The Empire Dreams

Destroyer 113: The Empire Dreams

By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

PROLOGUE

He watched the old men climb the bitterly cold, windswept beaches, proudly reliving memories of their hazy youth.

And he remembered.

He watched tired soldiers, teary-eyed and long-retired, grow maudlin and weepy in the midst of row-upon-row of whitewashed crosses and fluttering flags.

And his resentment spread.

He watched presidents and prime ministers-too young or cowardly to have participated in those dark events themselves-laud the sacrifices of those who had fallen in the conflict, old now by many decades. And he seethed.

He watched hours upon hours of documentaries and news reports retelling the horrors of a struggle that could not possibly be understood by an outsider. And the hatred grew....

Chapter 1

He had decided long before that he preferred being feared to being liked. It was his experience that people who were liked were not respected. He wanted respect. And fear-when used judiciously-always, always bred respect.

Not that fear did Nils Schatz much good these days.

He was retired. Not by any choice of his own. It had been a forced retirement.

Those who had inflicted this malady of inactivity on him weren't fearful of him. The young ones were like that these days. They knew his past, yet they didn't care. And of all the young ones, Kluge was the worst.

Adolf Kluge was the current head of IV, and it was Kluge whom Nils Schatz was meeting with this morning. Regrettably he couldn't hope to inspire fear in the IV director. But Schatz did hope that the young man would listen to reason.

The air of the village was cold in his throat as he made his way down the tidy cobbled streets. The gleaming bronze tip of his walking stick clicked a relentless, impatient staccato on the perfectly shaped gray stones.

He passed between narrow passageways designed only for single-lane traffic. Most people either walked or used bicycles to get around the village.

As he strolled along, several people on bikes passed by in either direction. The older ones facing him nodded politely as they slipped by. The impertinent young ones didn't even pay any attention to him. Coming from the other direction, those his age hunkered down over their handlebars and kept their backs to him.

The older ones understood who and what Nils Schatz had been. They still feared him.

But it was no longer enough.

Schatz quickened his pace. His meeting with Kluge was at eight o'clock. He checked his watch. He would be ten minutes early.

The whitewashed buildings smelled of freshly baked bread. They were lined up in perfect cookie-cutter formation along the narrow lane. There were no front yards. The stoops opened out directly onto the street.

Schatz could see dumpy elderly housewives moving just inside the immaculate windows that looked out to the lane.

The whole village was supposed to remind everyone in it of a picture-perfect Bavarian town. From the gaily painted shutters and window boxes to the neatly tiled roofs. The spotless streets and orderly shops were meant to give the impression that a chunk of Europe had been transplanted somehow to the mountains of Argentina.

But that was not the case.

What the IV village represented was an admission of failure. Those who lived there had been forced to flee the land of their birth and were now deluding themselves into thinking that they had brought some of that land with them.

The sorry fact was, this was not home. And for Nils Schatz, it hadn't been home for more than thirty years.

His breath made fragile puffs of mist in the crisp mountain air. Each puff brought him closer to his last. Soon, there would be no more. It was as if his life were mocking him-floating out before him in this land of his exile.

The last of the neat little houses broke away into a wide-open field. The cobbled path led into a much older stone road.

A vast shadow cast the ancient roadway in shades of washed-out gray. Through rheumy eyes Schatz followed the shadow to its origin.

Up ahead loomed Estemago de Diablo, the "Belly of the Devil." That was what the locals called it. It was an ancient fortress of mysterious origin. Some thought it was Aztec, while others argued that it was Mayan. No one knew for certain who had built the huge stone edifice.

The palace, the ancient roads and the terraced fields in the surrounding terrain were all that remained of an empire that had peaked and died more than one thousand years before.

The irony that the IV village had sprung up in what was essentially the ruins of a dead thousand-year empire was not lost on anyone there. For Nils Schatz, it was a lack of respect for the old ways that had brought them here at all.

The huge stone structure squatted on a separate mountain peak from the rest of the village. Schatz crossed the perfectly preserved rock bridge that spanned the chasm between the peaks.

He did not reflect on the remarkable engineering accomplishment the bridge represented. It was just something for him to tap his highly polished cane impatiently upon as he crossed into the bowels of the massive fortress.

There were four guards within the gigantic old archway. All were blond haired and blue eyed with muscular physiques. They also were each indistinguishable from one another. They stared, mute, at Schatz as he passed.

The guards were not simply being polite. The men were incapable of speech. They had been genetically engineered by the late Nazi scientist, Dr. Erich von Breslau. Some DNA glitch had robbed them of the ability to speak. In an earlier time, they would have been rightly executed as imperfect. In IV they were kept as soldiers.

So unlike the old days, Schatz thought, not with sadness but with bitterness.

His face creased in severe lines, he found his way down the vaulted stone corridor to the office of Adolf Kluge.

KLUGE READ THE PROPOSAL without a hint of expression.

He scanned each line with patient eyes, occasionally wetting his lower lip with the tip of his tongue. It was a habit he had developed years before in school. He didn't even realize he was doing it.

When he was finished, he tapped the sheaf of papers into a tidy bunch. He set them neatly aside. "Interesting," the head of IV mused, looking up. Nils Schatz sat in a too comfortable chair on the other side of Adolf Kluge's desk. He had waited impatiently for half an hour as Kluge carefully read the proposal-a proposal he should have read weeks before.

"How soon can we begin?" Schatz pressed.

Kluge raised an eyebrow. "This isn't the regular way we do things around here, Nils," he said. "There are committees that sort through this kind of thing." He indicated the stack of papers with a wave of his hand.

"Committees," Schatz spit angrily. "Everything in this infernal village is governed by committees. No one wants to do anything anymore. We just fill out forms and pass them up to others, who throw them away. We must start this, Adolf. Soon." His eyes were fearsome with just a hint of desperation. His balled fist shook with pent-up rage.

