Failing Marks td-114

by Warren Murphy

  "Cost." Remo laughed bitterly. "That's what this all comes down to." He sighed. "I'll see what I can do," he said finally. Standing, Remo hung up the phone.

  With a half-dozen sharp kicks, he launched the last of the stones on the balcony in a final flurry. They impacted against the trunk of the already damaged tree, one right after the other. The last one to enter pushed the others forward roughly. The stones dumped from the far side of the tree as if from a primitive slot machine, dropping to the forest floor. All that was left in their wake was a clean, fourinch-wide hole straight through the trunk.

  The men in the woods came tumbling out of the underbrush a few minutes later, scratched and panting. When they looked up at Remo's balcony, as they had several times after the loud noise, they saw that the strange American tourist was gone.

  COLONEL FRIEDRICH HEINE bounced unhappily in the passenger's seat of the shiny blue jeep at the head of the long line of border police jeeps and trucks. He viewed the countryside through hooded, washed-out green eyes.

  It was as if the ancient, gnarled trees around him were menaces over which to cast a suspicious glare. Heine was the commanding officer of the Federal Border Police regarding the matter dubbed "Siegfried's Revenge" by Berlin. The broad details of the situation had been explained to Colonel Heine by the German chancellor himself.

  It was a tricky affair.

  During the crisis in Paris a few months before, Heine had been in command of a detachment of border police sent to prevent civilian Germans who were sympathetic to the Nazis in France from swarming across the Rhine into the neighboring country. His job had been complicated by the fact that many of the men beneath him were in agreement with the evil cadre that had taken control of the French capital.

  This morning, the chancellor had informed him that a shadow organization called IV had been responsible for the incident in France. The same group, it was explained to Colonel Heine, was now threatening to destabilize the government of unified Germany. Heine was to locate them in the Black Forest and stop them at all costs.

  The colonel's job would be complicated by the fact that many of the men who were ready to switch allegiance a few months ago were still under his command. If they learned the true nature of their mission and what this group IV represented, they would most likely abandon that mission to join their enemy. Colonel Heine might find himself a lone patriot battling this new neo-Nazi menace.

  Heine would never think to join the rest. The grandson of a Catholic death-camp survivor, he detested the Nazis and all they represented. This had contributed in a very large way to the chancellor's decision to put Heine in command. For, if it became necessary, Colonel Friedrich Heine would not hesitate to shoot his own men if their loyalties swayed.

  The convoy had passed a lonely inn about a kilometer back and the colonel's jeep had just rounded the most recent desolate turn in the winding road when a strange chatter from the rear trucks began to filter up from the radio. The men of his force were yelling some nonsense about someone running up alongside the convoy.

  "How fast are we going?" Heine asked.

  "Forty kilometers per hour, sir," his driver replied.

  Too fast for anyone to follow on foot. His men were obviously in a joking mood. Heine hoped that they hadn't already learned about IV.

  Heine was about to instruct his driver to advise the men to hold down their chatter when the door near the man suddenly sprang open. A hand reached in and plucked the driver from his seat, tugging him out and flinging him upward. Heine became aware of a sudden weight on the roof of the jeep, even as a strange intruder slipped into the now vacant driver's seat. The man slowed the jeep to a stop.

  Taking the cue from their leader, the column of vehicles whined to a stop, as well. The colonel's driver scampered down from the roof, his boots denting the hood in his haste.

  Behind them came angry shouts. Doors opened. Feet clomped up the narrow forest road. At the direction of the colonel's young driver, the jeep was surrounded by armed soldiers in a matter of seconds. Rifles leveled menacingly.

  From the driver's seat, Remo looked out at the dozens of men. He yawned.

  "Let me guess. You're on a picnic and they're here to interrogate the ants," Remo said to the colonel.

  "You are not German," Heine accused.

  "No way, sweetheart. Could never get used to all that black shoe polish."

  "Leave now," said Heine. "And I will not file charges."

  Remo was aware that the colonel was surreptitiously reaching for the gun at his hip holster. Heine suddenly pulled the weapon loose. He swung it around to Remo, only to have it pulled from his hand before he had even found his target. Remo placed the gun beneath the driver's seat.

