Warren Murphy - Skin Deep

"How do you know?"

"Tests."

"Oh." Remo nodded, trying to look as if he weren't falling asleep. "What if he thinks about something else?"

Wolfe shrugged. "It would be disastrous for his concentration, I suppose. But that is hypothetical. He is interested in nothing besides his mission."

"Nothing?"

Wolfe shrugged. "On rare occasions he talks in his sleep. Speaks in German, of all things."

"What's he say?"

"Nothing important. He calls for his grandmother. He repeats schoolbook German phrases. Has a terrible accent." His eyes sparkled with amusement.

Remo tried to shake away the sleep that was falling on him like a blanket. Why would Caan speak German in his sleep?

"Give me an example."

"Of what? His German?"

"What he talks about."

Wolfe pursed his lips, thinking. "Quite uninteresting things, really. Thank you for your hospitality; where is the bathroom... things like that." He snapped his fingers. "Oh, yes. He also uses a phrase of Dr. Lustbaden's from time to time. Nie wieder. It means—"

"I know what it means. He used it with Ana. It's some kind of hypnotic trigger word."

Wolfe raised his eyebrows. "How very observant," he said. He picked up the red glass ball and held it close to Remo's face.

Remo blinked twice, very slowly. "You're trying to hypnotize me, too, aren't you? I ought to warn you. I can't be drugged, and I can't be hypnotized."

"Of course you can't," Wolfe said. "Just relax."

The red ball seemed to grow before Remo's eyes, expanding to fill the room, the universe. "But Caan..."

"Don't concern yourself with Caan," Wolfe said quietly. "It is an ordinary thing. And it only happens in his sleep."

Remo sighed. "Okay," he said groggily.

Only in his sleep.

"So what about me?" he asked, feeling his eyes glaze over.

Wolfe smiled. "The doctor and I feel that your physical and mental control are so highly evolved that you could shift your concentration at will. The old man is good only for pushups. Caan, who is stronger, has been prepared for his mission. But you, Remo." He stretched out his arms. "With the doctor's help, you will be able to do anything."

"No kidding," Remo said.

Amost imperceptibly, Wolfe moved the sparkling red glass ball closer to Remo.

"If the doctor can use you for his studies, it will further the cause of mankind by a thousand years. He will create with you a true Ubermensch, a superman whose seed will spawn a new generation of superior beings."

Remo grinned.

"So you see, we will make every effort to keep you alive, both now and later— after the incident in New York."

"Caan's going to blow up the summit meeting," Remo said, confused. He knew it was important to remember that the president and the Soviet premier were going to be murdered by Kamikaze attack. But he couldn't for the life of him figure out why.

"It will be a great beginning," Wolfe said. "The birth of the Fourth Reich."

"Is that like the Fourth of July?" Remo asked.

"Rather. Would you like to lie down?"

"Sleepy," Remo said.

"You'll find the sofa quite comfortable." He helped Remo up and directed him to a long velvet settee with a head cushion. He placed the red ball next to Remo's face. "How is that?"

Remo stared, smiling and transfixed, at the whirling lights in the ball. "Great," he said.

Almost as if it came in a dream, Remo heard footsteps entering the room and another voice speaking quietly.

"He is under control?" The voice asked.

"Perfectly, Herr Doktor."

"Well done, Wilhelm," Lustbaden said.

"He is an impossible subject," Wolfe said. "If it had not been for those time-released drugs you injected into his body earlier, he would not have..."

"I know," said Lustbaden. "That is why I injected them into his blood. Now we must simply keep him continuously drugged."

"Yes, sir."

"Our plan was good before," Lustbaden said. "Now it is perfect."

"As we expect of you, Herr Doktor," Wolfe said.

"First we destroy the summit conference and the rulers of America and Russia. And then we trot out this man as a secret weapon for a secret American agency and blame the disaster on him. Russia and America will be at war in hours. They will be destroyed in days."

"Brilliant, Doktor," said Wolfe.

"Of course," Lustbaden said.

Remo heard footsteps cross the room. He saw two white legs beneath a lab coat in front of him, and he followed them upward, past the portly belly to the pink face framed with white hair, the cold blue eyes watching him behind the gold-rimmed spectacles, the lips curved absently in a half-moon. "You are well, Mr. Williams?" Lustbaden asked.

"Okey dokey," Remo said.

"Good. Enjoy your rest. I will be with you shortly."

"Always got to wait in doctors' offices," Remo said. His eyelids felt like lead.

Lustbaden turned to Wolfe. "You will remain here. I must attend to the business at hand. Your men will come with me."

Wolfe saluted. The doctor left the room, his heels clicking sharply ahead of the heavy thud of marching footfalls as he headed down the corridor.

"One thing," Remo said groggily.

"Yes?"

"Where's Chiun? And Smith? They really escape?"

Wolfe hesitated. "For now," he said.

"Good." Remo smiled and settled into his pillow.

"But we've destroyed their boat," Wolfe explained. "We'll find them as soon as the launch is completed."

"Launch?"

"Lieutenant Caan is leaving on his mission now."

Remo frowned. "Mission? Oh," he said, deciding he was too tired to ask about it. "You bring Chiun and Smith here," he added. "We'll all spread our seed around the Fourth of July."

"Oh, they're both too old," Wolfe said, laughing at the outrageousness of the suggestion. "Why, one of them is not even white."

"No Chiun?" His eyes opened wide.

"Shhh. Sleep, Remo."

"Can't sleep. Tricked me. Going to kill Chiun."

"Sleep, Remo."

And against his will he slept, all of him except for a small spark deep within him. That small part of him, unmeasurable and inviolate, waited for a special call beyond time and space.

It waited for the Master of Sinanju.

?Chapter Eighteen

"Heil Hitler!"

Richard Caan snapped to attention at the words, shooting his right arm out in salute.

Lustbaden circled him slowly, nodding with approval at Caan's crisp attire, his ramrod stance, his clear, blank eyes. "Do you understand your mission?" he barked.

"Yes, Herr Doktor."

"And you are prepared to carry it out to the letter?"

"Yes, Herr Doktor."

"The maps? Have you everything you need?"

"Everything, Herr Doktor."

"Any questions?"

"No, Herr Doktor."

Lustbaden smiled, the half-moon lips quivering with excitement. "Then we shall begin," he said with an air of triumphant finality. "Collect your materials. The F-24 is on the runway. You will have to warm up the engine."

Caan went to his desk, where his maps and navigational guides were stacked. He leafed through them to double-check. He was a machine now, the perfect instrument for his mission. He no longer resisted Lustbaden, and was no longer punished. His health had returned within a matter of hours, thanks to the doctor's miraculous injections. All the suffering in that small room, strapped to a bed that allowed him no sleep, with the constant din of the projector in his ears— all of the discomfort, torture, and unspeakable pain were for nothing. He had changed it all just by saying yes.

By going along.

He walked to the bedroom, where his flight bag waited, already packed, on the freshly made bed. He picked up the bag, set it down again, and then followed a strange impulse to lift the pillow on the bed to his face.

It crackled with new feathers. The linen was stiff and blue-white, like the pillowcases in his grandmother's house in Brooklyn, scented with strong soap and the outdoor air where she hung her wash on a line.