Brain Storm (17 page)

He stared at the top of his desk.

The computer programmer stood. "I promise I won't tell anyone about this place." He began edging toward the door.

Smith was shaken from his reverie. "What? Oh, yes. Of course not. Thank you for your help."

The young man seemed greatly relieved and

moved for the door. He didn't see Smith nod to the Master of Sinanju, nor did he feel the blow that stopped his heart muscle from working through his meaty back. He merely felt the sudden urge to take a long nap on the inviting floor of the sanitarium office. A wave of blackness washed over him, and he dropped to the floor. He didn't stir again.

"Smitty, why does that name von Breslau sound so familiar?" Remo asked as the Master of Sinanju joined him before the desk.

"It has historical significance. Erich Von Breslau worked in three of the Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War. He was answerable directly to Mengele. Many reports have it that his brutality toward his victims was far worse than his superior's."

"Okay, that's right," Remo said. "I heard about him on a PBS documentary. But I thought he was dead."

"It would seem he is not," Smith said. "And someone obviously feels the lure of Sinanju knowledge outweighs the risk of exposing him to the world."

"But they don't have anything without me, right?'' Remo queried.

Smith considered. "I am not certain." There was something larger going on. Why would they bring von Breslau here now? What purpose would it serve?

He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts.

"Holz not only has a duplicate file of my brain but yours, as well. Either would be enough to compromise CURE. We must organize a plan of attack. But we must first find a location to store the PlattDeutsche van. I presume it is nearby?"

"Beyond the walls of Fortress Folcroft," Chiun said. "I will have to see inside, but I must check a few things here first. Remo, could you make certain that there is nothing that will attract attention to the van?" He was thinking of the Master of Sinanju's usual thorough work.

"I'm on it."

Remo and Chiun turned to go. Remo cast a glance at the programmer's body lying on the floor near the door.

"I'm not cleaning that up," he said, shaking his head.

"That is of no concern to me. Of course, if I am forced to carry this fat white thing, the strain might cause me to forget the secret method I have devised to shield myself from the demon signals. But that should not be a concern to you. You have done such a fine job representing your House in this matter so far."

"There's no secret method," Remo insisted.

Chiun didn't say a word. He smiled at Remo, his face a placid pool. When Remo glanced back at Smith, he saw that the CURE director was hard at work at his computer's buried keyboard. The light from the monitor screen cast an eerie, possessed glow on his pinched features.

Remo sighed.

"This better be worth it," he grumbled.

He hefted the body to his shoulders and carted it from the office.

13

The stewardesses all found him to be just darling.

He was so, so sweet. And polite? Everything was please and thank-you with him. He was positively the nicest little man they had had aboard the South American Air jet in a long time.

They just couldn't quite place his accent.

"Is it Swiss? It's Swiss, isn't it?" asked Bootsy.

She was thirty-two, blond and as perky as an Os-mond on uppers.

"You are very perceptive," the old man conceded.

"I knew it/' Bootsy said. She turned to her fellow crew members and flashed a set of the most perfect caps her meager paycheck could afford. "I told you," she said with a superior tone.

Another stewardess, a twenty-eight-year-old molded-plastic beauty with lacquered hair and a nose that had been rhinoplastied nearly to extinction, put on a pouty expression. "I knew it was European,"

she complained, as if this somehow gave her extra points. Her name tag identified her as Mindy, and she turned to the steward behind her for verification of her claim.

He, like Bootsy, was in his early thirties and, continuing the similarities, shared her strong physical attraction to the plane's copilot. The tag on his starched white blouse announced him as Brion.

His carefully plucked eyebrows furrowed as he looked the old man in 21B up and down. "I never would have guessed Swiss. It's a little rougher than that, isn't it? No offense," he added hastily.

The passenger squirmed in his seat. "Please, I am very tired."

"Of course you are," Bootsy said in a motherly tone. She shooed Mindy and Brion away.

"It still sounds sort of German to me," Brion said as he and Mindy picked their way back up the aisle.

