Brain Storm (8 page)

"You are quite resistant, Smith," Menk said with more than a hint of approval in his voice. "One wonders why a man of your caliber would waste your time and, yes, your life, on these worthless, lost souls. The French." Menk spit on the cold granite floor as if he had just spoken a curse. "Dogs to a man. Europe will fall as easily. And a new order will be established that will allow mankind to achieve a greatness that you cannot possibly understand."

"You are insane," Smith said softly. For the first time in nearly a week, he spoke in English.

Menk grinned broadly. "A pragmatic man," he said. "I am liking you more and more every day, Herr Smith."

"My incarceration and treatment are in clear violation of the Geneva convention," Smith said.

Menk smiled. He waved his hand around the room.

"There is no Geneva convention within the confines of these four walls," he said, laughing. 4'Have you not yet learned that?"

Smith said nothing. He was obviously in the hands of a lunatic.

The war in Europe was nearly over. Russian and U.S. troops were closing in even as Menk preened and threatened. The "glorious" Nazi Third Reich was at an end. Why did Captain Menk not seem to see that his brand of fascism was in its death throes?

Menk regarded Smith's silence with a curious tip of his head.

At last he crossed to his desk. Primly taking his seat, he called out an order on his office phone.

Seconds later the door opened, and a hulking man—whose broad shoulders nearly caught in the heavy oaken frame—entered the room.

Smith recognized the man. He was slightly over-weight and, despite the coolness of the stone building, perspired profusely. He walked with a limp, probably from an injury in an earlier battle, which would explain why he was not off fighting now.

Smith knew him only as Ernst. Menk's torturer.

Beneath his giant bicep, Ernst carried a tattered suitcase. The huge man set the package down on a wooden stool near Smith. Inwardly Smith cringed at the sight of the large valise. He knew what would come next.

As Ernst proceeded to pull a variety of gruesome and clumsy steel implements from the interior of the bag, Menk lazily pulled off his gloves. He examined his fingernails.

Beads of sweat formed on Smith's forehead. He had to bite down on his thin upper lip to keep it from quivering. Then Ernst seemed to find what he was looking for. In the wan light of the tiny room, he held up a metal rod much like a tire iron. At the end of the device, tiny metal prongs reflected the room's dull light.

Ernst would not be subtle today. With his clumsy fingers, he found the old bullet hole—the one that had been inflicted when Smith was first captured on this small island near the Peenemunde Army Experiment Station. They had given it some time to heal.

But not too much time.

Ernst jammed the small end of the metal device into the scabbing wound. Smith knew it was coming, had braced himself for the incredible, searing pain.

He grunted as the device was inserted. But he did not cry out. The sweat on his brow grew thicker. It was prickly and hot. The rivulets of perspiration that ran down his back were chilling. Smith felt the gooseflesh rise on his skin.

A mantra ran through his mind, the only help he had. Do not scream. Do not allow these madmen the satisfaction.

Ernst didn't seem disappointed. As Smith writhed on his ropes, the German gave the metal rod a full, harsh twist.

It was pain beyond pain. The metal spikes bit through the dead flesh. Living tissue tore away as the brutal man spun the metal rod in the other direction.

The circuit completed, he jammed the rod farther into the newly bleeding wound.

Smith succumbed to the agony.

As the American OSS agent screamed in anguish, Captain Josef Menk noticed that one of the ball bearings stitched into the back of his gloves had become exposed. He could see the shiny silver orb peeking out between the splitting seams like the tiny hairless dome of an infant about to be born. He smiled at the simile. Captain Menk had always considered himself to be somewhat of a poet.

As he congratulated his own cleverness, Captain Menk made a mental note to have his tailor strengthen the seams in both of his pairs of uniform gloves.

Smith made himself surface from his own thoughts.

Night had fallen.

A few weak stabs of light were streaked in shades of yellow and white across the gently undulating waters of Long Island Sound.

He checked his ticking Timex and was surprised to see that it was very nearly midnight.

