The Empire Dreams td-113

by Warren Murphy

  Only one of the men saw Smith go down. He watched the American drop from sight behind the bed the instant a wall of flame erupted around all three storm troopers.

  The sound was no greater than that of a loud firecracker, but the result was far more violent. Behind the protective shield of the bed, Smith was safe from the brunt of the explosion.

  He came up off his stomach a moment later, moving rapidly around the bed.

  Pierre came in from the hallway. On the bed a small fire burned atop the charred comforter. The Frenchman expertly pulled the ends of the bedcovers up over the fire, extinguishing the flames.

  Coldly rational now, Smith went over to the German soldiers. Only the one who had opened the briefcase was dead. His face and hands were reddish black masses of gore. The other two had been severely wounded. They lay dying on the old hotel rug.

  Smith detested killing. But he also was a man who didn't shy away from doing what was necessary. Smith didn't know if he would have to ration bullets. He drew a knife from a scabbard at the waist of one soldier. With the dispassion of someone carving a Thanksgiving turkey, Smith plunged the knife into the hearts of the dying men.

  Gathering up the soldiers' Walther MPL German submachine guns from the floor, he dropped them to the bed. Smith stripped the guns of their ammunition. He was about to damage them beyond use when Pierre stopped him.

  "I believe I will have need for them," the Frenchman said levelly.

  Smith glanced at the concierge. Quickly he handed over two of the guns. Dividing the ammunition into two equal amounts, he gave half to the desk clerk. "Merci," Pierre said. "Now we must get you to a safe place."

  "I will be fine," Smith insisted.

  Pierre glanced down at the three dead skinheads. When he looked back up, he wore a faint smile. "I have no doubt," said the desk clerk. Carrying his two submachine guns, the Frenchman left the room.

  Smith hurried to the bathroom door.

  "It is safe, Maude," Smith said. "Please close your eyes before you come out."

  Mrs. Smith did as she was told. The door crept cautiously open, and Maude stepped back into the hotel room. She appeared shell-shocked.

  "I heard an explosion, Harold." She trembled, eyes screwed tightly shut.

  He knew that any lie he might come up with would be pointless. After all, his wife wasn't stupid. "We must hurry," he urged firmly.

  Taking her by the arm, Smith led her hastily past the bodies and out into the hall. She didn't ask to bring her luggage.

  Chapter 25

  Remo hot-wired a Mercedes on Oxford Street and drove maniacally through the empty streets of London, finally flagging down the first British Army jeep he encountered.

  After a brief discussion with the lieutenant in the army vehicle, during which the officer relinquished two front teeth and his sense of smell for the next six months, the soldier agreed to escort Remo and Chiun to the English end of the Channel Tunnel.

  They flew at speeds in excess of 120 miles per hour down the M20, turning off in Folkestone five miles inland from the famed cliffs of Dover. Remo and Chiun left the stolen car and gap-toothed soldier behind, hurrying aboard the first Le Shuttle train.

  Thirty-one miles and fifty-seven minutes later, the train emerged into the dwindling yellow sunlight in the French terminal at Coquelles near Calais, two miles inland.

  Remo liberated a car from an English businessman who had brought the vehicle over on the train and tore out onto the A26 motorway. He pointed the car toward Paris.

  A LONG SECTION of Boulevard Mortier had been closed down during the occupation. DGSE headquarters was in the hands of the enemy. Helene Marie-Simone skulked through the streets of Paris, alone.

  A light drizzle had erupted shortly after nightfall. She held the collar of her leather jacket tight at her neck. Though it didn't provide much in the way of warmth, it kept out most of the rainwater.

  Alone.

  Helene hadn't set foot in her apartment since returning to France. If DGSE was in the hands of the neo-Nazi occupying army, there was no telling how much secure information they had gotten hold of. If her superiors had no time to destroy all that was sensitive before relinquishing command of France's premier espionage service, they would have an alphabetical listing of all DGSE agents.

