"Love to chitchat with the suicidal general," Remo said as he flew past, "but I've got work to do."
A long access ladder ran up the side of the slender tower. Remo began scurrying rapidly up the metal rungs.
As Remo flew up the four-story tower, Feyodov's weak voice trailed after him.
"Work? You were supposed to work for me. You and the old one," the general called. "You never came. But she did. Thanks to you she took the last scraps of my life." His tone grew cryptic. "And she took even more from you."
Remo found that he was forced to concentrate more than usual during his ascent. Staving off lightheadedness, he was doing his best to ignore the ramblings of the dying man.
The ladder ended at a circular platform. By the time Remo reached it, only thirty seconds remained. The cupped mirrors that focused the energy of the particle stream were aimed into the eastern sky.
"Ask her about the Institute," Feyodov called. "Ask her about Mactep. Ask her about what she-" he paused for a pained gasp "-what she... stole from you."
It was the intensity with which the words were spoken. From the top of the tower platform, Remo glanced down.
Far below, a thin smile touched the general's ashen lips. Pink froth bubbled from between them. No time to ask.
Remo was about to shatter the thick mirrors when another thought occurred to him.
With two swift swats he cracked the mirrors from their swivel bases and repositioned them, each aimed in a different direction. His work done, he leaped from the platform over to the uppermost metal catwalk that rimmed the interior of the big statue. He scrambled up the inner wall of the statue, disappearing over the edge.
At the bottom of the hollow interior, Boris Feyodov watched Remo slip from sight.
Whatever the young one had done to forestall Feyodov's revenge, it was too late. It would come. Perhaps not this day and not as he had expected it to, but it was inevitable. The men from Sinanju didn't know it, but one way or another the former Red Army general would have some small vengeance.
A smile still on his lips, General Boris Feyodov closed his weary eyes. And when the death he had feared for so many years finally came to claim the old soldier, it was like welcoming an old friend.
Chapter 32
Brandy Brand was standing anxiously on the sidewalk at the edge of the Barkley common when she saw Remo pop like a jack-in-the-box from out of Huitzilopochtli's stone head.
His descent was so rapid that at first she thought he was falling. He was halfway down the face when Chiun appeared from the door of the city hall. Anna Chutesov was flung over the old man's shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
Remo touched ground even as Chiun was darting down the steps. Racing full out, the two men met on the common. Side by side they tore across the grass toward Brandy.
The four bomb-filled duffel bags were at Brandy's feet. After Chiun had dropped Anna next to the FBI agent, the two men scooped up the bags, one in each hand.
"Bombs away, Little Father," Remo said tightly. "But I didn't set the timers yet," Brandy insisted. Remo and Chiun ignored her. Hauling back, they hurled their bundles high into the California sky. The four bags became specks of black in the vast blue backdrop.
Brandy barely had time to see them drop neatly, one after the other, inside the hollow head of Huitzilopochtli before she felt herself being swept off her feet.
With Brandy tucked up under one arm, Remo took off like a shot. Chiun kept pace with him, once more carting Anna.
With every racing step the old man seemed to grow more vigorous. Remo, too, quickly sloughed off the disharmonizing effects of the tunnel. They were two city blocks away from the town square when the ground began to shake.
It was a low, protracted rumble that started at the center of town and rolled toward the Barkley suburbs. Once they had both determined they were at a safe distance, Remo and Chiun stopped running. They deposited the women on the sidewalk.
A mile from the center of town, all four of them looked back in the direction from which they had come.
The Barkley skyline had changed. Over the nearest buildings something was missing. For the first time since they had arrived in town, the evil eyes of Huitzilopochtli did not look out over the small California community.
The statue was gone. In its place was empty air. And then a column of dust rose up from the distant point where the ancient god had stood, obliterating the cheery pastel-blue sky.
IT TOOK half an hour for the dust to clear. When Remo, Chiun and the others returned to Barkley's center, they found the buildings around the grassy square in ruins.
At the last minute Remo had aimed one of the mirrors into the civic center where the Buffoon Aid concert had been held. The other he had aimed down into the statue itself.
The fractured beam had detonated the explosives and set off a chain reaction in the network of tunnels. When the underground complex collapsed, so too did everything above it. Including the city hall. Barkley's main civic building lay in cratered ruins. Before it the four-story Huitzilopochtli statue was little more than a pile of crumbled stone.
"Oh, my," Brandy said when she saw the rubble that had been the Barkley civic center.
"I figured that'd keep them from hosting any more of those ditzy benefit shows," Remo explained.
Brandy cast a worried eye at Remo. "But that's where the city council was hiding."
A flicker of genuine concern passed over Remo's face. "Any civilians with them?" he asked. Brandy nodded. "They said Yippee Goldfarb and the other two Buffoon Aid hosts were in there. They were planning on starting that HTB fund-raiser again today." Her face troubled, the FBI agent wandered away from the rest, toward the bombed-out civic center.
Standing on the grass, Remo thought of the three famous actor-comedians. If Brandy was right, Yippee, Leslie Walters and Bobby Stone were probably buried somewhere under all that rubble. He thought of all the movies, TV specials and talk-show appearances they would never again make.
"I've done my good deed for the century," he said. With an expression of utter indifference, he turned his attention to Anna. "What's Mactep mean?" he asked sweetly.
Anna had been scanning the debris field. At his use of the Russian word, she glanced up. Buried in the depths of her ice-blue eyes was a hint of worried surprise.
"Where did you hear that?" she asked, her voice level.
"From the guy you were so eager to shoot holes through you took off on us twice," Remo said, his own tone flat. "And don't think we didn't notice."
"Yes, she was more of a single-minded nuisance than she used to be," Chiun agreed. "And given the mannish doggedness she has displayed in the past, that is saying much." With delicate fingertips he stroked his thready beard. "Perhaps it is due to her advanced age. It is a fact of nature that women past a certain time of life no longer produce feminizing chemicals. That goes double for Russian women, who at birth are already halfway to manhood."
"All the parts look like they're still in the right place to me," Remo said. His eyes never left Anna's. He was still waiting for an answer.
"You say that today," Chiun cautioned. "Tell me your opinion tomorrow when one of those parts is a mustache. And Mactep is Russian for 'Master'." His own gaze was curious.
The two men stared hard at the Russian agent. Anna seemed poised on the edge of a lie. At last she relented. With a sigh, her shoulders sank. "Mactep was the program intended to bring Sinanju to Russia," she admitted carefully. "It was begun many years ago under the auspices of a secret agency called the Institute. You recall the time when your Dr. Smith signed your contract over to our premier? Feyodov ran the agency that you were both supposed to come work for."
Remo had all but forgotten that time. It had been ages ago. It was during that particular crisis that he had met his bride-to-be, Mah-Li. After meeting her, the contract nonsense with the Russians had been just a pesky distraction.