"Remo," Chiun said, "I would like to say that you have acted most wisely."
Remo stumbled. Struggling to regain his stride, he managed to speak. "Thank you, Little Father."
"Yes, my son," Chiun intoned, "training is not knowledge and knowledge is not strength, but combine training with knowledge and then you will have strength."
"Believe it or not, Chiun, I know that," Remo said.
The two continued across the deepening horizon.
"What I want to say, Remo, is that you are behaving as a Master should."
Remo was pleased. He stood straighter, his eyes took in the sky, and his stride grew wider and stronger. This was indeed his day.
"Thank you," he said. "I can't say how much…"
"Except," continued Chiun, "that you jump badly, you cannot drive, and you are insulting. You behave like a Master who is insulting and weak."
"You old faker," said Remo. "You set me up for that." Remo tried to race ahead, but Chiun matched his speed, foot for foot.
And his voice continued as clear as a desert breeze.
"You have not sent the Norman Lear, Norman Lear message. You begrudge a man his simple pleasures. You do not clean your mess. You are a litterbug. You…"
Remo and Chiun continued across the sand, side by side.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The first perimeter guard had been surprised when the car on the main access road to the Zeher Lahurban sulphur plant stopped and Tochala Delit himself poked his head out.
The second perimeter guard had been stunned, and the third astonished. They had all found it unusual that Tochala Delit himself should be in the car alone and that his clothing was so heavy on so hot a day, but if Tochala Delit himself found it necessary, then it must have been necessary.
And if Tochala Delit himself said that no one else should be allowed in, then no one else would be allowed in. And if Tochala Delit himself said not even the prime minister, then not even the prime minister. And if Tochala Delit himself instructed that these orders were to be followed implicitly, then the three guards would be pleased and honored to lay down their lives for those orders.
But Tochala Delit himself acted strangely today, didn't he?
Tochala Delit himself entered the heart of the nuclear installation through a simple metal door, which he locked behind him.
He stood in the low, metal-reinforced concrete hallway sloping deep down to the room with no exit. He patted his inside jacket pocket for the hundredth time that afternoon. The layers of clothing and the hard, thin box were still there, giving him strength.
Thirty years. Thirty years, and now the end was in sight. But thirty years was a long time. Tochala Delit was an old man now. The man who had been Horst Vessel thought about his life. He felt warm blood flow in his veins again. He saw the twisted bodies of the people he had killed in the name of purity. He heard their cries, their screams, their prayers, their ranting. And now, to end like this. Riding the tip of a nuclear-powered mushroom cloud. Because whatever the bomb did not destroy, the surviving Arabs would. Israel was doomed.
Horst Vessel filled his lungs with the stuffy air and felt the salty beads of excitement on his brow. At that moment he would not have changed places with anyone on earth.
Remo took the first perimeter fence like a hurdler. Chiun followed like a parachute toy that one puffs into the air and it floats to the ground.
"We have entered a different part of the field,"
Chiun said. "We now stand on explosive ground."
"Mine field," said Remo. "I was wondering why the ground seemed different."
"Good," said Chiun. "You remain wondering, and I will see you in the kingdom of Heaven. Be sure to greet my ancestors for me."
"Come on," said Remo. "We don't have much time."
"Let us go quickly then," said Chiun, "for if you walk as badly as you jump, we are both doomed."
They moved across the sand with the combined weight of a tablespoon of whipped cream.
Coming to the second perimeter, the infrared fence, Chiun motioned to Remo ahead.
"Let us see if you have learned anything," he said.
Remo hopped over as easily as if he were taking a step. Chiun followed suit.
"Wonderful," said Chiun, "you now rank with the grasshopper, which jumps well."
"I'm sorry I opened my mouth," Remo said.
"So am I," said Chiun.
Since the area was barren and neither of them had tripped an alarm, their paths were uncrossed by blazing lead or flaming missiles. They easily transversed the third perimeter, and soon Remo and Chiun stood among the spiraling machinery of the sulphur plant.
