"Anything," said Ferris D'Orr, "as long as it's ham, pork roast, or pork chops."
"Any of those, Ilsa," the old man called as the girl left the room. "Come, sit by my side. You are a most peculiar young man, but then, you are a genius. All geniuses are peculiar."
"I want to go home," Ferris said, sitting in the chair with the same gingerly resignation of a death-row inmate settling into the electric chair. He suddenly, desperately, yearned for a lemon Coke, but they hadn't made them in years.
"Do not be frightened. You will be here only a short time. I need your expertise. And your nebulizer."
"It's yours. Just put me on a bus."
"Soon, within the week. Allow me to show you my plans."
Ferris watched as the old man unrolled a set of blueprints.
"Some of the parts are very delicate, as you can see, but we have the molds. Can your nebulizer cast such tiny parts?"
Ferris gave the blueprints a quick glance. "Easily. Can I go now?"
"After these parts are made and assembled."
"What are they going to be assembled into?"
"Me," said Konrad Blutsturz. "They are going to be assembled into me."
"But there are enough parts here to build a baby tank."
"Exactly."
All during that feverish night they brought in the molds and the chunks and billets of titanium. It was good-quality titanium. Ferris recognized the Titanic Titanium Technologies stamp on a few of the sections. They made Ferris melt the pieces into molds. When they were done, they had him weld the parts into mechanisms. The brown-suited soldiers took the finished components into the next room. Once, when the door opened wide enough, Ferris saw that it was an operating amphitheater.
He remembered his mother's stories of the grisly Nazi surgeries performed on conscious patients. Once he had seen in a book a photograph of two Nazi doctors. They stood with stupid pride over a sheet-covered body.
The body's legs stuck out from below the sheets and there wasn't enough flesh on the bones to satisfy a rat. Ferris D'Orr shuddered. He didn't know what he had become enmeshed in, but he knew that it was evil. And he understood for the first time why his mother was so determined to remember the holocaust.
It was happening again. Here, in America. And Ferris was a part of it.
"What's this all about?" Ferris asked Ilsa after he had finished casting the largest pieces of the mounting for a sicklelike blade of steel.
"It's about cleansing America," she said matter-of-factly. "Of what?"
"Jews, blacks, Asians, and icky people like that. Smiths, too. "
"Smiths?" asked Ferris, remembering the telephone-directory pages.
"Yes, they're worse than Jews or the others, much worse. A Smith put Herr Fuhrer Blutsturz into a wheelchair. But you will lift him out."
Ferris understood another thing. Hatred did not discriminate. All his life he had hidden his heritage from the world, half out of false shame and half out of fear. The evil that haunted his dreams had found him anyway. There was no escape from hatred.
"No one is safe," Ferris said.
"What, sweet thing?"
Ferris D'Orr stood up and shut off the nebulizer. A billet, beginning to liquefy, suddenly froze in its mold, only half-formed.
"That one's not done," Ilsa said.
"It is done," Ferris said firmly. "It's all done." He kicked over the nebulizer. It hit the floor with a mushy crack, and the projector tube bent. A panel popped off one side.
"Hey! Why'd you do that?"
"Because," said Ferris D'Orr proudly, "it's my historic duty. I am a Jew."
Ilsa made a face. "Oooh, too bad. We were going to let you live."
Konrad Blutsturz was beside himself. He raged. He flopped on the operating table. The doctors, frightened, tried to hold him down. It was a critical moment. "Herr Fuhrer, restrain yourself," the head surgeon pleaded. "If this is true, there is nothing we can do."
"He went bananas." Ilsa moaned, tears streaming down her cheeks. "I didn't know he was going to do anything crazy. How was I to know?"
"I must walk. I must."
"We may be able to proceed," the head surgeon said. Behind him, on a series of cork panels, the blueprints for the new Konrad Blutsturz were pinned up with thumbtacks. "We cannot stop. We have gone too far. We must proceed."
"And I must walk," said Konrad Blutsturz.
"We are taking stock of the unfinished components, Herr Fuhrer," the head surgeon said. "If necessary, we will build the incomplete portions of the mechanisms from aluminum or steel. Most of the critical titanium parts have been formed."