  Heine seethed. "I suppose you are with Four?" he said.

  "You know about them?" Remo asked.

  Heine nodded. "I have been sent to stop you."

  "Sorry," Remo said. "I'm not Four." He quickly appraised the colonel. "Give me your hand," he announced.

  The intruder had already disarmed him with ease. Heine thought it pointless to resist. Scowling, he stretched his hand out to Remo.

  Remo took hold of the fleshy area between the colonel's thumb and forefinger. He squeezed.

  The pain was so intense and came so quickly that it took the colonel's breath away. He could not even scream.

  "Are you with Four?" Remo asked, easing back on the pressure.

  "What?" Heine demanded. "No. No, of course not. My orders are to obliterate them."

  Remo knew he was telling the truth. He released the colonel's hand. Heine immediately jammed the injured part of his hand into his mouth.

  "Sorry, pal," Remo said. "Just had to make sure."

  "Who are you?" Heine garbled past a mouthful of thumb.

  "All you need to know is that I'm on your side." Colonel Heine examined Remo with the same suspicious eyes he had been using earlier on the trees of the Black Forest. He seemed to reach some internal conclusion.

  "It is nice to know someone is," the colonel harrumphed, pulling his hand from his mouth. Heine rolled down the window of his jeep. "Get these men back in their trucks," he ordered his driver.

  After a moment of convincing, the surprised driver did as he was told. Reluctantly the men began lowering their rifles. Heine got the distinct impression that some of them had hoped to catch him in the cross fire. Repayment for his failure to join the fascist cause of a few short months ago. Slowly the troops began trudging back down the road to their waiting vehicles.

  "You realize a lot of those guys were ready to shoot you, too," Remo commented as he started the jeep.

  "They are more loyal to the ghosts of the past," Colonel Heine said somberly.

  Remo frowned deeply. "There's been a lot of that going around lately," he said. He stomped down on the accelerator.

  With a lurch, the police convoy began to roll once more down the ancient, curving road.

  Chapter 22

  The ragtag convoy led by Adolf Kluge passed through the gentle lower slopes of the Black Forest, avoiding the high mountains of the Baden-Wurttemberg region. These large dark peaks loomed like giant sentinels along the distant horizon.

  Above the frosted mountaintops, the heavy gray clouds of early morning had grown more swollen with every passing hour. However, they had failed as yet to produce a single flake of winter snow.

  As the lead vehicle broke into a wide clear patch in the middle of the forest, the Master of Sinanju cast a glance at the distant mountains.

  From the rear seat, his squeaky voice intoned: "'Twas as much as twelve huge wagons in four whole nights and days,

  Could travel from the mountain down to the salt sea bay,

  Though to and fro each wagon thrice journeyed every day."

  "The Nibelungenlied," Heidi said, nodding. The look of flushed exuberance had not left her face since morning.

  Beside her in the front seat, Adolf Kluge was silent. The farther into this primitive portion of Germany they had tra
veled, the more convinced he had become of the authenticity of the legends. As he watched the mountains rise up through the desolate clearing, he felt a flutter of excitement in the pit of his stomach.

  "If that is so," Kluge said thoughtfully, "we do not have as many vehicles as we will need."

  "The wagons used were as the poem describes," Chiun said knowingly. "I will be surprised if the conveyances with which this expedition is equipped are able to hold even a third of what Siegfried's carts transported."

  Heidi was thinking aloud. "So it was three trips a day for twelve wagons?"

  "That is correct," Chiun said.

  "For four days," Kluge added. "That would be 144 wagonloads."

  "And if Chiun is right, we will have three times as many loads as that."

  Kluge nodded. "Which makes 432," he said. Heidi's cheeks grew more flushed as her mind attempted to encompass that much treasure. Try as she might, she couldn't begin to imagine so much wealth in a single place.

  "That is a lot of gold," she said breathlessly. They continued on for a few miles more before the Master of Sinanju ordered Kluge to halt.

