Until then, we can only wait. Perhaps you should both use the intervening time to rest.'
Though he spoke to both of them, his words were directed to Chiun.
'I do not require rest,' the Master of Sinanju huffed.
'You're the one who should go home and grab some shut-eye,' Remo suggested to Smith. 'You don't look too hot.'
'I am fine.' The truth was he had not slept more than an hour in the past two days. Smith was exhausted. 'Besides,' he added, 'there is work here that needs my attention. Now, if you will both excuse me...'
Smith tipped his head to Chiun in an informal bow and left the room.
'I can't just sit here like a lump,' Remo complained after Smith had gone.
'We will not.' The Master of Sinanju hopped down from the bed.
His hand snaked inside the folds of his kimono. A moment later, it sprang back into view. In his delicate fingers, he clasped a torn sheet of lined yellow paper.
'What's this?' Remo asked suspiciously. He took the paper from Chiun. There were eight names spaced several lines apart. Each was underlined and separated by strings of some sort of text other than English. Even though it was a foreign language, Remo got the impression that everything was written in shorthand.
'It is what passes for language among Huns.'
'Did you swipe this from the lab?' Remo demanded.
'It was near me when I awoke. Smith was pre-occupied like a deranged tinker with his infernal machines and you were shouting at ambulance attendants. Neither of you seemed interested in a mere scrap of paper.'
'So you filched it.'
'I do not filch. I acquire,' Chiun said with bland amusement. He plucked the list from Remo's fingers.
It vanished back inside the folds of his brightly colored kimono. 'Come, Remo. We shall visit the thieves in their dens.'
One bony hand held aloft in a knot of ivory in-dignation, the old Korean headed for the door.
22
Leonard Zabik lived in Somerville, New Jersey, in his parent's three-bedroom ranch house. His was the first name on Dr. Erich von Breslau's list.
There was an ambulance parked out front when Remo and Chiun arrived. Its lights were off, its siren quiet.
Remo left his rented car across the street and strolled over to the Zabik home.
Two slow-moving attendants were bringing out a sheet-draped stretcher when Remo and Chiun walked up. The men continued working, used in their jobs to morbid curiosity seekers. Without warning, Chiun pulled the sheet away as the men were lifting the body into the back of the ambulance.
'Hey!' one of the attendants snapped.
Chiun ignored him. 'This is the one we seek,' he said to Remo.
'Leonard Zabik?' Remo said to the men. He pointed to the body on the stretcher.
'Yeah. What business is it of yours?'
'What happened?' Remo pressed.
The ambulance attendant glanced at his partner.
The other man shrugged. 'We're not sure. He was dead before we got here. If you want my guess, though, I'd say an overdose.'
The man pulled the sheet back over Leonard Zabik's face, and they proceeded to load the body into the back of the ambulance. The doors slammed loudly shut. Both men climbed into the white-and-orange truck and sped away.
'What do you make of that?' Remo asked the Master of Sinanju once the ambulance had gone.
'His body rejected that which it had not earned.'
Remo sighed. 'I'd better see what happened,' he said. He started up the driveway. He was stopped before he had even gotten halfway.
'Yoo-hoo!' The voice came from next door.
A frumpy woman in her early seventies was waving from the front lawn of the house next door. Remo crossed the driveway to a small picket fence, Chiun on his heels.
'Are you with the police or something?' the woman asked.
'Or something,' the Master of Sinanju said haughtily.
'I am, he's not,' Remo said, indicating Chiun.
He thought the lie more plausible that way. It did not seem to matter one way or the other to the woman.
'I'm Gladys Finkle. I live next door. I saw the whole thing, Officer. That boy went nuts. Absolutely, stark- raving nuts.'
'What do you mean?'
'I go over there some mornings to have coffee with Edna, Leonard's mother. Lovely woman. Anyway, I was there this morning, and she goes in to wake him because he's going to be late for work.
He's in the business side of some computer place in Edison. Well he comes ripping out of that room like the house is on fire. I never saw anything like it in my whole life. He's breaking cupboards with his bare hands and chipping Edna's beautiful Formica coun-tertop. I swear he crushed the front of the fridge.
Bent the door right in half. He had a wild look in his eye. Almost like he couldn't stop himself. 'Finally he just collapsed right there on the kitchen floor.'
'He died just like that?'
'His legs kicked out for a while. And his arms.
Like he was doing some kind of judo or something.
He was gone before the ambulance drivers got here.'
Remo nodded. The poor guy had been a victim of his body's inability to adapt to the Sinanju information. He probably didn't even know what had happened to him. They had literally reached a dead end.
And if Zabik was dead, the other poor guinea pigs would be soon to follow.
He thanked Mrs. Finkle and started to leave, ready to return to Folcroft and wait for Lothar Holz to show himself.
'The funny thing is I went over this morning to see if everything was okay. I thought I saw an ambulance here in the wee hours.'
Remo was anxious to leave. 'Really?' He said the word disinterestedly.
'Yeah. There was a big white truck parked in the driveway. My eyes aren't too good anymore. That's why I went to see Edna. I thought something might be wrong.'
Remo's curiosity was piqued once more. 'Did she say whose truck it was?'
'It was Leonard's boss or something. He took Leonard into the truck for a while and then let him go.' The woman scrunched up her jowly face, a thought occurring to her. 'Hey, do you think that had something to do with Leonard dying?'
Remo did not hear the question. He and Chiun were already back in their car. The tires sent up plumes of acrid smoke as Remo spun around and headed back down the street.
The next name on the list was Aaron Solon.
Aaron Solon didn't feel very well when he
awoke that morning.
He spent nearly an hour debating whether or not to waste a sick day but finally, reluctantly, decided to call in.
He found that there was some sort of shake-up going on at PlattDeutsche America. For a minute, Aaron was worried that the company had been bought up and that his job was gone. He even considered going in after all. But his boss assured him that the problem was internal.
There was something wrong in the R&D section.
