"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.