Brain Storm (21 page)

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.

Though von Breslau had the determination, it was unlikely he had the strength to follow through on his threat. He never found out. For at the precise moment his palms brushed Chiun's Adam's apple, Lothar Holz entered the lab, Remo in tow.

"Doctor, stop!" Holz raced across the room and grabbed von Breslau's wrists. His hands had just encircled Chiun's throat. Curt Newton, who until that moment was a spectator in the exchange between the pair, joined Holz. Together they pulled von Breslau away from Chiun.

"He will die!" von Breslau barked.

"That is not the plan!" Holz said.

"It is my plan!" von Breslau was furious. Spittle sprayed from his mouth as he spoke. His eyes were daggers of hatred aimed at Chiun.

"Curt, please see that this one is transferred down here." Holz nodded to Remo.

Newton reluctantly pulled himself away from von Breslau. He called to the regular interface labs to have the signal controlling Remo switched over to the subordinate mainframe in the current lab.

When Newton was out of earshot, Holz lowered his voice. "Four wants both Sinanju masters."

"Those of Four do not understand," von Breslau said.

"They understand," Holz whispered harshly.

"This has been a costly investment. The Americans were not likely to buy into the interface technology anytime in the near future. With the abilities of these men at our disposal, we can recoup our investment a thousandfold. Immediately."

"We don't need them. Your machines can give us what they have. I can make an army like them long after they are gone."

"We don't know that yet. Are you willing to risk the fury of those in command on a single test?"

Von Breslau considered. At long last he nodded.

"Agreed. For now," he whispered. To Chiun, he said loudly, "Remember. You live at my convenience, Korean."

"You die at mine," the Master of Sinanju responded levelly.

Holz smiled warmly. "Doctor?" he said to Newton. He pointed to Remo. He indicated the floor near Chiun with a nod.

Understanding, the scientist punched a few rapid commands into his computer. The interface signal brought Remo from his place near the door, over to Chiun.

The two men stood side by side, motionless. Neither was able to gain comfort from even a sideward glance at the other. They were blocks of deep-frozen ice. Holz clapped his hands together warmly. "Imagine. I have the only two living Masters of Sinanju under my control. Yours is a tradition which spreads back, what, thousands of years?"

"You seem to know a fat lot about us," Remo said. His words were thick with loathing.

Holz beamed. "Actually I probably never would have heard of you," he admitted, "if not for my grandfather."

17

Lothar Holz remembered being sickened when his father revealed to him what his family had been during the Second World War.

He was eight years old and attending a private academy in Bonn.

While the public perception was one of danger for unrepentant Nazis still residing in Germany after the war, the reality was quite different. During the 1950s, in the little enclave where Holz spent his formative years, there was safety. The authorities tended to look the other way when Lothar's father and friends were about.

Young Lothar knew some of what had happened.

Hushed words. Furtive whispers.

Oftentimes his father would drink to excess. Deep in drunken melancholia, he would curse those forces that had conspired to thwart his dreams. They had crushed all hope of the promised, glorious Reich.

It was only when Lothar had seen pictures of the atrocities committed by his countrymen that he confronted his father. He was a brave boy, in short pants and cuffed felt jacket, standing up to the world-weary drunkard.

He told of the photographs from the book of a boy he had met, the son of an American serviceman who was part of the occupying force in postwar Germany.

He told of the half-naked, emaciated men and women standing in the snow. Of the bodies.

He had expected his father to be furious, but instead the elder Holz grew deathly quiet.

Leadenly he sat down on their gaily printed sofa.

He beckoned his son to sit next to him.

"You have heard of the so-called atrocities before, have you not?" his father had said softly.

Lothar admitted that he had.

"How long ago did you first hear?"

"I do not remember, Father. All my life."

"And why did you wait until now to question me?"

"The pictures," young Lothar had said desperately. He remembered one of a group of German ci-vilians being led past a row of corpses. They were Jewish women who had died on a forced march. Des-iccation had made their faces chillingly deformed.

They almost appeared to have been mummified.

"The pictures were horrible." Lothar shivered at the recent memory.

"And why was that?"

"Well.. .these people were dead. Murdered."

His father stroked his chin pensively. "Would it This was what she said to her young husband—a camp guard who saw his marriage as an opportunity to move up—many times over.

But the person she had the hardest time convinc-ing, apparently, was herself. She had climbed into a bathtub of warm water one sunny afternoon when Lothar was four. With her she had brought her husband's straight razor.

After that, Lothar and his father were alone. The year was 1951.

And from that day forward, not an hour went by in his young life where Lothar did not remember his mother fondly. But the day his father hinted to him what his mother had been during the war would alter his perceptions of right and wrong forever.

Lothar had received a fine education. English, Spanish and French were all taught at his exclusive school, in addition to his native German. He learned each language fluently. Mathematics was never his forte, nor any of the sciences. But he was persuasive and well liked, by students and instructors alike.

