Warren Murphy: Ghost in the Machine

"Pah! It is nothing," he snapped.

"What makes you say that?"

"It is only Japanese complaining."

"Just the same," Remo said. "Let's take this phone to Smitty."

"Yes," Chiun said bitterly. "Let us take the evidence of our ineptitude to Mad Harold. No doubt he will wish us beheaded for our miserable failure."

A relentless pounding continued to come from down the hall. Remo indicated it with his head.

"Think you can keep it down, until we can slip out of the building the same back way we got in?"

"Who could detect us over that racket?"

Harold Smith was very interested in the telephone. He looked up from his shabby oak desk at Folcroft Sanitarium later that day, his gray, pinched face thoughtful.

The cellular unit had been partially disassembled and was now connected to his computer system.

"According to the memory chip," he said, "the last number dialed was that of the Nishitsu Corporation in Osaka."

"Nishitsu?" Remo said. "Weren't they the ones behind that crazy invasion of Yuma, Arizona, a few years ago?"

Smith nodded. "A rogue operation. Or so it was claimed. But recall, Remo, that before that we had intelligence on an event at Nishitsu Osaka which was laid at the KGB's doorstep."

"Right. You thought that the suit was a Japanese invention, and that was how the Soviets got hold of it.

Smith nodded. "No doubt Rumpp was attempting to gain more information on the suit from Nishitsu. When you and Chiun burst in, the Krahseevah simply hit the redial button."

"And faxed himself to Nishitsu. Damn!"

"Not necessarily, Remo."

Remo and Chiun looked interested.

"Then where did he go?" Remo asked.

"Recall that prior to this, the Krahseevah traveled through fiber-optic cables and short-distance cellular transmissions. In order to reach Osaka, he would have to be uplinked to an orbiting communications satellite and relayed back to a ground station. It is not clear that his atomic structure would retain its integrity during such an extreme transfer."

"You mean he might have had his molecules scrambled?"

"It's possible."

Remo folded his arms. "Last time, you were sure he was never going to come back to haunt us again."

"And I am not certain of his fate this time. But it is a possibility."

"Yes," said Chiun. "That must be what happened."

"Since when did you become the technology expert?" Remo asked dryly.

Chiun surreptitiously kicked Remo in the ankle. Remo went silent. Chiun went on.

"Obviously the Russian fiend is no more," he said firmly. "And since we dispatched the schemer Rumpp, this assignment has been successfully accomplished and all glory and credit is ours."

"I imagine that it has," Smith allowed.

"And contract negotiations may continue," Chiun added.

"Er, yes," Smith said carefully.

Chiun beamed. "Then I suggest we begin now."

"If you do not mind, I have a few loose ends to tie up."

"What could be more important than contract negotiations?"

"Briefing the President."

"Yes. Do that. And be certain to speak our names prominently and often."

"Of course, Master Chiun."

"You know, there's one thing I still don't get," Remo said slowly.

The others looked at him.

"Who were those Russians?"

"That is a good point," said Smith. "You had no chance to interrogate them?"

"Yeah. The head guy said he was shit."

"He did?"

"So I obliged him."

"No," Chiun interjected, "he said he was 'shield.' "

Remo frowned. "I thought I heard the other word."

"Your mind is a sewer," Chiun sniffed.

"One moment." Smith turned to his ever-present computer terminal and called up his Russian lexicon file base.

"The only Russian word that transliterates into that term is Shchit."

"That's the word I heard. What's it mean?" asked Remo.

Smith looked up, his face puzzled.

"Shield."

"Means nothing to me."

Smith switched to another file. Keys rattled. "There is no such Russian organization on file, past or present."

"Maybe they're new, Smitty." Smith's lemony face grew more bitter. "I believe I will create an active file under that name. Strange things are happening over there now. If there is a new Russian group or organization known as 'Shield,' it may be a problem for the future."

"Emperor, what will be the fate of the mighty building of the schemer Rumpp?"

"It has been condemned. Demolition experts are going to wire it with shaped charges and implode it into rubble."

Chiun nodded. "It will be an improvement."

Remo said, "One last thing, Smitty."

"What is that?"

"Those people who fell into the ground when the Rumpp Tower first spectralized. What happened to them?"

"Officially, they will be counted among the missing."

"And unofficially?"

"Unofficially, we have no idea. They may have simply slipped into the earth some distance. Or they may continue falling until they emerge from the earth's crust at some point on the other side of the globe." Smith consulted his computer briefly. "Which would appear to be Kazakhstan."

"Then what will happen to them?"

"I have no idea. And it is not something I care to dwell on," said Harold W. Smith, closing the file and pressing the concealed stud under his desk edge that sent his CURE terminal slipping into the concealment of his desktop receptacle.

Epilogue

With the coming of winter, the Kazakh hill men of Kazakhstan came down from the gray folds of the Tian Shan Mountains to dwell with their herds in the valley.

Bulbul, leader of his people, led them off the mountains, as he had every winter for twenty-two years. Come the spring, he would lead them back up. It was the way of the Kazakh hill men of Kazakhstan.

After they had pitched their felt tents and set the bullocks to grazing, they cut the head off a sheep and played the last game of buzkashi until the spring.

It was a rough, sweaty game. The men on their horses would swoop down on the carcass, and fight with one another for the privilege of carrying it from a circle drawn at one end of the great winter valley to a pole at the other, and back.

It was a tradition as old as the mountains.

Bulbul, as always, was the first to reach the dead animal. Leaning over his pounding pony, his weathered hands snatched up the thing by its wooly white coat just ahead of the others.

Laughing and calling, they thundered after him. They seldom caught him. But this year, Pishaq bumped his horse against Bulbul's own and grabbed a sheep leg.

Tugging and struggling, they rode hard, the sheep carcass straining between them. The man who had it firmly in hand when he reached the end of the valley would be declared the winner.

In past years, for twenty-two winters, the winner had been Bulbul. This year, he felt, for the first time, the strength of a new champion in opposition to his own. It made his blood run hotter, but somehow his spirit grew sad. He did not yet wish to become old.

They never reached the end of the sheltering valley, still green with grazing grass.

Directly before their pounding hoofs, something came up from the earth.

It looked like a man. A strange, dead man.

Bulbul gave a warning shout, and immediately all horses were reined in.

Through the dust they watched as the dead man floated up from the grass, as if he were a ghost arising from some long-forgotten grave.

Their narrow eyes tensed, in the wonder of it.

"A ghost!" Bulbul hissed.

"Look at its eyes! They are dead!"

It was true.

The eyes of the ghost were open and staring, but its pupils were like pinpoints. Dead.

As they watched, it floated up toward the sky.

A rider shouted.

"Another ghost!"

It was so. This ghost wore a blue uniform, like a soldier. His eyes, like the other's, were round in a way they had never seen.