"It is here," the general volunteered quickly. Anna's face held no emotion. "Take me to it." Feyodov nodded sharply. Arms still high in the air, he began to step over his bleeding compatriot. Anna had taken but a single step to follow when she felt a hand suddenly grip her arm, holding her firmly in place.
Remo. He was fooling around again. He had always constituted an audience of one for his own childish antics. He was still behind her. With the traitorous Russians standing before her, she did not dare turn to look at him.
"Remo, let go," Anna urged.
His hand never wavered. Worse, his thick wrist flexed.
The pain was so sharp, Anna sucked in a gasp of air. She didn't have time to question him before he spoke. When he did, his voice sounded different than she'd ever heard it. Almost ...weak.
"Anna," Remo whispered.
The pain in her arm was white-hot. It was as if a vise had clamped hard, biting into flesh. His grip tightened. So strong was it, she nearly dropped her gun.
"Remo, you are hurting me," Anna said, wincing. "Something...something's not right," Remo gasped.
Up ahead, Feyodov and the others had stopped dead. A spark of hope was growing stronger in the general's eyes.
Since Remo was holding on to her gun arm, Anna was forced to transfer the weapon to her free hand. "Watch them," Anna ordered Brandy.
The FBI agent moved in front of Anna. "Hands up!" Brandy snapped.
Some of the Russians had been wavering. At the command they dutifully lifted their arms higher. Anna turned a wary eye on Remo. When she saw him, her pale skin blanched.
Remo looked as if he'd aged thirty years. His cheeks were sunken and his eyes were cavernous black hollows. It looked as though the life had been sucked out of him. Sapped of vitality, he had to hold on to Anna for support.
Behind Remo, the Master of Sinanju was in far worse shape. He seemed little more than an ambulatory skeleton.
Both men reeled in place.
"What's wrong?" Anna asked sharply.
"We have to go," Remo panted. "Now."
As he spoke, Anna felt a shuddering tickle, like ghostly fingers, across the downy hair at the back of her neck.
The sensation had been apparent for the last minute or so, but it had gotten worse in the past few seconds. It was as if some hidden switch had been flipped. And in the moment when the strange invisible touch reached its zenith, Anna Chutesov saw the impossible happen.
Remo and Chiun shot to attention. Arms snapped out, angled downward, fingers splayed. They stood like that for but an instant. Stiff, helpless and vulnerable.
As quickly as it came, it fled. And as Anna watched in shock, the life seeped visibly from the Master of Sinanju.
Chiun's fluttering eyes rolled back in their sockets. His frail old body went as limp as a wet rag, and he toppled over onto the hard floor.
Remo still stood. He reached a hand once more for Anna. This time he braced it on her shoulder for support.
"Remo, what is it?" Anna asked.
He shook his head. "Help me get Chiun," he gasped.
There was just a moment's hesitation before Anna did as she was told. Crouching, she helped drag the old man into Remo's arms. She had to pull Remo back to his feet.
There was not another word from him. Drawing on his last reserves of strength, Remo stumbled out the door, delicately cradling the lifeless body of his teacher.
Once he was gone, Anna dropped her voice low. "We must go," she whispered urgently to Brandy. "What about them?" Brandy said, nodding across the room.
Feyodov and the Russians were growing emboldened. Hands were lowering cautiously. None had yet moved for a gun.
"There are too many of them," Anna answered. "We do not know how many more there might be. We can't win. Not now."
The FBI agent seemed reluctant to follow the orders of a Russian agent. Yet she had no other backup on the scene and half of her team was apparently down for the count.
Brandy nodded crisply.
Anna didn't find it necessary to say a word to Feyodov. Both of them understood her predicament. Whenever she was confronted with this sort of situation, she always left it up to the men to strut and preen and offer silly threats and warnings. She was content to escape with her life.
It disturbed the head of the Institute when Boris Feyodov found it unnecessary to say anything, as well. There was no bluster from the former general, no booming anger typical for a man. Just a superior smirk as she backed away.
And in that silent smile, Anna Chutesov felt new reason to fear. Guns raised, the two women slipped out the door.
As soon as they were gone, the Russians grabbed for their own weapons. When they ran after the four intruders, they found that Remo and the others had already gotten past the second set of doors. Though damaged, they were still in place. Remo had sealed them from the outside. The Russian soldiers quickly returned to the hall.
Zen was climbing nervously down from the stage. The other council members were coming out from under the table.
"What was that all about?" Zen asked. "Those guys ...what-what happened to those guys?"
In the rear of the hall, Boris Feyodov was glancing at his Swiss watch. As he suspected, Remo and Chiun's strange seizures had coincided precisely with the moment his precious particle-beam device would have been charged enough to fire.
The general looked up with only his eyes, a devilish smile on his fleshy face.
"Our secret weapon apparently boasts an interesting side effect," Boris Feyodov said knowingly. And in his tired, silent heart he found delight in the fact that the end of the world was proving to be even more entertaining than he'd ever dreamed.
Chapter 21
Cosmonaut Sergei Sagdeev's return to space had been a silent defeat.
Russia's space program was not what it had once been. For years it had been a testament to ingenuity, endurance and sheer stubbornness. The man was always less important than the mission. Back in the late 1980s, Sergei had been one of the cosmonauts selected to test the limits of how much time was humanly possible to spend in space.
Sergei had stayed aboard the space station Mir for just over three months. Ninety-eight agonizingly long days.
An eternity away from his native Yaroslavl on the banks of the Volga. Away from his wife, his little daughter.
Away from Earth.
At first back then, the planet had seemed enormous, stretching wide beneath the fifty-two-degree inclination of the cramped station. As his time in space grew however, the planet seemed to shrink. With each passing day it grew smaller and smaller until it was little more than an insignificant speck against the greater backdrop of eternity.
Everyone he knew, everyone he would ever know. All the great figures both present and past had lived and would die on that same insignificant speck. Thanks to his time on Mir, Sergei Sagdeev had returned to Earth with a perspective on Man's place in the cosmos few people could appreciate. Sergei was one of the few human beings on the planet to understand just how tiny and worthless he truly was.
When he finally made it back home after his long ordeal, Sergei vowed never to return to space. His future work with the space program would be done only with solid ground beneath his feet. He had no desire to remind himself just how inconsequential he was.
It was a promise he could not keep.
The Russian space program had been flailing for a number of years. There was serious talk of scrapping it altogether. With no other training in a disaster of an economy, Sergei had begun to worry about his future job prospects. Things had looked bleak for some time when a private Netherlands-based corporation stepped in to help finance some of Russia's space program. In exchange for funding, they wanted the right to use the dilapidated old Mir station for commercial ventures. And they needed experienced cosmonauts to help them get their plans off the ground.