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No, I am from New York.
Oh. Come on in.
Where is your telephone? You have just one?
Red Terror Never Again 171
No, two. She led him to the kitchen.
This is one, she said, nodding to the wall phone. I ll take you to
the other. And she led the way to the study, where she pointed to a
wall phone near a desk. I have work to do. You know your way out,
don t cha?
Yes, and thank you.
As soon as the maid disappeared, he checked the photographs on
the desk, the painting of a handsome woman over the fireplace, and the
desk drawers. Easy decision. No John and Joy here.
The next house had a guard and a gate. He gave his explanation,
and was surprised when the guard called someone from the guard shack
and, watching him, spoke into the phone and listened to the response.
He put down the phone and stepped to the truck. I m sorry. You will
have to wait while your company is called to verify your request.
This is their house, he thought. Only they would exercise such security.
He waited a few moments, then called the guard over. I have other
jobs to hurry through. I ll come back later.
Without waiting for a response, he tried to back up the truck, some-
thing he had not done before he didn t realize he had to readjust the
spark and throttle. He backfired and jolted backwards, almost stalling.
He got turned around while the guard stared and, with another loud
backfire, got the truck moving forward in first gear. Then he shoved it
into second with a clash of gears, and disappeared down Crocker Road.
He drove several blocks, then down a side street, and then another,
and parked the truck at the edge of a forest. He walked back toward the
mansion, and soon noticed the tall wall that surrounded it. The wall hid
the precise location of the mansion. He had to have that.
He found a tree well back from the wall evidently they had
cleared all trees and bushes within twenty feet of the wall, and no
branches were allowed even close to overhanging it. No matter. He
climbed a paper bark tree until he could see the mansion, then secured
his feet against the soft branches while he pulled an instrument that
looked like a small telescope from his pocket. He put it to his eye and
scanned the outside of the mansion. He looked carefully at the French
doors, the rear windows, and the solid-looking side door. He checked
the half-glass door off a small balcony on the second floor and an adja-
cent picture window. That was where he would enter.
He adjusted several recessed small knobs, took the instrument away
from his eye, and pressed a button to fix in its memory the three dimen-
sional coordinates shown in a little window in the instrument s side. He
172 Rudy Rummel
counted to one hundred, which gave him the minute movements in the
earth s rotation and the relative change in the location of the star s x-
rays that he needed for the double-check. He could not make a mistake,
otherwise he might end up cut in half by a wall or a floor. He again put
the device to one eye, and went though the same procedure. Then he
subtracted the first coordinates from the second, and with a result of
zero he was satisfied.
He returned to the truck, drove it about a mile away, and parked it
on a small side street. He went to the rear, took off the telephone man s
clothes and his gray metallic belt, and changed into his own clothes,
putting the metallic belt on over them. After loosening the rope tying
the telephone man s feet and hands, he told him, You should be able
free yourself in an hour or so. As to me, nobody will believe you.
He touched something on his belt and disappeared.
Chapter 27
Evening, April 25, 1907
Joy
itting comfortably in bed with her back against a pile of pillows,
Joy was trying to read Tolstoy s War and Peace in Russian. She
S had her knees up and the covers pulled over them up to her lap.
Beside her were two Russian-English dictionaries.
John was in the library trying to refine Jy-ying s German. He could
speak and read it, and was using flash cards to increase Jy-ying s vo-
cabulary. The guys had taken their girlfriends to see the new silent
movie The Golden Beetle.
They all were on alert, but Joy felt safe in the bedroom safe
enough to reach her magnum in seconds if the house, John and Jy-ying
in the library, or the bedroom were attacked. She had her holster purse
hanging off the chair close by, and her throwing and tactical knives on
the chair seat. And she had drawn the curtains to the balcony as well.
Can t be too cautious, she thought.
Gospodi pomily? She underlined the phrase in Tolstoy, and went
to the open dictionary to look it up. Ah, Lord have mercy. That
makes sense, she told herself, and went back to her reading.
An area by the balcony door shimmered. Joy caught it out of the
corner of her eye. A man s shape began to form. Tolstoy went flying as
Joy tried to do a quick roll to reach her magnum. But the covers re-
strained her, and by the time she had one foot on the floor and her hand
on the magnum, the man was fully materialized. He held a small tube
in his hand.
With the magnum in her hand, Joy tried to twist around on one foot
to get a fast shot at the man. The tube flashed. A wide beam encom-
passed her whole body, partially paralyzing her instantly. She tried to
fight it, drawing on all her strength and focusing it on the simple act of
moving the hand with the gun and sighting on the man. Her whole body
shook with the effort, but she could do no better than slow motion. No
good.
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