"So here we are," said Remo. "See any atomic bombs laying around?"
Chiun stood implacable, looking like an ancient cog in a giant machine.
Remo leaned against a bolted metal door and felt vibrations emanating from its other side. Part of the sulphur machinery, he thought.
"Since this is still the outskirts of the plant," he said, "I guess we can figure the nuclear area is closer to the middle. A couple of miles in that direction." Remo pointed west.
Chiun turned and looked in that direction for a moment, then put his hand through the metal door Remo was leaning against, as simply as if it were paper.
"When vibrations speak to you, listen," Chiun said.
Remo looked through the ragged gap in the door and saw a sign with big red Hebrew letters at the end of a long concrete reinforced hallway.
"Don't tell me what it says," said Remo.
"Danger. Radioactivity. No unauthorized personnel beyond this point," said Chiun.
"I knew it all the time," Remo said, reaching through the hole and unlocking the door.
The two moved down to the end of the hallway where an impressive-looking door attached to the danger sign blocked their way.
"Hmmm," said Remo, looking it up and down and sliding his hands over several security devices. "Looks like a special key lock and a combination lock. This looks like a time-clock mechanism and a special reinforced lock guard."
Chiun walked to the other side of the door and ripped the hinges out of the concrete wall with two rhythmic taps of his hands, taps that looked slow and gentle.
"Formidable," he said as he opened the two-foot-thick obstruction from the other side.
"Showoff," said Remo as he stared down a maze-like corridor filled with sensory equipment, pressure-sensitive panels, sliding cast-iron partitions, warning lights, video-tape cameras, and more infrared devices. All inoperative.
"Delish must have switched them all off," said Remo.
Remo and Chiun moved through the hallway until they reached a last closed metal panel. Remo put his ear against it.
"I hear something," he said.
"That is good," replied Chiun. "It means you are not deaf."
"No, it means that Delish is probably in there," Remo moved back a step and was preparing to rend the door apart when it slid open.
Remo looked at Chiun, who looked back, and then they moved through the opening onto a long stairway that wound around a large circular room of dull blue metal. It gave the impression of being the insides of an upright bullet. The entire area was filled with the latest technical equipment that America could provide.
Standing in the middle of the room was Tochala Delit, tall and proud in a full S.S. uniform that he had worn under his street clothes. It was all there, from the wide red and black Nazi armband to the green, red, blue, and silver medals that gleamed on his chest.
"Who does your suits?" Remo asked.
Delit did not answer. Instead, he looked to his side where a twelve-foot-long cylinder lay. It was rounded at one end and finned at the other. The sides were rounded and smooth except for a flat, rectangular shape that stuck halfway up the tube. The rectangular thing was ticking.
Tochala Delit looked up and his eyes were shining. "You are too late," he said.
Yoel Zabari could not convince the first guard to stand aside.
"How do I know you are Mr. Zabari?" asked the guard. "You have never visited us before, and Mr. Delit left instructions to allow no one else in. Not even the prime minister."
"I'm not the prime minister," shouted Zabari, "and Tochala Delit is a traitor. You know me, damn it, you have seen pictures of me. How could anyone fake this?" he stabbed at the right side of his face.
"Well, I do not know…" began the guard.
"You do not know?" yelled Zabari incredulously.
That settled it for the guard. The Zeher Lahurban was probably just testing them again. Mr. Delit had said no one. No one it would be.
"I'm sorry, sir, you will have to wait for authorization."
"Damn it, that will be too late. There will not be anything to authorize if you do not let me through. And now."
Zhava Fifer saw her boss's rage mount as she sat behind the wheel of the jeep.
The guard understood that their loyalty had to be tested, but this was going a bit far.
"Sir…" he began. Suddenly Zabari smashed him across the neck with the side of his hand.
"Drive," he said savagely as the guard spun to the ground, unconscious. "Drive, damn it!"
Zhava ground the jeep into gear and rammed forward as Zabari pulled her dashboard automatic up.