  She cursed herself for not informing Remo of the telephone call.

  It had been from Director Remy Renard himself. He told her in hushed tones of what appeared to be a coup attempt at the Palais de l'Elysee. Agents who had been sent to liberate the palace had never returned. There was no word from the president, but he was believed to be inside.

  Of course, all of this was hours before news broke of the fall of Paris. Helene had blundered back into the city at the worst moment of crisis. The capital had been locked down tightly before she had a chance to flee.

  She was trapped. A prisoner in her own city. Helene had been wandering the streets for hours, waiting for nightfall. Now that it had finally come, her stride became more purposeful. Keeping to the shadows, she walked down the damp sidewalk along the Champs-Elysees toward the presidential palace. Barricades had been placed before the gates. Bags filled with sand were stacked atop one another. Before them, huge concrete slabs had been dumped in order to prevent suicide runs by explosives-laden trucks.

  Armed guards knelt behind the barriers, chatting among themselves. From the shadows Helene scanned the fortifications.

  There did not appear to be many guards. The force they had used to take the city was small. They must have expected reinforcements to come once the mission was under way.

  Only two men were behind the sandbags. Occasionally a third man would stroll into view within the gates. A vicious-looking German shepherd walked at leash length before the final guard.

  She watched the scene for half an hour. The rain grew heavier, pasting her brown hair to her face in thick sheets. She tugged it away from her eyes with impatient, shaking hands.

  The guard with the dog completed his circuit every ten minutes or so. Within that interval the two guards were completely alone.

  She waited until the dog guard returned one last time. As she watched his rain-slick back disappear beyond the high columns beside the gate, Helene moved out of the protective shadows. Her hand felt inside her coat, reaching for the butt of her gun.

  She walked briskly across the wide street to the palace.

  Her shivering now had nothing to do with the cold.

  THERE WERE NO LIGHTS on inside the ground floor apartment. The windows were dark, the shades tightly drawn.

  The figures approached from the east, up the dimly lit side street to the alley door. Rain dripped down from the roof three stories above, splattering in furious, uneven bursts against the pavement.

  Somewhere distant two cats shrieked a sudden argument at one another. Afterward there were voices. A single loud laugh followed by a bawdy German shout. More laughter.

  The dark, drenched shape in the lead came up to the old door, hugging the wall. A single knock, followed by three in rapid succession. Silence ensued. "Resistance," a voice called in a hoarse whisper. No response.

  The rain continued to drain loudly into the alley. The German voices grew louder. They were coming closer.

  Another knock.

  "It is Smith," the dark shape hissed in English. Footfalls. Louder now. They were in the alley. But they were unhurried.

  At the door a brief pause was followed by the sound of a dead bolt sliding back. The door opened an inch and a watery yellow eye peered out into the alley. All at once, the door swung open wide.

  The Germans were nearly in view.

  Without a glance down the alley, Smith hustled his wife inside the small apartment.

  The door shut and locked once more.

  Seconds later the German patrol strolled past the unlit apartment. They continued on without a glance at the silent alley door.

  THE FRENCH ARMY HAD placed roadblocks around the city of Paris. The only people being allo
wed in so far were members of the press. By order of Fuhrer Schatz no one was being allowed to leave. Beyond their barricades, French authorities were helpless to do anything to liberate their capital city.

  The president had been allowed to speak via direct satellite transmission to those members of the French senate and national assembly who hadn't been caught in the neo-Nazi web during the spate of kidnappings.

  He informed them that he had indeed signed the document of surrender. He also told them that he was against their taking any action at this time to liberate the city. Of course, he was surrounded by eager young skinheads with plainly visible firearms, so the sincerity of France's chief elected official was suspect.

  Of one thing, there was no doubt. France was facing a constitutional crisis.

  The leaders of both houses of parliament were being held captive. The prime minister had been out of the city at the time of the takeover and had assumed control of what was left of the government. However, he was having difficulty rallying support among the remaining legislators.