Kluge sighed. He drummed his fingers delicately on his desktop as he looked over at the picture that hung from the mahogany-paneled wall of his large office. The eyes of Adolf Hitler-Kluge's namesake-glared arrogantly from beneath a sheet of gleaming glass.

"How old are you, Nils?" Kluge asked gently.

Schatz stiffened. "I fail to see the relevance of that question."

"I think it may be relevant, my old friend."

"I am not old," Schatz insisted, seething. He stopped short of saying that neither was he Kluge's friend.

Kluge nodded thoughtfully. "I suppose it may be a matter of perspective. You appear to be in very good physical condition."

"I exercise daily."

"Nonetheless," Kluge pressed, "you must notice that there aren't many like you left. You are one of the few people left in the village from the old school."

"Again, I fail to see the relevance."

The leader of IV smiled wanly. "This proposal of yours is from another era," Kluge said, pressing his palm to the stack of papers. "IV simply does not have the physical resources it once had to mount a campaign this ... ambitious. Perhaps your efforts would be better spent here at the village. I understand you have a garden."

"Do not dare patronize me, Kluge," Schatz growled. "I am not some mental defective."

In days gone by, his tone would have sent men scurrying like frightened mice-desperate to apologize. Not anymore. Adolf Kluge merely looked at Schatz with the patience the young reserved for old men with foolish dreams of glory.

"I am not patronizing you, Herr Schatz," Kluge replied slowly. "I am merely telling you the financial realities of IV's current situation. You know of the events surrounding the failure of Platt-Deutsche?"

"I know that the company failed. While you were in charge here," Schatz added icily.

Kluge almost laughed at him at that point. Almost laughed! The impertinent toad had the nerve to snicker. Nils Schatz resisted the urge to leap across the desk and throttle the much younger man. "Yes, I was the one who left Lothar Holz in charge during the company's brush with the men from Sinanju. Had I known the threat they posed, I would have taken different measures. Or instructed Holz to back away. Slowly."

"Instead you pressed ahead. Holz died along with Dr. von Breslau. And the company failed as a result of the lawsuits generated by the computer-to-brain uplink system they had developed. All of this could have been construed by some to stem from a lack of leadership here at IV."

"You made that clear at the time."

"With me, there are no secrets," he said. This time it was Schatz who resisted the urge to smile. "That may be true," Kluge said, "but as a result of that misadventure, IV lost a very lucrative company. We still have other assets, obviously, but in the current market we need to take a step back and recognize our long-term fiduciary responsibilities. Take you, for instance. There are not many left of your generation, but there are many more only a decade or two younger than you. I need to think of their future well-being. It is not as if they can go out and find work elsewhere. IV is responsible for their retirement expenses. You need to understand, Nils, that these are not the old days."

Schatz's eyes were hooded. When he spoke, the words were lifeless.

"You are more concerned with walkers and bedpans than you are with fulfilling the mission of this village?" he asked flatly.

"I am sorry, Nils, but I see our mission from an entirely different perspective. If I am able to care for these people in their infirmity, then I see that as a fulfillment of our original charter. Of course, there are other concerns. But the events at PlattDeutsche America are only a few months old. I will address the interests of our founders as soon as IV is financially able."

That was it. The meeting was over.

Schatz stood. When he spoke, his tone was ice. Every word dripped menace.

"You may remove me from the rolls of those for whom you feel responsible to care."

His eyes chips of flinty rage, he wheeled around, heading for the door. He collected his metal-tipped walking stick from its resting spot against the heavy wooden frame.

"Nils, be reasonable," Kluge begged patiently. He stood, as well. "You must see this from my perspective. Your goals are too high. This plan of yours would never have worked."

It was too much to bear. Schatz spun back around, eyes mad. He aimed the blunt end of his cane at Kluge.

"Silence! You shame me! You shame him!" He stabbed his cane wildly toward the portrait on the wall. "You shame the people who built this haven! You are a disgrace, Adolf Kluge. To everything the movement represents. A disgrace and a coward."

The cane quivered in the air. It was not merely for effect. For a moment Kluge actually thought the old man might attack him.

Whatever thought Schatz might have had, passed quickly. The cane snapped down to the floor with an authoritative crack.

Spinning on his heel, Nils Schatz marched from the room, slamming the huge oaken door behind him. As the noise rumbled off through the old fortress, Kluge could hear the old man's cane tap-tap-tapping along the echoey stone floors of the cavernous corridor.

The sound died in the distance.

Alone in his office, Kluge sat back down, frowning deeply.

He drew the stack of papers detailing Schatz's proposal across his desk.

The words on the cover sheet were in German. Kluge was surprised at the difficult time he had reading his native tongue these days. Most of the business he conducted for the village was in English. He read the words again. Carefully.

"Der Geist der stets verneint. " "The spirit that never dies." Kluge smiled wanly.

"My poor old Nils," he mused. "Pity you don't realize your day died more than half a century ago." Gathering up the sheets of paper, Adolf Kluge dropped them in the trash barrel next to his tidy desk.

Chapter 2

His name was Remo and he liked nuns.

It was a drastic change from the earliest opinion he could remember having. There was a time in his youth when he had hated nuns. More often than not, he had feared them.

But that was a long time ago. Back when Remo Williams was a ward at Saint Theresa's Orphanage in Newark, New Jersey, the nuns told him when to go to bed, when to get up, when to go to school and, most important of all, when to go to church. Hate and fear went hand-in-hand during those years.

Now, on this cool summer night, as he walked the darkened streets of Nashua, New Hampshire, Remo was surprised at how completely his attitude had changed. The respect he felt for the women who had raised him was not grudging but absolute. But even though Remo's opinion of these "brides of Christ" had evolved over the years, he knew with sickening certainty that there were some who did not share his enlightened attitude. He was after one in particular.