  The lead car slowed to a stop. Behind it, the trucks of the expedition stopped, as well. Their engines idled briefly before growing silent.

  Chiun, Kluge and Heidi climbed from the rental car. The surviving Numbers from the IV village along with the handful of skinheads got down from their trucks.

  "Tell your pinhead army to remain where they are," the Master of Sinanju commanded.

  Kluge did as he was told.

  The skinheads and the rest stayed back by the trucks. They were stretching their arms high in the air and twisting their spines, trying to relieve some of the muscle strain the long ride had inflicted on them. Only the identical blond-haired men seemed interested in what was going on up by the lead car. They stayed back where they were told, sullenly staring at Kluge and Heidi.

  "I find those genetic freaks unnerving," Kluge complained as he tore his eyes away from the unflinching gaze of the Numbers.

  Heidi, who had been eyeing the Aryan men with a look bordering on sympathy, shot a nasty glare at Kluge. Whatever her dark thoughts, she kept them to herself.

  "Why have we stopped?" she asked, turning to Chiun.

  "It is no secret to any of us," he said. "We all know that we are close now to the Sinanju Hoard."

  "The Nibelungen Hoard," Kluge corrected flatly.

  "Do not quibble, thief," Chiun cautioned. He marched over to a nearby copse of trees.

  The Master of Sinanju used the sharpened edge of one long fingernail to sheer a slender branch from a small tree. With a flurry of fingers, he stripped any small sticks or nubbins from the black bark. Coming back over to Heidi and Kluge, Chiun used the heel of his sandal to kick up a sandbox-size area of dirt in the frozen mud at the shoulder of the road. With the thin end of the three-foot-long stick, he drew out a perfect square, cutting it into four large sections. He began sketching in one of the quarters.

  "I act now in good faith," Chiun said as he drew. "Behold, the segment of the map discovered by my ancestor Bal-Mung beneath the body of the slain Nibelung king."

  Heidi was the only one there seeing the Sinanju section of the map for the first time. As Kluge looked on, bored, she appeared to be studying every detail of the map as Chiun formed it in the powdery earth.

  "There!" Chiun said, finishing with a flourish. He had sketched in a portion of a long river. "I give you the Sinanju legacy of a long-dead king."

  There was a pause from those assembled, as if they were uncertain how to respond to such histrionics. The mood was broken by a dull, lifeless clapping of hands. Heidi and Chiun looked at Kluge.

  "I am sorry," he said, sarcastically. He stopped his flat applause. "Is not that what we were meant to do?" His smile was all condescension. "That is not as impressive as you would like it to seem," Kluge said, nodding to the etching in the dirt. "After all, I have already seen it."

  Chiun was indignant. "Only due to your act of thievery, Hun," he sniffed.

  Heidi didn't wish for this posturing to go any further. She injected herself between Chiun and Kluge. "I will go next," she offered.

  Heidi took the stick from Chiun and quickly began filling in one of the three empty squares. Some of the lines met up with those of the Master of Sinanju. Chiun watched with interest while she worked. When she finished, she handed the stick over to Kluge.

  "Here," she said.

  Holding the stick lightly in his hand, Kluge looked down upon the half of the map that was sketched out in the cold dirt of the Black Forest.

  "Very nice," he said, nodding. He indicated a corner of Heidi's section with the end of the stick. "That portion was not visible in my photograph."

  "What do you mean?" Heidi asked blandly.

  "This is not your family portion of the map," he explained. "It is the Hagan piece, which I kept for years on my mantel at the Four village. Presumably you stole it when you stormed the fortress." He smiled.

  "Enough, brigand ancestor of a deceitful king!" Chiun snapped. His eyes were fire.

  Kluge considered only for a second. With an outward dispassion that belied his inner fear of the wrath of the Master of Sinanju, he squatted down next to the nearest empty grid. He hastily sketched out his family portion of the map.

  When he was finished, Kluge-still on his haunches-handed the stick up to Heidi.

  "It is your turn. Again." He smiled tightly. Heidi didn't hesitate. She pulled the stick away from Kluge. In the final quarter of the larger square, she drew for them the last piece of the Siegfried map.