  In absence of a plan or a functioning government to support that plan, a vacuum had developed. And in that void nothing was getting accomplished, giving Nils Schatz and his tiny band of fascists more time to solidify their stranglehold on the famous city.

  On one of the northwestern roads leading into Paris, a heavily armed convoy of French soldiers had stalled at the city's outskirts. Concrete barriers lined the road.

  French army soldiers milled helplessly around trucks and jeeps on their side of the partition. On the other side a woefully outmatched force of neo-Nazi soldiers stood smugly at attention.

  The French forces could easily have overrun the band of invaders, but hadn't yet been given instructions to do so. The Germans knew this. Like neighborhood milquetoasts given licence to taunt the local bully, the skinheads were milking their newfound power for all it was worth.

  The Germans jeered and spit toward the French soldiers. The French could do nothing but stand back and stand down.

  The standoff had gone on like this for several hours when Remo and Chiun finally drove up in their stolen Fiat.

  They were waved to a stop by French guards. "We're in kind of a hurry," Remo pressed, leaning out the window as an armed French soldier approached.

  "You are American?" the soldier said in English.

  "Yep," Remo replied. "Hey, Frenchie, could you move that tank?" he called up ahead. He beeped the car's horn.

  "I am Korean," Chiun said to no one in particular. Sensing he had a couple of potential lunatics on his hands, the French soldier took a step back from the car.

  "Could you wait a moment, please?"

  As Remo's car idled, the soldier walked briskly over to his commanding officer. The officer-a colonel-looked suspiciously at Remo and Chiun. He, in turn, went off to find his commander.

  For a few long minutes, Remo tapped the dashboard anxiously. There seemed to be a dozen large vehicles in their way along with a dozen more huge concrete barriers.

  He turned to Chiun.

  "You want to walk?" he asked.

  "It would be preferable to sitting here," Chiun admitted with a curt nod.

  The two of them got out of the car and headed up the road alongside the stalled column of army vehicles.

  By this point word of the car and its strange occupants had gotten up to the general in command of this particular detachment.

  The general's name was Adrien Cresson. He was a wiry man with thick curly hair and a deep baritone that belied his size. He was also in a foul mood.

  Suspecting they might have a pair of Nazi sympathizers on their hands, General Cresson had come personally down from his command post to Remo's parked car.

  "Traffic into the city is restricted-" the general started to say as he approached the car, his hand perched on his side arm.

  He stopped short. The vehicle was empty. General Cresson glanced angrily back at the colonel and private accompanying him.

  "Where are they?" he demanded.

  The men only shook their heads in confusion. Furious, he ordered the platoon to spread out along the road, searching under trucks and around the sides of tanks.

  The scurrying French army soldiers located their prey in a matter of seconds. The two men from the car were seen strolling calmly through the barren stretch of road between the convoy and the first of the concrete barriers.

  "No one stopped them?" General Cresson boomed, furious.

  "No one saw them, sir," begged the colonel.

  Cresson wheeled on his men. "Level weapons on those two!" he yelled.

  The French soldiers obeyed.

  On the other side of the line, the arrogance of the German soldiers melted into deep concern as the weapons of the French army detachment were pointed in their direction.

  Remo and Chiun felt the pressure waves of rifles aimed at their backs.

  "Beautiful country, isn't it?" Remo said.

  "It reeks of fermented grapes," Chiun commented.

  They strolled past the French barriers and over to the German end of the road.

  "Halt!" an angry, French-accented voice shouted from behind them.

  In front of them the Germans were at a loss what to do-with either the French army or the two men approaching.

  Until now, the kidnapping of the French president had awarded them a sense of impunity. Now it seemed as if that air of privilege had evaporated.

  Rather than flee, the half-dozen skinhead soldiers raised their own weapons at the approaching men.

