It finally hit Smith. He thought he had recognized Howard's name when he read Mrs. Mikulka's Postit note the previous day. He had dismissed it as a common-sounding name. Now he realized he had indeed heard it before. He was surprised it had not occurred to him during the background search he had conducted earlier in the day.
Smith's eyes were flat behind his clear glasses. "Did the President suggest it might be me, or did you surmise this on your own?" he asked evenly.
"I figured it out myself," Howard said.
"You did not share this information with anyone?"
Howard gave a lopsided smile. "No way," he promised, shaking his head. "I'm not like this Feyodov. I don't have a death wish, Dr. Smith. I just thought you should know."
Smith pursed his gray lips. "Your candor is appreciated," he said. "That will be all."
Nodding, Howard turned once more. His hand had closed around the doorknob when he glanced back one last time.
Smith was hunched over his computer. The glowing screen was reflected in his owlish glasses. "One more thing," the new assistant CURE director said. For the first time there was hesitation in his youthful voice. "I think there's something else at play here. It's somehow connected to this whole satellite thing. It's not really big. Something small, behind the scenes. But it's the catalyst that set all the rest of this in motion."
Smith's gray face betrayed minor intrigue. "What makes you say that?" he asked, his tone curious.
Mark bit the inside of his cheek. "I don't know," he said, shrugging. "Just a feeling, I guess." Before he could be pressed further on his hunch, the young man slipped quickly from the Spartan office. The door closed behind him with a soft click.
Chapter 24
It was sleep without dreams. A great, oppressive blanket of black numbness the likes of which he had not experienced since before his earliest Sinanju training. When the darkness finally fled for Remo Williams, it was replaced by a blob of amorphous white and a nerve-numbing weariness that leached deep into bone. An eternity passed as the clot of shapeless white resolved into a more familiar environment.
He was in a room. By the looks of it, it was some sort of flophouse. A grimy lava lamp sat on a warped bureau. Behind it, a faded Jerry Garcia poster concealed tears in the fuzzy striped wallpaper.
Remo was in a bed.
No. As his senses returned, he realized it was lower than a bed. It couldn't have been more than just a mattress on the floor. A foul mustiness created by thirty years of human odors flooded up from the squeaky springs.
At first he had no idea how he had come to be there. It struck him all at once.
Something had happened back at the Barkley city hall. Something he had never encountered before. It was as if the air itself had drained the life from him. From him and-
His heart stopped.
He couldn't raise his head to look around the room.
"Chiun," Remo croaked. Though he tried to call out, his voice was barely a whisper.
When last he saw him the old Korean appeared to be dead. At least Remo had never seen him so drained of life.
Once the enervating sensation struck, Remo's own system had gone so haywire he couldn't sense any life signs from his teacher. He had drawn on reserves he did not have just to get them both to safety. After he had barred the door to prevent the Russians from following, he had collapsed.
There was no memory after that. No knowledge of how he had gotten from there to here. No way of knowing if his adopted father was...
"Chiun," he called again, his voice louder this time.
A concerned face appeared above him, blocking out the cracked, water-damaged plaster ceiling. For an instant he thought he was dreaming. Then he remembered that Anna Chutesov had come back from the dead.
The Russian agent gazed down on him as she had in days long forgotten, a vision of beauty from another time.
"How's Chiun?" Remo croaked weakly. He braced himself for the worst.
When the reply he dreaded came, he felt the world drop out from beneath him.
"He's gone," Anna replied simply.
The words were like a dagger in his heart. Blood pounded through his veins, ringing in his ears. Remo closed his eyes, too exhausted for tears. His worst fear of the past few months had come to pass.
On the trip to Africa during which he had inadvertently taunted the gods into leveling a lifetime curse of Master's disease, Remo had been visited by the spirit of Chiun's son.
The little Korean boy with the sad eyes had prophesied a future of hardship for Remo. Ever since that time, Remo had harbored the secret fear that the Master of Sinanju himself would be part of the suffering he was destined to endure.
Lying in that squalid room, he had never felt so alone.
The loss of his home was nothing to him now. Everything else in life was dross. The one thing that mattered to him more than anything else in the world was gone.
"I have to see him," Remo said.
There was strength now in his hollow voice. Already he was wondering in which of his fourteen steamer trunks the Master of Sinanju kept his funeral robes.
Anna was sitting on a stool next to the mattress. She seemed unmoved by his loss.
"In a little while," she said as she squeezed out a damp facecloth into a cracked antique chamber pot on the floor. "You have been unconscious for hours. You need rest."
When she leaned over to wipe his brow, Remo grabbed her wrist, holding tight.
"I need to see him now," he insisted.
"You cannot," she said. "He and the FBI woman went out for food. They won't be back for a while yet."
A weight lifted from Remo's chest.
"He's alive?" he asked, scarcely daring to speak the words aloud.
Her response sent his soul soaring. "Of course," Anna said. When she realized what he had assumed, a spark of weary mirth came to her eyes. "I know he is like a father to you, Remo, but let us be realistic. If he ever did die, where would he go? Heaven does not want him and hell would not take him. May I have my arm back now?"
His heart singing with joy, Remo released her wrist. When he closed his tired eyes this time, they burned with invisible tears.
"Don't be too sure Chiun won't be the big man on campus of the afterlife," he muttered, trying to hide his great relief from Anna. "Most of the Masters of Sinanju I've met have been even bigger pains in the ass than he is."
There was a sudden trip in her voice. "There are other Masters of Sinanju?" she asked. "It was my understanding that the two of you were the only living practitioners of your martial art." The words sounded almost too casual.
Curious, Remo opened his red eyes.
Her face was etched in stone. Sitting on her stool, holding her soggy facecloth, she seemed utterly indifferent to his interest. There was no visible reason to think she was making anything more than idle conversation.
"Long story," He sighed. "We're the only two alive. Well, the only two alive if you don't count the psycho-coma one who wants to kill us. Which I didn't for a long time until two days ago." His head sank back tiredly into the grimy mattress. "Ever wish you could take a vacation from living such an interesting life?"
"My life has not met your definition of interesting for many years," Anna replied. "My last active field mission was the one we shared. If not for the recklessness and avarice of the fool Feyodov, I would have happily lived out the rest of my life in anonymity."
"Yeah, renegade Russian generals with stolen doomsday devices do have a tendency to piss out the candles on the birthday cake." Remo struggled to his elbows. "How was Chiun when he left?"