Newton's face was severe. "He shouldn't have hypoglossal control at this point."
The scientists collectively shrugged or shook their heads in confusion. They redoubled their efforts.
An instant later, there was another crash from the office speaker.
In the back of the van, Dr. Curt Newton froze. He prayed that nothing had happened to his mentor. For without Holz, the money flow for the Dynamic Interface System would trickle to a stop. With wary eyes, he turned toward the heat-sensing apparatus.
The chair holz had been sitting in shuddered as if from some unseen inner force, then collapsed into a shattered lump on the threadbare carpeting. There was nothing left to indicate that the pile of splinters had been, until a few seconds before, a rather worn and uninviting office chair.
In a lightning-fast flash, Remo's hand returned to his side.
"Control your man, Smith!"
Holz looked clearly terrified. His unflappable facade had given way to a look of sheer horror as Remo, struggling to fight the interface signal, slowly advanced.
Smith kept his expression bland. He dared not allow Remo's unexpected resistance to raise any visible signs of hope. If Remo was able to battle the signal and take care of Lothar Holz, then perhaps this situation could be rectified quickly. But there was still the matter of the white van out in the parking lot. "Master of Sinanju, I meant you no harm," Holz cried out as Remo closed in.
Remo managed a puzzled frown. Master of Sinanju? What was he talking about?
Remo wanted to ask, wanted to put the question to Smith.
But it had become too much of an effort to speak.
He would take care of Holz first.
Remo's deep-set eyes were focused on his target, but he still moved in an awkward, stilted manner. He was battling a nervous system that had for years obeyed his every move and now felt sluggish and unresponsive. The itchiness inside his skull was a constant irritant.
His ears rang dully.
But he had Holz. The man cowered like a frightened, craven dog before him. He would finish him with a simple blow. Nothing fancy. Then he'd find out from Smith what the hell was going on.
But the blow he planned had a mind of its own.
To Remo's surprise, his hand slashed out automatically, his spear-sharp fingertips aimed directly at the sternum of the man who cringed before Smith's desk.
Sweating profusely, Holz cowered, petrified and utterly defenseless against the killer attack.
Out in the van, Curt Newton was frantic.
"Boost the signal!"
"I can't."
"There's got to be interference coming from somewhere!"
"There's no interference. The signal's fine."
Newton shook his head. "This is impossible," he said again, desperately.
Information raced across the screen at a rate Newton had never before seen. The lightning-fast binary scroll was reflected in his owlish glasses.
"Master of Sinanju, I meant you no harm," the pleading voice of Lothar Holz hissed over the tinny speaker. Newton glanced at the speaker with a worried expression.
"Can you get the cerebellum lock yet?" Newton pleaded with one of his white-coated associates.
The man was bathed in sweat, red faced and pale in turns. He nodded sharply. "I could get it now, but we don't have the capacity."
"What do you mean?"
"His neural system is incredibly complex. There's not enough room for the file. That's why we've had a problem so far." The man wiped the sheen of perspiration from his forehead as he spoke.
"There's no way one man could fill the entire system." "I don't think this guy is human," the technician explained, shaking his head in awe. "It's almost like his neural codes have been entirely rewritten."
"But you're saying we don't have the capacity to duplicate the file?"
"Only if we destroy the other files in the system."
Newton's jaw was firmly set. "Copy over them."
"Are you sure?"
Newton nodded sharply. "Copy over everything we have. Get the cerebellum lock on him first."
"Yes, sir." The man immediately went to work, setting up the interface system to automatically delete old files as it copied the synaptic information from the individual in the rear office. The portable computers in the van whirred anxiously to life as the information flowed back over the radio signal from the rear office.
The massive databases rapidly began to fill with a wealth of new information.
"I've got cerebellum control," a tech announced after only a few seconds. He hunched over his screen excitedly.
Newton watched in fascination as new sets of binary codes—translated automatically by the preprogrammed interface system—began scrolling across the screen. The speed was far greater than before.