  BACK AT THE FRENCH lines, General Cresson had been ready to give the order to shoot. But when the occupying soldiers raised their machine guns at Remo and Chiun, he ordered his men to hold their fire.

  Anxiously the French line watched the drama that was playing out before them.

  "HALT!" the leader of the German troops called in English, echoing the command he had just heard the French general give. He was an unregenerate old Nazi. One of the men Schatz had brought with him from the IV village. He and his comrades were crouching alertly behind their protective wall of four-foot-high barriers.

  "Wo ist die Toilette?" Remo asked, using a German phrase he had picked up from a guide book on Le Shuttle.

  The neo-Nazi soldiers frowned. Was it possible this lunatic had broken through the French lines and was risking his life approaching occupied Paris simply to locate a bathroom?

  The German in command decided that it made no difference.

  "Turn around slowly and go back the way you came," he ordered, aiming his gun at Remo's chest.

  "No can do," Remo said, shaking his head. "It's an emergency. I just had a big plate of snails at a little outdoor cafe that specializes in health-code violations." He continued toward the German defensive barriers.

  "Stop!" the Nazi officer called one last time. His curled finger closed within a hair of his trigger. Remo and Chiun kept coming.

  That was enough for the officer. Without further preamble the German opened fire. His men followed his lead an instant later.

  German machine-gun fire erupted on the road into Paris for the first time in more than half a century. But unlike then, the bullets had no hope of finding their marks.

  The instant the soldiers' fingers began caressing their triggers, Remo and Chiun split away from one another. Remo moved left, Chiun right.

  They vaulted over the barriers in half a heartbeat, landing amid the startled squad of skinheads. Before the men were aware of what had happened, they felt their still-firing guns being wrenched from their hands. Fingers accompanied weapons-ripping free as if held in place by nothing stronger than air. Machine guns and detached digits soared high above them, landing with clattering finality on the vacant expanse of road between the two warring camps.

  Spinning on the nearest disarmed soldiers, Chiun became a swirl of vengeful blue in his soft robin's egg kimono.

  The Master of Sinanju launched back and forth, battering the foreheads of the stunned troops, crushing skulls and
launching deadly fragments of bones into brains. Metal battle helmets rocketed backward off of the men, so great was the concussive force. The dead men crumpled to the road a split second after their useless headgear.

  On his end of the line, Remo had taken out the first pair of skinhead soldiers with blows identical to the ones employed by the Master of Sinanju. Remo's third and final soldier bared his teeth as he grabbed for a side arm on his baggy uniform.

  He was an older man. Obviously a product of World War II. Swearing in guttural German, the man pulled his gun free and wheeled on his attacker, only to find that his target had vanished. In fact, everything around him had vanished. The world had grown incredibly dark.

  And then the pain began.

  Outside the confines of the helmet, Remo had clapped his hand down atop the old soldier's headgear. He pushed.

  There was a crunch of metal, like a beer can being crushed, followed by a snap-snap-snap of bone as the old Nazi's spinal column was compressed from above.

  The man's startled eyes disappeared beneath the helmet. These were followed by his nose, his mouth and, finally, his chin. When Remo was finished, there was no sign of the thug's shaved and tattooed pate. He looked like a doughy mannequin's body with a greenish mushroomlike head.

  Remo jammed two eye holes into the front of the helmet. With his blunt fingertip, he created a smiling crease in the thick metal beneath the two holes.

  He held the soldier at arm's length, examining the makeshift smiley face.

  "Have a bien day," Remo said with a smile of his own. He dropped the soldier to the road.

  The Master of Sinanju came over to join him. He looked down at the helmet-head of the soldier. "The eyes are crooked," the old Korean said, tipping his head to one side thoughtfully.

  Remo shrugged. "Spur of the moment," he said. "I'll do better next time."

  Chiun nodded his approval.

  They were about to leave the scene when something from the French lines distracted them.

  It was soft. Barely audible at first. It was a single feeble clap. Remo turned.