There was no one in the hall.
A strange and sickening mustiness filled the air. Remo set his breathing low, tuning out the smell. He trailed the Master of Sinanju through the apartment.
The rest of the rooms were like the hallway, all stacked with ancient bric-a-brac.
In one room Remo thought he saw a shadow move. But he sensed no life. Not even vermin. The dust didn't dance.
Keying up his senses, he followed Chiun to the far rear of the big apartment and into the main living room.
The big room was neater than the other rooms. The clutter extended in here, but there was more order to it. Unlike the rest of the apartment, it looked as if someone cleaned in here from time to time.
Sitting in the middle of the room was a chair.
It was made of dark, carved wood and plush cloth. The material was a little threadbare, but the wood retained a deep, just-polished finish. Remo realized it was more than a chair. Although it had nothing on the throne he had seen back in Buckingham Palace, it had that same regal feel as the seat from which the queen of England ruled.
Seated atop this plain throne of wood was a young boy.
The boy couldn't have been much more than thirteen or fourteen. His clothes had been rich at one time, but had seen better days. A few small holes peppered his shirtfront. Where the fabric was torn, Remo saw sparkling jewels.
The teenager didn't appear to be surprised at their appearance. With eyes that seemed lost in the dream of another age, he watched the two men approach.
Remo was about to question the Master of Sinanju, but the old Korean shot him a silencing glare.
With great reverence the old man approached the tawdry throne. He offered a deep, formal bow.
In a foreign tongue Remo now thought he recognized, the Master of Sinanju addressed the child. They spoke for a brief time, Chiun showing the boy the sort of respect Sinanju usually reserved for leaders of powerful nations. When the teenager spoke, his words were very slow coming. Even Remo with his supersensitive ears had to strain to hear them.
The boy's voice was not the same one that had growled at them from the downstairs speaker.
The audience was brief. Chiun offered another formal bow before backing from the throne. The boy watched him go with the same dreamlike eyes. He seemed like a lost and flickering memory, projected from another time.
Remo fell in step with his teacher on the way out of the big upstairs chamber.
"That sounded like Russian," Remo whispered as they made their way back through the maze of rooms. "Of course," the Master of Sinanju replied. "What else would you expect Russian to sound like?"
"So the kid's a Russian. Well, I know he's not their latest president, 'cause the kid's taller. So who the hell is he?"
"That was the czarevitch," Chiun explained. "He is the son of the last czar and crown prince of Russia."
Remo frowned. "Can't be," he insisted. "Didn't the Commies murder the last Russian czar and his entire family a hundred years ago?"
"That is what the world thought and is made to think to this day. However, two of his children escaped thanks in part to the intervention of my father. The rumors that they had fled to safety are well-known."
Remo only felt his confusion growing. "So what are you saying, that was his grandson?"
"No," Chiun said darkly. "I told you, that is Czar Alexis Romanov, youngest child and only son of the murdered Czar Nicholas II. Heir to the Russian throne."
Remo stopped dead. "Okay, you lost me. How can that be Czar Nickelodeon's kid if the czar was shot back at the end of the nineteenth century?"
"July 16, 1918," the Master of Sinanju corrected.
"Okay, twentieth. It doesn't matter. He'd still be, what, a hundred about now?"
"He is close to that venerable age."
"Right. There's where you lose me. That kid's barely out of junior-high school. How-?"
He didn't have time to finish his question.
There was a sudden compression of air behind him. It shouldn't have been there. Couldn't have been there. It was not mechanical. Nothing had launched from the wall. There were no panels popping or springs firing. This was a human stroke, yet Remo's senses had warned him of no human threat. All his instincts told him that all behind was air even as the knife lunged at him from the darkness.
Remo dodged just in time. He pivoted on his right foot, twisting out of the knife's path. The thrusting blade that had been aimed for his lower back slipped by harmlessly.
When Remo glimpsed his attacker, his first instinct was to call Universal Studios to see if any of their 1930s movie monsters had escaped.
The man wore a black robe with a cowl that encircled his head. His skin looked as if it had been drained of fluid. The face was sunken and pale, the deep creases filled with grime. His strings of ancient black beard were gnarled grease. The nails on the hand that clutched the dagger were long and twisted and caked with filth. He seemed shorter than he should have been, hunched as he was inside his robes.
But worst of all-the thing that would have sent children diving for cover under their beds and made otherwise sensible villagers form torch-wielding mobs to storm the local castle-were the man's eyes.
His eyes seemed twice as large as those of a normal man's. Pupils swam in seas of bloodshot whites. They never blinked. They just stared from the black depths of the man's cowl.
Remo had barely reacted to the first attack, barely got a glimpse of the demented man, before the stranger attacked again. Fingers clutching more tightly around the handle, the man jabbed hard at Remo's exposed belly.
This time Remo was prepared. When the knife was an inch away from slicing open his abdomen, he simply slapped the underside of the man's wrist.
The blade launched up and buried deep in the man's throat. The eyes bugged even wider, and the wretched creature dropped like a stone to the dusty floor.
Remo whirled on the Master of Sinanju. "What the hell was that?" he demanded.
The old Korean stood near a pile of ancient Russian knick-knacks, a bland expression on his face.
"The best old Russia has to offer. Pitiful," he tsked.
Remo sniffed the air.
"Pee-yew," he groused. "I thought the eyes were the worst, but the stink's got them beat by a country mile. It's not the building that reeks, it's him."
He jabbed a thumb in the direction of the corpse. Or, rather, where the corpse had been.
The body was no longer there.
"What the hell?" Remo asked, just as the knife jammed hard toward his back.
He jumped and spun.
The weird-eyed man was back on his feet, standing silently behind Remo, thrusting with his dagger. Remo strained his ears even as he dodged the blade.
There was not a standard heartbeat. Just a momentary fluttering. A faint gurgle of life deep in the man's chest.
Slapping the knife back again, Remo buried the dagger where the gurgle gurgled. It stopped gurgling. His clawlike hand fleeing the knife handle, the man fell to the floor once more, the dagger buried deep in his chest.
As his black robes settled, he grew very still. "All right," Remo insisted to the Master of Sinanju. "I killed that guy the first time."
"Probably," Chiun admitted glumly.
Remo opened his mouth to say more. Before the words could even come, he heard a faint squeak. His face growing shocked, he looked for the source.
On the floor, the dead man had taken hold of the knife handle once more. Metal squeaked on flesh as he slowly withdrew it from his lifeless heart. Once the blade was removed, the faint gurgle began again.
Remo wheeled on Chiun, his eyes wide. "What is this guy, freaking Freddy Krueger?"