Curved street lamps gathered swarms of flitting flies and moths around their dull amber glow. What little weak light that managed to carry down to the sidewalk on which he strolled illuminated the funereal lines that traced Remo's cruel features. He was deep in thought.

Remo was a man of indeterminate age. Most who saw him placed him somewhere in his thirties. His short hair and deepset eyes were as dark as the night through which he passed like a vengeful shadow. His T-shirt and chinos were black.

Remo was here this night because of a simple news report. One like so many others that had interrupted regular television programs of late.

Back in the days after Saint Theresa's, when Remo had been a beat patrolman living in a dingy Newark walk-up, such break-ins by news anchors were rare. They heralded only the most dire tidings. Back then, when Walter Cronkite appeared, Mr. and Mrs. America sat up and took notice.

Over the years, as the uncommon of America's subculture slowly and insidiously became the norm, the anxiety traditionally brought on by a special news bulletin gradually washed away. Now, an entire generation was desensitized to the violence that spilled regularly from their TVs like coins from a one-arm bandit. When the anchorman appeared these days, America now hoped he wouldn't be on too long into "Friends" just before they hurried out to the fridge for a snack.

But this night, Remo had been paying attention. And when the blow-dried anchor spoke of what had happened across the border from where he lived in Massachusetts, something in his frigid soul cracked like ice settling on a pond.

The sound of sirens that had filled these same streets on television had echoed to silence up the Merrimack Valley by the time Remo had arrived in Nashua. He left his car on a residential side street in the south end of town.

Like metal to a magnet, Remo was drawn to the buzz of activity in the center of town.

He found the vans first. Call letters and painted logos identified them as members of the Boston media. Satellite dishes atop their roofs pointed south as the men and women farther ahead reported the gruesome details of the day's events back to their home stations.

The gaggle of reporters squeezed in around a small building that seemed out of place for such attention. The Nashua police station. To Remo, the press there represented an intrusion on the simpler world he had known as a child.

"...was once a small town has grown into the era of urban violence," a reporter with a serious voice was announcing into a mushroom-shaped microphone as Remo slipped past.

"...are telling me they can't remember the last time such a violent act was committed in Nashua, Peter," another was saying.

"Good eeee-vening!" screeched a third. "I'd like to give a big hello out there for all the kids in Sister Mary Bernice's first-grade class at Nashua's St. Jude Elementary. Hi, kids! You're gonna be happy to know that you've got the day off tomorrow! Whoopee!"

The hapless reporter was a local weatherman who had been conscripted into fieldwork when no one else could be found to cover this particular story. Completely out of his element on television on an ordinary day, he was flapping his arms and yelling excitedly in the same squealing, girlish manner he always used on his bizarre weather forecasts. Unfortunately, the grating personality that had made him a local curiosity if not an institution for the last ten years was woefully misplaced today.

The camera feed to the New Hampshire network affiliate was rapidly shut down. A half-dozen representatives of the station quickly tackled the panicked-looking weatherman, wrestling the microphone from his frightened grip.

As the group rolled around in a frantic, grunting pile of arms and legs, Remo continued on.

He was careful not to stray into range of the many television cameras. A specter in black, he followed the deepest shadows to the rear of the police station.

There were no reporters here. Several members of the Nashua police department milled anxiously around a dozen or so parked police cruisers. Most of the men in blue were engaged in conversation with one another.

Although he passed within arm's length of two police officers, neither man saw Remo. He slipped through the police lines and up to the rear brick wall of the building.

Fingers immediately sought the rough texture of the wall. The instant his sensitive pads brushed the surface, his shoes shot off the ground. A silent wraith, he stole up the side of the police station with impossible swiftness.

He was up and over the roof ledge seconds later. On his feet the instant he reached the surface, he moved in a swift glide over to the dented ventilator unit.

It was a curving tin device that jutted like a crooked finger from the pebbled roof surface. There was a wire-mesh grate across the square opening that was meant to prevent birds and squirrels from entering the building below.

Hard fingers stabbed through the interwoven mesh. Remo peeled the covering back like the top of a tin of sardines. His face was harsh as he deposited the tight curl of wire grating to the cool roof surface.

A moment later, Remo had melted through the opening, vanishing from the roof. His roiling thoughts were filled with images of death.

LINUS PAGGET had started screaming for a lawyer the minute the tear gas canister crashed through the stained-glass window of the St. Jude convent. As the police flooded through the smoke-choked chapel-faces covered in masks more menacing than any Star Wars costumer could have envisioned-Linus screamed that he had rights that must not be ignored. He uttered the words while cowering behind the base of the statue of the Virgin Mary, hands clasped in a mockery of supplication atop his greasy head.

Linus screamed himself hoarse as he was dragged down the rows of empty pews and out into the waiting paddy wagon. Even though his throat was raw, he had screamed as the big truck tore through the press lines to the police station.

But the screaming had paid off. It was now some three hours after the incident that had caught national attention and Linus Pagget had gotten what he wanted. His court-appointed lawyer had just left his cell.

His attorney was already formulating a strategy. There was no pleading innocent, as Linus had initially wanted. Dozens of nuns were witness to his depraved acts. And no American outside the White House would be believed when his word was placed against that of a line of wimple-wearing, rosary-clutching witnesses.

They were going with either an insanity or "drug rage" defense. There was also the possibility that his childhood doctor could be blamed for the antihyperactivity medication he had prescribed in Linus's youth, but that possibility-his lawyer had told him-was a long shot at best.

No matter what case they presented, Linus knew as he shifted on his uncomfortable cot that he would not receive the kind of justice that would have been dispensed years before. He had committed acts that would have granted him immortal infamy in any other day, so abhorrent were they. And for a moment now, he had been awarded the stature of ignominious celebrity. But by next week, the revulsion of the nation would fade. In a month? No one would remember his name.

It was only a matter of time before the world forgot all about him. And when they did, he would be paroled.

For now, Linus would have to sit in his cell.