"The legs?" demanded Konrad Blutsturz. "They are being assembled now."
"Are they complete?"
"Nearly. Let me finish attaching the arm."
"Finish it, and bring that man to me."
"What man?"
"The traitor, D'Orr."
"Gotcha," said Ilsa.
The doctors had opened up the stump that was Konrad Blutsturz' left arm and inserted a titanium coupling into the bone marrow, as they had done with both leg stumps. The old steel hand lay in a corner. In its place they were attaching the bluish jointed arm that ended in a fully articulated hand. It possessed four fingers and that ultimate symbol of humanity, an opposable thumb. "No pain?" asked the doctor.
"This is a moment of rebirth," said Konrad Blutsturz. "The pain of birth is the pain of life. It is to be savored, not endured."
"I could put you under, if the local anesthetic is not enough."
"Only to stand erect will ease the pain. Only to take the throat of the man who put me in this position will be enough."
Ilsa brought in Ferris D'Orr at gunpoint.
Konrad Blutsturz had only one question: "Why?"
"I am the son of a Jew."
"And for that you would cheat me of my dream? Fool. I meant you no harm."
"Your kind has seared the conscience of the world."
"Fool! We Nazis did not hate the Jews, or anyone else. It was a political hatred. It was not real, not true. The Jews were just a focusing point, a scapegoat to rouse Germany out of the hell of inflation and defeat after the First World War. Had the Reich triumphed, we would have abolished the death camps. There would have been no need for them. We would have pardoned the Jews."
"And who would have pardoned you?" asked Ferris D'Orr.
"So you have placed yourself in this jeopardy because you wish to avoid a repetition of your holocaust. Correct?"
"Yes."
"Ilsa, make him kneel. On my left side, please."
Ilsa forced Ferris D'Orr to his knees and pulled back his hair until his eyes were stretched open.
Ferris D'Orr stared at the blue metal arm lying next to him. Parts of it he recognized; he had molded them. "The first years were the worst," intoned Konrad Blutsturz, his words as distantly angry as far thunder. "I could not move. I was in an iron coffin staring at the ceiling. I wanted to die, but they would not let me die. Later, I would not let myself die. I would not die because I wanted to kill."
The titanium hand clicked into a fist. Then it opened. It moved soundlessly, with a near-human animation that was as repulsively fascinating as watching a spider eat.
"I dreamed of this moment, Harold Smith." Konrad Blutsturz spoke to the ceiling. The operating lights blazed down upon his unformed body.
"Ilsa, place Smith's neck in my new hand. I wish to feel its strength."
"Smith?" Ilsa asked blankly.
"Our prisoner."
"Oh." Ilsa obediently pushed Ferris D'Orr's head down onto the operating table.
The blue robot hand clenched Ferris' neck, digging in. Ferris D'Orr clutched at the edge of the steel operating table. He pushed against it. But his body would not move. The hand held his neck, his spine, his life. There was no escape. His breath caught and came hard.
"Did you think you could escape me, Harold Smith? No? Yes, you thought I was dead."
Ferris D'Orr choked, his face purpling.
Ferris D'Orr clawed at the unyielding stainless-steel table, and when that did no good, he clawed at the arm that acted with smooth, unfeeling life-the arm of titanium that he had helped to make. He clawed the way they had clawed the walls in the death camps, after the doors were shut and the gas was pumped in through the shower nozzles.
The others looked away. Except Ilsa. She bent down to get a better look at Ferris' blood-gorged face.
"Do their tongues always stick out like this?" she asked.
"Do you feel fear. Harold Smith?" Konrad Blutsturz' voice ground lower. "Anger? Remorse?"
But Ferris D'Orr did not feel anything. There was a sudden taste in his throat that he thought must be blood, but oddly, it tasted like lemon Coke. Then he was dead.
"I think you can let go now," Ilsa said.
The body of Ferris D'Orr slipped to the antiseptic floor in a heap of inert flesh.
"He is dead?" Konrad Blutsturz asked, his eyes clearing.
