Brain Storm (15 page)

The pipe struck Ernst in the temple. The big man stopped in his tracks, dazed.

Smith swung again. Another crack. Ernst blinked once, hard, and fell to his knees.

Smith lashed out once more. Ernst was too far gone by now to feel the blow register. Shattered skull fragments were already lodged in his brain. The final blow forced them in farther.

Like some great primal beast that knows when its time has come, Ernst's eyes rolled back in his head.

The huge man fell forward onto his bag of torturer's tools. He didn't move again.

Smith quickly unholstered the man's side arm, tucking it in his belt. Captain Menk had left his greatcoat on a hook in the corner of the room. Smith snatched it up, pulling it on over his grimy clothes as he ducked out through the opening.

From all around came the sound of shouting, panicked voices and frantic milling around.

Smith ducked into the shadows behind the building, hiding away.

Plotting his next move. He knew that Captain Menk wouldn't rest until he was dead.

Smith had become the madman's prey once more.

Harold Smith awoke behind the wheel of the rented car.

For one frightening instant, he thought he was back on Usedom, but the thought soon fled. He was here, in the present. And the stakes were as high now as they had been then.

He checked his watch. He had slept for precisely eleven minutes.

Harold Smith removed his glasses and massaged his eyes with his fingertips. The same troubling thought that had passed through his mind for the past five hours resurfaced.

He should have shot Holz when he had the chance.

His gun had been in the desk drawer the entire time.

He could have ended this nightmare before it had even started.

It was a foolish recrimination, he knew. He had hoped that Remo would be able to take out Holz and his interface van quietly. That hope had vanished, along with Remo.

His organization was an open book to Lothar Holz, but Holz didn't seem interested in CURE. Only Sinanju. That had been the only piece of true luck in this entire ordeal.

Smith's only hope was to use the organization against Holz. But for that, he needed access to his office.

The passenger's door of the car suddenly opened.

The Master of Sinanju slid in beside Smith. There was no rustling of leaves or clothing, not a single audible footfall to warn of his approach. These were the skills that had served the Korean Masters for centuries and that had finally been rendered useless by technology.

"The vehicle is not there." The old Korean's voice was thin.

"You are certain of that?"

Chiun fixed Smith with an icy glare. "I am certain, Smith."

Smith nodded curtly. He turned the ignition key.

"I'm sure Remo will be fine." He was embarrassed the second the words passed his lips. Chiun didn't respond. The wizened Asian stared stonily out the windshield.

Without another word, they drove the last quarter mile to the darkened gates of Folcroft.

There was a note on Smith's desk.

Your appointment informed me that you were feeling ill. Hope you are better today. E. Mikulka Smith's secretary.

The note was neatly typed and perfectly centered on the onyx slab. She must have suspected Smith would return the next morning. In his entire time as director of Folcroft, only dire circumstances had kept him from his post for more than two days in a row.

He settled in behind his desk and booted up his computer.

Chiun stood before the desk, tucking his bony hands into the voluminous folds of his brocaded kimono.

Smith ran a security check for any signs of tampering in the CURE system but found none.

It was a relief,, though not entirely a surprise. He had been checking in at various intervals from pay phones around Rye. If someone other than himself had attempted to access any information, the entire memory core of the Folcroft mainframes would have self-destructed. However, it was still a relief to see with his own eyes that everything remained intact.

"You will use that device to locate Remo?" Chiun asked flatly.

He hadn't spoken much to Smith in the past few hours.

"It is my hope," Smith said. He stabbed out a few rapid commands, eyeing the results expectantly. He was surprised to find no listing of a Lothar Holz in any of the PlattDeutsche company records that were open to public scrutiny. "Odd," Smith said aloud.

He tried a different tack. Reasoning that they would have to bring Remo somewhere convenient to their research, he began checking real-estate holdings. He found that the PlattDeutsche Corporation and its subsidiary, PlattDeutsche America, had several smaller business concerns in the immediate vi-cinity. It was a well-diversified company, and as Smith ran through the various real-estate holdings, he eliminated most of them as possible destinations.