  Chiun examined the section she had drawn, making certain that its lines matched the ones in the piece they had retrieved from Heidi's ancestral home. They did.

  In the dirt before them, staring back at them from across the ages, was the entire map to the Nibelungen Hoard. Incomplete for more than fifteen hundred years, its assembled pieces now gave them clear directions to the great treasure.

  "I have maps of the area," Kluge said, excitedly, pushing himself to a standing position. "We can use them to find the location."

  The IV leader began striding to the car, but Chiun stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

  "That will not be necessary," the Master of Sinanju said. "My ancestor compiled many maps in his years of feckless wandering in these woods." Chiun nodded to the map they had all drawn. His voice was filled with a grand solemnity. "This place is known to me."

  REMO WAS PEEVED. He made this clear to Colonel Heine.

  "I don't know why I'm even going," he complained. "I mean, it's got nothing to do with me."

  "Perhaps-" Heine began meekly.

  Remo interrupted. "It's just another dippy million-year-old legend he's somehow gotten me dragged into," he griped as he steered the border police jeep down the long forest road. "I tell him I'll help him find his block of wood and his gold coins. Fine. Everything should be hunky-dory afterwards, right? Wrong. No sooner do we find them, along with the guy we've been looking for for the last three months, than he goes running off with the bastard on some half-assed treasure hunt. And he gets mad at me." Remo's voice approached a level of incredulity that left Colonel Heine nodding in nervous, sympathetic confusion.

  "I have found only recently that loyalties are not what they should be," Heine said through clenched teeth. He was holding on to the seat with both hands as Remo's foot stayed clamped heavily to the accelerator. The forest whizzed by.

  "Tell me about it," Remo continued. "You've got a heck of a bunch back there," he commented, nodding to the trailing line of trucks. "If I were you, I'd sleep with one eye open and a frigging howitzer under my pillow."

  "There is a danger that they might join the enemy," Heine admitted. "If that happens and we fail, the army will be called in. Although I would not trust that the army will not join them, as well." Remo shook his head. He wondered again whether or not he should let Chiun go this one alone. After all, the Master of Sinanju had only the neo-Nazis,
the border police and possibly the German army to contend with. It'd serve him right to work up a sweat over this one.

  They came tearing around a corner near a pile of toppled boulders. A fork suddenly appeared in the road ahead of them. Remo barely lifted one foot off the gas pedal as the other one was stomping down on the brake.

  The jeep spun out on the shoulder, completing two full circles on the dusty road. At the nadir of the first screeching circle, Colonel Heine saw the rapidly approaching shape of the nearest trailing truck. It, too, had slammed on its brakes. Plumes of dust poured up from beneath its locked wheels.

  Heine closed his eyes and waited for the truck to plow into them. As he did so, he was vaguely aware of the driver's-side door opening and closing. He felt the jeep grow lighter.

  When a few tense seconds had passed without the sound of a crushing impact, Heine opened one eye. The jeep was rocking to a gentle stop near an oldfashioned wooden signpost. Colorful characters and black German words marked the three destinations beyond them.

  Remo was crouching at the fork.

  With a sigh of relief, Heine opened his second eye. He climbed out of the jeep on wobbly legs, walking up to join Remo. Looking back once, he saw the troop truck had stopped a hair away from the parked jeep.

  "They took the left fork," Remo said. He nodded as if to some obvious marks in the road. Heine saw nothing but a few grooves in the sandy shoulder.

  "Can you get some helicopters in here?" Remo asked, standing. "With a few eyes in the sky, we could get this thing over with in less than an hour."

  Heine shook his head. "The chancellor does not wish to alert them," he said, panting. His mind still reeled from his brush with death a minute before.

  "I wish we were closer to Berlin," Remo complained. "One visit'd get the air force out here like a shot. Heck, kidnap the presidential pastry chef and you could probably get that pork hog to surrender to France." He spun from Heine. "Let's go."

  "Do you wish me to drive?" Colonel Heine said with weak hopefulness.