The second perimeter guard was clicking the safety off his weapon when Zabari shot him through the leg. Zhava drove fast and straight as the second guard fell backward, spouting blood, and Zabari sprayed the entrance to the third perimeter guard shack, trying to keep the man from reaching it safely.
"Hit him," Zabari said.
"What?" cried Zhava.
"Hit him," Zabari repeated. "Try not to kill him, but hit him."
Zabari kept firing away as Zhava swerved the car and sideswiped the running guard. His body flew off the ground and somersaulted three times across the sand before finally landing in a dusty stillness.
Zabari's face was stretched tightly across his skull, and Zhava felt like crying. They tore across the plant to the nuclear area. Less than ten seconds had passed.
Remo stepped off the stairway and moved into the room that housed the atomic bomb.
"I sent away the technicians," Delit said, "and have silenced the protective devices. No alarm can be raised. The bomb cannot be neutralized. It is now only a matter of time."
Remo saw on the side of the thin rectangular bump on the bomb an electronic counter that kept tract of the passing seconds.
One hundred and eighty, one hundred and seventy-nine, one hundred and seventy-eight…
"Time, Herr Williams," said Delit. "That is all that is left. After thirty years, we are down to this. Just minutes before the bomb explodes."
Chum joined Remo beside the bomb. One hundred and sixty, one hundred and fifty-nine, one hundred and fifty-eight…
"It is useless to tinker with time, gentlemen. If the device is tampered with, even by myself, it will explode. And I doubt that even you, who have eluded my people for so long, could survive that."
"We'll see," said Remo. "You killed Hegez and Goldman?"
"Yes," said Delit.
"You sent those Palestinians and Markowitz after us?"
"Dorfmann? Yes."
"And you slaughtered Gavan?"
"Yes, yes, yes, I did all that. Please, Herr Williams," said the man who had been Horst Vessel, "do with me as you like. I am merely a servant of the master race."
"You do not look Korean," said Chiun, who still stood staring at the bomb and its ticking detonation device. One hundred and forty-six, one hundred and forty-five, one hundred and forty-four…
Delit went on as if there had been no interruption. "Germany, gentlemen. The glorious Third Reich. And now I, single-handedly, am creating the Fourth Reich."
Remo moved in. "That's your problem, pal. Don't you know that three Reichs don't correct a wrong?"
Remo's hand moved in a deceptively lazy pattern.
"Kill me, Herr Williams," invited Delit. "I do not care. Now or later. It makes no difference."
One hundred and thirty-two, one hundred and thirty-one, one hundred and thirty…
"Toe!"
Both Delit and Remo looked toward the source of that awful voice. It seemed to shake the room with its terrible pain. The ripped, broken voice came from the very bottom of Yoel Zabari's soul. He stood in the doorway of the room with Zhava Fifer.
"Toe," he cried again. "How could you do this? After what we have been through together? After all of it? Has it not touched you at all?"
Tochala Delit smiled sadly. "You Jews," he said, "you never learn. Yoel, I am only doing what the world wants me to do. Even now with your faith, you hold back the world. It wants no part of you. You have heard it through its newspapers and its United Nations votes. I have heard it. The world whispers in my ear, 'Throw your Gods away, Jews, we do not need them. We do not want them.' "
One hundred and fourteen, one hundred and thirteen, one hundred and twelve, one hundred and eleven…
"The world can only march forward when you and everything you represent are gone, like the dirt you sprang from and the past you represent."
"It cannot be," Zhava burst. "It will not. Our allies will avenge us."
Delit moved directly under the landing where the pair stood.
"Stupid girl," he said. "What allies? You have no friends, only guilty enemies. Too weak, too hypocritical to say what they feel. Where were your friends during the war? Where were your allies when the six million died? Where were the Americans? Where were your own people in Jerusalem? I am killing you because the world wants you dead. You might say…" Tochala Delit smiled, "… I am only following orders."
