He thought he saw something that looked like a pink powder puff melt into the shut fire door. Remo blinked. The blotch of pink was gone. He went to the door and looked through the vertical slit window above the latch. The corridor was empty except for a passing physician.
"Ah, the hell with whatever you are, too," said Remo.
Returning to the basement, he told the Master of Sinanju, "Bad news, Little Father."
"What?"
"The IRS has told the staff to begin releasing patients."
"The wicked Dutchman, too!"
"He's still there. But they're about to let Beasley go."
"This must not happen."
"Yeah, the only way to head this off is to put Smith back behind his desk. But I don't think we can trust him.
"We have no choice." The Master of Sinanju looked from Remo to the gold and back again. His face tightened like a spiderweb. "I will attend to Smith. You fetch a vehicle suitable for conveying the gold of Sinanju away from this place."
"Gotcha," said Remo. He slipped out the side door.
Chapter 17
When Jack Koldstad awoke, he thought he was dead. It was a reasonable conclusion to jump to under the circumstances. He lay out under the open sun, a trio of shadowy vultures circling over him on lazy wings, and he could taste blood in his mouth. His front teeth wobbled when he touched them with his tongue.
He tried to remember how he had gotten here. The last thing he could recall was the monarch butterfly. It was huge. Bigger than the birds circling overhead. It was the fiercest, most venomous-looking butterfly Jack Koldstad could ever remember seeing. Even as the memory returned, its hideous shriek reverberated in his skull.
"Oh, God," Koldstad groaned.
A voice said, "He's awake."
"Who is it? Who's there?" Koldstad demanded.
"It's me, Mr. Koldstad. Agent Phelps."
"Phelps! You're here, too. What happened?"
A head came into view somewhere between the circling birds and Koldstad's recumbent head. It was Phelps. His broad face was very concerned. "Don't you recall, sir? We were in the basement. We had just broken down that big door."
"Yes, I remember seeing gold."
"You saw it, too?"
"Of course. What's wrong? How did we get here? And where is here? All I see is sky."
"The hospital roof. We all woke up looking at the sky."
"The last thing I remember was the basement."
"What else do you remember?" Phelps asked solicitously.
Koldstad winced. "The black-and-orange... thing."
"Sir?"
"It was a giant. I'd never seen one that big."
"Seen what, sir?"
"Don't you remember?"
"We've just swapped impressions, sir. And for most of us, the lights went out when that janitor, Remo, turned on us."
"I remember him, too."
"Did he get you, too, sir?'
"No, it was the other... thing."
"Thing?"
"It clawed my face."
"We've sent for a doctor, sir. Your face is pretty badly lacerated. Did you see what did it?"
"Yes."
"So you can describe it for us?"
"It was a butterfly."
Silence greeted Jack Koldstad's admission. Other heads came into view. Koldstad's eyes tried to focus on their faces, but the overhead sun threw them all into shadow. But they blocked out those damn tireless vultures, so that was a good thing.
"A butterfly. Did you say butterfly?"
"A giant of a butterfly. With monarch markings and a face."
"You mean a butterfly face?"
"No, it was the face of that damn phantom Chinaman."
Silence greeted that admission, too.
"Do you think you can stand, sir?"
Koldstad lifted a wavering arm. "Help me up."
Hands reached down to grasp Jack Koldstad's hands and elbows and shoulders. He felt no pain as he was hauled to his feet. No pain at all. Oh, there was some stiffness about his face, but no bones complained. And he could see fine.
He saw a man lying on the gravel roof, his skin, hair and clothes a powdery gray.
"Who's that?"
"Agent Reems, Mr. Koldstad. He was with us when we woke up. I'm afraid he's dead, sir."
"What about Skinner?"
"Here, sir."
A man stepped into view. He was the same powdery gray mummy color as Reems. But he was alive. His sheepish smile broke through the gray like a whalebone corset emerging from the ashes of a banked fire.
"Skinner. What happened to you?"
"I don't know, sir. I woke up with the rest of you. But a skinny guy with thick wrists ambushed me and threw me into the coal furnace with Reems."
"Was his name Remo?"
"He didn't say."
Phelps spoke up. "It must have been that janitor, sir. It's the only explanation."
"Okay," Koldstad said. "We don't know how we got here. That's fine. We know what we saw and who we saw."
Phelps nodded. "The janitor."
"And the Chinaman who attacked me," Koldstad snapped.
"I thought you said it was a butterfly, Mr. Koldstad."
"It was either a Chinaman dressed as a butterfly or a butterfly wearing a Chinaman's mask. Either way we're going to audit his ass to the conclusion of life on earth and back again to the dawn of time. Now, let's get off this stupid roof."
Jack Koldstad led the way, or tried to. He started to turn in place and kept on turning. Around and around he went, like a slow top. He couldn't seem to stop. The expression on his long face reflected that like a mirror.
The other agents watched in growing confusion. Then concern. Then horror as Jack Koldstad seemed unable to orient himself toward the open roof trap that was plainly in sight.
Finally an agent reached out both hands to steady his superior.
"Thanks," Koldstad said shakily. "I must be more dizzy than I thought."
He started for the roof trap and stepped over it. He kept on going. Right to the edge of the roof. The tips of his shoes bumped the low parapet. Koldstad didn't seem to understand why he couldn't keep going forward.
The agents were right behind him. It was a good thing. They saw that Jack Koldstad was about to step off the roof to his death.
A half-dozen hands plucked at his coat and sleeves and piloted him back the way he came.
"Sir, are you all right?" Phelps asked.
"Let go! Let me go! I can make it. I'm just woozy, that's all."
Just to be sure, the agents held his elbows as others stood by the trap to assist him down.
Jack Koldstad got on the ladder all right. Relief came over the IRS agents' faces. He was climbing down fine. A man started after him. Then another.
When they reached the bottom of the ladder, they found Jack Koldstad on his knees, still clutching the sides of the ladder. He might have been praying. Except he was banging his knees in alternation on the floor.
"Sir, what is it?" asked Phelps in a nervous voice.
"I'm okay. I'm just climbing down. Can't you see? Damn, this is a long ladder."
"Sir, you're on the floor."
Other agents dropped onto the floor as Jack Koldstad looked down and saw that his feet were no longer on the rungs but folded under him.
He looked down, then up, then blank. Then very, very worried.
"What's happening to me?" he asked in a tiny, frightened voice.
"PARTIAL frontal lobotomy," pronounced Dr. Aldace Gerling.
"Yes," agreed Dr. Donald Bex, one of the resident physicians.
"Unquestionably," concurred Dr. Murray Simon.
"But how?" IRS Special Agent Philip Phelps asked, looking down at the Folcroft hospital bed where Jack Koldstad lay sedated.
"You can see the marks here and here," said Dr. Bex, indicating the natural indentations on either side of Koldstad's squeezed-in temples. "A very thin instrument was employed to sever the frontal lobes with absolute precision."