People rushed to his side. "Grab him! Don't let him sink!"
Gripping hands tried. They only slipped through the man's seemingly solid form. No one could touch him.
When he saw the marble floor creeping up to his waist, he screamed. It was a long scream. It went on for as long as he continued to sink and a little while after.
The last thing to go was his black fireman's hat.
Wide-eyed shoppers shrank back from the spot where the poor fireman had last been seen. They could see him scream, but no audible sounds reached their ears.
After that, those trapped in the lobby lost all hope and stared out the great windows like dull creatures in a zoo.
The Master of Sinanju regarded the lines of frightened faces from a position behind police lines.
He stood barely five feet tall, yet he stood out of the crowd like a lapis lazuli fireplug. This, despite the fact that several New Yorkers had crawled into their trick-or-treat costumes early.
His blue-and-gold kimono shimmered like the finest of silks. He carried his hands before him, tucked into the garment's wide, touching sleeves. His face was a webwork of wrinkles, like a papyrus death mask upon which spiders had toiled delicately over centuries.
In contrast to the stiffness in his visage, his young, hazel eyes looked out with a sharpness belying his full century of life.
"Nice costume," said a red-faced ghoul at his elbow.
"Thank you," Chiun replied in a chilly voice, not wishing to acknowledge the interruption.
"Love the mask."
Chiun's eyes narrowed. He looked up. The crown of his head, bald as an amber egg, wrinkled above the eyebrow line. There were two puffs of cloudy white over each ear. A tendril of similar color clung from his tiny chin.
"Mask?"
"Yeah. What are you supposed to be? Bozo the Chinaman, or what?"
The steely eyes lost their hard glitter. They flew wide.
"I am Korean, white!"
"No offense. The mask looks Chinese."
The Master of Sinanju's tiny mouth thinned even more. What manner of imbecile was this, who could look upon the sweet face of Chiun, Reigning Master of Sinanju, and mistake it for that of mask?
"I wear no mask," he said frostily.
"Ha-ha," laughed the ghoul. "That's so old, it's almost funny again."
This was too much for Chiun, who slipped the toe of one of his sandals onto the man's instep. The man never felt any pressure when his toe bones impacted all at once, sending waves of searing pain up into his nervous system.
This had a predictable result. The man screamed and began hopping in place.
Inasmuch as this had taken place but minutes after the fireman had vanished in plain view of everyone, it was enough to ignite the low spark of hysteria.
"The sidewalk! It's going here too!"
In a mad rush, the area surrounding the Master of Sinanju and the hopping wretch who had had the misfortune to insult him was cleared. The fire trucks pulled back. Word that the instability in the sidewalk was growing raced about like wildfire.
Normally, New York crowds have to be beaten back with mounted police and water cannon. But in this case, panic was enough to motivate even the stubbornest gawker.
In less than twenty minutes, a four-block area surrounding the Rumpp Tower was clear to the last person. A new perimeter was hastily established.
From a place of concealment in the deserted B. Dalton's bookstore, the Master of Sinanju smiled thinly. With one blow, he had reprimanded an insolent idiot and created space in which to work without attracting undue attention or angering his employer, whom he believed was the secret emperor of America, known privately as Harold the Mad.
Now all that remained was to learn the nature of this sorcery before Remo arrived.
For not even in the five-thousand-year annals of the House of Sinanju, greatest house of assassins in human history, was there recorded any such magic as this taking hold of a building.
And that, more than the quiet horror that had befallen the most opulent landmark on Manhattan's gold coast, was what troubled the Master of Sinanju's parchment face more than anything else.
Chapter 4
Word of the bizarre fate that had overtaken the Rumpp Tower reached the ears of Broadcast Corporation of North America superanchorwoman Cheeta Ching, while she was giving an interview in her office.
"Don't bother me now!" she blazed, when her assistant poked her head in.
"But Miss Ching . . ."
All cameras and microphones turned from Cheeta's angry glare to that of her white-faced assistant.
Realizing that she was courting a PR disaster, Cheeta slapped the angry lines from her face and put a little sugar in her tone.
"All right. You may speak."
"It's a story. A big one."
Cheeta Ching had been in the midst of recounting her latest triumph. It was bigger than her Jell-O breast implant expose, or her four-part series on testosterone dementia, or the classic "Why Men are Bad."
It was the culmination of her three-year campaign to become with child. From the moment word had gotten out, Cheeta, who had walked off Eyeball-to-Eyeball with Cheeta Ching to undertake "the heroic struggle," had become a celebrity in her own right. The ultimate career woman who was having it all.
Even flush with biological triumph, she still wanted it all. All, in this case, meant the anchor chair at her network.
"One moment," Cheeta said crisply, excusing herself. She moved quickly to the door.
"What's this about a story?" one of her interviewers inquired nervously.
"I'll find out for you," Cheeta said helpfully.
She shut the door. The last sight they had of Cheeta Ching was of her treacly professional smile, set in a flat face so heavily made up it looked like a petri dish overwhelmed by mold spores.
Then they heard the lock click. Shocked glances were exchanged.
"She wouldn't . . . !"
Then came Cheeta's loud, screeching voice.
"Don't let them out until I'm on the air with this thing, whatever it is!"
"That Korean shark!" a reporter screamed.
Cheeta's next words were, "Does Cooder know about this?"
"No," said her nervous assistant.
"Perfect. Let me break it to him."
She hurried down the corridor to Dan Cooder's office and poked her glossy head in. "Hi Don," she said sweetly.
"Get lost!" snarled BCN anchor Don Cooder, not bothering to look up from his latest Nielsen standings.
"Hear about the Lincoln Tunnel collapse?"
"What!"
"I'd take it myself, but I'm giving an interview on the state of my world-famous womb."
"I owe you one," said Don Cooder, blasting past her like a hurricane with hair.
Ten minutes later, Cheeta Ching was piling out of a microwave van and tearing through the crowd like a bulldozer in high heels.
"Who's in charge here?" she asked a cop.
The officer pointed to a fire marshal. "The marshal is. At least, until the National Guard gets here."
Cheeta thrust her flat face into the fire marshal's grizzled, weatherbeaten features. "Sheriff . . ."
"Marshal."
"Let's have your story."
"No time. We're still stabilizing the situation. Now get back."
"I will not get back," Cheeta hissed. "I demand my rights as a dual minority-female and Korean."
"I am woman, hear me roar," the fire marshal muttered.
Cheeta lifted her mike to his face. "What was that? I didn't catch that."
"I said, 'Get back, please.' "
Cheeta Ching turned on her cameraman, snapping, "Follow me."
The cameraman meekly followed. Cheeta skirted the crowd until she found an opening.
She reached back, found the cameraman's tie, and using it as a leash, yanked him through the opening.
"Miss Ching! What are you doing?"
"Just keep your eye to the viewfinder and the tape rolling. I'll get you through the rest. Trust me."