Brain Storm

21

"You have overstepped your bounds." Over the phone, the voice of Adolf Kluge was as frigid as an Arctic ice storm.

"I only wanted to please," Holz replied.

His superior didn't even acknowledge the statement. "Take what you are able and return to the village immediately. There will be seats reserved for you when you arrive at the airport. Call me from there for further details."

"Herr Kluge, please," Holz begged. "Dr. von Breslau assures me he can operate the equipment."

"You will return to the village immediately,"

Kluge ordered.

The line went dead.

Holz stared at the receiver for a long time. It felt cold in his grip. Finally, very quietly, he replaced the phone in its silvery cradle. Woodenly he left the small roadside booth and returned to the interface van. Von Breslau was in the back, along with Holz's assistant. He had bound the shoulder of the blond man with a strip of cloth torn from a bloody lab coat.

When Holz reentered the van, the doctor was tapping an impatient index finger on a steel table.

The bodies of Ron Stern and the other technicians were gone.

Holz had dumped them in a shallow ditch by the side of the road late the night before, covering them with handfuls of rotting leaves. The floor of the van was still coated with a thin veneer of dried blood.

"Is he making arrangements?"

Holz was biting the inside of his cheek, deep in concentration.

The doctor had shaken him from his thoughts.

"Nein—" Holz fell into the language of his youth, but quickly caught himself. "I mean, no. No, we are to stay here and proceed with my plan."

"What?" von Breslau demanded. "Does he realize how dire our situation is?"

"Of course he understands, Doctor. He also understands the importance of our mission." Holz was growing more confident as he spoke. He was here.

Kluge was in South America. He still had time to turn this minor setback to his advantage.

Von Breslau shook his head, his naturally dour expression more severe than normal. "I have never known Kluge to be a fool," he said.

4'He is not," Holz stated. He spoke in a sharp tone, as if he had taken personal offense.

Von Breslau refused to be taken to task. "What is it we are to do?" he said wearily.

"You will continue your work and thus allow me to complete mine."

"I have told you, Holz, the files have been wiped clean. There is no longer any Sinanju information in these computers. All that is left is the basic programming of the interface system."

"You understand how to use it?"

"Newton outlined the basics of the system yesterday. It has very user-friendly commands."

"That was for my sake," Holz explained impatiently. "I insisted on it." He didn't admit that, in spite of the elementary commands of the Dynamic Interface System design, he still couldn't grasp how to make the machine work. Newton had tried many times to show him the wonderful simplicity of his brainchild, but Holz proved uneducable. He was mildly resentful that a man who was nearly ninety years old had figured it out in less than a day.

"The system might be simple," von Breslau conceded, "but it is worthless without the neural files Newton created."

Holz smiled. "Fortunately for us, Doctor, the late Curt Newton was kind enough to create backup files."

The Folcroft doctor draped his stethoscope around his neck, careful to tuck the diaphragm end into the breast pocket of his white hospital coat.

"There is nothing wrong with this patient," he announced. "In fact, we should all be as healthy when we're his age."

Remo looked greatly relieved.

"Thank you, Doctor," Harold Smith said.

"Not at all. I'd still like to keep him here. Run a few tests on him, if that's okay with you."

"It is not," Chiun sniffed. "The Master of Sinanju will not be prodded like an ox at market."

"That will be all, Doctor," Smith said hurriedly.

The doctor frowned unhappily. He was used to being deferred to when it came to medical judg-ments. It was a habit, however, the director of Folcroft had never fallen into. His pride as an omnipo-tent healer wounded, the doctor left the room.

"You had me worried for a minute, Little Father,"

Remo said.

"And well you should be," Chiun replied. "The vile innerfaze device should have affected you in the same manner as it did I. These fiends were no doubt able to home in on my awesome vibrations, thus im-peding my swift return to robust health." He sat on the edge of the hospital bed. His tiny, birdlike feet dangled a foot above the floor.

"It still knocked the wind out of my sails," Remo allowed. He felt silly trying to defend himself for not being more debilitated by the radio signal.

"Actually I imagine the slowness of your recovery had more to do with your lifetime devotion to Sinanju techniques," Smith offered reasonably. "Your training outstrips Remo's by decades. This, coupled with your advanced years, made your system more sensitive to the deleterious side effects of the signal."

Chiun eyed Smith levelly. "I will pretend I did not hear that," he said, voice chilly.

Smith cleared his throat. "Er, yes. In any event, until we have a lead, you will stay here. I will need you close by if I hear from Holz. Master of Sinanju..."

Bowing, the CURE director began to go.

Remo stopped him. "We've got to do something, Smitty," Remo stressed.

"For now we have done all we can. I've dismantled the system at the Edison complex and I have destroyed our respective files. There remains no physical link to CURE."

"Except for Holz and his cronies."

"Obviously."

"I should be out looking for them."

Smith shook his head. "Remo, Holz could be anywhere. I have put a description of the van and its license number on the law-enforcement network. If the FBI or some state or local police force discover him, I will hear of it."

"Have you had any luck finding the people he made Chiun and me kidnap?"

Smith admitted he had not. "I have federal authorities looking into it, but PlattDeutsche owns a large number of real-estate holdings in the New York and New Jersey areas. You are certain it was a warehouse?"

"Positive."

"That definitely limits the search parameters. We should have something in regard to that some time soon. Until then, we can only wait. Perhaps you should both use the intervening time to rest."

Though he spoke to both of them, his words were directed to Chiun.

"I do not require rest," the Master of Sinanju huffed.

"You're the one who should go home and grab some shut-eye," Remo suggested to Smith. "You don't look too hot."

"I am fine." The truth was he had not slept more than an hour in the past two days. Smith was exhausted. "Besides," he added, "there is work here that needs my attention. Now, if you will both excuse me..."

Smith tipped his head to Chiun in an informal bow and left the room.

"I can't just sit here like a lump," Remo complained after Smith had gone.

"We will not." The Master of Sinanju hopped down from the bed.

His hand snaked inside the folds of his kimono. A moment later, it sprang back into view. In his delicate fingers, he clasped a torn sheet of lined yellow paper.

"What's this?" Remo asked suspiciously. He took the paper from Chiun. There were eight names spaced several lines apart. Each was underlined and separated by strings of some sort of text other than English. Even though it was a foreign language, Remo got the impression that everything was written in shorthand.

"It is what passes for language among Huns."

"Did you swipe this from the lab?" Remo demanded.

"It was near me when I awoke. Smith was pre-occupied like a deranged tinker with his infernal machines and you were shouting at ambulance attendants. Neither of you seemed interested in a mere scrap of paper."

"So you filched it."

"I do not filch. I acquire," Chiun said with bland amusement. He plucked the list from Remo's fingers.

It vanished back inside the folds of his brightly colored kimono. "Come, Remo. We shall visit the thieves in their dens."

One bony hand held aloft in a knot of ivory in-dignation, the old Korean headed for the door.