Ghost in the Machine

On Halloween, indebted developer Randal Rumpp faces foreclosure as telephones ring with voices claiming to be trapped and people disappear through the pavement by Rumpp Tower. Remo, using the reunion cover Edgar Perry, kills terrorist Manuel “The Weasel” Silva and is sent by CURE chief Harold W. Smith to investigate. Cheeta Ching arrives to report on the threshold anomaly; she, Chiun and Delpha Rohmer join Remo, while Delpha attributes events to Baphomet and Wicca. The team tests the tower, and Cheeta and Chiun sink from sight. Remo falls into the space below the building and later reunites with the others. Rumpp exploits the crisis, falsely claims to have caused it, and pitches a publicly funded replacement tower.

A strange cable-covered apparition calls itself Grandfather Frost, travels through telephone lines, and its departure changes the tower again. Delpha sells her haunting footage to the Multinational Broadcast Company, while former KGB major Yuli Batenin recognizes the figure as Captain Rair Nicolaivitch Brashnikov and joins Shchit’s effort to retrieve the vibration suit. Smith connects Brashnikov to an earlier CURE telephone trap. The anomaly shifts to Rumpp Regis; Brashnikov appears through a guest and then Batenin, and Remo and Chiun rescue Cheeta; Remo kills Batenin. Brashnikov surrenders himself while still wearing the suit but escapes through a telephone. A Shchit contact and a Nishitsu representative give separate accounts of the suit’s origin and its effects on the connected phone systems; the latter attributes the tower’s sinking to its returning mass.

Brashnikov returns to Rumpp Tower; Remo throws Rumpp through a window, killing him, while Brashnikov escapes by redialing a phone last connected to Nishitsu. Smith questions whether he survived the long-distance satellite transfer. Smith says he will brief an unnamed President. The embedded winter Epilogue shows three unidentified apparitions rise from the ground in Kazakhstan’s Tian Shan valley as local riders play buzkashi. Their identities and Brashnikov’s final fate remain unresolved.