Where they had first moved by in a flash, they were now a blur. When he blinked, the bands of white numbers seemed to congeal into single, static lines of washed-out white.
"Wow, this is great," said the technician who had informed the others of the cerebellum lock. He had isolated the information from that section of the brain and was now playing around at his keyboard.
"This guy's got some killer programming." He punched out a simple command on the cerebellum board.
"What did you do?" Newton asked. He was still nervous, still thinking about the funding that a major screwup could cost him. Still thinking about his place in future scientific textbooks.
The man shrugged. "I just ran a program this guy's brain had started. It was something that was already along the neural net. Pretty basic compared to the rest of this guy's programming."
"What was it?"
"It was a move."
Newton pressed. "What kind of move?"
Again the young man shrugged. "It was like a karate chop, sort of." He scrunched up his face at the inadequacy of the description.
Newton felt his heart turn to water and slide down into his stomach. This foolish little hacker in the van had no idea what he might have done. The man in the office was like no one he had ever downloaded before. He was something more than a man. And he had already been advancing on Lothar Holz.
Newton prayed that the blow had missed its mark.
Fortunately for Lothar Holz, it had.
And fortunately for Remo, as well, it had been a simple stroke.
Any maneuver more complex might have ripped his arm from his shoulder.
His arm shot out, but the aim wasn't true. Holz had moved to one side. And while Remo's brain would have ordinarily compensated for the movement, he found to his supreme surprise that his brain was no longer his own. His hand breezed past Holz's shoulder. The powerful blow dissipated in the empty air above Smith's desk. His hand returned to his side, seemingly of its own volition.
Now, though Remo struggled against the mind control, he couldn't budge even a fraction of an inch.
Holz caught his breath. With grateful eyes, he watched Remo's hand slap back against his leg. It didn't move again.
Holz stood erect, straightening his tie. He tugged the cuffs of his suit jacket primly and, with a half turn of his neck, adjusted his Adam's apple against the collar of his white dress shirt.
"Well done, Curt," he said to the microphone.
"Though a touch on the late side," he muttered under his breath. He walked over to Remo.
Smith looked deflated. Any hope that Remo could rebuff the interface signal was lost. His only hope now was the true Master of Sinanju. He prayed that Chiun would be strong enough to fight off the powerful radio signal. Hopefully, by lying about Remo's true identity, Smith had bought the organization a few hours.
Maybe, just maybe, Chiun would introduce a random element that Holz hadn't planned on. The element of surprise.
Smith took his seat. "You have what you came for. Could you please leave now?" he said.
"Not quite yet."
Smith's brow furrowed. "I do not understand."
Holz slipped his slender, perfectly ma
nicured fingers around Smith's desk telephone. He lifted the receiver and extended it toward the lemony-faced man. His next words made Smith's already erratic heart muscle skip a beat.
"Call the other one."
And a Cheshire Cat smile displayed a row of gleaming, perfect teeth.
9
Chiun let the phone ring precisely one hundred times.
He didn't wish to appear too eager to perform such a menial chore.
In any other kingdom, at any other time during the nearly five-thousand-year history of the House of Sinanju, an indentured servant would have been placed at the disposal of the Master of Sinanju. This servant's duties would have been varied. Among them would be drawing the Master's bath, laundering the Master's robes, and now—in the twentieth century, on the distant shores of the United States of America—answering the Master's telephone.
Since the crazed Emperor Smith, the true though secretive ruler of America, didn't wish for Chiun to have servants, the duty of answering the telephone generally fell to Remo.
But Remo wasn't there.
Remo had allowed the device to squawk more than sixty times earlier in the day. Chiun couldn't allow himself to appear more eager than his pupil, so he had decided that the perfect number, one hundred, would be the one on which he answered the ringing apparatus.
"I am Chiun," he announced into the phone.
"Chiun, I need you at Folcroft."
