Brain Storm

25

Lothar Holz knew he was risking everything. By de-fying Adolf Kluge, he had made himself a powerful enemy. But even Kluge might change his mind—

albeit grudgingly—if Holz was able to turn the situation around. And he was convinced he could do just that.

He knew that those from Sinanju would eventually find this warehouse. It had been a public real-estate transaction made several years before. PlattDeutsche had no reason to keep it secret. They had intended to use it for storage but never had. It would only be a matter of time before Smith uncovered it. He would eventually send his enforcers here.

If Holz could obtain another complete copy of their neural files, either of the young one or the old one, he could claim a resounding victory. As it stood now, he had only been able to reclaim a small fraction of their capabilities.

He planned to download one of them and run before they had a chance to catch him. If he succeeded, even Kluge might come around.

Of course, Kluge had been upset by the abduc-tions. But the old ones in the village would savor the victory. And some of the old ones still had influence.

No, this was the answer. He would return to the village a hero instead of a bumbling clown. And his victory would put him back on the fast track.

Holz drove the white van behind the decrepit warehouse and circled around the building, negoti-ating the tricky path through the pothole-filled drive.

The rear lot was a shambles. Tufts of crabgrass and dandelions pushed up through sections of cracked asphalt.

Wet papers and crushed beer cans were strewed everywhere. At one time, a pile of sand had been dumped toward the rear of the lot, but over the years most of it had washed down over the remaining patches of faded tar. An abandoned car, stripped of doors and tires, lay in one corner, exposed to the elements like the bleached skeleton of some long-dead desert animal.

Holz tucked the interface van beneath the shadow of the abandoned warehouse. Where he parked, the main road was clearly visible around the far rear corner of the building. He turned off the engine.

Almost immediately von Breslau stuck his head through the door into the cab. He squinted at the brightness of the late-afternoon sun.

"Oh." He seemed disappointed to find that they were back at the dismal warehouse site. Holz got the impression that the old man had been sleeping.

"Stay alert back there, Doctor," Holz said from the driver's seat. "We do not know how soon they will be here."

"Or if at all," von Breslau muttered in German.

He glanced at Holz's blond assistant. The young man sat silently in the passenger's seat. The bandage on his shoulder was stained a deep brown.

"They will come," Holz said confidently. He placed the earpiece for his transceiver into his ear.

They had tested the device earlier to be certain it was in working order. He had no intention of being trapped inside the building with Remo and Chiun.

"We will make certain everything inside is ready, Doctor. Please prepare our present guests for the welcome." He climbed down from the cab.

The instant Holz was not looking, von Breslau nodded slightly to the young blond man. In spite of his severe twitching—which had gotten worse on the trip from New York—Holz's assistant nodded back.

The young man climbed down from the cab. He trailed his master to the decrepit building.

The old Nazi doctor watched them go through hooded eyes.

"I will be prepared, Lothar," von Breslau said quietly. "But I fear you will not be." The old doctor smiled wickedly and stepped up into the rear of the van.

Remo and Chiun took the Holland Tunnel beneath the Hudson River to Jersey City.

Chiun sat beside Remo in the front seat. He had removed the object Smith had given him and was examining it carefully.

"Stop looking at that thing as if it's going to do something," Remo griped.

"Pray to your gods that Smith's talisman is strong enough to ward off the evils of the innerfaze," Chiun said ominously.

"I wouldn't count on any hocus-pocus to save us," Remo replied tensely. "Smith didn't sound too sure that that whatever-it-is would work. All I can say is we'd better hit hard and fast." His face was grim as they drove out of the tunnel up into the sunlight.

"We will prevail," Chiun insisted as he secreted the strange object away once more.

Remo followed Smith's directions to the letter.

They found the building in a bombed-out section of town. An old, faded sign identified the place as the former home of Ingalls Meat Packing Distributors, Inc. The sign at one time had stretched the length of the building.

The place looked familiar to Remo. He did not know if it was because this was the same warehouse he and Chiun had been to the day before or if it merely provoked the same sorry desperation of all abandoned buildings.

They parked in front of the warehouse and headed in the side door.

The Nazi doctor watched the two men glide into the building. Their shapes were ghostly on the thermal monitor. Four other spectral images registered elsewhere in the building.

Tapping away at the keyboard, von Breslau entered the final elementary commands into two of the shapes. All was ready for the final trap.

He found that the Dynamic Interface System allowed him to operate most men simply. It was a matter of entering the proper commands beforehand. Rokossovsky had been easy to program. But he remembered Newton mentioning the difficulty he had had at first controlling the Sinanju masters. He had needed an entire team to control one man.

