He might have teleported himself, except instead of materializing in their midst, he dropped down on them from above.

  Landing in the splayed-spider position, Remo took out all three with short-armed punches and slap-kicks. Their guns clanked to the floor, unfired, dragging their dead owners down with them.

  Dancing away, Remo turned to the patiently waiting Master of Sinanju and asked, "Aren't you going to help?"

  "I found this place. I have earned a respite from this hectic assignment."

  "There's nothing hectic about this assignment."

  "You are making a great deal of noise for one whose task is yet to be completed."

  As if to demonstrate Chiun's comment, another panel rolled aside to disgorge a pair of thick-skulled Russians wearing black uniforms stripped of any insignia.

  "Point taken," said Remo. "I come in peace for all mankind," he told the pair, who clutched foldingstock Kalashnikov rifles.

  They seemed to understand English because they hesitated.

  One asked a harsh question: "What do you do here, Amerikanski? This is simple tailor shop."

  "My mistake. I thought it was Shchit headquarters."

  The pair exchanged glances, their eyes got sick and they mumbled unhappy excuses in a mix of English and Russian before taking their muzzles into their mouths and yanking back on the triggers.

  Like watermelons under a chopping machine, their heads disintegrated and they fell dead.

  "Check this out, Chiun," said Remo. "Guess I was right, after all. They liquidated themselves because their cover was blown."

  Chiun floated to the panel and kicked it in, disclosing a long stainless-steel corridor marked by a ceiling-mounted security camera.

  "They're going to see us coming," Remo warned.

  Chiun nodded firmly. "This is good. It will encourage fear in their craven hearts."

  "I wasn't thinking of that. Smitty'll have puppies if our faces are broadcast all over Moscow."

  The Master of Sinanju considered.

  "I will show you a trick you do not know, Remo," Chiun said thinly. He shook his head from side to side and kept shaking it until his pupil caught on.

  Together, they crossed into the bowels of the organization that had ordered their destruction.

  Chapter 26

  Colonel Radomir Rushenko was wolfing down a good proletarian lunch of red caviar on black bread chased down by a glass of warm kvass when the red light on his desk started to go bap-bap-bap-bap.

  The light happened to be buried under a sheaf of telexes from his operatives scattered about Russia and abroad, so the blinking light went unnoticed. The bapping was muffled, and at first Rushenko didn't hear it through the meaty sounds he made while consuming the overflowing sandwich.

  A telex from Kazakhstan, where a Shield operative watched over the Baikonur Cosmodrome, had his attention.

  Unable to develop reliable information at this time on recent Mir activities. Station not believed to be testing weapon.

  Another telex from his mole in Glavkosmos was more substantive:

  Widely believed here that recent Buran launch, reported to be test of new Mir docking coupler, was subsidized by commercial fee. Kremlin disinformation suspected. Unknown what was launched, by whom or for what purpose.

  Rushenko frowned heavily. This suggested a foreign contractor.

  The insistent bap-bap-bap of the desk alarm penetrated his thinking processes, and he swept the telexes away, scowling.

  It was the intruder alarm. It meant only one thing: a penetration.

  And penetration here in the most secret stronghold in holy Russia could mean only one of two things: the traitorods Russian police. Or worse, local mafiya biznesmeny intent upon extracting ransom from what was outwardly a legitimate business. It was absurd how these hooligans operated in the new, licentious Russia. Twice in the past, it was necessary to liquidate mafiya interlopers selling "protection." Yet still they came. Such things were inconceivable in the good old days of Red rule.

  Engaging his intercom, Rushenko got his chief of security.

  "I have an alarm. What is happening?"

  "Two men have penetrated the outermost circle, comrade Colonel."

  "Only two?"

  "We have six casualties. Reinforcements are on the way."

  "I am on my way," Rushenko said, rising from his chair so hastily his sandwich toppled to the floor. His shoes crushed a glop of red caviar into the red rug, and he tracked it down the corridor, whose scarlet ceiling lights proclaimed a highest-urgency penetration, and stormed into the security room.