Turning from the window, he checked his computer. The dull glow of the buried computer screen stared ominously up from the heart of the onyx desk.

Smith was mildly surprised at himself. He had been reminiscing.

This was not unusual for most people, but it was nearly unheard-of for Harold Winston Smith. There was much too much real work to do during the day without cluttering up the mind with errant thoughts.

Reminiscing served no useful purpose; therefore Smith did not reminisce.

Yet he had.

Captain Menk. He hadn't thought of him in years.

So why had he now?

The back of his head itched, and his immaculately groomed fingernails searched out the spot. It wasn't his scalp. It was an internal sensation. The remembered feeling of the Dynamic Interface System radio signal he had felt at the bank. He had been as helpless before Menk all those years ago as the bank patrons had been to the computer-controlled radio signal. That must be it. The reason for recalling those horrible events on Usedom.

But there was something more to it than that....

Smith was shaken from his reverie by a persistent blip of the cursor in the corner of his screen. Some new information had filtered into the PlattDeutsche file he had created earlier in the day.

Smith scanned the text quickly. The PlattDeutsche story had made it to the local 11:00 p.m. newscasts.

It was a rehash of all of the earlier stories with one hitch. Apparently some of the bank's customers were not pleased by the demonstration. There was already talk of a number of lawsuits to be filed in connection with the incident.

Smith read the last line with a hint of sadness.

More lawsuits. More wasted court time. More time for real criminals to exploit an overburdened system.

Exactly what America needs, Smith thought rue-fully.

His own reliving the past was irrelevant, he decided. This was the world in which he lived. Where everyone, it seemed, had hopes of scoring big without expending any effort whatsoever.

There was no real connection between events of this day and those terrible events so long ago. It was odd, that was all. Just an old man allowing his past to cloud his present.

Smith was never a man given to wallowing in his own morbid past.

Menk was dead. As was the younger Harold W.

Smith.

Smith shut his computer down. It was only midnight. Perhaps his wife was still awake. He'd surprise her by coming home early for a change.

Without another thought of his days in the OSS, Smith snapped off the dull overhead light and left his Spartan office.

Night had taken firm hold on the most exciting day of Dr. Curt Newton's professional life. It was remarkable. Simply remarkable. Who would have thought?

"Not me," Newton admitted to the dull pastel walls and carpeting of the empty office corridor.

That was it He'd been working so long he'd started speaking to himself. He giggled as he strode through the half light. So he was speaking to himself?

"So what," he announced to any ghosts that might be loitering in the darkened recesses of PlattDeutsche's R&D wing. "So I talk to myself. I'm a genius. I'm supposed to be eccentric." He giggled again as he stepped aboard the elevator at the center of the six-story structure.

He hardly wanted this day to end.

In the elevator, he checked his watch—12:26 a.m.

It was already tomorrow. Oh, well. As someone once said, tomorrow is just another day.

And if it proved to be as eventful as this day, well then, Curt Newton, physical cryptologist extraordi-naire, would sit back and enjoy the toboggan ride.

Though he'd probably have to go on some of those new antidepressant drugs or something. What was that expression his father liked to use? High as a kite on goofballs? That's what Curt Newton felt like right now.

He got off the elevator on the top floor. This corridor, as well as all the others at the New Jersey complex, was deserted. Everyone not connected with the Dynamic Interface System program had gone home at five. They would, therefore, have to wait until eight o'clock the next morning to find out that the project was finished.

Successfully.

Well, not finished exactly. That was overstating it.

It would take some time to work out all of the reverse-engineering procedures.

But they were already working on it, and Newton had already made more breakthroughs in a single day than he had in five years on this project.

And he owed it all to one remarkable, remarkable man.

There was a light coming from the foyer of one of the executive offices down the far end of the corridor. Newton steered for it.

Of course, there was one other man whom he would have to thank. Reluctantly. Lothar Holz was a rather dim bulb, not given much to understanding the complex nuances of scientific thought. Newton suspected it was because the man didn't much care for the whole endeavor in itself. But whatever his motivations, Holz had come through with the money.