However, this early acceptance by his peers was short-lived. Once he had learned the truth about his mother, his grades began to fail.

His father was called, but he didn't seem interested in his son's problems. The elder Holz's drinking had grown worse with each passing day, and though he was still a relatively young man, he looked older and more haggard as his advanced alcoholism ravaged his system.

He died nearly a year to the day he had first told his son the truth about his mother.

At nine years of age, Lothar Holz was an orphan.

He had no other family. The only relative his father had ever spoken of was his father-in-law, but the man had died during the war, a victim of the Russian and American advance in the death throes of the old power system.

He thought he was completely alone.

Lothar was in the small flat where he and his father lived. It was the day after his father's death. There would be a service of some sort, someone had told him, but he didn't wish to attend. Lothar didn't love his father, although he missed his presence in the shabby little apartment. It was a strange feeling for a nine-year-old to have, and with no one to share it with, Lothar had sat in a dusty corner of his father's bedroom and cried for hours.

He was sniffling quietly when he heard a knock at the door.

He assumed it was another woman from the apartment building with a plate of pastries. When he went to answer it, he found a reed-thin old man in a black topcoat and gloves. The man asked if he could come in. Lothar assumed he was a mortician, such were his gaunt features and pallor. He let him inside.

The man had stepped through the apartment carefully, as if he did not want the grimy carpet to soil the soles of his shoes. He seemed displeased at the stack of empty liquor bottles piled on the floor.

Lothar felt ashamed. He wished he had thought to throw out the bottles. Quickly he tried to pick up a few items of clothing that were draped over the backs of chairs.

"Do not bother with that, Lothar," the old man had said.

He sat down on the sofa, careful to first brush it free of crumbs.

"I'm sorry," Lothar said with a timid half shrug.

He felt as if he was apologizing for his entire life.

"Do not apologize," the man said. "Never apologize for that which you cannot control."

Lothar almost said he was sorry again but stopped himself. He nodded his understanding to the man.

"Good." The man sat straight on the battered sofa. His back was as rigid as a board. He spoke without preamble. "Lothar, did you ever wonder where your father got his money?"

"Excuse me, sir?"

"Surely this flat cost your father money? The rent, Lothar."

Then Lothar knew. This was the landlord. He knew his father paid someone so that they could continue to live there. His young mind raced. He had no money. His father had died the day before, and this man was going to evict him today.

The old man saw the look of fright and immediately sought to ease his fears. He explained that he and his friends had been helping his father out for quite some time. It was a debt, he said, they owed to their past. And their future.

It made sense. Though his father never seemed to work much, there was always food on the table and clothes on his back. Lothar had never thought of it before, but the money must have been coming from somewhere.

"We are a network of friends," the old man had said. "There are more of us than anyone imagines.

We help other friends when we are able. In your case, we weren't as much helping your father, but the grandson of a friend. A great man."

"My grandfather was a member of the Gestapo."

The man seemed surprised. "Your father told you this?"

"I learned some on my own. Some from my father."

The old man smiled. "Then you appreciate his greatness."

"My grandfather was a murderer."

Now there was shock on the visitor's face. "Lothar, you are mistaken."

"I am not," Lothar said. "My grandfather was a murderer. And my mother, as well." His neck and cheeks grew red as he spoke.

"Is this what the drunkard told you?"

"It is the truth."

The old man shook his head resolutely. He tried to explain to Lothar the old ways. He tried to tell him that, though his father was an aberration, he had come from a great family. His mother and grandfather had served the Fatherland well. As their heir, he had earned the help of the old man and his friends.

The orphaned boy was horrified.

Everything he had, everything he knew, his entire life had been purchased with the blood of those poor dead women in that grainy black-and-white photograph he had seen a year before.

The old man offered to continue assisting Lothar, but he no longer heard him.

Lothar left his father's apartment that night for the last time.

He lived for a time on his own. Scrounging for food, working odd jobs here and there. Some of the Americans stationed nearby felt sorry for him. They gave him food, clothing. In the winter, someone gave him an old pair of service boots. It was never enough.

Most times he had barely enough to eat, and more times than he cared to remember he went to sleep hungry.

Not even one year had passed before he sought out the old man.

He was hungry, dirty and frightened. He justified his decision by repeating to himself that, though he didn't agree with what these people had done in the past, he would be foolish to refuse their help in the present.

The old man didn't scold. When his jaundiced eyes settled on Lothar Holz, the old man seemed curiously unsurprised. He smiled warmly at the ragged, emaciated boy.

Lothar returned to school.

He was housed with other boys in similar situations to his own.

For the first time in months, he was able to eat on a regular basis.

Lothar vowed at first to leave as soon as he was able to survive on his own. But that day never came.

As the years went by, his grandfather's friends secured him a position at the German PlattDeutsche.

Though he didn't merit advancement, he found himself moving inexorably up the corporate ladder. And why not? The primary stockholders in the company were all somehow involved in the group that had helped him out years before.