Brain Storm (27 page)

Remo did not hear the question. He and Chiun were already back in their car. The tires sent up plumes of acrid smoke as Remo spun around and headed back down the street.

The next name on the list was Aaron Solon.

Aaron Solon didn't feel very well when he

awoke that morning.

He spent nearly an hour debating whether or not to waste a sick day but finally, reluctantly, decided to call in.

He found that there was some sort of shake-up going on at PlattDeutsche America. For a minute, Aaron was worried that the company had been bought up and that his job was gone. He even considered going in after all. But his boss assured him that the problem was internal.

There was something wrong in the R&D section.

Nearly everyone with the Dynamic Interface System had vanished. Dr. Curt Newton had been found in a fourth-floor maintenance closet, dead of a gunshot wound.

Aaron felt a little guilty that he was relieved by the news. But in this day of secret mergers and midnight acquisitions, a touch of selfishness was a job requirement. His boss told him to take it easy for the next few days.

Twenty minutes later, Aaron was lying on the living-room sofa. He had just started watching one of the morning talk shows when the palpitations began.

He could feel his heart begin to beat irregularly, almost as if the organ were inflating like an overfull water balloon inside his chest. It felt like it would burst.

His breathing was still good. Centered. It had been that way since he had agreed to undergo the strange test for PlattDeutsche vice president Lothar Holz. He didn't know how he knew the breathing to be right; he only knew it was. And that for the past thirty-seven years he had been breathing completely wrong.

Now, though, it was as if every perfect breath his lungs pulled in was causing his heart muscle to expand and contract wildly.

A heart attack.

He grabbed for the phone. It tumbled off the table near the couch. He clawed for it on the rug. The blood pounding from his chest cavity was ringing hollowly inside his ears.

His hand found the phone. He tried to pull it toward him. It wouldn't budge. Only then did he notice that someone was standing on the cord.

He recognized the man. Young. Long blond hair.

He had seen him around the office. Behind him was another man. Solon knew him, as well. Lothar Holz.

The two men picked Aaron Solon off the couch and carried him out the kitchen door.

They are taking me to the hospital, Aaron Solon thought. They know they did something wrong with their tests and they're taking me for help.

They carried him up through the cab and into the back of a large white van. The van didn't move.

Five minutes later, the passenger side door opened once more, briefly.

Two figures got out, carrying a large, awkward bundle. The same figures returned a moment later, alone.

Slowly the van drove down the long driveway and out into the street.

"This one's gone, too," Remo said grimly.

Aaron Solon lay at the far end of his driveway behind a pair of trash barrels.

Chiun came out of the kitchen door and squatted to examine the body. He touched the man's forehead experimentally.

"Innerfaze," he announced, tone grave.

"Are you sure?"

"Note the circular marks on his forehead."

Remo squinted. Two round impressions were

faintly visible in the flesh at Aaron Solon's temples.

They were consistent with the marks made by the rubber suction cups on Holz's temple electrodes.

"We'd better get to the next one on the list."

Remo sighed.

As they hurried back to the car, one thought kept passing through Remo's mind.

What was Holz doing?

Simon Waxman s wife was leaving her apartment when Remo arrived.

She was accompanied by her mother-in-law.

Simon's father was off handling the funeral arrangements.

Holz had already been there.

The young woman was so distraught Remo didn't detain her.

The same was true for the next four names on the list. All had met with Lothar Holz earlier in the morning; all were dead.

It was afternoon before they reached the final name on the list.

The apartment complex where David Leib lived was near Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Remo left his car in a guest spot in the small parking area, and he and Chiun made their way to the string of two-story buildings.

Before they had even gotten near Leib's building, Chiun was sniffing the air like a dog on a scent.

"They have been here already."

The heavy door splintered and fell back inside the small hallway.

They found David Leib on the floor of his bedroom. All around the room was in disarray. The walls were broken, the bed collapsed. A bureau had been split into two neat halves.

