Warren Murphy: Encounter Group

So Pavel tried another tack. He tore at the carpeting that separated the trunk space from the back of the rear seat. It came loose. Behind it was a partition, which also came loose and exposed the back seat itself. When this was forced, there was a clear opening into the back seat.

Pavel crawled out of the trunk and stepped from the car. He was free, but he had no intention of running. There was still the matter of the strange creature from another world who had called him by name. Pavel Zarnitsa intended to solve that mystery.

* * *

The white door opened automatically for Remo when he approached it. He could sense the remote cameras watching his every move. He stepped into the blue building, and the door closed after him.

Remo found himself in a curving corridor, white and smooth and winding to his left. He began to walk. Light came from indirect ceiling panels. There seemed to be no danger. In fact, the curving corridor reminded him a little of walking through a fun house back in Palisades Amusement Park, where his orphanage had once been taken on an outing. He had only gone a few feet when he noticed that the natural curve of the path prevented him from seeing more than a few feet ahead or behind him. More disturbingly, he realized that the path was forcing him to move along a continuous outside line. In Sinanju, there were two forms of attack— the outside attack, which was a circle, and the inside attack, which was a line. Remo realized then that any attack would come from ahead or behind, and from the right outer wall, where an inside attack would be the only defense.

The first attack came from the right. Three knives rammed out of the wall at knee level to cripple his legs. But Remo caught the preliminary sound of a concealing panel flopping back and reversed himself in time. The knives embedded themselves in the opposite wall.

Remo walked on.

The second attack came when Remo began to feel himself favor his left, even though he knew that side was probably safe. He tried to avoid hugging the wall, but the spiral path wouldn't let him. It had started to tilt slightly to the left so Remo had to walk that way, as if one of his legs was shorter than the other.

Then a ball of flame appeared at his back, forcing Remo forward. He ran, aware that the flame might be more of a prod than a direct threat. And because of that awareness, he did not crash headlong into the almost invisible pane of glass, which, had he struck it, would have shattered into dangerous razorlike shards.

Remo found the edges of the pane and scored it using one very short but hard fingernail. A kick sent the pane to the ground, where it broke harmlessly on the floor. Chiun would have liked that.

Remo continued on with more confidence— or perhaps because the spiral shrank as it got closer to the center, he found himself moving faster. He tried to slow down, but when everything in two directions seemed to curve into infinity, judging distance and speed became difficult.

Remo heard the next obstacle before he saw it. Someone moaned just ahead. Putting his back to the left wall, he inched sideways toward the sound so he'd be less of a target.

Amanda Bull lay on her back in a pool of blood. Remo knelt beside her, and she opened her eyes.

Amanda coughed a bubble of blood. "Tricked..." she gasped. "He tricked me. Tricked all of us."

"Where are the others?" Remo asked.

"Dead... all... dead..."

"The warhead— do you know where I can find it?"

"Tulsa," Amanda said with effort. "In truck. Will go off... three hours. Look— look for plain truck with blotches of paint on sides. Find—"

"Easy," Remo told her.

"He— shot— me," Amanda continued, her gray eyes fixed on the ceiling. "I... trusted him and he shot me... I was such a jerk. Believing a man."

Then she died.

"That's the biz, sweetheart," Remo said and moved on. "They should have drowned you at birth."

* * *

The Master of Sinanju was almost there. The tunnel was damp and cool, and he could feel it in his bones despite his robes. Ahead, chinks of light indicated a door not properly fitted. That light had been the only illumination in the blackness of the tunnel.

Chiun paused to listen. He heard nothing ahead of him, but after a space, he heard slow footsteps behind him. Not Remo. The Russian. He had escaped and followed the Master of Sinanju.

Chiun, all but invisible in the darkness, pushed himself against the earthen side of the tunnel and allowed the Russian to pass by him. Let the Russian blunder through the door on his own, if that was his wish. If he was not killed immediately, then Chiun would know that it was safe to proceed.

* * *

Seeing the old Korean disappear into the ground several hundred yards from the odd-shaped building, Pavel Zarnitsa naturally assumed that Chiun and Remo had both gone into the tunnel. He waited briefly, then entered the tunnel. The Americans would blaze the trail for him so he could safely follow.

The tunnel was black as a Politburo limousine, and Pavel was forced to feel his way along the walls, which seemed to go on forever until the vague outline of a door showed ahead. There was no sign of the two Americans. Good. They had already gone in. Now Pavel Zarnitsa would go in, too.

He put his shoulder to the yielding door.

The room was circular. Fluorescent lights flickered bluely from the ceiling, which gave the room something of the aspect of a hospital operating room. Or a morgue.

There was a small control console opposite the place where Pavel found himself. A figure was seated at that console, watching a television screen on which Remo Williams could be seen moving down a winding corridor. The figure was dressed in a long purple garment something like a monk's cassock but without the cowl. Above its collar rose the figure's head, which was a pinkish bulb twice the size of a human's and the color of the inside of someone's eyelid. Pavel could not see the World Master's face, who sat with his back to the Russian, but he did see the twin sets of spindly arms hanging uselessly from the armholes of the purple garment.

Two other arms— human ones— projected from the front of the garment to manipulate the console buttons.

Pavel eased forward, trying to make no sound. But he made a sound.

The World Master turned in his chair, causing his false arms to rattle like kindling. But Pavel wasn't thinking of them, or of the unearthly face that now faced his own. He was thinking of the familiar baritone voice that came from the slit mouth beneath the single fisheye set in the center of the World Master's pink face.

"Pavel! You fool. You stupid fool— you do not belong here!"

"Chuzhoi!" Pavel croaked incredulously. "What is this? What—"

"Idiot," the expressionless face said. "You have stumbled upon a GRU operation. The greatest of all time."

"No," Pavel said hollowly. "You cannot do this. Exploding a nuclear weapon in the United States is wrong. You—"

"You will not stop me," the other said, drawing a revolver. "I cannot allow you to interfere."

Pavel stepped back in shock. "You would shoot me? I am your brother!"

* * *

The ceiling changed. It was no longer smooth, Remo saw. Instead, for about six feet, it was perforated with hundreds of tiny holes. Beyond that, just visible around the bend, the ceiling was smooth again.

Remo became a blur, and thus sped through the danger zone before any of the acid that squirted from above could hit him. He looked back and saw the acid spatter and blacken the floor. Fumes curled up and reached toward him. Before Remo could move on, he saw another perforated section of ceiling revealed just ahead. It, too, began raining acid. And the acid formed puddles, which spilled in the direction of Remo's feet.

There was barely time for the fact that he was trapped to sink in when Remo heard the sound of gunshots through the walls followed by a trailing scream.