He shifted again as he stared at the drab gray wall of the Nashua jail. The cot couldn't have been less comfortable. He jammed a balled fist several times into his cardboard-flat pillow in an attempt to fluff it.

With a grunt, he rolled over.

He was startled to find a face staring back into his. Linus jumped back with a start, banging his head on the painted cinder-block wall.

"Dammit!" he growled, slender fingers grabbing the injured spot at the back of his head. "Who the hell are you?" Linus demanded.

He failed to note that the cell door was wide open. Nor did he notice the lack of guards in the block. Standing before Pagget, Remo didn't respond. His deep eyes-as cold and limitless as the farthest reaches of space-were locked on the weak brown eyes of Linus Pagget.

Remo had been struck by the ordinariness of the man lying on the plain jail cot the instant he stepped before the old-fashioned cell. Pagget could have been any thug summoned from central casting for any gritty reality TV show.

The man was in his late twenties. He had the emaciated mien of a full-time drug or alcohol abuser. Probably both. Bloodshot eyes darted with furtive suspicion around black-rimmed lids. His scraggly blond beard did not match the greasy hair atop his balding head.

Still on his cot, Linus struggled to a sitting position. His pale features pulled into an injured knot. The wiry stubble of his goatee jutted forward accusingly.

"I said who the hell are you?" he snapped. Remo's hard face was a block of frozen obsidian. He straightened up, fixing Pagget with a look of pure malice.

"Death," he replied, voice soft.

And suddenly, Linus Pagget felt his entire world collapse into the boundless fury of the intruder's dark, accusing eyes.

Before the criminal could cry out for help, a thick-wristed hand shot forward. In a breathless whisper, night fell on Linus Pagget.

HE HAD NO WAY OF KNOWING how long he had been out.

When Linus awoke, he felt something hard against the back of his head. For a minute, he thought he had dreamt the whole thing and that he was leaning against his cell wall. But when he opened his eyes, he found that he was no longer in his cell.

A chill night wind blew across his prone form. All around, crickets chirped.

Linus struggled to a sitting position.

Remo was a few feet away from him, perched atop a chunk of carved granite. He was staring off into the unseeable depths of the night. Somewhere far distant, an owl hooted.

There were other objects, like the one Remo sat on, lined up beyond him. Their shape was familiar to Linus.

Twisting sharply, Linus saw that he had been propped up against yet another of the familiar objects.

Headstones. The stranger from his cell had brought him to a cemetery.

Linus gulped. "What do you want from me?" he asked, hoarse voice tremulous.

Remo's answer was a puzzling non sequitur.

"I was sentenced to die once," Remo said. His gaze remained far off. As if by staring alone, he could peel back the years to view his younger self. "Just like you."

"Hey, I haven't even been tried yet," Linus insisted.

The evil smile that cracked the wistful veneer of Remo's face sent an icy frisson up the young man's spine. As quickly as the smile appeared, it scurried off, leaving in its wake the death's skull mask that was Remo's usual expression. Night shadows painted eerie streaks across the sunken patches of his face.

"I was framed for murder. They strapped me into an electric chair. Believe me, Linus, you don't know fear until you have that done to you."

Linus wanted to dispute that, but remained mute. He began listening for the sound of police sirens. Hoping their piercing cry would rise up from the deathly still night.

"I thought the world had ended when they pulled the switch. But it didn't. When I woke up, they'd given me a new face and a new life. I was supposed to rid the world of scum like you."

At this, Linus felt his head begin to swim. He pushed himself carefully to his feet. Eyes darted to his left. In the far-off distance, the wrought-iron cemetery gate jutted from the crooked earth. Linus inched toward it.

Remo continued to speak, seemingly unmindful of what was going on three yards to his left.

"You ever hear of CURE, Linus?" Remo asked.

The killer was shocked to be addressed. He sniffled at the cold. "No," he said. He had begun to shake in fear.

"I'm not surprised. Only a handful of people have. They were the group that was supposed to clean up America. Work outside the Constitution in order to preserve it. They drafted me. And I've been a loyal foot soldier for them, more or less, for a long time now. But I've failed, Linus. You want to know how I know I've failed?"

When he turned his attention on Pagget, the scrawny young man froze like a deer caught in headlights. He had been attempting to tiptoe away through the damp night grass.

Linus wheeled, leaning casually against the nearest moss-covered headstone.

"No," he announced. "Uh, no. Why?"

"Because in America now, a piece of slime can break into a convent wielding a gun, Linus. He can steal the prescription drugs from convalescing nuns and hold a one-man party for twelve hours straight while police negotiators try to talk him out. He can rape a nun, Linus. He can get a butcher knife from the convent kitchen and hold it to her throat and force himself on her. Then he can carve up her body like a Halloween pumpkin. In the America I was supposed to be preserving, that sort of thing wouldn't happen."

By this time, Linus could not stop his shaking legs. His ears strained for police sirens.

Where were they? Didn't they miss him by now? They had to be looking for him.

"And no one cares." Remo's voice was somewhere else. Lost in the hazy images of days long past. "You know what, Linus? I wish I didn't care. But I do. And even though I've tried, I don't know what to do to stop caring."

Still sitting atop his stone perch, Remo's head drooped, as if pressed down by both great sadness and awesome responsibility.

That single moment of intense introspection by his captor was the break Linus Pagget had been waiting for.

He turned and ran. Ran for all he was worth. His lungs burned. His raw throat bled.

He ran, and ran, and ran.

The cemetery gate rose up before him. He grabbed the cold iron with shaking hands. As he shoved it open, slipping on the wet grass, a face appeared on the other side.

Linus screamed.

"I can only do what I know is right, Linus," Remo said as he reached through the gates and grabbed the whimpering man by the throat. "But between you and me, I don't think it makes a difference anymore."

"You don't have to do anything!" Linus pleaded. Remo said not a word. Although it would bring him no satisfaction, the decision had already been made.

