She leaped from behind her desk and plastered herself against the inner-office door.
Her body was pressed between Remo and the
door.
"Mr. Holz isn't in right now."
"I can hear his heart beating through the door."
"That's mine." She grabbed Remo's hand and placed it on her chest. "Let's go someplace and talk," she urged.
Remo didn't have time for this. He tapped the woman lightly on the inside of her wrist. She gasped once loudly, her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed sideways onto the office sofa. A broad smile stretched across her overly made-up features.
Remo popped the flimsy door lock and entered the inner office.
The pain from the Dynamic Interface System signal was immediate and intense. It was far more powerful than it had been the day before.
It felt as if someone were dragging his brain and spinal cord out of his body through a raw hole in the back of his neck.
Then all at once, the pain receded.
Lothar Holz was seated behind his desk. A row of tinted windows behind him overlooked a grassy courtyard. Beyond the courtyard was the matching PlattDeutsche building, reflecting its sister structure in its glassy facade.
Remo tried to lunge for Holz, but was rooted in place. He heard the door behind him close and saw Holz's male assistant step out from his peripheral vision and move across the office to stand behind his boss.
4'Don't bother to struggle. You know how pointless that is."
Remo gritted his teeth. "Not as pointless as you might think."
He was surprised to find that, unlike the previous day, the impulses weren't arrested when he tried to speak.
"We've eliminated certain aspects of the program.
Speech, most involuntary responses. The pickup time is greatly increased. You can thank Dr. Smith for that. His input—so to speak—has helped us a great deal. He delivered you over to us in every sense of the word."
Holz grinned triumphantly.
Remo felt foolish. He wanted to say something like You 7/ never get away with this, but the fact was he had already experienced the futility of trying to battle the powerful radio signal. He had tried for hours the last time and had failed. He screwed his mouth tightly shut and stared stonily ahead.
Holz tapped a pen on his desk. "When the interface van didn't check in, the entire building was wired yesterday for your eventual return. Sort of a Sinanju frequency. I don't suppose you'd want to tell me where the van is."
"Go goose a gorilla."
"Your cooperation is irrelevant—we will find out what we want to know easily enough."
Remo remained silent.
"Understand this, Remo, your consciousness may still be yours, but your body now works for me."
Holz turned to his assistant.
"The interface van is at the sanitarium in Rye. Get it." The man nodded and move toward the door.
Holz called after him. "If Smith attempts to stop you, kill him."
Remo heard the door close behind him.
"It became necessary to import assistance on your unique case," Holz said. "You might be curious to see how we're progressing." He called downstairs on his office phone and instructed the technical staff to move Remo down to the fourth floor. Holz then went over to the broken office door and pulled it open.
Remo felt his legs kick in automatically. Woodenly. Again he felt the sensation of some outside power forcing its will upon him.
Though he tried to stop it, he felt the interface signal coursing into his brain, seeping down into his limbs. In spite of his determination, he knew it was no use. He followed Holz out the door.
The expression on Holz's face was insufferably smug.
Remo wanted to rip the smile right off his smarmy face. And unbeknownst to Holz, he still had one chance. One thing the man hadn't bargained on.
Remo prayed the Master of Sinanju would be able to locate the source of the signal and stop it once and for all.
They had nearly been killed.
Von Breslau seemed to be taking the whole thing in stride, but maybe he didn't understand what a close call it had been. Only Dr. Curt Newton knew that they had made it by the skin of their teeth.
The old Asian had blown into the room like a man possessed.
His hands flailed; his legs pumped. Jaw clenching furiously, he had swooped toward them.
He was halfway to them when his actions began to slow.
The signal had kicked in automatically, as it had been programmed to do, but there was a time lag.
The Dynamic Interface System signal hadn't been able to cerebellum lock as quickly as usual. If the mainframes hadn't already been programmed with the information obtained from the younger one, they would never have stopped the Asian.
His speed continued to decrease as he came across the room. In the end, he was like a child's toy with worn-out batteries.
He froze a foot away from Newton.
"What is this sorcery!" the Master of Sinanju demanded. His hazel eyes were sparks of uncompre-hending fury.
Newton ignored Chiun. He tried to copy the old doctor's calm demeanor, though his heart pounded at the closeness of Chiun's attack.
He spoke directly to von Breslau.
"You'll be interested to know we've just refined the program to include speech. Before, we were forced to take hold of everything. It took up tons of computer space. Now we're able to be much more selective."
Chiun's eyes were wide in shock as he tried desperately to move his limbs. He couldn't budge them an inch.
The test subject seemed baffled by the strange ap-parition in the kimono. Newton tapped him on the leg. "Why don't you take off for now? We'll call you back when we need you."
The man nodded his understanding. He hopped down from the gurney and began buttoning his shirt.
He paused a moment, startled. "What—?"
He held his hands out in wonder. The pads of his thumbs and forefingers were covered with a faint white dust. He had crushed one of his plastic buttons to powder.
"A result of the test," Newton said quickly. "Just take it easy on things for the rest of the day. Until we can get back to you."
The man left the room, staring in amazement at his own hands.
Von Breslau had shuffled over to Chiun. He brought his face to within inches of the old Korean. "This one is very old," he said to Newton. He looked even more unhappy than usual.
"An understatement, I'd say," Newton agreed.
"His physical reactions are astounding for a man of any age. But they're even more astonishing for someone of his obviously advanced years."
"You have lived a long life," von Breslau said to Chiun.
"Longer than an apricot. Not nearly as long as a mountain." The Master of Sinanju had contained his initial rage. Through a monumental effort, he held himself in check.
"You were Master when Berlin fell?"
Chiun did not speak. His eyes were as cold and barren as the belly of the deepest, iciest sea. His mouth was a razor slit.
"You murdered the chancellor." It was a statement of fact, as well as an accusation.
"If you refer to the strutting little fool with the comical mustache, he ingested poison and shot himself when he heard the Master was coming. Double ignominy for a preening jackanapes. This, of course, after he had bravely taken the lives of a pregnant woman and a dog."
"You lie!"
"He was a coward who sent fools to die for his base cause. His black-booted storm-poopers were de-valuing the market for true assassins."
Dr. Erich von Breslau's normally bitter features had slowly churned into a burning fury. "Liar! You are a murderer! And you will stand and watch, filthy Korean mongrel. You will watch while I wrap my hands around your own lying throat and squeeze the life from you."
The arms of the Nazi doctor shook with rage as he reached for the unguarded throat of the Master of Sinanju.