Chiun crouched down near the body. "This one still lives," he announced somberly to Remo.

Remo stooped down beside the Master of Sinanju.

The pupils of the young man on the floor were pin-pricks. His eyes roamed their sockets sightlessly.

"How long ago was Holz here?" Remo asked softly.

Leib shook his head. When he spoke, his voice was distant.

"Hours... hours."

"What did he want?"

The young man nodded. With an effort, he pointed to his own forehead. Suddenly his limbs shuddered as if charged with electricity.

"The interface system," Remo said to Chiun.

The Master of Sinanju nodded gravely. "He steals back that which was not his to give."

Below them, Leib had another violent spasm. The man who had been so delighted to climb walls the night before had become a wasted shell.

He gasped once, grabbing Chiun by the forearm.

"The breathing," the young man said. "It felt so...so right."

Chiun nodded his understanding.

Leib smiled. A final frantic shudder racked his slender frame before he finally grew still.

Remo noted that, in death Leib had centered himself. His arms and legs were in perfect harmony with the forces of the universe. Chiun gently closed the young man's eyelids.

Slowly Remo stood. "I better call Smith," he said.

"Remo, where have you been?" Smith demanded.

His lemony voice seemed distraught.

Remo explained about the list Chiun had found in the PlattDeutsche lab and about the deaths of Holz's test subjects. He also informed Smith of his suspicion that Lothar Holz was retrieving data from the minds of his victims.

"Why did Chiun not show the list to me?"

"I guess he thought it was family business,"

Remo said.

"It was," Chiun intoned, even of voice.

Smith did not press the issue. "Please return to Folcroft immediately."

Remo glanced at the Master of Sinanju. Chiun was frowning down upon the body of David Leib.

"Why, is something up?" Remo said into the phone.

"They have found one of the missing ambassadors."

23

Wearing grim expressions, the network anchors broke into the afternoon soap operas, each telling the same story.

Arkady Rokossovsky, Russian ambassador to the United Nations, had entered the offices of Schuler Designs on the fifty-seventh floor of the Empire State Building at approximately one o'clock, Eastern standard time.

He was questioned by the firm's receptionist, but Rokossovsky had ignored her.

Rokossovsky had wandered beyond the woman's desk and into the office. Several people asked what he was doing, but he trudged resolutely past them. It was only when he got to the window that someone thought to call security. By then it was too late.

The window panes had been specially devised for high-buildings.

They were triple-enforced plates of high-density polymer. Invisible steel strands crisscrossed the pane.

Each window was guaranteed by the manufacturer to withstand a thousand pounds per square inch of pressure.

A marketing embellishment, as most people had imagined, but it was understood that the panes could not be shattered by conventional means. It was agreed by all that Arkady Rokossovsky should never have been able to break one.

In a crowded conference room, Rokossovsky

kicked out with the heel of his foot. It impacted with the center of a high windowpane.

Against all design specifications, the heavy plastic rattled on its frame, a long, spidery fracture spreading up its middle. Finally the pane cracked apart in a half-dozen huge sections. Broken sheets of simulated glass exploded out onto Fifth Avenue.

Rokossovsky followed them.

Those who witnessed the obvious suicide found it troublesome for more than just the apparent reasons.

To a man, they all said the same thing. Arkady Rokossovsky didn't look or sound like someone who wanted to die. His actions were incongruous with his words. Or at least to his tone.

From the moment he stepped through the office door to the instant he impacted with the sidewalk far below, Rokossovsky could be heard screaming in Russian.

An immigrant who was standing nearby when Rokossovsky hit the ground translated his final words for the networks. Psychologically, it all seemed to fit.

Loosely interpreted, Arkady Rokossovsky had been pleading for someone to stop the voices inside his head.

Holz had wanted Rokossovsky to do a swan dive off of the observation platform at the top of the Empire State Building, but was disappointed to find that the powerful antennae high atop the structure would have interfered with the signal. Reluctantly he had opted for the fifty-seventh floor.

