Unpopular Science

“To make just about anything invisible to radar, lidar, infrared, you name it,” Mark explained. “It was just about perfected. The thief knew the right moment to strike. He got the coating and he left the research firm incapable of recreating its own technology for the immediate future.”

“The thief also took the only test batch of the material. The older samples were poured out and ruined in the fire,” Smith said. “We believe the thief then used the material as a coating when he next penetrated two military laboratories in rapid succession in a high-security complex near Phoenix.”

“Okay,” Remo said, hoping to hurry all this along. “The thefts were for missile guidance systems. Old systems, outdated by current U.S. state-of-the-art but decades ahead of the systems used by most global militaries,” Mark said. “They’ve got a lot of black market value. The last theft took place a week ago.”

The screen lit up with a marker in south central New Mexico.

“This time the thief targeted a research lab operated at White Sands,” Mark said.

“Wasn’t the Air Force being especially careful after the first three thefts?” Remo asked. “Who did this, anyway? Who could get into a military base, let alone a top- secret compound, without being noticed? I could. Chiun could. I don’t know who else could.”

Remo realized he was fibbing. He did know who else could. Freya could, if what he had witnessed in recent days was any indication.

“Hey, they weren’t doing any testing on animals, were they?” Remo added.

“What?” Mark said.

“Forget it.”

“Interesting that you should mention yourself and Chiun,” Smith said in a droll voice. “We’ve got some video from the surveillance at White Sands. Mark?”

“Mark?” Remo added.

Mark made an effort to ignore Remo as he brought a video onto the screen. It was a dark concrete lot, a small drift of sand swelling over it in a steady breeze. “White Sands. We tapped into their security system and found three conditions of security tape from the time of the theft. This is unaltered tape, and yet we see no sign of the intruder.”

“Because he’s covered in stealth paint?” Remo asked.

“Watch,” Mark said.

Remo spotted the movement. It was a flash of a tiny, whirling blade and it moved outside of the chain-link fence that towered out of sight on the screen. It moved up, over and down, and the flicker was enough to attract the attention of the motion-sensitive camera. It targeted the spot, turning to bring the movement to the center of the frame.

“The camera automatically switches to thermal, senses nothing,” Mark said. The image became green with bright spots, showing just a faint glimmer of something beyond the fence. “Then it switches to a white negative view, and finally back to normal vision. Sound and laser landscape measurement systems are also at work. They sense nothing.”

“There’s something there,” Remo protested. He could see it, although the limitations of the video recording made it indefinable.

“According to the algorithms driving the security system, there’s nothing,” Smith said. “It watched the same spot for two hours and there was no further movement Not so much as the rising and falling of a breathing human being.”

“Then this, after two hours,” Mark said. He touched a key and the camera was still on the same spot on the fence, although Remo could see a shifting of the stars in the background to prove time had passed. The camera jerked abruptly to the right, falling upon a tiny mechanical device that hopped across the concrete and froze against the fence.

“The camera decided later this was a rabbit.”

“Looks like the toy from a Happy Meal.”

“While the camera was distracted, the fence cut-out was opened and closed,” Smith said.

The camera panned back to the fence, where the opening was now slightly askew. There was nothing behind it now. Remo had to admit that whatever went through it had moved skillfully.

“The second kind of tape we saw was deliberately distorted,” Mark said, bringing up a view from within a hallway that was suddenly a sea of swimming monochrome shades. “Lasers polarize the lens. A similar sound-obstructing technology erases the sound before the security picks it up. The third kind of video we downloaded was when the intruder deliberately revealed itself.”

The next scene was in another hallway, with a door to the outside. The lens polarization was there, then gone, just long enough to show the strangest thing Remo had seen in a long time.

It was a black place in the shape of a bulky foot, and the ankle disappeared into an orange silk kimono. “Come on. You’re joking.”

“We’re not joking.”

“It looked like the elephant man in a bad geisha costume.”

“It was an armored or mechanically enhanced human in a kimono,” Smith said. “The kimono was put there for our benefit.”

“What do you mean? Somebody wants us to think Chiun is responsible?”