, pointing guns and yelling. The door to the jet swung open and someone beneath Remo waved the guards back.
"What's going on?" came a voice from inside the cabin.
"I don't know, they're crazy. They've been radioing that someone is on top of the plane."
"Are they using the product? If they are, we've got to stop it now."
"There's no product allowed in here, sir."
"Then why do they claim they see someone on top of the plane? We just landed. We were flying at thirteen thousand feet."
"They're aiming their guns, sir."
"Cut them down," came the calm voice from inside the cabin, and suddenly bright yellow flames danced from the door of the plane. Remo saw the light first, heard the shots second, felt the slight impact of the backfire third, and finally saw each bullet land on its target on the runway, sending shiny bursts of reflective coloration dancing along the landing material designed to imitate a river to nowhere. On the open landing strip, the men from the tower were easy game. The slugs dropped them like laundry sacks. Apparently the marksmen inside were competent because there was not the wild, continuous fire one saw in soldiers who would use a machine gun when a slap would do, and artillery when a gun would do, and a bomb when artillery would do until they earned a reputation as a professional army.
"Has someone taken over?" came a voice from inside.