He gave her a wink. She winked back and her eyelashes stuck together and she had to dislodge them manually.

Remo moved through the suite's entertaining room with his normal silence. He hadn't thought about moving like this for more than ten years. The silence came from the breathing rhythms and the body in unity with its nervous system and its own internal rhythms. All things had rhythms, most too subtle to be perceived by those untrained and not even suspected by those who clogged their systems with meat fats and took bare little jerky breaths, hardly ever washing the full lung with oxygen as they should.

Remo only noticed he was moving correctly when the woman gasped, "My god. You move like a ghost. You don't make sounds."

"It's your ears," lied Remo and he was out the window, onto the ledge, and then pressed against the brick, salty with the Miami Beach sea air, and somewhat worn by cars' exhaust fumes. The wear was not much but the brick edges became crumbly and one had to be extra careful not to rely on them. Instead he had to bring the wall

25

into himself and press upward. A full ledge could be used for a leap, but there was no ledge beneath his feet now, and the wall had to be worked meticulously.

"How are you doing that? What are you standing on?" It was the woman. Her head out the window. She was eye-level with his feet.

"It's a trick. See you later, sweetheart."

"How do you do that?"

"Mind control," Remo said. "I've got tremendous mental discipline."

"Can I do that?"

"Sure. Later."

"It looks so easy. Like you're doing nothing. You're just moving up the wall," said the woman, her voice rising in amazement as she turned her head to follow the progress of the attractive young man.

There it was. She was sure of it. The feet were touching nothing. They were pressed into the wall itself and it was like he was creating a suction force with his body. But where was the suction?