Harold Smith turned off the recorder. Resetting everything, he padded back to the folding stair.
Dawn found him next door examining the darkened living room in his flannel bathrobe, purchased in 1973 at a yard sale and still serviceable.
The room was unremarkable, as was the floor where the apparition had appeared.
Smith stood on that spot, mentally summoning up every kernel of knowledge he possessed that related to paranormal phenomena. Smith did not believe in the paranormal, but over the years he had been exposed to enough imponderables that his once-razorlike skepticism had been dulled to a vaguely suspicious curiosity.
The room itself was unremarkable. No cold spot. He checked each window, knowing that lightning flashes had the ability to imprint the photographic image of a person who stood too close the glass. No angle of examination revealed a lightning-flash print, however. Not that he expected to find one. His video camera had absolutely picked up a three-dimensional phenomenon.
When he had exhausted every possibility, Harold Smith prepared to go.
He was walking to the kitchen when the light grew. It was lavender. Like a distant flare.
"What on earth?" Smith whirled. His gray eyes fluttered in disbelief.
The Master of Sinanju stood only inches away, looking stern and vaguely afraid.
"Master Chiun?" Smith asked. He felt no fear. Just a cool intellectual curiosity. He had never believed in ghosts. But having come to the conclusion that Hindu gods might have entered the affairs of men, he put his skepticism aside. Momentarily.
The apparition gave him a querulous look. It had animation. Smith reached forward. His hand passed through the image. His gray eyes skating about the room, he dismissed a holographic source for the image.
"Er, what can I do for you, Master Chiun?" Smith asked, at a loss for something more appropriate.
The Master of Sinanju pointed down at the floor.
"I fail to understand. Can you speak?"
Chiun pointed once more.
Smith tucked his white-stubbled chin in one hand. His pale eyebrows crept together in thought.
"Hmmm," he mused aloud. "Remo said something about this. Now, why would a spirit point to the floor? You cannot be pointing specifically at this floor, and therefore at the basement, because I understand you first appeared to Remo in the desert, where you . . . um . . . apparently died. Am I warm?"
Chiun's birdlike head bobbed in agreement.
"And you cannot be telling Remo that he now walks in your sandals because that would not be an appropriate message to give to me, correct?"
Chiun nodded again. His hazel eyes brightened with hope.
"Therefore, the meaning of your gesture is neither abstract nor symbolic. Hmmm."
Smith's fingers came away from his chin. He snapped them once.
"Yes, I understand now."
A look of relief washed over the wrinkled visage of the Master of Sinanju-then he was gone like a dwindling candle.
Harold Smith turned determinedly on his heel and left by the rear door, locking it with the same duplicate key that had given him secret access to install the monitoring equipment that might just have saved the Middle East from conflagration.
If he hurried.
Chapter 38
For once, official Washington was not leaking.
Despite the Iraiti feint into forward positions of the Hamidi Arabian Defensive Fan-as the Pentagon called it with straight-faced soberness-the news media were unaware of the fact that for a few brief moments in the neutral zone there had been hostilities.
The blustering from Abominadad continued. And was ignored.
The story of the U.S. assassin-defector prompted only the most peremptory journalistic questions at the daily press briefing held at the Department of State.
"The U.S. government does not employ assassins," was the curt reply of the briefing officer, a serious-voiced spokeswoman who had been accused by the press of being dull as dirt. Which in journalese meant that she did her job and did not leak.
A reporter pressed the point.
"Is that a denial?" he asked blandly.
"Let me remind you of Executive Order Number 12333, which specifically forbids the use of assassination as a tool of foreign policy," she retorted. "And further, I can confirm to you that this individual, who has yet to be identified by name, is neither a current nor a past employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency., or the Defense Intelligence Agency. We do not know him."
The briefing moved on to the real meat. Namely, the whereabouts of Reverend Juniper Jackman and news anchor Don Cooder.
"Our sources indicate that both men are sharing a suite at the Sheraton Shaitan in downtown Abominadad and are not repeat, not being used as human shields," the spokeswoman said.
"Are they getting along?" asked anchorwoman Cheeta Ching, who had lunged for Don Cooder's anchor desk like a hammerhead shark after a bluefin tuna.
A ripple of laughter floated through the press.
"I have no information on that," was the clipped, nononsense reply.
At the Sheraton Shaitan, Don Cooder was climbing the walls.
More accurately, he was trying to climb the door of the suite he shared with Reverend Juniper Jackman, The transom was too narrow to admit his brachycephalic head, never mind his body.
"I can't stand it anymore!" he howled in anguish. "That Korean witch has probably ruined my ratings by now!"
"Improved them, if you ask me," called Reverend Jackman from the bathroom. He had been sitting on the toilet, with the seat down, all during their captivity. He figured the tiled bathroom was the safest place to be in the event of a U.S. air strike.
"They won't strike while I'm a prisoner. I'm a national symbol," Don Cooder had said.
"You're a bleeping journalist," Reverend Jackman retorted hotly. "I'm a presidential candidate. They won't bomb 'cause of me, not you."
"Failed presidential candidate. You're irrelevant."
"Says who. Mr. Dead-Last-in-the-Ratings?"
"Me, for one. To ninety million people. Besides, you're a syndicated talk-show host now. That puts you on the same plane as Morton Downey Jr. There's an idea. Maybe he'll be your running mate next time."
They had argued thus for two days. The argument had grown particularly heated since Reverend Jackman had refused to give up the toilet seat to Don Cooder, fearing that, once lost, it could never be regained.
As a consequence, Don Cooder had been holding all bodily functions in abeyance for two days and was now approaching criticality. And he was not going to go on the rug. If they ever got out of this alive, his critics would be armed with another embarrassing personal anecdote for him to live down.
So, the closed transom looked like his best bet.
"If you're so important," Reverend Jackman taunted, "why are you trying to save your skin? I should be the one trying to escape. I'm a political bargaining chip."
"Trade?" Don Cooder asked hopefully, feeling his bowels move.
"No."
Cooder resumed his attempt to climb the door to the transom, impelled by visions of Cheeta Ching chaining herself to his anchor chair and refusing to give it up. She was a notorious glory hound.
And if there was anything Don Cooder despised, it was a glory hound.
Ultimately. it was not concern over the fate of either Don Cooder or Reverend Juniper Jackman that forced the President of the United States to cave in to the President of Irait's demands that Ambassador Abaatira be produced.
It was the American news media.
The ambassador's death was one of Washington's best-kept secrets. It had been easy enough to disclaim any knowledge of the ambassador's whereabouts when even his own consulate had no inkling of what might have befallen him.
But when CNN reports coming out of Abominadad replayed the accusation that Ambassador Abaatira had been murdered by U.S. agents, the President knew he had a problem.