There were only two research facilities in the area.

One in upstate New York, the other in New Jersey.

But he needed to be certain.

He used his computer to gain access to PlattDeutsche's vast database...and was instantly surprised at the complexity of the company's antitam-pering safeguards. Every time he tried to delve into the research material concerned with the Dynamic Interface System, he was rebuffed. Smith had little time to waste cracking the code. He couldn't even find a listing of Lothar Holz as vice president in charge of the operation. The entire R&D wing of PlattDeutsche seemed impossible to access.

And then it struck him. Lothar Holz. Vice president in charge of research and development.

Remembering the file he had created the previous day, he called up any information the computers had culled from a variety of media outlets. And there it was. An interview in a local New Jersey paper.

Glowing praise for Lothar Holz, rising star at PlattDeutsche. The computer offered a grainy newspaper photo of Holz donating a check to a local community center.

It was only then that Smith remembered. The van that had brought Holz to Smith's home had sported New Jersey license plates. They had taken Remo to their facility in Edison, New Jersey.

He stood.

"Master of Sinanju, Remo is in New Jersey."

Chiun didn't seem convinced. He held a slender index finger to his lips. He cocked a leathery ear toward the door. When he seemed at last convinced of some invisible certainty, he tucked his hands back inside his sleeves.

"That is where your machine tells you we will find my son?"

"That is correct."

"Then it is time to have it hauled over."

Smith frowned. "Overhauled? Why?"

"Because Remo is here."

And his voice was fraught with foreboding.

He would have felt more comfortable if Dr. Newton had come along. Or Mervin Fischer. But Mr.

Holz had sent Ron Stern out in the interface van on a specific mission. A mission that he could not entrust to the others.

That Lothar Holz could trust Ron Stern to follow his orders to the letter was a certainty. Trust was the very foundation of their relationship.

Stern was a brilliant programmer who had come to computers late in life. He was nearly forty years old, but in spite of his advanced years—in terms of the computer field—Stern had worked alongside Fischer developing the earliest translation programs for the Dynamic Interface System.

His age made him a sort of father figure to the rest of the men on the programming team, including the real genius, Mervin Fischer.

But Stern and Fischer were polar opposites. Stern was boisterous and outspoken. He was an avowed sportsman and quite athletic. He watched his diet more carefully than anyone else at the Edison complex. Even when the rest of the boys were eating their fast-food burgers and pizzas, Stern always ate nothing heavier than a salad. No dressing. Stern also had one minor peccadillo that the others didn't know about. He was somewhat more aggressive when it came to the fairer sex than his friend Mervin. He was just more persuasive, and though some people had called it rape, Ron Stern knew that term was far too strong.

Unfortunately for the computer programmer, the authorities didn't think the term was strong enough when applied to Ron Stern.

His world had begun to cave in shortly after an incident concerning a PlattDeutsche executive secretary.

Luckily for Stern, when his darkest hour had been upon him he had found an ally in the R&D vice president. Holz put the entire muscle of the legal-affairs division into defending the "poor innocent man." The prosecution crumbled. In less time than it took to bring the charges, Ron Stern was a free man. And Lothar Holz had the programmer in his back pocket. After that, the lines between right and wrong further blurred to Ron Stern as Holz, his sav-ior in his most desperate time of need, used him to deal with any niggling extralegal thing that came up.

Unbeknownst to Stern, most of these problems were manufactured, in a deliberate manipulation to train him to unquestioning obedience and make him feel more and more indebted to his boss.

And it had worked. Stern didn't question the motives of Mr. Holz when he was given his special instructions to return to the sanitarium in Rye with his

"special cargo."

The others who had been sent along with him wouldn't be a problem. They had all had similar help at one time or another from Lothar Holz. The only thing that really worried Stern were the computers.

He hoped they were up to the challenge.