Smith was usually more formal on the telephone, electing to use Chiun's title rather than his name.
Chiun preferred the formality.
"Remo is on his way, O Emperor," Chiun declared.
"There is a problem with Remo."
"He is missing?"
"No, no. He arrived here but...it would be better, perhaps, for me to show you rather than explain it over the telephone."
"You wish to show me something?"
"Yes."
Chiun tipped his head, considering. "You will hire me a conveyance?"
"A cab will be there to pick you up shortly. I have reserved you a seat on a 6:00 p.m. flight out of Logan."
"Very well."
Chiun hung up the phone.
Smith had something to show him. What could it be but the autograph? Doubtless the fool felt his name was too valuable to entrust the signature to Remo.
It had better be. Especially with all of the aggra-vation Chiun was going through to collect it.
Like a fussy hen, Chiun hurried around the house preparing for the trip.
Ten minutes later Chiun was in a cab on the way to the airport.
The driver was a sixtyish man with a crown of steel gray hair and a thick, wrinkled neck.
As they drove, Chiun complained loudly about Smith. He was upset at the CURE director's short-sightedness in not asking him to accompany Remo this morning. At least then he would have had someone to complain to along the way. He also griped about Remo, a boy so dim he couldn't be trusted to carry out a simple errand.
"Tell me about it," the cabbie commiserated. "I got a kid. A son, too. Ten years out of college and still living at home. I tell the wife we should just toss him out on his ear. But, you know, he's his mama's boy. She says I'll go before he does."
"Pardon me," Chiun said. "Was someone speaking to you?"
The cabdriver shrugged. "I thought you were," he said. There wasn't a hint of malice in his voice. He was used to the rapid mood swings of fares.
"I am put through all of this for a simple autograph," Chiun said to the window. "A thing that could be sent to me by post."
"I wouldn't do that," the cabdriver cautioned.
"My kid's got an autographed Willie Mays card.
You know, from back when he was playing. It's worth a bundle right about now. You tell me, is it normal for a thirty-year-old to pay a couple hundred bucks for a bubble-gum card?"
And because he didn't wish to hear someone griping all the way to the airport, Chiun touched the man lightly on the side of the neck.
Immediately the cabbie's vocal cords seized up.
The rest of the trip to the airport was blessedly quiet.
It was dark by the time Chiun arrived at Folcroft.
As he made his way across the tree-dotted lawns surrounding the sanitarium, he could see a few late-evening boaters chugging across the gently rippling waters of Long Island Sound. The lights on the craft bobbed hypnotically above the undulating black surface.
He spied a young blond man standing alertly beside a large white van parked at the apex of the long gravel driveway. He avoided the man, as well as the truck, and merged with the pervasive darkness surrounding the ivy-covered building, a shadow among shadows.
The side door was locked this late at night. Chiun wrapped his delicate fingers around the handle and wrenched. The hooked piece of shiny aluminum bent but stayed attached to the thick metal fire door.
The bolt dropped free of the latch and clanged into the damp inner stairwell.
Chiun entered the building.
The sanitarium was lightly staffed at this hour, and a cost-cutting measure instituted by Smith had dropped the ambient light within the corridors and stairwells to near nothing.
The Master of Sinanju became as one with the gloom as he moved through the empty administrative wing of the sanitarium.
He found Smith's office and, ignoring his suprasensory data that told him there were three men inside—one obviously Remo, another obviously Smith—Chiun pushed open the doorway and entered the sparse room.
"Emperor Smith, the House of Sinanju expresses gratitude to you, its benefactor, for that which you are about to bestow. All hail—"
He was halfway through his speech when he noticed Lothar Holz beside Smith's desk. The man had been sitting, but stood when Chiun entered.
Chiun's eyes grew as wide as joyful saucers. "You have brought with you your costar," Chiun said delightedly.
"Master Chiun, you must dispatch this man at once," Smith ordered abruptly.
