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The agents of Shield arrayed about the room perked up. Their two senior officers were about to settle a dispute over operational seniority. They licked dry lips, hoping to see blood spilled.

Instead, Major Yuli Batenin suddenly grew a third hand in the middle of his chest.

The hand was white, blurry, and seemed to sprout from the center of Yuli Batenin's breastbone.

Major Batenin, stiffening in anticipation of the fight of his life, seemed unaware of the phenomenon. The hand grew a wrist and, like some fast-growing, leprous vine, continued to emerge from the unaware ex-KBG major's person.

"Sukin syn!" Gerkoff swore, his eyes growing wide.

They had to point to the thing coming from Batenin's chest before the petrified major looked down and saw the phantom appendage.

The howl Batenin gave was like a hot needle piercing their eardrums. He scrambled off the bed as if it were afire, became tangled up in the loose bedding, and thrashed around on the rug.

"Brashnikov!" he screamed. "He is here!"

Of that, there was no doubt. A luminous white figure, its limbs spread like a crippled white starfish, continued to rise out of the mattress. It was still as death.

"What do we do, Batenin?" Gerkoff sputtered.

"We must capture him."

This proved difficult. They threw blankets on the slowly rising figure. They fell flat on the bed without impeding the thing in the least.

Each Shield man carried a white silk strangling scarf under his shirt, which was imprinted with key commands in Russian and translations in the major NATO languages. They pulled these out and tried to ensnare the stiff limbs of the ghostly corpse of a thing.

They might as well have been attempting to capture moonbeams.

Gerkoff looked back, his face twisted in anger and superstitious fear. "Batenin, what do we do?"

"We pray."

"Why?"

"Because there is nothing we can do, and if Brashnikov's power is drained while he is in contact with physical object, it will be just like Chernobyl, but much worse."

This galvanized the men of Shield. They drew Tokarev handguns, P-6 silent pistols, and short-barreled AKR submachine guns from hidden holsters and opened fire on the untouchable apparition.

"Nyet nyet nyet!" Batenin screamed over the din. "You will awaken entire hotel and ruin mission!"

But the Shield men didn't hear. Or if they heard, they didn't care. They peppered the thing that threatened them with nuclear disaster, as if the sheer volume of their fire could affect this untouchable thing they could not understand.

Chapter 29

The lowermost floor of the Rumpp Regis Hotel was the storage subbasement. It was crammed with the historical castoffs of the nearly century-old hotel. Everything from old brass mantel clocks to spittoons littered the dusty shelving.

It was dark. Remo closed his eyes and listened for the sound of a heartbeat he knew better than anyone's on earth. Chiun's.

He zeroed in on it and simply moved in the direction his ears indicated, oblivious to the solid-looking obstacles he breached with each step.

He passed through antique highboys and turn-of-the-century dining tables like a phantom wading through the history of furniture.

His bare arms felt the body warmth of two people.

Remo opened his eyes to see the frantic figure of the Master of Sinanju, bending over the prostrate figure of Cheeta Ching.

Apparently, Cheeta was drowning on the concrete floor. At least, that was the impression her body language gave Remo. She had landed on her back, and now strained to keep her mouth and wildly flaring nostrils above the level of the floor. Her hands threshed the air, and when her mouth came up above the floor level, it made shapes Remo mentally called "inarticulate."

Remo looked down at his feet. The floor supported his feet perfectly. It gave Remo a creepy feeling.

The Master of Sinanju was fussing helplessly.

"Remo! I cannot help Cheeta!"

"Tell her to stand up," Remo told Chiun casually.

"I did!" Chiun squeaked. "Cheeta cannot hear me!"

Remo folded his arms. "Oh, that's right. We can't hear them and they can't hear us. In this case, it's a blessing."

Chiun stood up. His wizened face was beseeching. "Oh, Remo, what do we do?"

"Look, she's not going to drown. She just thinks she is. Give her time. She'll figure it out."

Chiun stamped an angry foot. "Heartless one!"

At that moment, Remo felt the vibration again.

"Oh-oh. Don't look now, but the building's becoming glued again."

"Quickly! Cheeta will be trapped. Help me!"

"Help you how?"

"Take one precious hand."

"If you insist . . ."

Remo reached down. Chiun did the same. Their fingers attempted to capture the incapturable.

In a flash of a second, the insubstantial hands of Cheeta Ching grew palpable. Remo and Chiun each grabbed a flailing bunch of fingers.

"Now!" Chiun cried.

They heaved. Cheeta came up out of the floor. They set her on her feet.

In the darkness, Cheeta Ching swayed like tightrope walker.

"You okay now?" Remo asked.

"What? What? What?" Cheeta gulped. "Who's there?"

"It's me," Remo said.

"Frodo?"

"She's okay," Remo said.

"She is not!" Chiun flared. "She has been traumatized by machines. Cruel, white, oil-drinking machines."

"Fine," Remo said, starting off. "You comfort her. I'm going to look around."

"I am coming with you."

"You bring that barracuda, and there will be complications," Remo warned.

"Chico, don't leave me!" Cheeta pleaded.

At that, the Master of Sinanju rendered Cheeta Ching insensate with a simple application of pressure to a neck nerve. She collapsed with a rattly sigh.

Bearing the limp figure, Chiun followed Remo Williams back up to the lobby level.

"In her hour of need, she spoke your name!" he hissed.

"Technically, no," Remo pointed out.

"I am humiliated."

"Wait'll she names the baby."

"Argh!"

They found the Rumpp Regis lobby in an uproar.

The desk clerk was screaming at the IRS men, saying "They're shooting up the fourteenth floor! Do something!"

"Call the police," suggested one IRS man.

"But you're government agents!"

"Yeah, but we're tax collectors, not enforcers. We don't carry guns. Call the police."

Remo turned to Chiun. "The Russians are up on the fourteenth floor."

"Then that is where they will perish," said Chiun, placing Cheeta on a divan. She immediately rolled over and began snoring.

"There they are!" one of the IRS men shouted. It was the one Chiun had imprisoned in the revolving door. "You, stop!"

"Let's go, Little Father!" Remo urged. "The last thing we need now is tax trouble."

"Woe to him who touches the Master of Sinanju's trunk!" Chiun hurled back.

They flashed to the elevators, Remo racing and the Master of Sinanju floating along in an effortless series of leaps.

Three revenue collectors hit the closing elevator doors and bounced off like ping-pong balls.

Remo and Chiun piled out on the fourteenth floor and ran into a wall of frightened hotel guests, who pushed past them in a blind panic and commandeered the elevator.

"They will surely hinder pursuit," Chiun remarked, as the elevator started down.

"Follow me," Remo said grimly. "I know exactly what door to knock on."

Captain Rair Brashnikov floated in the middle of a bullet storm. He knew it was a storm, because all around him the fine gold-leaf molding and framed pictures were cracked and coming apart as assorted Soviet-made ammunition took their toll.

Assorted rounds pierced his brain, his lungs, and other major organs with no effect, other than to cause him to blink when the stray bullet crossed his retina.

Otherwise, it was quite peaceful up here under the ceiling. Much like the bathhouses of his homeland.