"Yeh," said Ilsa. "I'll have someone get rid of the body. Imagine that, a Jew named Smith."
"Smith," said Konrad Blutsturz, and the rage came into his eyes again.
Ilsa sponged the blood off his titanium hand and went out to see if the two new recruits were dead yet.
The new recruits were not dead. There was no sign of them on the firing range. Instead, five White Aryan League soldiers lay in contorted positions.
One of them, his legs shattered, still lived.
"What happened?" Ilsa asked, kneeling at his side.
"They were superhuman. Bullets could not touch them. We tried. We truly did." His voice congealed on itself.
"How could you fail? You are an Aryan. They are mongrels."
The soldier uttered a final gurgle and his head lolled to one side. Ilsa stood up numbly.
Ilsa Gans had always believed in Aryan supremacy. She had first learned it from her parents, who had come from Germany after the war because living in America was better than suffering in a broken and divided land.
She had met Konrad Blutsturz in Argentina, on a family vacation. Her parents always vacationed in Argentina, where they felt free to speak of the old Germany and of the Reich that was now ashes. They and their friends told bitter stories of failure and shattered hopes. It seemed so boring. But Konrad Blutsturz had actually met Hitler. Konrad Blutsturz made it come alive for her.
Even in a wheelchair, he was a giant. Ilsa had thought so at age eight, and the next year, and every vacation after that.
One year, Konrad Blutsturz had asked her to stay on. Her parents were at first apprehensive, even horrified. There was a scene. In the name of the Reich, Konrad Blutsturz had commanded them to release their daughter to him. And they had refused.
Konrad Blutsturz had come into her bedroom the night before she was to leave Argentina, and sadly, with grandfatherly patience, explained to Ilsa, then sixteen, that her parents were dead.
Ilsa had no words. The shock was too great, and to fill the silence Konrad Blutsturz had explained that the Jews had killed her parents, Jews who chose to persecute the vanquished soldiers of Germany.
"We'll get them," Konrad Blutsturz had promised. "And their leader, the evil one incarnate."
"His name is Smith, Harold Smith."
"Is he a Jew?"
"He is worse than a Jew. He is a Smith."
Ilsa became his nurse, his confidante, and the only one he would allow to tend him. She learned to hate the Jews, the blacks, and the other inferior races. When Konrad decided to return to America to seek out Smith, Ilsa had gone along willingly. By that time, he had taught her to kill.
Just as he had taught them all to kill. He had instilled in the White Aryan League the confidence of racial superiority. Even the ones who weren't exactly Aryan. And he had passed out enough rifles to equalize their racial shortcomings.
Yet five crack White Arvan League soldiers armed with rifles had been killed by only two non-Aryans. There were security cameras built into the ceilings of every Fortress Purity building. Ilsa got a stepladder and used it to collect the videotapes of the day.
As she walked across the darkened compound, her brow puckered as she recollected of Konrad Blutsturz' words in the operating room. He had said that the Jews were really not inferior. Perhaps it was stress that made him say those things. After all, he had called the metallurgist Ferris D'Orr by the name of Harold Smith. Sometimes Ilsa worried about her mentor. The strain was becoming great. They had to get to Smith soon, while Herr Fuhrer's mind was whole.
Ilsa had no time to wonder further because across the compound she saw the two new recruits, Remo and Chiun, prowling through the Fortress Purity parking lot.
They were looking for something.
"This is it, Little Father," the taller one said. "Same van, same color and license plate."
"Next time I will remember the state too," the shorter one said. Ilsa thought his accent was peculiar.
She started to draw the Luger that was always holstered at the small of her back, but then she remembered the five high-powered rifles that lay uselessly beside the bodies of the trained soldicrs.
Ilsa Gans hurried on. Whoever these two were, the videotapes would show how dangerous they really were.
Chapter 24
"No one has attempted to kill us in several hours," the Master of Sinanju said.
"The van is empty," said Remo.
"Of course. It is for transportation, not storage."
Remo closed the van door. He hadn't expected to find anything inside, but discovering the van was a final confirmation that they were in the right place.
