Newton gulped. 'Breslau? That wouldn't be Erich Von Breslau, would it?'
The old man ignored the question. Holz leaned in closer to Newton. He said crisply, 'You will not tell anyone. The doctor is involved in the management structure of PlattDeutsche International. If this is discovered, there are forces who would argue that all of our research is tainted. Including your own.'
Newton's mind was racing. His brain conjured up images, countless photographs he had seen over the years, depicting horrific scenes of a war that had ended three years before he was born. He saw London after the blitz; merchant vessels sinking, torpedo victims, orphans crying in the streets, wasted figures in tattered clothes lined up along barbed-wire fences, shallow mass graves stacked with rotting corpses.
Putting all of that on one end of a scale, he placed his own career on the other. His career won out.
He heard the voice of Lothar Holz, breaking through his thoughts.
'Curt? Do you have a problem with this?'
Newton blinked. He glanced at Holz, then at the small aged man standing impatiently next to him. He didn't look all that dangerous.
Newton extended his hand. 'I'm certain I will enjoy working with you, Doctor.' And the smile Curt Newton flashed was sincere.
16
Remo and Chiun took the interstate from New York onto the Jersey turnpike. On either side of the high-way, industrialized New Jersey was a joyless, flat expanse of smoke-belching factories built in swamps.
At night the ugly yellow glow of a million parking lot and chimney lights gave the flats the surreal tone of a depressing futuristic film. In the day, everything just looked squalid.
Chiun sniffed at the air, thick with chemicals and other pollutants. His face became a pucker of displeased wrinkles. 'Why do they call this province
'new'?' he asked Remo.
'Because it was at one time,' Remo replied.
'The newness has been eroded. It is time it was renamed Old Jersey.'
'I think that's over in Europe. It's an island or something in the English Channel.'
Chiun's eyes narrowed suspiciously. 'Its history predates that of this malodorous place?'
'By centuries.'
'Remind me never to visit there, Remo, for time has surely allowed the vile Old Jersians to amass an even greater volume of filth than their descendants.'
'Not very bloody likely, but I'll make a note of it,' Remo promised.
They got off the turnpike near Highland Park and threaded their way over to Edison.
The PlattDeutsche America complex occupied a separate corner of an industrial park near the edge of town. It had its own fence to cordon it off from the other buildings on the site. Several tin patches decorated in red, white and blue adorned the fence at regular intervals. They sported the logo of a private security company.
Remo parked his car in one of the nearer lots and he and Chiun walked the rest of the way over to the PlattDeutsche America compound.
It was nearly nine and the place was open for business. People hustled from building to building. Cars were continually passing back and forth through the main gate.
4 'I don't like this,' Remo warned. 'Maybe we should wait until tonight.'
'I do not wish to prolong my exposure to this foul air. When you were last here, to which building were you brought?'
'That one,' Remo said, pointing at one of two matching buildings at the front of the complex. It was a gleaming steel-and-glass structure. The early morning sun reflected brilliantly off hundreds of huge, glistening black panes.
'Then that is where we begin.'
Chiun's hand chopped down. The links of the high fence popped, one after the other, beneath the side of his razor nails. When there was a large enough gap in the fence, he wrapped his fingers around the serrated edge and drew it back.
Remo followed Chiun through the tear in the fence and the two of them made their way across a stretch of well-watered lawn for the main building.
'I don't think we should barge in through the front door,' Remo said when they were on the sidewalk encircling the building. A vast parking area stretched out to their left.
'The Master of Sinanju does not use the servant's entrance,' Chiun sniffed.
Remo paused on the sidewalk. Grudgingly Chiun stopped, as well.
'Look, Chiun. It doesn't make sense to announce we're here. You might not be worried about that gadget of theirs, but I am. If we go in the front door, their security is going to know something's up. We don't even have passes.'
Chiun glanced at the entrance. Several employees were passing into the building at that moment, their laminated security tags attached to a lapel or hanging from the neck. An older woman had one clipped to her pocketbook.
'Wait here, O worrier,' Chiun said with an annoyed sigh.
Stranding Remo on the sidewalk, Chiun flounced off toward the parking lot, disappearing behind a tall row of neatly trimmed shrubs. He returned a moment later, two plastic tags in his frail hand. He handed one to Remo. 'You may stop worrying now.'
Remo looked at his tag. It identified him as Louis Washington III. A charcoal black face was pasted in the corner of the pass.
'This doesn't fill me with much confidence,'
Remo said as he affixed the tag to the collar of his T-shirt.
'These will not even be necessary,' Chiun insisted. He clipped his tag to the front of his kimono.
'I am merely indulging you. Come.'
As if he were master of the entire PlattDeutsche complex, Chiun marched boldly for the door. Reluctantly Remo trailed in his wake.
Less than a minute later, they were roaming the corridors of the company's research-and-development wing. The passes had gotten them beyond the main security desk and onto the elevator. The guard at the R&D level hadn't even looked up when they disembarked from the elevator.
A gold-embossed sign above the main corridor read Advanced Research Division, but it looked as though the research division had become fixated on a single item. Almost the entire floor had been turned over to the Dynamic Interface System. Down the hall were a few smaller signs announcing Computer Labs, DIS; Product Design, DIS; and Physical Cryptology.
On the door of the last lab, a hand-written note was taped to the wall: 4'Dr. Curt Newton, resident genius.'
Chiun sniffed the air. 'I do not sense the vibrations of the innerfaze device,' he said.
'They might not have the machine turned on,'
Remo suggested.
'Is this the correct floor?'
Remo glanced around, considering. 'I'm not sure.
All these rooms look alike.'
Chiun nodded his understanding. 'The banality of American architecture.'
'Maybe we should split up,' Remo suggested, thinking it would improve the odds that one of them would destroy either the interface equipment or Holz.
It would eliminate the chance that they would both be taken at once.
'Agreed.' Chiun spun on his heel and marched down the corridor.
As he watched him go, Remo noted that the old Korean looked very small, very frail. He wished he could have impressed upon his teacher the frustration he had felt at being manipulated so easily. It was a feeling of