And without the money, Curt Newton wouldn't be poised on the verge of introducing a technology that would revolutionize the world for centuries to come.

When he rounded the corner into the foyer that was Holz's outer office, Newton was mildly surprised to find someone sitting in one of the alumi-num

-and-cloth chairs set against the inner wall. The man looked up with unblinking blue eyes when Newton entered from the corridor.

It was the young blond man who always seemed to hover near Holz. In the cafeteria. At the lab. In the bank this morning. And outside Holz's office at 12:30 a.m.

In spite of the lateness of the hour, he didn't appear to be tired.

Newton didn't even know the young man's name.

Some at the lab speculated that the young man, who had no discernible job at PlattDeutsche, was kept on retainer as a perpetual "escort." Newton had decided to quash any speculation of this nature early on. As long as Holz continued to funnel funds into the interface project, he could have buggered a rabid skunk for all Curt Newton cared.

The blond man rose wordlessly at Newton's approach. He swung open the office door labeled Lothar Holz: Vice President, Research And Development, and stepped back. Once Newton was ushered inside, the door was pulled closed behind him.

Holz was at his desk. The blinds were drawn behind him. A small lamp bathed his face in an eerie incandescent light. The distinct smell of fresh cigarette smoke clung to the interior of the office. This always surprised Newton. Holz was a man of meticulous habits, and Newton could not remember once seeing him with a cigarette in his hand. Yet it was common for his office to reek of smoke. It was strange in this day and age for a man to be so secretive about his smoking habit.

But Newton wasn't here to discuss the man's id-iosyncrasies. He fell into the chair across from Holz, weary yet triumphant.

He dropped the computer printouts he had carried from the lab into his lap.

"This is an incredible piece of luck," he said, shaking his head. He couldn't refrain from beaming.

"As you've said."

"You can't begin to grasp the importance of this, Lothar."

Holz regarded Newton levelly. "It is just possible I can," he said, his words tinged with sarcasm.

"No reflection on you," Newton said, raising his hands, defensively. "It's just that..." He stopped and scooped up the papers. "With this I have so far been able to program the computers with a sixty-eight percent accuracy of response in the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus! I could only work the autonomous nervous system on the most rudimentary of levels this morning. Now I can make people perspire. I can raise or lower their blood pressure." He held up the papers triumphantly. "Thanks to our friend from the bank, I can now use the interface frequency to reg-ulate hormones in human beings."

"I am certain every parent with an oversexed teen-ager will be lining up tomorrow for your invention,"

Holz droned in a bored tone. He stared beyond Newton at the reproduction of Toledo in a Storm that hung on his office wall. The dark, grayish green hills and the savage clouds of the El Greco painting seemed to mirror his inner mood.

Newton raised an eyebrow. "Is there something wrong?"

Holz drummed his fingers on his desk, still staring at the painting. "There are those who question the wisdom of our little demonstration."

There was only one thing the scientist could sur-mise. "You went before the board."

Holz nodded. "This afternoon."

"And you didn't tell me the results?"

"I did not wish to disrupt your research."

Newton's voice shook with concern. "They're not thinking of shutting us down?"

Holz shook his head. His gaze was distant, and his voice soft as his eyes traversed the grim Spanish landscape. "The board is nothing. I don't answer to them."

"What do you mean?" Newton asked, puzzled.

The board was the ultimate authority at PlattDeutsche.

Holz allowed himself a wan half smile. He pulled his eyes away from the painting. "Worry about your test tubes and beakers, Curt. Let me worry about other matters," he said. Newton shrugged. The last test tube he had seen was on a TV show almost a year before. He launched into his report. This was, after all, the reason both of them were putting in such late hours.

"We're working back from our subject's mind to program our computers. The work is going faster than I could have hoped for. But this guy is amazing.

Truly an enigma. There was a whole section of his brain that was virtually walled off to all of my best efforts. Even Mervin had a hard time with it."