Two hands reached out for the sides of Linus's head.

The pain was incredible. Brilliant. Blinding. It was a more excruciatingly intense crystallization of sheer agony than Linus Pagget could ever have imagined in his twenty-seven long, but useless years of life. And then it was over.

The official report would eventually say that Linus Pagget had been spirited from the Nashua Police Station by forces unknown. Whoever had liberated him from his cell possessed equipment that was somehow able to exert hydraulic force of incredible proportions. The bones of his skull had literally been fused into a single, tight mass no larger than a baseball. Somewhere in that tight ball of pulverized calcium phosphate, the evil brain of the late Linus Pagget had been compressed into a gray knot the size of a Ping-Pong ball.

But even though a machine of incredible force had to have been used to do such a deed, there were no signs of such a killing device, nor of the tracks it would have left near the spot where Linus's body had been found.

There were many who believed his death was an act of God. But those who had suffered most at his hands, the nuns of St. Jude, did not speculate on the thing that might have brought the man who had terrorized them to his violent end. They merely prayed for Linus Pagget's eternal soul.

AFTER HE WAS DONE, Remo let the lifeless body drop to the cold earth.

He felt nothing about what he had just done. In fact, he felt nothing at all. About anything. And the emptiness within him was almost unbearable.

As he looked down at the body, he shook his head sadly.

"And another hundred will flood in to take your place," he said, hollow of voice.

Remo turned from the twisted remains of Linus Pagget. He left the cemetery, intense desolation slowly flooding the gutted pit that was his very being.

Chapter 3

The Banque de Richelieu was tucked away between a pair of old brick buildings on a small street between the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Avenue du Maine.

The bank was just shy of one hundred years old, and most of its architecture and its interior reflected its long history. Beyond the foyer of gleaming marble and polished wood, however, invisible to the eye of the average customer, the old bank had been forced to make some concessions to the modern era.

There were now motion-sensitive beams that activated a silent alarm. Bulletproof glass had replaced the steel bars at the tellers' cages. Paint bombs set to explode if a single franc was touched improperly were set in bags and vaults and at each teller's drawer.

The main vault of the Banque de Richelieu was a fortress. The walls were three feet of reinforced steel encased in a tomb of poured concrete. It would have taken two hours of sustained cannon fire directed against a single spot in a side wall of the vault to even crack the facade.

Today the thickness of the vault didn't matter. Today the massive door was wide open.

Ordinarily the whirring, remorseless eyes of surveillance cameras scanned the interior of the bank. This afternoon they had been disabled. Every precaution had been taken to ensure that there would be no evidence of what would transpire here today.

Monsieur d'Ailerons, the manager of the Banque de Richelieu for the past thirty years, had seen the last of his employees through the doors at a little after five that afternoon. When he was alone, clucking and fretting, he had moved nervously about the building, disabling security systems with a quick professionalism.

He had finished early.

Taking a seat in a hard-backed chair near the door, Monsieur d'Ailerons waited. Legs crossed sharply, back straight, eyes forward, d'Ailerons was one of those rare people who appeared to be standing at attention even when sitting down.

He was panting lightly, though not from his exertions. Nerves made his heart and lungs thunder in his chest.

It didn't take long before he started to wish he had gone through his routine more slowly. He had nothing more to do now but sit. And wait.

As he studied the front door, Monsieur d'Ailerons drew a precisely folded silk handkerchief from the interior pocket of his impeccably tailored suit bought in a small medium-priced shop on the Rue de la Verriere. Dabbing with slender fingers, he mopped away the sheen of nervous sweat that had formed on his pale, broad forehead.

The cloth came back drenched. He hadn't realized he was perspiring so much. With a crisp snap of his wrist he replaced the handkerchief in his suit pocket. He checked his Swiss watch.

It was time-6:00 p.m. sharp.

Unusual. They were always on time. Perhaps something had happened to them.

Pushing his small bifocals back up his long nose, Monsieur d'Ailerons allowed himself the hope that they wouldn't arrive after all.

His hopes were dashed two seconds later when there came a sharp rap of knuckles on the glass at the front door. It was not yet 6:01 p.m. They were still on time.

A fresh stream of sweat began trickling from beneath his arms. Moving swiftly on short legs, he went to answer the door.

In the hallway between the two sets of double doors, the banker drew a key from the pocket of his trousers. Reaching up, he quickly unlocked the dead bolt at the top of the door frame. Squatting, he flicked open the hand lock at the door's base.

He opened the door, stepping back obsequiously. Nils Schatz and his ragged entourage bustled into the ornate entryway of the Banque de Richelieu. The IV renegade didn't even look at the Frenchman as his group moved into the depths of the bank.

Rapidly d'Ailerons relocked the doors. He hurried back inside the bank. As expected, the men were waiting for him in his office.

It was the same procedure they had gone through every time during the past several months of secret meetings. Tonight it would be different, however. Monsieur d'Ailerons need only work up the courage to make it so.

"Hurry up, d'Ailerons," Nils Schatz demanded impatiently.

The German was standing in front of d'Ailerons's spotless desk. He held his walking stick in one hand and was tapping it relentlessly on the faded carpeting.

Schatz's men stood behind him. There were six of them altogether. Four were of Schatz's generation-though like their leader they were in remarkable physical condition. The other pair was much younger. Though concealed mostly by black winter hats, the heads of these two were shaved and spotted with tattoos.

It had been d'Ailerons who had suggested to Schatz that the young men wear some sort of hats when accompanying the old German on these trips to the bank. After all, they hardly looked like ordinary Banque de Richelieu patrons. Surprisingly Schatz had agreed.

Ordinarily d'Ailerons would peer disapprovingly down his long nose at such a lowly twosome. But under the circumstances he wouldn't dare. Not considering the company they kept.

The banker crossed behind his desk and carefully unlocked the long top drawer. He removed a few slips of paper tucked deep in the back and passed them across the desk to Schatz.

