"He wasn't no Russian," Ned insisted. "Told me he was a Czech."
Remo sighed. "Did he wear a white coverall suit?"
"That's the one."
"Now we're getting someplace. Where'd you take him?"
"I dropped him off at the Holiday Inn on Interstate Twenty-nine."
"Great. Appreciate it."
When Remo rejoined the others, Ed asked, "Ned help you out?"
"He did. Thanks," Remo told him.
"Good. Because if he didn't, I woulda boxed his ears. Ned's my twin brother."
"Thanks," Remo said as he climbed back into the jeep. He nodded to the driver and they drove off, Ed waving an oily rag in farewell.
As they tore along the road, the sun came up, turning the distant sky orange.
"He was dropped off at a Holiday Inn," Remo told the driver. "Know it?"
"Sure. All the .local hookers work out of that one."
"Good. Take us there."
"You don't think you'll actually find him there, do you?" Robin demanded. "Wouldn't he have switched to a car or another cab?"
"One halting step at a time," Remo said.
The desk clerk was extremely helpful. He told them that he would have to speak to the manager before he could answer any questions about the hotel's guests.
Robin Green, putting on a charming if strained smile, leaned over the desk and whispered something low and breathy.
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The clerk leaned forward, his brows growing together as he concentrated. His eyes fell to Robin's ample chest.
"I didn't quite catch that, miss," he began.
Then Robin yanked his face down onto the shiny countertop and stuck a cocked automatic in his left ear.
"I said if you're hard of hearing, I got just the thing to clean the wax out of your ears," she shouted.
The desk clerk looked to Remo with wild, pleading eyes.
"I'd answer her," Remo said seriously. "She's been like that all day." He smiled. The clerk's face sagged like hot taffy
"Foreign accent? White coveralls?" he said quickly. "Room 5-C. Been here two weeks. He's registered as Ivan Grozny."
"Thank you," Robin said politely, releasing the desk clerk."You've been very helpful. Anything else you care to tell us?"
"The elevator's around the corner."
They started for the elevator. Remo paused to have a word with the desk clerk. "If you're thinking of giving the room a buzz to warn anyone, don't. We know where you work."
"My break starts in five minutes."
"Why not get a head start on it?" Remo suggested pleasantly. "You probably don't want to be on duty when the fun starts."
They exited the elevator on the fifth floor. Remo led them to the room marked 5-C. He waved for them to stay back, and slipped under the door peephole. No sense in taking any chances.
Remo put his ear to the door. He heard the unmistakable beeping of a Touch-Tone telephone at work. Good, Remo thought. He's preoccupied. Remo got down on the garish red-and-blue rug and tried to peer under the crack in the door. He was in luck. He saw
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the legs of assorted furniture. And near a circular lampstand stood a pair of white plastic boots. They were sharp and clear this time. Not fuzzy-looking at all. And they didn't glow.
Remo took that as a good sign. He eased himself to his feet and joined the others.
"He's making a call," Remo told them. "This is perfect. Chiun and I will go first. You stay back until we subdue him. If we can."
"Try to stop me!" Robin said, waving her automatic.
Remo calmly relieved Robin of her weapon. He held it up and shoved his index finger down the barrel. The mechanism cracked. The slide fell off.
"I meant it," Remo warned, leaving Robin to stare at her maimed weapon in wonderment.
"Ready, Chiun?" Remo asked. They placed themselves on either side of the door. Chiun nodded silently.
"Okay," Remo said."One ... two ... three!"
Remo cracked the lock with a short-armed blow while Chiun pulverized the hinge-supporting wood with hammerlike blows. The door felt in like a ramp.
They jumped in. And stopped dead in their tracks.
The room was empty. The telephone receiver dropped to the rug with a soft thud.
"Damn!" Remo snapped. "He's made his move. Search everywhere."
Chiun pulled open the bathroom door. It was empty. Remo checked the closet. Also empty. They looked out the window. The parking lot was deserted.
Remo lunged into the corridor. "He slipped through one of the walls," he shouted. "Knock on every door. Someone must have seen him. You, airman. Call the front desk. Keep an open line. I want to know if he tries to escape through the lobby."
Remo knocked on the next room. Getting no answer, he forced it. The room was dark. Deserted. He hurried to the next room. A sleepy man answered.
"See anything of a man in white?" Remo asked
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earnestly. "With no face? We think he might have walked through your walls."
The door slammed in Remo's face and the guest could be heard angrily complaining to the front desk.
Working her way down the corridor, Robin knocked on doors. She was propositioned twice and had to slap one man who refused to take no for an answer.
They rendezvoused near the elevator.
"No sign of him," the SP reported. "Nobody fits the description the gas-station owner gave us. And he wasn't seen in the lobby."
"Then he's gotta be on this floor," Remo offered.
"Maybe he's a master of disguise," Robin suggested.
At the end of a half-hour they had marched every hotel guest out of his or her room.
"Repeat after me," Chiun was telling them. "Krahseevah."
"Krahseevah," they recited. Or those who remained conscious did.
"No, one at a time," Chiun said. "I wish to hear your accents."
One by one, the fifth-floor guests repeated the word krahseevah in accents ranging from a mellow Califor-nian warble to a midwestern twang.
"None of them is Russian," Chiun decided,
"Maybe he's a voice mimic," Remo suggested.
"We're wasting our time," Robin insisted. "He got away. Maybe down the stairs or the elevator."
"No, at least one of us was in the hallway at all times. He couldn't have taken the stairs or the elevator."
"But he's not on this floor. Unless . . . unless he's inside one of the walls."
"Then we will tear down every treasonous wall until we uncover the culprit," Chiun announced, to the horror of everyone, including Remo.
"What do you think?" Remo asked Robin.
"We gotta get this guy. Let's do it!"
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When the lobby switchboard lit up with frightened calls that the fifth floor was being systematically dismantled by maniacs, the police were called. Two patrolmen entered from the elevator with their service revolvers drawn.
Robin met them with a hard face and a resolute tone of voice.
"We have a report of a disturbance on this floor," one of the cops said in a dead monotone.
"Green, OSI," she said, flashing her ID. "We're confiscating this floor in the name of national security."
The cops hesitated. They examined her ID card carefully. Then they eyed her up and down, lingering wistfully on her bustline, which strained at her uniform blouse.
Finally they handed the card back to her. "Sounds like the hotel is being dismantled," one of them said while the other stared up and down the corridor.
"Just the walls on this floor," Robin said crisply. "We're looking for stolen military equipment we believe to be hidden in the walls."
The cops hesitated and went off into a corner to confer.
Finally they said, "We'll have to check with our superiors."
"Have them call Grand Forks AFB. But do it from the lobby. This floor is off-limits to civilians."
The police reluctantly departed. Robin found Remo and explained the situation to him.
Remo was tearing crumbling plaster chunks from the room the Krahseevah had occuped. "Can you really confiscate a hotel?" he asked, his hand crushing plaster like a jackhammer. "A tree I can understand. But an entire hotel?"