  It was a nest of TV monitors and radio equipment in a very confined space. Even for Shield, Moscow floor space was at a premium.

  A Ukrainian in the uniform of the old Red Army but without insignia of rank was punching up views of the reception area, the second line of defense. This was the first penetration of the tailor-shop cover.

  Rushenko winced to see crack former Spetsnaz commandos lying in their own blood alongside the latest heroine of Mother Russia. There was no sign of their assailants.

  "Where are they?" he demanded, his hands turning to fists.

  The security man tapped a screen on the second tier of monitors. "There, comrade Colonel."

  Rushenko squinted. Two men were moving down the corridor. No sooner had he laid eyes on them than they vanished from sight. A pointing finger directed his gaze to another monitor that picked them up as they walked into an ambush.

  The ambush consisted of two Spetsnaz kneeling at either side of the corridor terminus.

  Rushenko smiled grimly. "They will not get past the outer ring alive."

  "They should not have gotten into the outer ring in the first place," the security chief said tightly.

  "Where are their weapons?" Rushenko asked suddenly.

  "They have none."

  And Rushenko lifted an eyebrow thick as a woolly caterpillar. "What is wrong with this camera?"

  "Nothing."

  "Their faces are two blurs."

  The security chief adjusted the monitor. Try as he might, the faces of the interlopers couldn't be clarified, though other details were quite sharp.

  "It does not matter," Rushenko grunted. "They will be dead soon."

  The faceless duo slipped up the corridor. The camera showed the two commandos lying in ambush, prepared to whip their weapons around the corner and spray the stainless-steel corridor in a withering cross fire.

  "All that will be left is blood and bio-matter for disposal," the security chief agreed.

  As the moment of truth neared, Colonel Rushenko and his security chief involuntarily tensed. The two strange ones walked along casually, as if entering a cafeteria. Had they no inkling of the danger? Or did they imagine this would be an easy penetration?

  The instant the two commandos jerked around their positions, Rushenko breathed, "Now!"

  The AKs erupted, spewing a cross fire, back and forth, back and forth, so that a ball bouncing randomly down the corridor would have been shot to pieces.

  Unfortunately the exact moment of truth was the same moment the pair jumped over the kneeling commandos. They landed in perfect synchronization, on one foot only, while the other kicked backward with studied viciousness. Both feet caught an unwary commando at the back of his head.

  And both commandos crumpled atop their quieting weapons. One fallen hero managed a last defiant trigger squeeze. Unfortunately all he got for his trouble was a burst through the soft tissues under his own chin, which made his face fall off like hard frosting from old cake.

  The two interlopers vanished around another corner like a pair of blur-featured ghosts.

  "Why are there only two?" Rushenko queried suddenly.

  "Perhaps," the security chief returned thickly, "two are all that is necessary."

  "Seal the passage."

  "Da. " A finger depressed a stud, and bulkhead doors dropped down on either end of approach corridor 4. They were almost into the middle ring. It was too dangerous to allow them to penetrate farther.

  "It is done," said the security chief.

  "Let them suffocate for lack of air."

  A switch was thrown. Pumps began sucking up the corridor's already stuffy air.

  The two seemed to understand their plight without consultation. They were very good. Just watching them, Rushenko realized they were trained agents.

  "These are not mafiya, " he muttered.

  "FSK?"

  "If so, they are men who are worthy of Shield. Their loss is regrettable."

  The intruders were at the inner steel door, touching it with their fingers, as if taking the metal's temperature.

  The corridor was miked. The security chief turned up the volume.

  He got an exchange of unfamiliar words.

  "What language is that?"

  Colonel Rushenko shook his head. It was not Russian. Nor American English. It was strange. The last thing he expected was a foreign agent. For if the Kremlin did not suspect the existence of Shield, what other nation could acquire that forbidden knowledge?

  "I have changed my mind," he said. "They must be interrogated before liquidation. Open the inner door."