Schatz examined the slips of paper. Bank notes. As good as cash. Withdrawn from several special accounts. This was the way the transactions had been conducted all along. Schatz was holding several hundred thousand dollars in his hands. It was the most he had ever gotten at one time.

Monsieur d'Ailerons was blinking and swallowing like mad. He wanted to speak-knew he should speak-but no words would come. He twitched and perspired, struggling with how he should broach the subject.

He finally gave up the thought that he would mention the irregularities to Schatz. Let the others find them. It would be their problem, not his.

No, it would be his. That was what had been troubling him since he found out. He must find the courage to speak. Must tell what ha-

"You are more fidgety than usual," Schatz said abruptly.

The banker jumped in his seat, shaken from his trance.

When he looked over, he saw that Schatz was peering up at him. The German didn't lift his head from the handful of checks, but had merely rolled his eyes up to the tops of their sockets. His eyes, hooded beneath his brow, lent his face a demonic cast. The banker glanced at the others. They were all staring at him, expecting him to speak, but he wasn't sure he wanted to any longer.

He swallowed again, hard.

"It is just-" D'Ailerons hesitated, fearful of what he was about to say. He closed his eyes. Perhaps it would be easier if he didn't have to look at Nils Schatz. "Does Mr. Kluge know of all this?" he blurted.

His question was met with silence. After what seemed like an eternity of utter quiet, Monsieur d'Ailerons opened his eyes. Nils Schatz was staring at him with those icy, washed-out blue eyes.

"What do you mean?" the German asked flatly. D'Ailerons swallowed again. His throat had turned to dust.

"With respect, Herr Schatz, you informed me when we began these transactions many months ago that this operation had the blessing of Herr Kluge," the banker said.

"And?"

"I have learned of some irregularities in the accounting methods of my subordinates. These were per your specific instructions, I am told."

"And?" Schatz repeated coldly.

"The way it has been done lends one the impression of someone attempting to cover his tracks," d'Ailerons suggested. "There has been much money taken from IV accounts but in a most secretive manner. It is almost as if you are...embezzling the funds, Herr Schatz."

Schatz finally lifted his head completely. Frigid eyes stared fully at Monsieur d'Ailerons.

"That is a very interesting conjecture," Schatz said thoughtfully. "Do you realize, d'Ailerons, that in my younger days I might have killed you with my own hands for even suggesting that I was a thief?" Some might have treated the words as a joke. Not Nils Schatz. Schatz never joked. He stared, unsmiling, at the banker.

D' Ailerons shrugged helplessly. "I did not mean to insult, surely. If you give your word that Herr Kluge knows of this, then I consider the matter settled." He nodded emphatically. He suddenly noticed that his desk drawer was still open. He made a great show of closing and locking it once more.

"I have already told you Herr Kluge approved of the appropriation of funds," Schatz said slowly.

"Indeed," d'Ailerons said with a carefree motion of one shaking hand. "Absolutely. That is that." He clapped his hands together to brush off the last remnants of some imaginary dust.

"Who have you mentioned this to?" Schatz pressed.

"Pardon me?"

"This-" Schatz waved his cane in the air "-this notion of yours?"

D'Ailerons was suddenly deeply offended.

"No one, sir, certainly. It was only a thought. I am certain Herr Kluge has his reasons for conducting business in this manner. Remember, the Banque de Richelieu has had a history with IV going back to the war."

"I am aware of your fine history, Frenchman," Schatz offered contemptuously.

"Yes." The banker fussed with his desktop, not making eye contact with any of the men in the room. D'Ailerons was uncomfortable now for an altogether other reason. He knew of the bank's shaky history prior to World War II and of its sudden revival immediately after the war. Back then, through circuitous means, IV had bailed the bank out of its immediate financial difficulties. In the time since, the Banque de Richelieu had been more indebted than its owners would have liked to the secret organization.

"I will let you in on a little secret, d'Ailerons," Nils Schatz whispered. He leaned over the desk. His cane-clenched in his fist-rested parallel to the desk surface. "Your assumptions are correct. The money you have given me these many months? All stolen from the coffers of IV."

D'Ailerons was taken aback by Schatz's candor. He began fussing at his desk more furiously. He straightened his blotter, pen and pencil holder, and a small bronze barometer that had been a gift from his sister.

"I am certain you have your reasons." The banker nodded sharply. The pounding of his heart made his ears ring.

He had suspected Schatz was stealing. Now, confronted with an admission of guilt, he wished more than anything he had kept his suspicions to himself.

"Oh, I have a reason," Schatz said, voice still low.

"Of course," d'Ailerons agreed. He studied the corners of his blotter.

"Look at me!" Schatz screamed, his voice suddenly loud and shrill in the tiny office. Even his own men were startled by the sudden jarring change.

D'Ailerons's head snapped up as if shocked by electricity. Schatz leaned back and aimed the bronze end of his walking stick accusingly at d'Ailerons.

"I mean to finish what was started more than fifty years ago by a visionary the world has chosen to blindly vilify. Kluge does not appreciate the importance of the goal. We do," he said, indicating with a swirl of his cane the other men in the room. "You have given us the funds we need to see this vision to fruition."

Schatz still clenched the bank notes in his other hand. He held them aloft. One of the older men dutifully collected them and tucked them away in the pocket of his black suit jacket.

D'Ailerons didn't know how to respond. In the next moment it didn't matter.

"I suppose I should thank you for your generous help these many months," Schatz said with an indifferent shrug. "I think, however, that I will not."

The cane was up in an instant, held firmly in the German's hands. Using a batter's grip, he swung the metal tip at the man behind the desk. It met with the side of Monsieur d'Ailerons's head with a resounding crack.

The banker's bifocals were thrown from the tip of his nose. They clattered across the floor.