They had parked outside the high walls of the sanitarium. One of the men had scrambled up to the roof and attached the rotating transmitter array to the coupling behind the cab. The curved black mesh looked like some kind of miniature Pentagon missile tracker.

It would boost the signal so that they wouldn't have to enter the grounds of the sanitarium.

Ordinarily this wouldn't be necessary. The wide beam of the system was usually all it took. And the machines themselves were preprogrammed to handle hundreds of ordinary people automatically. It was virtually idiot proof. But this was a special case.

They needed all the focus they could get just to hold on to one man. And Stern had permission to access the satellite if it became necessary.

In the rear of the van, three technicians operated the motion-coordinating terminals. Stern and two others worked the keyboards on the other side of the truck.

It was a go. Stern saw two people in the same rear office they had isolated earlier in the day. The thermal sensors outlined the men in red.

"One of them is that guy from the bank. We still can't get a lock on him."

"Doesn't matter," Stern said. "Mr. Holz wants them both dead."

He watched as another lone figure, also outlined in red, moved swiftly through the corridors of the administration building. And as the men behind him typed madly away, the spectral shape drew closer to the rear office.

They would have expected him to come in through the window. Or to explode in through the office door.

Maybe to ambush them in the parking lot. What they wouldn't have expected was for Remo to saunter in through the doorway as if nothing was wrong. So that was exactly what they had programmed him to do. "Hi, Smith. Hi, Chiun. How's it going?"

"Remo?" Smith asked, confused. Chiun raised a warning hand. "Do not trust your senses, Emperor."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Remo aske< His face scrunched up in a flawless computer creation of puzzlement.

"Come no closer."

"What? I waste half the night escaping from those goons you turned me over to and that's the welcome I get? Thanks a lot."

His words sounded sincere, but Chiun could see the look of anguish deep within his pupil's eyes.

knew that Remo still didn't control his own actions.

Smith looked at him, his staid features puzzled.

He opened his mouth to ask for some enlightenment.

Unexpectedly, Remo sprang toward Chiun. His feet and hands lashed out like a manic windmill. The movements were much more fluid than they had been earlier in the day. Whoever controlled Remo had obviously been practicing.

Chiun blocked the arm blows with his forearms.

In the move Remo used, the arms were not the primary means of assault. They were meant only as a distraction to the target. The real killing blows were focused in the legs.

Chiun dared not attempt to stop Remo's legs. Jje leaped up and over them, his skirts billowing as he landed to Remo's right.

The next attack was instantaneous, as if Remo had anticipated Chiun's first move. He whirled and struck out with the heel of his hand. Another millisecond, and he would have shattered the Master of Sinanju's windpipe.

Chiun no longer stood beside Remo. He was behind, then above him as his spindly legs flashed out, knocking Remo off balance. The instant Remo struck the carpet, Chiun was on him, his tapered fingers searching out the spot at the base of Remo's skull that would paralyze him.

When he was satisfied that Remo could no longer move, Chiun stood.

Amazingly Remo flipped over, thrashing out at Chiun once more. Chiun was stunned. This should not have been possible. Whatever this outside influence was that tampered with Remo's mind, they had no idea what their ham-fisted tinkering could do.

They might irreparably damage Remo's delicate nervous system if they continued to override his body's instincts for preservation.

"Fiends," Chiun hissed, dodging Remo's lightning-fast hands.

Again he knocked Remo down and again he

placed pressure on the top of the spine. On the floor, Remo grew rigid.

"Come here, Smith," Chiun said, beckoning to the CURE director.

Harold Smith stepped uncertainly from behind his desk and crossed over to the Master of Sinanju.

"Here." Chiun grabbed Smith by the wrist and pulled him down to Remo's prone form. "Place your fingers here, at the top of his spine." Smith did as he was instructed. Chiun rose, leaving Smith squatting on the floor beside Remo.

"What now?" Smith asked.

Heading for the door, Chiun called back over his shoulder, "Do not waver for an instant, or I fear Remo will kill you."

"Where are you going?"