"Ferris has to be around here," Remo said.
"In the big building," said Chiun. "Where something important transpires."
"What makes you say that?" said Remo.
"Important personages are always to be found in the largest buildings. That is why they are large. Do emperors live in huts or hovels? Even Smith, who claims not to be an emperor, although he is, lives in a fortress."
"Smith lives near a golf course," Remo said. "He only works at Folcroft."
"An emperor lives within himself. Wherever he is, he is home."
"And what makes you think something is going on in the main building'? This place is like a ghost town."
"Exactly," Chiun said. "No one has tried to kill us in several hours. Obviously, they are preoccupied."
"Maybe they're afraid of us?"
"We only killed five. Whoever commands here would not quake when but five soldiers fall. Commanders do not feel fear until their elite guard has fallen. It is the way of such men."
"I didn't notice this before," said Remo slowly.
"Notice what?"
"The design on the side of the van, the repeating one. It's a series of swastikas hooked together like a chain. "
"The Zingh," Chiun corrected. "I must tell you about that."
"On the way," said Remo. "Let's try the big building."
"An excellent choice," said Chiun. He had taken off his sunglasses now that the sun had fallen behind the hills. "The Zingh is older than Germany, older than the Greeks. The Indians knew of it."
"American Indians?"
"They, too. But I refer to the Indians of the East, the true Indians, the Hindus. Their Lord Buddha wore this symbol tattooed to his body as a sign of his goodness."
"Really?"
"Yes, the Zingh was a lucky sign in olden days. Although not so lucky for some."
"I detect a legend coming on," Remo said.
"Once, a Master of Sinanju was in service to a caliph of India," Chiun recited. "This particular caliph was having problems with the priests of his province. They objected to his taxes or something. I do not remember because their offense i
s not the point of this story. And so the caliph sent the Master, whose name was Kik, to slay the priests."
"For not paying their taxes. Just like that?"
"Merely because priests wrap themselves in holy words, that does not make them holy. Or even less mortal. The priests, hearing of the Master of Sinanju coming to their temple, were beside themselves with trepidation. They knew they were powerless against the Master of Sinanju. They could not fight him. They could not defend their soft bodies from his blows. They could not reason with him, for they spoke not his language. In their fear, they sought a charm to ward off the Master's attack."
"The Zingh," asked Remo.
"The very same. They knew that their Lord Buddha anointed his largeness with this very symbol, and so with pigments they anointed their bodies with this emblem of luck and goodness, trusting that the Master Kik would perceive their good intentions and spare them."
"You make the Zingh sound like the old peace symbol hippies used to wear."
"No, that is the Urg. Another thing altogether. The Zingh is more like that funny yellow circle people wear with the dots for eyes and the insipid smirk."
Remo looked puzzled. "A smile button? The swastika was the Hindu version of a smile button?"
"The Zingh. Exactly," said Chiun. "And so when the Master of Sinanju stood outside the gate of this temple, he called the priests out to face his wrath. And the priests came, stripped to their loincloths, their bodies anointed with the Zingh, and their fat bellies quaking in fear, and the Master of Sinanju flew upon them, chop, chop, chop, and in a twinkling they fell dead."
"The Master of Sinanju did not recognize the Zingh, huh?"
"Oh, he recognized it," Chiun replied cheerfully, "but he did not know it as the Zingh, but as the Korean Buk, the symbol of storm and lightning and combat. You see, to a Hindu it meant 'Have a nice day,' but to a Korean it meant 'I challenge you to fight to the death.' And so the fat-bellied priests died."
"And the lesson?"
"There is none."
"Really," said Remo, "no lesson? I don't think I've ever heard a Sinanju legend that didn't come with a lesson attached to it."
"That is because this is not a lesson legend, but a humorous legend. Masters of equal ranks use them to pass the hours. Now that you are a full Master, I may tell you other such legends. But remember, these are not stories to tell the villagers or others. These are between Masters, to be appreciated by Masters only. To tell such lessons to villagers is to diminish the solemnity and dignity of the Sinanju histories."
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