Schatz brought the cane back and swung. Another crack. This shattered the bone into the brain and brought blood to the surface. D'Ailerons fell forward.

Again.

Swing and hit.

D'Ailerons was sprawled across his desk by now. Blood seeped out, staining his blotter.

Feverishly, wildly, Schatz pounded him again and again. His eyes sparked with an internal rage as he brought the cane repeatedly down atop the battered head of the banker, dead now for minutes.

Blood spattered across Schatz's clothes and around the walls of the office. His men backed away at first, avoiding the spray. Eventually they stepped in, pulling Schatz away from the mangled corpse.

He allowed himself to be restrained.

The end of the cane was covered with blood and gore. D'Ailerons's face was an unrecognizable pulp. Panting, catching his breath, Schatz went around the desk. He used the tail of the banker's jacket to clean the reddish slush from his walking stick. Once it was clean, he pulled his handkerchief from his pocket.

"The Frenchman always shuts off all of the alarms and cameras. Perhaps now we should liberate what we can from the vault?" He wiped at the blood on his face with his handkerchief. "I believe, after all, that this may be our last chance for a withdrawal."

"Go," one of the older men ordered. The two young men with the shaved heads left as directed. One of the older men went along, as well, in order to keep an eye on them.

As the rest of them were leaving the office, Schatz cast a last glance at the late Monsieur d'Ailerons. He tipped his head pensively.

"I have always found the company of the French to be invigorating," he said without malice or humor. He glanced at his men. "For their sakes let us hope they feel the same."

Still breathing heavily, Schatz left the office.

The lifeblood of Monsieur d'Ailerons ran in drizzly red rivulets from the gleaming desk surface.

Chapter 4

Before the morning sun had even peeked over the easternmost horizon of the continental United States, Harold W. Smith was snapping off his alarm clock. As usual, he had shut off the alarm a minute before it was due to sound.

Sitting up on the edge of the bed, Smith slipped his feet into his ratty slippers. Behind him his wife continued to snore lazily beneath the covers. He left her there in the dark, oblivious to her husband's movements.

While his wife and his nation slept on, Smith made his careful way across the cold floor to the bathroom. As a boy there was an expression common to his native Vermont. "Up with the sun," people used to say. Even as a child Smith had always considered to be slugabeds those whose day began only with the inevitable arrival of a star.

Smith was always up before the sun. After all, there was always much to be done.

This had been Smith's guiding principle his entire life. There was always much to be done. And, he noted ruefully, more and more these days there seemed less time in which to do it.

He shut the creaking bathroom door behind him. Only then did he turn on the light.

For a time a few years before, he had thought that the dull fluorescent glow of the light was casting unflattering shadows across his gray features. It was giving him the appearance of an old man. Eventually he had realized that the light was only reflecting reality. Smith was old.

Somehow age had taken firm hold of Dr. Harold W. Smith and-like a dog with a tattered rag-refused to let go.

He felt old now as he took his antiquated straight razor from the medicine cabinet.

Smith wasn't a man given to extravagances of any kind. He considered shaving cream to be just such an unnecessary expense. First lathering up his face with soap, he went to work with the sharp edge of the razor.

The cost of heating the water was avoided simply enough. Harold Smith set the tap on Cold. Miraculously Smith somehow managed to get through the same ritual every morning without slicing in his gaunt, gray flesh. It required a knack that few men had. Nor were there many men who would want to develop this skill.

He allowed himself tepid water in the shower. Smith had had difficulties with his pacemaker-equipped heart in recent years and didn't wish to jar his system any more than was absolutely necessary. Ice water from the showerhead-no matter how bracing he had claimed it to be in youth-could easily give him a heart attack at his age.

His morning bathroom ritual over, Smith reentered the bedroom.

As always he had laid his clothes out the night before. It was easy enough getting dressed in the dark.

His wife continued to snore softly from beneath the massive pile of bedcovers. He watched her sleep as he drew on his gray three-piece suit.

How many mornings have I left her like this? Smith wondered.

He knew how many years it had been. Fifty. Fifty years of marriage. Quite an accomplishment in this day and age.

They had married young. After Smith had returned from the war.

Maude Smith had stuck by him during those early days when the war's Office of Strategic Services was being transformed into the peacetime CIA. She had been a dutiful wife up to and beyond the time of Smith's "retirement." When he had settled in as director of Folcroft Sanitarium, a private health facility here in Rye, New York, Maude Smith had gone with him. Just as any good wife would.

What Maude never knew-could never know-was that Harold Smith hadn't retired from the intelligence service.

His appointment as head of Folcroft had been a cover. The sleepy sanitarium on the shores of Long Island Sound was in reality the headquarters of the supersecret government organization CURE. Smith had been its one and only director for more than thirty-four years.

As the incorruptible head of CURE, Smith directed vast amounts of information to covertly aid law-enforcement agencies in their fight against crime. Set up as an organization whose mandate was to rescue a country so endangered that the Constitution had become an impediment, CURE used extralegal means to achieve its ends.

If his quietly sleeping wife only knew the power wielded by the nondescript gray man who had shared her bed for the past five decades, she would have been shocked. And Maude Smith would have been even more stunned to learn that her seemingly unassuming Harold would have liked nothing more than to level the most fearsome power at his disposal directly at the woman whom Mrs. Smith had considered to be her best friend for the past fifteen years.

The lump beneath the mound of blankets stirred. The snoring grunted to a stop.

"Are you going to work, Harold?" Her voice was hoarse in the early-morning hours.

"Yes, dear."

"Don't forget our flight,"

"I won't, Maude."

Maude Smith was already rolling over. Already going back to sleep. The snoring resumed.

Smith left her in the predawn darkness. Let her enjoy the rest he couldn't. He made his quiet way downstairs.

Two minutes later, Smith was backing his rusting station wagon out of his driveway.

Four houses down he passed the sleeping home of Gertrude Higgins, a matronly widow who had made it her business to regularly poke her nose into the affairs of everyone else in the neighborhood.