Surprised, Holz glanced from the aged Asian at the door back to Smith.
"Master?" he said. His eyes strayed to Remo, who stood stock-still beside Smith's desk, a glint of impotent fury dancing in the depths of his deep-set eyes.
Chiun nodded sagely. "I have heard of such problems on television sets before. Do not fret, Emperor Smith, for this was merely the pilot episode. Surely your role will be expanded in the future."
Chiun suddenly felt something brush against the base of his skull. It was a slight tickle. The sensation intensified and moved around behind his ears. Chiun waved a long-nailed hand beside his head as if swatting away a pesky fly. Although he felt the unmis-takable hum, he didn't sense the disruption of air an insect would cause.
"Chiun, quickly!" Smith called urgently.
"This is the true Master of Sinanju." It was a statement of fact. Holz unfurled a delicate finger in Chiun's direction. "Curt, get a lock on the old one."
Chiun was torn. Though his emperor was directly ordering him to destroy Lothar Holz, star of the evening news, he was momentarily distracted by the strange sensation creeping across the back of his egg-shell skull.
But it was no more than that. A sensation.
And as quickly as the sensation had come, it passed.
Confusion clouded the cobweb wrinkles above his eyes.
Chiun took a step into the room...and was blocked by Remo.
The younger man had become suddenly animated.
He had gone from being a motionless statue one moment to a springing tiger the next.
He leaped from his spot beside Smith's desk, landing softly in the center of the worn carpet.
Remo now stood protectively between the Master of Sinanju and Lothar Holz, barring Chiun's way.
Chiun's ancient eyes narrowed to curious slivers.
"Remove yourself."
Remo said nothing. There was no malice in his deep-set eyes.
In fact, there was something closer to sadness. And fear.
"Remo is not himself," S
mith insisted. "He is being manipulated."
"Do not be a fool, Smith," Chiun spat. He started to slide to Remo's left, but a thick-wristed hand shot out, blocking his path. It wasn't a threatening move, by any stretch of the imagination. But it was aggressive nonetheless. Remo was barring the Master of Sinanju from performing a duty to his emperor.
Chiun dodged right, but Remo's other arm shot out, faster than either Smith or Holz could follow.
Both arms were stretched out now, like a Hollywood zombie's, with Chiun standing between them.
"Curt, what's going on?" Holz demanded of the air. "Get the old man under control." He tapped the small receiver in his ear.
"Remo, step aside," Chiun said, under his breath.
And rather than move, Remo's hand lashed out viciously, in a direct line for Chiun's temple.
So shocked was Chiun by the unexpected attack that the blow very nearly registered.
The old man dropped low and feinted left, beneath Remo's deadly fist, and came up behind him, his back to Smith's desk. Remo spun a perfect pirouette in midair and landed facing Chiun.
To Smith and Holz, it appeared as if Remo's response were instantaneous, but Chiun saw that it was sluggish. It didn't have any of the normal fluidity or grace Chiun had come to expect from Remo's usual movements.
"Remo, what is this?" the Master of Sinanju demanded, his mouth a furious, questioning O.
He again saw the strange look buried deep within his pupil's usually expressionless eyes. Something that registered deep regret and deeper sorrow. Remo threw another blow at Chiun.
The Master of Sinanju swatted it aside as if it were nothing. But he could see that Remo was becoming more focused in his attacks. It was as if whatever was controlling his actions was growing more adept with each subsequent move.
"Chiun, Remo is under some kind of mind control. His actions are not his own," Smith cried Pleadingly. "Holz is behind it." With a gnarled gray index finger, he indicated the man Chiun had seen on television with Smith the previous day.
Holz was tapping at the tiny object in his ear, not even paying attention to the battle being waged in the center of the office.
Remo attacked Chiun once more. It was more complex than his previous attempts and it very nearly worked. The Master of Sinanju had to duck away before he was able to join in the motion of the blow.
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