Brain Storm

18

Running, running...

Smith tried to catch his breath. It came in desperate spurts. The exhaled mist clung to the frigid winter air. The solid earth beneath his feet suddenly gave way.

Stumbling.

Groping for a handhold, he tumbled roughly down a rocky slope to the beach. He fell, sprawled across the hard-packed sand. The black grit was in his mouth. He spit viciously.

Smith pulled himself to his feet. Too late.

The Nazi captain. He saw the face. Menk was running toward him. His gun was drawn. His cruel features looked more haggard from the exertion.

Menk was upon him.

Smith still wore the stolen greatcoat. It was large, far too big for Smith's lean frame. Hopefully it was concealing. His hands were hidden from Menk, his shoulders stooped. He tried for all the world to look like a broken man. Someone who had tried a last-ditch flight for freedom and had failed.

Menk seemed to revel in Smith's sunken de-

meanor. He stood, panting on the beach before Smith. In the background, rumbling in the distance, was the faint drone of American warplanes.

"Your Allies are nearly here, Smith," Menk said.

It was a taunt.

Smith didn't respond. He stood his ground silently.

"You will not be alive to greet them."

The man had sat calmly by for a week, watching as Smith was being tortured. Occasionally he would offer little hints to increase the level of pain. Now, in defeat, he planned to kill Smith. To Menk, the man before him represented the force that had brought his dreams to a humiliating end. He would kill Smith.

But there was one thing that Captain Josef Menk did not realize. He didn't know Smith had a gun.

Menk raised his weapon slowly, for effect. He would make the man before him cower, perhaps beg for his life.

Smith, on the other hand, wasn't one for histri-onics. He pulled his own weapon from beneath the long greatcoat and fired.

The look on Menk's face was one of utter shock.

His own weapon dropped from his hand. There was nothing melodramatic, nothing unique about the death of Josef Menk. He merely fell to his knees and dropped facedown on the sand.

Smith dropped, as well. Not from a wound, but from exhaustion.

The planes were closer now. Usedom would soon fall to the Allies.

While he gathered his last reserves of strength, vague resolutions began to fill his mind. Smith would facilitate the dismantling of the V-2 rocket program.

He would ensure that the German scientists saw the wisdom of using their talents for a better purpose in America.

He left Menk's body for the tide. Slowly he trudged back up to the road. It was over.

So long ago...

Before he had merely been apprehensive. But when Remo didn't call in by noon, Harold W. Smith began to grow more and more distressed.

He couldn't have arrived at PlattDeutsche's Edison complex any later than midmorning. He was, therefore, three hours overdue. Remo had never been the most responsible individual when it came to checking in, but even he would realize the importance of this mission. Perhaps especially him.

They had gotten him. There was simply no other explanation.

And if they had Remo, they had Chiun, as well Smith had racked his brain to come up with an alternate plan throughout the morning. There was something that had been troubling him for some time. On the surface, it was an inconsequential point.

He didn't deal in trifles, so his mind had stored it away. But it was important. His mind wouldn't let him forget.

Why did the Dynamic Interface System signal not work on him?

They had been able to access his hippocampus easily, but their efforts to physically manipulate him had proved futile. Why?

He wasn't fighting it, surely. If Remo and Chiun couldn't ward off the signals, then he shouldn't have had any hope whatsoever.

Yet, he had. Even in his own office—once when Chiun had arrived the previous day, once as he knelt over Remo—he had felt the tingle at the back of his neck. It was the same sensation he had felt at the bank.

Neither time had he fallen victim to the signal.

He had spent several hours that morning transferring information from the PlattDeutsche van out back to the massive CURE database hidden behind the walls of the basement below. The technology was unquestionably brilliant, and in time he was certain he could crack the sophisticated encoding system of Ae programmers.

As he downloaded the information, he had no real Way of gauging how much of Remo or himself was stored in the company's mobile hard drive. An entire lifetime of knowledge relegated to a few kilobits.

He would have liked to have studied the new information more carefully, but he found himself distracted. As he worked, he continually checked his watch, realizing that as the time grew later and later, it was becoming less and less likely that Remo had succeeded.