The room was shattered by a roar as Yoel Za-bari sprang. His body hurled down upon Delit's, and the two men smashed to the floor.
Remo stood back as Zabari rose, his hands clenched tightly around Delit's neck, tears streaming down the left side of his face.
The death head grew red, then purple, then green. Even as the eyes bulged and the bloodless lips curled back on his teeth, Delit's fuzzing pupils locked onto those of Yoel Zabari.
The gritting teeth parted and a dying voice whispered, "The Nazis will not die. The world does not want them to."
Then the tongue forced its way from between the flaxen lips, the eyes rolled up, the brain died, and the heart stopped beating. Horst Vessel was dead.
Eighty-five, eighty-four, eighty-three…
Zabari let the corpse fall from his hands. Zhava came down the stairs and walked up to him. He looked up at her and said, "I hurt my own men for this garbage." Then he kicked the body.
Zhava Fifer wrapped her arms around Zabari and wept. Zabari looked haunted, his hands like claws. Delit lay still, the thirty years ending as he had wanted them to, in death. Remo turned to Chiun who still stood before the bomb.
Seventy-eight, seventy-seven, seventy-six…
Well, this is it, then, Remo thought. Technology versus the Destroyer, and no one in the world he could kill to make this bomb stop ticking. He was faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive and all that, but give him a machine without a plug to pull out and he was helpless.
Remo walked to Chiun and put a hand on his shoulder.
"Well, Little Father," he said gently, "do you think your ancestors will be expecting us? I'm sorry."
Chiun looked up. "Why?" he asked. "You have done nothing. Do you not know that the only use of machinery is to break down? Stand back."
And with that, the Master began to unscrew the top of the bomb.
Yoel Zabari broke out of his trance and ran forward. "Wait! What are you doing?"
Remo blocked his way. "Take it easy. What do we have to lose?"
Zabari pondered that for a second, then stood back. Zhava fell to her knees in prayer.
Chiun pulled off the top of the bomb and nothing happened. "I would have this fixed sooner," he said, "if everyone had not been talking so much." He bent down and looked into the cylinder.
> Fifty-two, fifty-one, fifty…
"Well?" asked Remo.
"It is dark," Chiun replied.
"For the love of Jesus, Mr. Chiun," Zabari began.
"Now you've done it," said Remo.
"For Jesus?" cried Chiun, straightening. "Oh, no. We never got a day's work from Him. Now, Herod, that was something else."
Forty-five, forty-four, forty-three…
"Chiun, really," said Remo.
"If you read the history of Sinanju as you are supposed to, I would never have to tell you this," said Chiun.
"It's hardly the time for a history lesson, Little Father," said Remo, pointing to the bomb.
"It is never too late to learn," replied Chiun.
Thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight…
"This is what really happened to the poor wretch, Herod the Maligned. Abused by his own people, used by the Romans, he turned in pain finally to his assassin, an ancient Master of Sinanju, and said, 'I was wrong. If only I had listened to you instead of the whores and counselors who abound in this wretched land.' "
Thirteen, twelve, eleven…
"The ancient Master buried him in the desert."
Nine, eight, seven…
"Chiun, please!"
Six. five, four…
"To Herod the Maligned!" Chiun cried, ripping out handfuls of wires.
"It's still ticking," Zhava screamed.
Three, two, one… zero.
Nothing happened.
"Of course, it is still ticking," said Chiun. "I broke the bomb, not the clock."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
No one saw them off.
Yoel Zabari had declared undying allegiance to both Korea and America. Zhava Fifer had declared undying allegiance to Remo's body. Tochala Delit had been riddled with bullets and dropped behind enemy lines, which was not difficult since all Israel's borders were enemy lines.
But Israel still existed, so life went on as if nothing had happened. Israel nearly having been destroyed did not mean anything. Zionism was still outlawed by the UN. The Arabs were still denying the Jewish state's existence. The price of gasoline was still sixty-three cents a gallon for regular, sixty-five cents for high-test. Nothing had changed.
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