Looming above the Russian agent, Boris Feyodov tipped his head knowingly. "You have not changed a bit since we last met," he said. Pausing, he held his hands out apologetically to either side. "I wish that I could make the same boast. However, the years have not been so kind to me."
The look of disdain never left her face. "We've met?" Anna Chutesov asked blandly.
A smile spread across the flabby features of the former Red Army general. "Do not make me think your reputation is undeserved," Feyodov said. "You remember it well." The smile fled and his voice grew chilly. "I certainly do."
With great care he took a seat across from her. Dull eyes looked to his men.
"Release her," Feyodov commanded.
The black market men instantly did as they were told. Snapping to attention, they took a step back from her chair. Their hands never left their weapons.
Leaning back, Feyodov casually crossed his legs. "It was April when we met," he said, his eyes growing distant. "I had been director of the Institute for only a few months before I was relieved of duty. All because of you. You and some great secret you brought back with you from America. You barely acknowledged me that day you took command, just a glance and a nod as you carried your precious bag into your office. Into my office." He took a deep breath. "That was the day we became enemies, you and I," he confided.
Anna finally had enough. Brow dropping low she shook her head firmly. "Please keep your delusions to yourself," she said. "I am not your enemy, you are. You hate your own cowardice and incompetence. You are a military man who had to live his entire career in the shadow of his own father. The one time you were put to the test, you failed yourself, your country and the men under your command. You are a tiny little failure and you have invented pathetic phantoms to blame for your own weaknesses."
Since his humiliation in Chechnya, the accusation of cowardice was one that always brought swift anger from Feyodov. The reports were all clear on this.
Given the circumstances, Anna hoped to provoke him into granting her a swift end. But instead of rage a knowing smile cracked the sagging face of the old general.
"'Phantoms.' An interesting choice of words." Feyodov nodded thoughtfully. "Oh, and I am not going to kill you. At least not yet. For all their faith in you, you are really not as clever as they think you are. For instance, the first thing you should have done when you took over the Institute was change the combination on my office safe."
This drew a reaction. Nothing dramatic. A single thin brow arched almost imperceptibly on her forehead.
The general leaned forward, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "You left for a few hours that first day. It was before you had changed any of the security systems. I waited for you to leave, and then I snuck back inside." His whispered voice became a rasp. "I saw what you brought back with you." Exhaling, Feyodov leaned back in his chair. "Of course, I heard the rumors after that. When the dark days came and Moscow fell to the capitalists, I heard whispers of how the Institute alone was safe from the mobs. I always assumed I knew why. Until yesterday."
Feyodov would have said more, but at that moment a black market soldier came marching up the tunnel.
His arm bandaged tightly where Anna Chutesov had shot him, Oleg Shevtrinko glared hatred at the Institute head. After the events of the previous day, he now wore a bulky bulletproof vest, but it seemed to be doing little more than irritating his injuries.
"They have reached the five-minute mark, general," Oleg announced, shifting the weight of his vest.
Feyodov nodded silent understanding. With a wave of his hand he sent Oleg back up the tunnel. "The Americans are about to launch a rescue attempt of the men on Mir," the former general explained to Anna. "While they count down, so do we. Soon the world will know the truth of what happened at Sary Shagan." He tipped his head, considering. "Fate is a powerful thing," he mused. "The weapon that brought you here is the same thing that finally drew the men from Sinanju to me." A thought occurred to him. "You were aware that when I was given my appointment at the Institute, they were supposed to come work for me?"
There was no point in lying. "Of course," Anna spit.
Feyodov nodded. "But then fate intervened, and they remained in America. As I said, given the reports I heard in later years, I assumed they had finally come to work for Russia. For you. It seems now that was never the case. Not that it matters. I possess the means to render them impotent. They share the blame with you for the life I now lead. Therefore, when they come to rescue you, they will die."
Anna Chutesov shook her head. "They will not come," she said firmly. "Those two are many things, but unlike you they are not fools."
Standing, the former Red Army general offered a tiny shrug of his shoulders.
"Then I will have to settle for your death and the annihilation of America and Russia," he said. "I suppose no plan can be perfect."
A thoughtful frown erasing his glimmer of a smile, the tired old soldier offered her his back. Leaving Anna Chutesov with the two guards, Boris Feyodov strolled down the tunnel. To watch history repeat itself.
A PAIR OF black market soldiers guarded the entrance to the city hall. They had been at their post for hours without incident. The streets of Barkley were empty. Its citizens had been ordered to stay in their homes.
The sun rose high and warm on the eerily calm scene.
It was just after 8:00 a.m. when one of the city hall guards felt a sudden light tapping on his shoulder. Startled, he wheeled for the source.
Someone was standing beside him on the high steps. A pair of deep-set eyes offered dark disapproval.
"No wonder you Commies lost the candy store," Remo Williams said. "You listen the same way you create systems of government. Shitty."
Another voice chimed in beside the second soldier, this one a high singsong.
"They stopped listening because no one in Russia has said anything worth listening to since the last tzar," Chiun squeaked. "I would turn a deaf ear, too, if I had to endure seven decades of bushy noses telling me why their hands were always in my kimono pockets."
Quickly gathering his wits about him, the guard near Remo grabbed for his gun. He found to his horror that he had nothing to grab with. His arms ended in bloody stumps.
"Sorry, but we need 'em for the next five-year plan," Remo said, tossing the man's hands into the bushes beside the steps. "But I'll see about requisitioning you a spare set of feet. Should be in the mailbox by May Day."
He finished the man with a punishing palm to the temple.
As the first man fell, the soldier next to Chiun tried to get a bead on the old man. Whipping his gun up, he squinted one eye. His eye was still squinting as his head bounced down the city hall steps and rolled under a shrub.
Remo and Chiun hopped over the pair of bodies and swept inside the big building.
The main door that they'd wrenched off in their previous assault on the town hall was still lying on the floor. It had been too heavy for the Barkley council to lift. Remo and Chiun bounded across it and raced up the hallway.
The second set of doors was warped around the handles. A pair of thrusting heels snapped a barricading bar and sent the battered doors screaming off their hinges. The two men raced along in their wake, slipping through the door to the auditorium. In the back of the hall they found a door precisely where Gary had said it would be. The room it fed into was small and windowless. Portraits of Marx, Mao, Lenin and other heroes of the Revolution hung on the walls.
A glass display case with a wide base sat in the middle of the floor. In it was a half-complete Barkley constitution that Zen Bower had started to write in a fit of delusional optimism. At a glance, Remo saw three misspellings and a dozen Wite-Out splotches in the preamble alone.