"I'm sorry about them," Bootsy said once they were gone. She sat in the vacant seat beside the darling little man and placed her hand on his jacket sleeve. "They're really awfully, awfully nice. Except sometimes." She laughed as if she had just said something terribly amusing.

"It is our burden to endure the imperfect," he agreed. "Tell me, how soon will we be arriving in New York?"

She checked her watch. "Oh, another hour. Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea?"

He raised a hand. "I am fine."

"Then I won't bother you anymore." She patted him on the arm and stood. She carefully smoothed the wrinkles from the front of her uniform skirt.

"You have lovely eyes," said Erich von Breslau.

He considered himself an authority on eyes, having removed many sets of them from a large number of screaming, nonanesthetized patients.

"Why, thank you," Bootsy gushed. She batted her glued-on horsehair eyebrows.

"They are very beautiful. Very blue, aren't they?"

He breathed deeply, considering. "Tell me," he said after a moment, "are you a religious person? If you don't mind my asking?" He tipped his head and stared into her beautiful blue eyes.

Bootsy sucked in a mock-guilty hiss of air.

"Oooh, you got me. Not really in a strict sense. But my mom was a Baptist. My dad was Jewish."

"Oh." Though he tried to mask it, there was a strange coolness in his tone.

She wasn't sure what she had said to offend him.

"Not Orthodox," Bootsy said quickly. "He was Re-formed. He didn't run around with the curly side-burns or anything. We ate pork and everything. But with me and my brother, my folks didn't want to force us into anything—you know, they didn't want to upset either family—so they waited and let us decide what to do when we were eighteen. I guess I sort of decided on nothing really." She held up her hands. "That's not to say I'm not religious. I am. In my own way."

"How nice for you."

Bootsy beamed. "It is, isn't it? Look, I've got to make my rounds, but I'll be back. Don't you worry."

She touched the darling little man on the arm once more, reassuringly, and headed up the narrow aisle.

Dr. Erich von Breslau looked down at his sleeve where the Jewess had placed her hand. Though no difference was visible to the naked eye, he knew there now was one. He made a mental note to burn the jacket he was wearing once he reached New York.

14

"Yuck, this is disgusting." Remo had already dumped the body of the young programmer into the back of the white van and he was searching the surroundings for anything Chiun might have left lying around in his usual earnestness. He found the head-less body of Ron Stern sitting in some bushes on the side of the road. He hefted the body into the air, careful not to get any of the drying blood on his T-shirt.

"You might have done a neater job," he complained. He tossed the body into the back atop the others. "Where the heck did you throw the door?"

He began picking his way through the nearby thicket.

Chiun stood at the side of the road. He seemed rooted to the asphalt. His face was etched in stone.

"You might show some gratitude," he sniffed.

"For what? You know, if I'm not picking up after you, I'm traipsing off on some autograph expedition."

"And you do neither well. The door is in that direction." A slight upturn of his delicate chin indicated that Remo should search the thicket farther down the road.

Remo found the van door a hundred yards away wedged in between a cluster of maple trees. He trotted back up the road and jammed the door back into place. The hinges were ripped, gleaming metal shards. He used his fingers to twist and knead the steel into some kind of usable shape.

He stood back and placed his hands on his hips.

The door was crooked. He shook his head. "I hope that holds."

Remo walked around front and climbed into the cab. Chiun slid in beside him.

"You are welcome," the Master of Sinanju declared softly.

Remo gripped the steering wheel and sighed deeply. There was only one way to silence the Master of Sinanju. "Thank you, Little Father," he said. He didn't glance right, but stared straight out the windshield at the midnight blackness.

"It was nothing," Chiun said.

"Give me strength," Remo muttered. He drove the van around to the front gates of Folcroft.

At this time of night, the guard on duty was generally either sound asleep in his shack or off somewhere else, probably chatting up one of the night-shift workers. Though Harold Smith would ordinarily not put up with such a lax attitude toward work as administrator of Folcroft, as head of CURE he occasionally found the man's incompetence useful.