  Before the order could be executed, the taller of the two punched the door at a point at the level of his head. The door rung out like a badly tuned gong. The entire installation shook for the briefest of moments.

  It was very disquieting. A human fist should not affect steel that way.

  Then, as the door shivered in the aftermath of the blow-clearly shivered-the tall one struck it again.

  It jumped clear of its frame as if a great electronic magnet had repelled it.

  "I am witnessing the impossible!" Rushenko blurted.

  "I am activating the next line of defense, comrade Colonel."

  The next line of defense was deadly in its simplicity.

  Floor vents began leaking kerosene, with its unmistakable odor. The ceiling water sprinklers suddenly ignited like upside-down hurricane lanterns.

  One began to drop sparks. Soon, they were all dropping rags of flame that touched the steel floor without consequence. But the kerosene was spreading now ....

  Grabbing the microphone, Colonel Rushenko barked into it. "If you wish to live, throw up your hands in surrender!"

  The two ignored his voice.

  Rushenko turned to his security aide. "Is this getting through?"

  "Da. Perhaps they do not speak Russian at all."

  "Then what would be their purpose in penetrating this installation?"

  "Perhaps they are lost tourists?"

  Colonel Rushenko tried English next. He never finished his warning.

  The two began turning off the ceiling lamps by the simple expedient of leaping up and squeezing the sprinklers shut. It was miraculous in its sheer simplicity. One went to one end of the corridor. The other stationed himself at its opposite end.

  Methodically they reached up and took hold of each steel aperture in turn. The audible crunk of the metal surrendering to their crushing grips came back through the sound system.

  Meeting in the middle, they closed off the last dripping flames just as the kerosene pool began meeting in the middle.

  Nimbly, they leaped over these until they reached the innermost door. This time the shorter of the two breached the barrier. His method was to spin in place and lash out a foot that sent the door screaming from its frame to bang on the floor.

  "They are not human," the security chief of Shield gasped.

  "They are human," insisted Colonel Rushenko. "They merely require special deaths before they will consent to die."

  "You no longer desire them alive?"

  "I desire them very much alive. But I am no fool. They are unconquerable. We must concentrate on proving them not to be unkillable."

  "The next corridor is a dead end," the security chief said.

  "Thank you for that information," a squeaky voice said in perfect if old-fashioned Russian.

  "Damn you! You left the connection open!" Rushenko roared as the two took the right branch, not the left.

  "This is not good," the security chief said, cutting off the circuit. "That branch will take them to the inner circle."

  Rushenko stood unmoving for nearly a minute, his dark Kazakh features working. "It was Korean," he muttered.

  "What?"

  "They spoke Korean," he said bitterly. "I should have known who they were before. But now I know. We must abandon this installation."

  "We have countermeasures remaining in inventory."

  "I am a fool. If these two have knowledge of us, however slim and imperfect, others do, too. We must evacuate. Give the command."

  "Yes, comrade Colonel," said the shaking security chief as he broke a key from a neck chain and inserted it into a panel. He turned it with a harsh twist.

  A Maxon blared over and over.

  "Come," said Colonel Rushenko, tearing from the room.

  Racing deeper into the Shield installation, he returned to his office. The paper-strewn desk stood as it had before, its red light going bap-bap-bap-bap like a spitting thing.

  Reaching into a desk drawer, Rushenko found a catch and yanked it. The desk lifted mechanically and rolled aside, disclosing a concrete well and immaculate pine steps going down into shadow.

  "What about the others?"

  "They have their secret exits," Rushenko hissed. "Or their cyanide pills. Come."

  Rushenko led the other into the tunnel, and the desk began returning to its spot, dropping back into place, its shadow overwhelming them.

  "Are there no lights?" the security chief complained.

  "The tunnel goes in one direction. Just follow my voice."

  From behind them came a fierce splintering, joined with the complaint of gears and machinery under terrible stress.

  A crack of light appeared back the way they came.

