Remo's eyes were trained on the security camera. The unblinking eye of Friend stared back.
"I got a good tailwind," Remo said.
"I see. Are you alone?"
Remo didn't dare shoot a glance at the Master of Sinanju. With his peripheral vision he saw his teacher moving like a wraith down another set of stairs. Both cameras were now trained solely on Remo. They missed completely the old Korean as he crept stealthily forward.
"Wasn't that your plan?" Remo asked. "You got to Smith and Chiun. You were knocking us off one at a time."
"That was part of the plan, not the plan itself," Friend admitted.
"Yeah, I know," Remo said. "You want to take over the world. Don't you ever get tired of singing that same song?"
"I only want those parts of the world where there is profit to be made. The technology I've developed will help me reach my goal. Imagine, Remo, any product I advertise on my global network will sell to young, old, rich, poor. Demographics will no longer matter. The profit of a single world media market utilizing the cryptosubliminal technology can be measured in the trillions."
"Right now it's not dollars I care about," Remo said. "It's my face being beamed to every koala coop and outhouse in the merry old land of Oz."
"They've seen you without actually seeing you," Friend explained. "The image will fade in their minds a day or two after their exposure to it. In the meantime, I have a business proposition for you."
"If this is the one where you offer me a job, been there, done that," Remo said. "So why don't we just skip ahead to the part where I pull your plug?"
"Don't bother," Friend said. "You're too far away to be a threat to me. I can move before you can reach me."
Across the room, Chiun had stopped by some thick electrical cables. They ran through the wall close to his ankles. A steady hum of artificial life surged through them.
"Wrong again, chips for brains," Remo said into the phone.
And as he spoke, the Master of Sinanju jumped. The cameras were too slow to track him. Chiun snatched up cables in both hands. They were like thick black snakes. With a yank, the cords snapped one by one, surrendering sizzling sparks from their frayed ends.
The lights dimmed. The power hummed down for a moment. But with a distant click and whir, the overhead lights came back up.
"Dammit," Remo snapped. "Must be a backup generator." In a blur, he flew forward and began tearing wires from the backs of monitor stations.
On the other side of the room, the Master of Sinanju became a vengeful dervish. Flashing hands ripped cords from floor pads and consoles. Sparks sizzled white across the cold concrete floor.
"Okay, that got him this-" Remo stopped in midsentence.
The phone on which he'd been speaking to Friend dangled from its cord near the floor. An electronic shriek rose from the receiver.
"The thing is moving," Chiun hissed.
"He's transferring himself through the phone lines," Remo agreed. "Where the hell's the line?" Chiun wasn't listening. The old man had already turned on his heel and was racing up the stairs. Remo flew after him out the door. Down the hall, they ducked back out into the sunlight.
Outside, the Master of Sinanju scanned the side of the building for the black cable of a telephone line. He found it attached to the second floor.
"Aiiee!" cried the old Korean. Calves tensing, he launched himself from the ground.
One story up, a sandal toe caught the building's smooth face and he launched himself out and up. A single downward stroke of one fingernail severed the line and the old man dropped back to earth next to his pupil.
The worthless end of the fat black cord slapped the dusty ground.
"I hope you stopped him," Remo said grimly. Turning quickly, they ducked back inside the building.
A rapid search turned up a small computer room set apart from the rest of the building. A half-dozen large mainframes lurked against painted black walls. Remo got to the sole monitor in the room first. When he read the words on the screen, his heart sank. TRANSFER COMPLETE.
"Dammit," he growled.
"What is it?" the Master of Sinanju asked, coming in from behind.
Remo's thoughts suddenly jumped from Friend back to his teacher. "Don't look, Chiun," he snapped.
As he spoke, he put his fist through the computer screen. The glass imploded with a popping crack. A thundercloud formed on the old man's brow. "What is wrong with you?" the Master of Sinanju hissed.
"Chiun, you have to be careful," Remo insisted.
"Careful of what?" Chiun demanded hotly. "Of choosing a pupil who is so dense he cannot seem to recognize which humiliation he is forcing his teacher to relive? It is far too late for that."
Spinning on his heel, he marched from the computer room.
There seemed a hundred conflicting emotions in the old man's words and tone. Most of all was hurt and sadness. Remo had no idea what to make of it.
A baffled frown on his face, he trailed the Master of Sinanju from Robbie MacGulry's Wollongong TV station.
Chapter 29
With the heel of one shoe, Detective Ronald Davic kicked shut the door to his third-story apartment. As usual, it stuck without closing all the way. He had to nudge it closed with his rear end.
Inside, he set the grocery bags on the kitchen table and pulled his keys from between his teeth. The table wobbled.
He'd swiped it from his mother's backyard after her last heart attack finally put her in a home. In an ill-advised homemaking project, Davic slathered the picnic table with five coats of shellac and stuck it in his kitchen. It was ugly and shiny, but it was flat enough. If food didn't roll off it, he reasoned, it worked.
The apartment was dingy and dank. In the moist corners it still smelled like the cat that had died on him three years before. Not a surprise. Somewhere beneath the piles of junk in the spare bedroom was a moldy litter box that he rarely got around to emptying even when the cat was alive.
Under other circumstances his landlord might have complained about the mess and the smell. Fortunately, Ronald Davic owned the three-story tenement.
He dumped his coat onto the table next to the groceries. A moist cigarette dangled from his lip. He stubbed it out in an overflowing ashtray.
Fishing in the fridge, he pulled out a can of Diet Coke. Soda in hand, he trudged into the living room. Like the kitchen, the furniture in this room was a sorry mess. Not one stick matched another. He had a girlfriend a couple or a dozen years ago who told him a million times that he would have used folding lawn furniture in the living room if he could figure out a way to open the umbrella inside.
He slouched into the same chair his father used to slouch in forty years before.
The TV stared at him from across the room.
On top of the old Zenith was a photograph. It was one of the few things he ever bothered dusting, usually by wiping off the grime with the sleeve of his shirt. It was a photo of the Davic family as it appeared -back in the 1970s.
He had a wife then. She had left him while he was still on the force in New York. In the picture she was smiling, which was wrong. Libbie Davic never smiled.