Unchallenged, Remo drove the van around the back of the administrative building. He backed it up against one of the old, unused loading platforms.

He climbed down from the cab and stepped out from the small alcove in which the truck was nestled.

The lawns behind Folcroft were moist with dew.

They rolled downward to the edge of Long Island Sound. A decrepit boat dock rocked almost imperceptibly on the undulating surface of the water.

Chiun joined Remo at the front of the truck.

"Mission accomplished," Remo said. "Now, do you want to tell me the big secret on how to block out that interface signal?"

Chiun nodded. "I will tell you, Remo. But you must promise to adhere strictly to my words, for to ignore them surely invites death."

Remo agreed.

Chiun first glanced around the darkness of the loading-dock area, making certain there was no one near. Satisfied there were no eavesdroppers who might overhear his words, Chiun drew Remo down to him and leaned in close, so that his lips were a hairbreadth away from Remo's ear. When he spoke, Remo felt the warmth of his breath.

"The secret to avoiding the demon signal of the air. That is what you wish to know?"

"Yeah," Remo said.

Chiun pitched his voice even lower. Remo had to strain to hear.

"Do not be stupid."

Chiun straightened back up. There was a slight playfulness in his hazel eyes.

"Why doesn't that surprise me?"

"Ah, you anticipated my words. You who plucks phantom signals from the air like a great, lumbering television set. You are most wise, Remo."

"It didn't take a genius to know you were going to yank my chain about all this."

Chiun smiled condescendingly. "Then why did you ask of me the secret?"

"Because, Chiun, there was still a slim chance you wouldn't yank my chain. And if you really had a way to stop this thing, I wanted to know it." Remo shook his head. He stared helplessly out at the Sound, rotating his wrists absently—it was an old habit he had never broken. "They had me attack you, Little Father. I couldn't stop myself." When he looked up, his eyes were moist. "I'm sorry." And unlike the thank-you Chiun had cajoled out of him earlier, he spoke these words with feeling.

Chiun's usually harsh features grew softer.

"You were caught in a weak moment, my son,"

Chiun said with a knowing nod of his bald head. The wisps of white hair above his ears quivered at the movement. "Perhaps your recent experience with the Pythia is to blame. A frailty, if such is the case, that is not your fault. The attack made within your mind was not anticipated—therefore you had not properly prepared yourself for it."

"So why didn't they get you?" Remo said. "You didn't know about it, either."

Chiun straightened up to his full five feet. "I am the Reigning Master of Sinanju," he said.

Remo shook his head. "I wouldn't be so cocksure if I were you. When they had me in the van, they said they'd used up a lot of space to get me under control. Maybe they just didn't have enough room left to take you on, as well."

"Do not be foolish," Chiun said impatiently.

"The Master of Sinanju cannot be switched on and off like a common household appliance."

Remo shrugged. "If you say so. I just don't want the same thing that happened to me to happen to you."

"Give the matter no more thought," Chiun directed with a wave of his hand. He looked over at the Sound, lapping gently at the shore.

Farther out, the murky black strip had taken on a few gray hues at its most distant edge.

"Come. It will be light soon. We will leave this vehicle to Smith."

The plane touched down just before dawn.

Von Breslau had the homosexual steward help him with his luggage. He was disgusting, but at least he was a Lutheran.

At the door, he encountered the Jew woman who had dared touch him.

She smiled her perky smile when she saw him coming up the aisle.

"Hope you had a nice trip," she said cheerily.

There was no need for pretense any longer. He had arrived safely.

Staring straight ahead, he ignored her.

He crossed the enclosed ramp and was led by the steward through the bowels of the terminal building.

The endless, windowless corridors had the look and feel of a subway. Though subways tended to be designed with a bit more imagination.

The steward even went so far as to help him through customs. When they were finished with him, he led the nice passenger out to meet his friend who was waiting just beyond the security gates. The airline attendant was delighted to see a delicious-looking blond hunk waiting with the friend. But though he tried to make a little friendly eye contact, the man merely stared sullenly at the passersby.