  Rushenko turned. The light elongated and began chasing them.

  "Hurry!"

  They ran. They didn't hear any pursuing footsteps, so when the security chief happened to look back over his shoulder, he was shocked to see a tall man, the blur of his face like a death's-head, just three paces behind.

  A thick-wristed hand took him by the back of his neck and dissolved his eyes with a two-fingered blow that penetrated his brain.

  Colonel Rushenko heard the ugly death thud and decided against looking back.

  It didn't matter. A cool hand arrested him by squeezing the back of his neck. His still-running feet made futile whetting sounds, then stopped.

  "I told you I'd be right with you," a cool voice said.

  Colonel Rushenko reached for his side arm. He got it out, but it was snatched out of his clutches. He next reached for the cyanide pill in his inner blouse pocket.

  A hand clamped his wrist, got the pill and powdered it before his disappointed eyes.

  "Nice try," said the taller of the two interlopers. His face was still a blur. It made Rushenko's eyes hurt to look at it.

  "What is wrong with your head?" he asked.

  "Oh, sorry." And the man shook his head once. Miraculously the features cleared. Deep-set eyes looked at him without mercy.

  Colonel Rushenko realized the truth then. The man had been vibrating his head somehow at a speed that defied the human eye and TV cameras to read it. It was wonderful technology, whatever it was.

  "How did you know that was a poison pill?" Rushenko asked as the cyanide powder finished dropping from the man's open fist.

  "That's where my superior keeps his."

  "You are US. agent, obviously?"

  "You are head of Shield."

  Rushenko quailed inwardly. Shield was known!

  "I do not know these Shield. It is an American word," Rushenko insisted.

  "Suppose I say Shchit?"

  "Then I would tell you you are a vulgar Amerikanski. We say govno. "

  The American gave Colonel Rushenko's cervical vertebrae a squeeze, and Rushenko found himself walking backward. His legs were moving involuntarily. No, that was not it. They were moving voluntarily.

  But it wasn't of the colonel's own volition. It was the American's.

  He was walked back like a puppet up the wooden steps to his ruin of an office. The desk was a shambles. Somehow the bapping light continued to signal its now-useless warning.

  "This is the headquarters of Shield," the American said flatly.

  "This is Radio Free Moscow. We are Communists."

  Then the American began peeling Colonel Rushenko's fingernails off, one by one. He did it with casual cruelty.

  "We want to know about the thing that hit our shuttle."

  "I know nothing of this!" Colonel Rushenko sobbed, amazed at how swiftly he was reduced to blubbering.

  "Kinga told a different story."

  At that point, his left thumbnail came off. The false one. Under it was the real one, and under that his Shield tattoo. A tattoo that should have meant nothing to anyone who wasn't a Shield operative.

  The other interloper stepped into the room then. Colonel Rushenko saw that he was Asian. His nationality was unclear. Dressed as he was, the man might have been from one of the former Asiatic republics. Remembering Kinga's last report, the colonel felt the saliva in his mouth dry like warm rain on a hot rock.

  "You are the Master of Sinanju."

  The little old man bowed serenely.

  Rushenko addressed Remo. "And you are-what?"

  "Tour guide. What about the thing that got our shuttle?"

  "This was not our operation," Rushenko said with a trace of regret.

  "Then whose was it?"

  "This is unknown to us. We are investigating."

  "Why would you investigate a U.S. problem?"

  "Because someone is attempting to blame Mother Russia for this matter, of course. Why do you think?" A finger and a thumb reached out and squeezed Colonel Rushenko's thumb. The tip turned red, then purple, then popped like a Concord grape. It was exceedingly painful to behold, never mind endure.

  "Lose the attitude," the American agent requested.

  "Da. It is gone," Ruskenko gasped.

  "I want to hear about Shield."

  "It does not exist," Colonel Rushenko said.

  The squeezing fingers drew additional blood.

  "It has no official existence, I meant to say," Rushenko gasped. "The Kremlin does not even know about us."