Warren Murphy: The Eleventh Hour

"He is waiting," he said under his breath. "He wants something."

Steranko walked to the phone and dialed the officer in charge of Kremlin security.

"Inform the man on the bell tower that Marshal Josef Steranko wishes to speak to him," he said crisply. Ten minutes later, two green-uniformed KGB officers escorted Remo Williams into Steranko's spacious apartment. The old marshal noticed that the arms of the troops hung limply by their sides, hands empty.

"Your weapons," he demanded. "Where are they?"

"He took them," one trooper said, jerking his head toward Remo.

"And he took away the use of our arms when we protested," the other added.

"It'll wear off in about an hour," Remo said casually.

"Leave us," Steranko said. The KGB men left. Josef Steranko looked hard at the man before him. There was an unreadable expression on the man's blackened face.

"The penalty for espionage against Mother Russia is execution," he told Remo.

"I wouldn't have written my name over every blank wall in Moscow if I were spying," Remo pointed out.

"Then what?"

"I'm here to get back a friend. Your people have him."

Marshal Josef Steranko sat down on a sofa that, although new, might have been designed around the time Buddy Holly died. He looked at Remo with unwavering eyes and said:

"Speak."

Chapter 17

Marshal Josef Steranko knew it was treason to escort the American named Remo into the Grand Kremlin Palace itself. He also knew that if he did not, this madman who fought like a tiger would not only kill him but also bring Moscow down about everyone's ears until he got what he came for.

And Marshal Joseph Steranko, who had stood at Leningrad when the Nazis and the Finns were hammering the city with artillery, was charged with the defense of Moscow and the mother country. And he was going to do whatever he had to do to safeguard them both-even if it meant sneaking into the Kremlin an American agent possibly bent on assassinating the entire Politburo.

Leaders came and went, but Moscow must stand. Steranko had escorted Remo as far as the main stairway of the Grand Kremlin Palace. Remo was wearing a winter greatcoat and fur hat that Steranko loaned him.

None of the sets of guards they encountered questioned them. They assumed the old marshal was reporting on the rumored attacks on the city.

"The guards say that the General Secretary is in conference three floors above with an Oriental such as the one you described to me," said Marshal Steranko, pulling Remo into a marble corridor. "Your friend may be anywhere on that floor. I can go no further."

"You're sure?" Remo demanded, shucking off the greatcoat.

"Absolutely."

And Remo thanked the man by putting him to sleep with a nerve tap, as opposed to killing him. Remo floated up the damp north stairs. He sensed no electronic warning systems. No traps. Remo wondered if it was because the Kremlin's stone walls did not allow electronic implants-or were the Russians so secure in their capital that they thought they didn't need any?

On the third floor, Remo found himself in a dark paneled corridor with numerous heavy doors on either side. It was strangely deserted. All the doors looked alike and Remo couldn't read the letters on any of them. They reminded him of his old high school back in Newark. Oppressive.

For want of a better approach, Remo walked down the corridor, trying the doors on each side. The first several were empty, but in the third, he came face-to-face with six guards who were just leaving what must have been a break room, if the strong smell of coffee was an indication.

"Sorry," Remo said lightly. "I was looking for the little boys' room."

The guards turned as if on separate pivots geared to a single motor. The nearest one, seeing Remo's strange costume, fired two shots almost without thinking.

But in the split second it took for him to pull the trigger, before the bullets emerged from the barrel, Remo had grabbed the pistol and turned it into the Russian's stomach, so that the man shot himself as well as the guard directly behind him.

Both men fell, hitting the parquet floor so close together that they made a single thud.

Remo was in motion before the two dropped. The room was small, without much room to maneuver in, so he moved in on the next nearest guard with a straight-arm thrust, taking him in the throat. The man's head snapped back, his neck dislocated. He died instantly, but Remo wasn't through with him yet.

Grabbing him by the back of the neck, Remo backpedaled into the corridor, bringing the body, still on its feet, with him.

"Hold your fire," the sergeant of the guards yelled, not realizing what had happened because it happened so blindingly fast. "You'll hit Ilya."

The guards held their fire.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are," Remo sang from the hallway. He had to avoid a firefight. If Chiun was anywhere on this floor, he didn't want him to be hit by a stray bullet.

"He is unarmed," said the sergeant of the guards softly. "Two of you go out and shoot him dead."

A pair of guards started for the door. The sergeant hung back, his pistol ready.

A head suddenly appeared in the doorway, and the two guards opened up on it. The head snapped back out of sight just ahead of the shots.

"What was that?" one asked.

"It looked like Ilya. Ilya, what is wrong?"

The head reappeared in the doorway, and they could see it was Ilya's all right. They could also see that Ilya's eyes were open and unblinking, like those of a Howdy Doody puppet.

"I'm fine," the head seemed to say in a weird, faraway voice. "Come out and play."

"He's dead!" one of the guards said. "And that crazy man is using him like a toy."

The macabre sight froze the two hardened guards in their tracks. One of them went green.

"Fools!" cried the sergeant of the guards. "What are you frightened of?" And he put two bullets into Ilya's slack jawed dead face. "There. Now get that hooligan."

Remo dropped Ilya's body across the threshold of the door and waited out of sight.

The snout of a Tokarev pistol showed first, and Remo snaked out a finger to meet it. The barrel snapped off and fell to the floor with a clank. The guard stood looking stupidly at his maimed weapon. Then he looked at Remo, who held his right fist with forefinger extended, like a kid pretending that his hand is a gun.

"Mine still works," Remo said casually. The guard fired anyway. The bullet popped out of the gaping breech. Without a barrel to give the slug velocity, it tumbled slowly end over end.

Remo caught it in his palms, held it up for the Russian to see clearly. "Now, for my next trick," Remo announced, and flicked the bullet back.

The guard took it in the forehead with enough force to knock him down.

Remo danced into the room, taking out the fallen guard with a crunching kick to the temple and then went straight for the one person left in the room.

The sergeant of the guards.

The Russian's Tokarev snapped off a series of shots. Remo wove to one side, dodging the first three shots, and then moved to the other, letting the round drill past him.

"You got one shot left, pal," Remo said. "Better make it count."

The sergeant of the guards did. He placed the pistol to his temple, and before Remo could react, blew half his face across the room.

"I guess they don't make Russians like they used to," Remo said.

It had gone so well for Colonel Viktor Ditko. From the flight from Pyongyang airport to Moscow, and the escorted drive from Sheremetyevo Airport to the Kremlin, the Master of Sinanju had not spoken a word. He simply stared out the window, regarding the wing of the Aeroflot jet as if it might, at any moment, fall off.

Colonel Ditko personally led the Master of Sinanju through the ornate gilt door of Vladimir Hall in the Grand Kremlin Palace. The low-vaulted octagonal room was one the General Secretary preferred for certain kinds of meetings.