In a matter of minutes, Remo had reached the cordon. Kegs of barbed wire were being unrolled to keep back the crowds. National Guard APCs and sentries were stationed at every corner and lamp post. They didn't seem to be doing much, other than watching the crowd with one eye and the gleaming tower with the other.
The tower looked perfectly normal. Or as normal as a modern skyscraper, with dirt loam hanging over its lower terraces and trees growing up from that, could possibly look. Remo had read somewhere that Randal Rumpp had ordered the trees planted to give the building a friendly, organic look. Instead, it made Remo think of an abandoned temple the jungle was just beginning to reclaim.
The sun was reflected in its upper stories, burnishing it to a bright golden bronze. From the ground, its irregular roof line gave the impression of a mammoth crystal calliope. Remo was still surprised at how thin and unimposing it was. From all the hype about it, he had expected another Empire State Building.
To Remo's trained senses, something was very, very wrong about the Rumpp Tower. He was getting a cool fall breeze directly from the tower. Not swirling around it, as gusts typically do around tall skyscrapers. The wind was blowing through the Rumpp Tower. Definitely.
Yet the trees stood still.
Remo looked around the crowd. There was no sign of Chiun. But the cordon had been cast so wide that the Master of Sinanju might be anywhere.
"First things first," Remo muttered.
He pushed through the edges of the crowd to a man in National Guard camos. The crowd gave before Remo without realizing what was happening. He would pinch or prod-once he snapped the wrist of a pickpocket in the act of dipping into a woman's shoulder bag-until he reached the National Guardsman.
The Guardsman wore captain's bars, and was anxiously scanning the skies.
"Captain," Remo began to say.
The captain looked down, frowning. Remo flashed an ID card that identified him as an agent of the Foreign Technology Department of the U.S. Air Force.
The captain blinked. "FORTEC?"
Remo nodded soberly. "We think this is saucer-related."
The captain made a face.
"Don't believe in them," he snorted.
"Tell that to Randal Rumpp, who's probably brushing up on his Venusian even as we speak," Remo said flatly. "I'm looking for my colleague. He's Korean. Very old. And wears native costume."
"Haven't seen him. He's not here."
"If you haven't seen him," Remo said seriously, "that counts as proof he's probably here. Listen, if he lets you spot him, tell him Remo Gavin is looking for him."
"That's you?"
"Today it is," said Remo, moving on. Remo got on the other side of the barbed wire, flashing his FORTEC card and describing Chiun to each person he encountered. He had read somewhere that over sixty percent of Americans believed in flying saucers. From the response he got to his FORTEC ID, Remo decided the pollsters had severely underestimated their count.
At one point, a Coast Guard helicopter clattered overhead. Everyone stopped to see what it would do. Including Remo.
At first, the chopper-it was a white Sikorsky Sea Stallion-contented itself with buzzing the tower like a plump, noisy pelican.
Evidently, the pilot decided to drop lower to see into the Tower windows. The Sikorsky descended straight down on its wide rotor disk.
It was a smooth descent. At first. But the wind gusts that blew harmlessly through the insubstantial Rumpp Tower were swirling and spiraling around other tall buildings, creating the kind of turbulence that plucks hats off pedestrians.
One eddy pushed the Sikorsky into the south side of the tower.
A collective gasp rose from the crowd. Faces turned away. Others craned eagerly to see.
They all saw what Remo Williams saw.
The rotor blades chopped through the golden panes. They beat wildly, as the pilot attempted to correct his equilibrium.
Not a pane of glass shattered. Other than the rotor whine, no noise came from above.
The chopper pitched and turned. In his effort to clear the tower, the pilot managed to send the tail rotor slipping into the facade. It disappeared as if into still golden water.
"It's being sucked in!" someone screamed.
It looked that way. But only for a moment.
The white Sikorsky veered back into view and, evidently giving up, rattled eastward like a frightened bird.
"Okay," Remo said to himself, "it's not really there."
A screechy voice from somewhere near called, "Rocco!"
"Oh no," moaned Remo. Without looking in the direction of the voice, he ducked down and tried to move as far away from the sound as he could.
The voice called after him. This time it said, "Beppo!"
"Not even warm," Remo muttered.
He slipped back into the crowd at a convenient spot and tried to blend in. He took a moment to break the thumbs of another pickpocket, and to his surprise the moment the man began screaming the area around Remo cleared, as if the people were water and evaporation was taking place.
"The sidewalk's going here, too!" a voice shrieked.
It came from a disheveled man who had been holding a soup can in one hand and a sign that said HELP ME. I AM AN AIDS VICTIM in the other. He was the fifth AIDS panhandler Remo had passed in the crowd, which Remo thought as demographically unlikely as spotting zebra in Central Park. And he ran like a marathon runner.
Since the sudden evacuation had left Remo as exposed as a baby's behind, he moved with the crowd as far as the Rolex Building. There he broke off and slipped into an alley, where he almost stepped on the burning human hand.
Remo stopped. The hand was definitely human. It was shriveled, and a pale, waxy yellow. It was set in a kind of ebony base, with the thumb and fingers pointing skyward.
The tips of each digit glowed with a sick green light.
Before Remo could take it in, a cool voice from the shadows intoned, "You see. You cannot escape your destiny."
Remo hesitated. Before he could reverse himself the screechy voice, sounding very close now, called, "Geno! Oh, Geno!"
Remo groaned like a wounded bear. He had no place to run now.
Chapter 6
"Harm not ye hand of glory," warned Delpha Rohmer, as she emerged from the shadows, her pale hands making weaving patterns in the air before her. The spidery hem of her long black gown swept the dirty concrete, quickly turning gray with urban grime.
"Glory hand?" Remo asked, one eye on the alley mouth.
"It is potent magic. It will dispel any visitant from the nether realms."
Remo brightened. "Does it work on anchorwomen?" he asked.
"I do not understand."
Cheeta Ching picked that exact moment to burst into the alley, huffing as if from a hard run.
"Guido!"
"Not even close," Remo said.
Cheeta showed her teeth in a smug grin. "I have something to tell you," she said.
"Go ahead."
"I'm pregnant."
"I know. It's on the cover of every magazine in sight."
"And you're not the father."
"Louder. I want there to be no doubt."
"But you could have been," Cheeta said quickly. "You could have been the father to the most famous baby to be born in the nineties. Mine."
"I stand chastised," Remo said sourly. "My life in ruins."
"Good. I wanted you to understand the golden opportunity you lost when you spurned me."
At that point, Cheeta's predatory eye fell on the shadowy figure of Delpha Rohmer.
"Who is this?" she demanded.
Remo decided to go with the flow. "Cheeta, meet Delpha. Delpha, meet Cheeta. Delpha's a witch. Cheeta just rhymes."
Both women looked blank.
"What?"
"What?"