"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 manicured 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.