That wouldn't matter to von Breslau. He didn't need to manipulate them at first, only to stop them.

That, he was told by Newton, was relatively easy.

He saw the spectral outlines of Lothar Holz and his assistant.

Von Breslau would soon send a message ordering the young man to attack Holz. He would wait until Holz was cornered.

That Holz deserved to die wasn't even in question.

Any fool who lied to Adolf Kluge had earned death.

But his death wouldn't be entirely in vain.

Von Breslau planned to follow through on part of Lothar Holz's plan. Once the men from Sinanju were frozen like statues, he would download the information from one of them into the computer. Copies of the files would be brought back with him to the village for study and further testing.

But he had one final debt to repay. Before he left, he would enter one last command. He would use the Dynamic Interface System to order the young one to kill the Master of Sinanju.

Tapping his tongue excitedly against his loose dentures, von Breslau watched the two men advance.

IT WAS THE SAME building. Remo had no doubt.

He and Chiun saw the marks on the dirty floor where they had left the three bound ambassadors.

Rokossovsky was dead. Sir Geoffrey Hyde-Black and Helena Eckert were gone, as well.

Remo sensed movement to one side of the building. There was a staircase running up to a second floor. The Master of Sinanju indicated the direction with a bony, upturned chin. Remo nodded. He and Chiun made their way toward the stairs.

As they made their stealthy way across the floor, Remo suddenly felt the telltale itchiness at the base of his skull—the controlling signal of the Dynamic Interface System. He glanced at Chiun. The Master of Sinanju was obviously experiencing the same sensation.

But this time, Remo knew that it was different.

The command that until now had allowed the system operators to control their actions was somehow faulty.

This time, they could still move.

Chiun smiled tightly, patting that area of his robe where the strange object from Smith was hidden.

They headed for the stairs.

The rotted staircase ended at a broad landing that overlooked the main warehouse space far below. A single narrow hallway led away from the top step. It ended at a broken, grimy window far away. The hall was flanked on both sides by ancient office doors.

Some were broken off their hinges, but most were surprisingly well preserved.

At the entrance to the hallway, Remo hesitated.

There were four occupants. He couldn't tell exactly where two of them were—he could only place them farther down the hall—but the second pair was nearby.

He could also sense that their breathing was too perfect for normal humans. It was almost Sinanju.

Remo turned to warn Chiun of the danger. The instant his guard was down, the first door on the left exploded out into the hallway.

Secretary of State Helena Eckert flew through the air toward Remo, one bare foot tucked up beneath her ample thigh. The other was aimed precisely at Remo's head. He spun to meet her just in time.

Remo caught the ambassador by the ball of her foot. He flipped her up and over. The mailbox-shaped woman landed on the long balcony with a heavy thump.

Immediately she sprang to her feet, holding her hands out before her in a classic Sinanju attack pose.

It was one used by beginners, a throwback to the times when Sinanju masters competed in public contests. Remo could see her fleshy knuckle dimples as she brandished her hands menacingly.

With a hellish growl, the Acting Ambassador lunged at Remo.

Behind Remo, Chiun had his own problem to deal with.

The door on the right had sprung open a split second after Acting Ambassador Eckert had flown through the one on the left. From the open doorway, Sir Geoffrey Hyde-Black had launched a rapid series of deadly multiple thrusts against the Master of Sinanju.

Chiun had avoided each of the first half-dozen fists with relative ease. The seventh nearly registered. It was on the eighth that the Master of Sinanju wrapped his delicate hand around the forearm of the British ambassador and yanked the man out into the hallway.

Sir Geoffrey crashed into the opposite wall. The water-stained particleboard wall collapsed under his weight, buckling in half. Sir Geoffrey rolled with the wall and sprang back to his feet. He immediately launched another attack against Chiun.

The Master of Sinanju pulled his hand back for a killing blow.

Still battling Helena Eckert, Remo caught the flash of a kimono sleeve from out of the corner of his eye.

"Don't kill him, Little Father!" Remo shouted.

Chiun appeared angry. "Would you suggest I let him kill me?" he asked impatiently.

"Just immobilize him," Remo called.

Helena Eckert's foot lashed out, and Remo ducked away from it.

Chiun let out an angry hiss of air. The British ambassador threw out another malletlike fist. The Master of Sinanju grabbed Sir Geoffrey by the bicep and spun the man around like a top. His hand clamped down on Sir Geoffrey's neck. The man froze stiff as a board. The instant he did so, Chiun heard a groan from behind. When he turned, he saw that Remo had the American ambassador in an identical embrace.