The Dynamic Interface System van had several portable signal boosters tucked away behind the other equipment. Holz had positioned one in a hallway on the twenty-seventh floor. He was worried that the signal strength would not be strong enough even with special enhancement, but any concerns he might have had were dispelled the instant Arkady Rokossovsky splattered like a fat Russian meatball across the pavement of Fifth Avenue.

A crowd had quickly formed around the ambassador's body. The gawkers offered unintentional cover. Holz had slipped back inside the building to retrieve the booster.

When he was gone, Erich von Breslau motioned Holz's assistant to him. Even though they were alone in the back of the white van, he pitched his voice low. "I have been in contact with the village," von Breslau whispered to the young man. He had left the truck seconds after Holz had gone to place the booster signal, returning not long before the R&D

vice president. He had been unable to speak freely until now. "Our Lothar Holz has not been entirely forthright with me."

The blond-haired man was listening, but there was a distracting twitch at the corner of his mouth. It was a nervous tic that had developed late in the morning.

It had grown steadily worse as the afternoon wore on. Von Breslau's expression was dubious as he watched the young man attempt to suppress the twitch.

"He lied to me," von Breslau growled. "He was instructed to return to the village. He disobeyed a direct order. Kluge is furious."

The young man stared at the Nazi doctor. Despite the muscle spasm at the corner of his mouth, his face remained impassive.

"We have the new Sinanju information, collected from you and the other test subjects. I will bring this back to the village." Von Breslau glanced at the door that led into the cab. "Kluge does not want attention drawn to Four. Not yet. When this fool takes us back to where the Britisher and American are being held, you will kill him."

Von Breslau leaned back in his chair, intertwining his fingers over his slight paunch. He had spoken the words as casually as if he had just given the afternoon train schedules.

Holz's assistant of the past eight years did not even raise an eyebrow at the command. He nodded obediently.

Ever so slightly, the corner of his mouth twitched in punctuation.

24

"It was risky for the two of you to go out like that,"

Smith admonished.

"Sorry," Remo replied across Smith's desk, "but we didn't exactly feel like sitting around for a month twiddling our thumbs."

"It appears that might not be necessary." Smith went on to describe the incident involving the Russian ambassador.

"It sounds like the poor guy was programmed to off himself," Remo said once the CURE director was through.

"I agree," Smith allowed. "And to shatter the window as he did obviously required Sinanju skills."

"Only minor ones, Emperor," Chiun interjected, lest Smith believe his or Remo's skills to be any less valuable. He stood beside Remo in the Spartan office, hands tucked snugly inside his kimono sleeves.

"That is neither here nor there," Smith said. "The point is, Holz has retrieved the Sinanju information from his victims."

Remo shook his head. "It won't do him any good, Smitty. All the guys we went to were either dead or dying. They can't adapt."

"Yes, that is true. However, if they slow down the process to take weeks, months or perhaps even years in order to allow the host time to absorb the information, the process might still work. Your skills could conceivably be sold to terrorist nations or organized-crime syndicates. Or for that matter, to any petty criminal."

"Savages!" Chiun hissed to Remo. "They would be stealing prospective clients away from Sinanju."

Remo steered the conversation back to the problem at hand. "The British and American ambassadors haven't turned up?" he asked.

"Not yet. But we can assume Holz has similar fates planned for each of them. It is clearly his way of paying back the Allied nations for the defeat of Nazi Germany."

"Have you been able to find out anything about him yet?"

"No, but I have a suspicion," Smith replied, vaguely. His tired eyes stared off distractedly at the distant wall.

Remo snapped his fingers in front of Smith's face.

"Earth to Smitty. Care to share it with us?"

Smith's head snapped back. He blinked a few times, hard. "I am sorry," he said, businesslike once more. "The past three days are beginning to take their toll." He took a deep, cleansing breath before responding to Remo's query. "My suspicions concerning Holz are unfounded at the present time. And they are irrelevant to the current investigation."