Once he was finished, he had returned to his office to wait. As he sat ruminating, the same vexing question that had bothered him for two days surfaced once more.

Why wasn't he affected by the interface signal?

Behind his desk, staring out at the waters of Long Island Sound, Smith's mind wandered.

He thought of Usedom again. Of Captain Menk.

What did those events have to do with the present?

Why was he remembering them now?

There were other matters far more pressing. He forced the memories of the island of Usedom and of Captain Menk away.

He thought of the bank. He thought of Lothar Holz.

Holz. Menk.

His brow furrowed.

Yes... Yes, it was possible.

Smith's lemony features grew more intense as he called up an image of Captain Josef Menk in his mind. The face on the beach. The bland look when confronted with mortality.

Yes, he decided. He didn't know how likely it was, but yes, it was possible.

But that was not all. There was more to the bank.

What? What?

He tried to picture himself there. He saw it as if he were viewing it on television. The young mortgage officer before him. Holz calling to the crowd.

The robbers. The startled looks on the faces of the thieves at the arrival of the bank guards. The sudden movements. Holz glancing at the street outside. The white truck.

Another vehicle beyond...

Smith sat up straight in his chair.

That was the answer.

And he believed he had an explanation for his own apparent immunity to the interface signal.

Smith's analytical mind raced. If they had Remo and Chiun, would they come for the interface van?

Quite probably.

It was an old ruse, but it might work.

And if he was right about his own immunity...

If, if, if...

Smith hurriedly patched in his computer to the Pentagon's. He circuitously routed an order from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Edwards Air Force Base.

When he was done, he shut down his computer and pulled open his desk drawer. He found a familiar battered cigar box tucked away in the back. In it was a well-oiled automatic and two spare clips. Coiled around the gun was an old leather shoulder holster.

This gun was like new, but the well-worn holster was obviously from his CIA days.

Smith slipped the gun, clips and holster into his pockets. Picking up the keys Remo had dropped on his desk earlier that morning, he headed for the door.

At the door, he paused.

He looked around the office for what he realized could be the last time. There was a great risk factor involved. The results of today's events might mean a final end for him, for Remo, for Chiun. For CURE.

Smith was far from an emotional man, and as he looked back inside the room he wondered how normal people said goodbye to a room in which they had served tirelessly for more than thirty years.

Harold W. Smith had no idea.

He felt for the switch beside the door. Certain that the lights were off, he left the office.

No one at the gates of Folcroft questioned Holz's assistant.

His cab attracted no attention. It wasn't unusual for a family member to take a taxi to visit a loved one in the sanitarium. No one ever stopped a taxi.

He was surprised to see the white van with the ornately stenciled PlattDeutsche America insignia on the door, parked in the lot beside the building. They had made no attempt to hide it. It was parked right out in the open, clearly visible to the main entrance.

He paid the fare and let the cab go.

Walking as if he belonged there, he crossed over from the main driveway to the parking area.

The broadcast coupling was damaged. He didn't know that was what it was, only that a bare piece of metal hung down from some wires over the cab. Otherwise, everything seemed fine.

He checked the back. The door had been broken off and repaired.

Hastily, it seemed. It was a sloppy welding job.

There were furrows that almost looked like finger marks all up and down the sides of the large rear door.

The back handle was bent. He rattled it experimentally. The door was solid. So solid, in fact, it wouldn't open. The fool who had repaired it had welded it to the side panels. At least it wouldn't fall off in traffic.

He shouldn't dawdle. Leaving the rear of the truck, he climbed up into the spacious cab.

He checked the door between the cab and the rear of the van.

That didn't budge, either. It wasn't fused like the other door, but only appeared to be stuck. No matter.

Let Holz worry about that in Edison.

The keys weren't in the ignition, but that didn't matter. He had driven the van several times himself.

He pulled a spare set of keys from his pocket and stuck them in the ignition.

The engine turned over on the first try.

The security guard gave him a polite wave as he drove out onto the street. It was the same little half salute the guard gave all the service trucks as they passed through the gates of Folcroft.

Holz's assistant did not wave back.