Carrying Helena Eckert like an overfilled bag of groceries, Remo crossed over to Chiun. He had an unhappy expression on his face.

"What do we do with these now, O wise one?"

Chiun asked hotly. "For if we let them go, they will be made to attack us once more."

"Wait a minute, Chiun," Remo said in a hushed tone. He cocked an ear to one side, listening down the hall. "Do you hear something funny?"

At the rear of the building, Lothar Holz heard Remo shout to the Master of Sinanju.

His assistant stood nearby. Closer, it seemed, than usual.

The shaking had become almost unbearable. Holz pressed his fingers against the earpiece.

"They're here!" he whispered into the small transceiver. "You were supposed to tell me if they were coming!"

Von Breslau didn't reply. The earpiece remained silent.

Holz glanced around desperately. He had to get out. He couldn't be caught here.

Luckily the rear rooms all opened onto the fire escape. He'd get down to the van. He could not allow these men to capture him.

Quickly he turned toward the rear door. He was just fast enough to see his assistant flash from out of his peripheral vision.

The man's fist moved lightning fast, in a direct line for his face.

He was astonished by what happened next.

Lothar Holz looked on, bewildered, almost a spectator to the actions of his own body. The first Sinanju-enforced blow landed with a squishy thud.

One minute before, von Breslau had been fussing impatiently with the equipment in the van.

He couldn't get a lock on the Sinanju men. He had tried, but the Dynamic Interface System stubbornly refused to work. He didn't understand the intricacies of the system. If it didn't work, it didn't work. He had gotten some information from the young one.

That would have to suffice.

He only wished he had been responsible for the death of the Master of Sinanju. But that could still happen. Even in his lifetime. He had the information that could be used to ultimately destroy the old Korean. In a year, perhaps two...

But first things first. He used the interface system to enter a command into the mind of one of the men in the building. It was to Holz's assistant. He told the man to kill Lothar Holz. Von Breslau waited what he felt was an appropriate amount of time and then cut the signals to both ambassadors. If the blond mute was still in the room when the Sinanju men got there, it was his own fault. And anyway, he was expendable; von Breslau was not.

This task accomplished, the good doctor climbed up into the cab of the mobile interface van and started the engine.

Helena Eckert suddenly became slack in Remo's arms. He placed her on the floor and glanced at Chiun. Sir Geoffrey Hyde-Black had gone as limp as a plate of boiled noodles. Chiun dropped the man as if he were diseased. All at once, Remo became aware of an engine roaring from the lot at the rear of the building.

Running to the window at the end of the hall, Remo was just in time to see the rear of the Dynamic Interface System's van clear the side of the building.

Its twisted rear door bounced roughly along with the rest of the frame through the potholed driveway, sending up plumes of sandy smoke. A second later, it reached the road. Engine flat out, the truck thun-dered off.

It was gone.

Remo stood near the door from which he had sensed movement a few moments before. There was nothing now.

He hoped Holz hadn't gotten away again.

Remo pushed open the door. In the middle of the untidy room, a body lay twisted on the floor.

The face was an unrecognizable pulp. It resembled a pile of raw hamburger. The blood-streaked hair was wrenched out by the roots. All that remained were patchy, mottled clumps. The entire head, hands and torso were soaked with blood.

Remo looked more closely. He saw it. The tiny radio earpiece Holz was so fond of wearing. He heard Chiun enter the room behind him.

"His assistant must have killed him," Remo said.

"These are Sinanju moves." His nose wrinkled.

"Carried to the extreme, though. What a mess." He stood.

It was probably understandable. By now, Holz's assistant would have been experiencing the final side effects of the Sinanju download. He had been in better physical shape than the other test subjects, but he wouldn't be able to hold on to it much longer than the rest. He had already begun experiencing the same savage physical outbursts some of the others had had at the end. His wild, mindless attack was proof. He could no longer stop himself.

The killing blows had been repeated over and over even after Holz must surely have died. It was totally unfocused.

Remo went over to the window. He saw the rusty old fire escape.

He must have escaped out the window. It didn't matter. Wherever he was, the young man would be dead by morning. Remo turned to leave.

Chiun was standing by the bloody body, looking on with a curiously musing expression.

"We'd better get the ambassadors out of here,"

Remo said with a sigh. "Maybe Smitty can do something to get that programming out of them."

He headed out into the hallway. Chiun didn't move. "You coming?" Remo asked impatiently at the door.

Turning away from the body, Chiun slowly trailed Remo out into the hall. His mouth was a somber frown.