Gert Higgins was the person against whom Smith had-however fleetingly-contemplated employing the most lethal power in CURE's arsenal.

Of course, it had only been a flight of fancy. Brought on by...what?

Not anger. There was little that could get Smith truly angry these days. He had seen so much that inspired anger in his long life that he had become desensitized to much of it.

What Smith felt was just a hair over the other side of perturbed. This peevishness had surfaced the day Maude Smith had presented him with the plane tickets.

It was for their fiftieth wedding anniversary, she had said. He worked so hard. Other people had vacations. They had never gone anywhere together.

The list was well-rehearsed. It was unlike Maude Smith to do anything as spontaneous as purchasing airline tickets to Europe. Even to celebrate fifty years of marriage.

It hadn't taken Smith long to learn that it was Gert Higgins who had pushed Maude along. She was the one who had encouraged Maude to buy the tickets without "bothering poor, overworked Harold."

Of course, his first impulse was to return the tickets.

Maude had prepaid for them.

He was going to cash them in just the same. He had even gone so far as to contact the airline from his computer at Folcroft. But at the last minute he hesitated.

Fifty years.

There was a small part of Smith that felt a pang of guilt for the many years of deceit. For the years of placing his own life in danger without concern for his family. For years of being a bad husband.

In the end Smith had kept the tickets.

His wife had been overjoyed. Her reaction had produced even more guilt. The feeling had lasted several weeks.

Later that afternoon Harold and Maude Smith were scheduled to leave for Europe together. A couple in the twilight of their years enjoying a second honeymoon together. And Harold W. Smith had every intention of hating every minute of his time away.

For now, Smith had work to do. As the earliest streaks of dawn painted the sky, Harold Smith crawled through the silent streets of Rye to Folcroft.

Chapter 5

When Claude Civray had first come to work at the old deminage depot in the town of Guise one hundred miles northeast of Paris, he was more than just a little ill at ease. After all, he knew the history of the depository for old mines.

The depot had originally been constructed on the banks of the Oise River. A foolish decision, it was later learned, as no one had taken into account the fact that water had a messy tendency to rust metal. If such a consideration had been entertained, the location would certainly have been changed because no one at the Guise facility wanted the metal casings of the old mines to deteriorate.

It had.

The French government only discovered the shoddiness of its planning when the original facility had blown itself to kingdom come after a particularly soggy spring.

Afterward the Guise depot had been moved far away from the river. It was an easy move. After the explosion, what was left of the base fit into the back of an old dairy farmer's truck.

The accident had occurred back in 1951. The French government was never certain what had caused the base to go up the way it had. It could have been a sudden jostling of stored materials. A guard might have tripped and fell.

Eventually the blame was placed on a single chain-smoking watchman and a carelessly discarded cigarette. However, this was mere speculation. The real truth of what had happened would never be learned. Fiery death had erased all traces.

Claude wasn't sure what had caused the accident, either. But one thing was certain. Given the possibility of even a kernel of truth to the rumor, Claude Civray never, ever smoked at work.

He toured the facility now, cigarettes tucked away inside his pocket, careful of where he stepped. Though it was night, there were small spotlights positioned at strategic points around the various yards and buildings.

Claude found that the lights helped very little. Several had been angled, it seemed, to blind a casual stroller. One misstep and it could be 1951 all over again.

Worse than 1951. There were many more bombs now.

They were everywhere. Even in the shadows cast by the uncertain spotlights, Claude could make out the rusted casings piled high in the open yards. It wouldn't take much to set them off.

France had had the unlucky fate of being a focal point of the two major global conflicts of the modern era. For the French people, even after the armies had left, the wars were not over. By some estimates more than twelve million unexploded shells from World War I alone lay hidden in the fields and forests of Verdun.

The closer an area was to conflict, the more densely packed were the bombs that were left behind. And while Guise was certainly not Verdun, it had still seen its share of military action.

More than its share, if anyone had bothered to ask Claude Civray.

Claude was acutely aware that there were dozens of deaths or injuries every year directly attributed to shells that turned up in unexpected places. French farmers tilling their fields seemed to suffer casualties most frequently.

What was unearthed intact was brought here, to the depot at Guise and others like it. All around the acres of grounds that comprised the storage facility were piles upon piles of unexploded military ordnance.

The French government did try to safely detonate as many of the explosives as they could, but there were simply too many. All would be gotten to someday. In the meantime, they were stored away for that eventuality.

It was Claude's job to watch the bombs rust. And to hope that they didn't blow up in his face. Claude made his way around the far end of the depot. Back here were huge aerial bombs-five feet tall and so thick a man's arms could stretch around the corroded casing and still not meet on the other side. They sat upright on their fins-stranded birds with clipped wings.

Some of the ordnance had been at the depot so long that the earth was beginning to reclaim them. Mud had collected up around the bottommost shells. High weeds grew up around the stacks, partially obscuring them.

Civray rounded a cluster of rotting pallets laden with tons of unexploded 170 mm shells. This spot always made his stomach tingle. It was here that he was at the farthest point of his nightly circuit. He always imagined that this would be the place he would be when the depot went up in flames.

Holding his breath as he did every night, Civray quickened his pace. He stepped around the many stacks of huge shells and back out onto the road used by the demineurs' trucks. He moved swiftly away from the long 170 mm casings.

Only after he was a few yards distant did he release his breath. He had made it.

Claude wouldn't have to tour the yard for another two hours. Moving more briskly now, he made his way back to the main clapboard building near the barbed-wire-festooned gate of the large facility.

When Claude had hiked the quarter mile back to the front of the yard he was surprised to find the main gates open.

There were two large halogen lamps positioned on curving poles on either side of the gate. Insects fluttered crazily in the light.

Claude could make out a line of trucks sitting idle along the desolate dirt road leading into the depot. This was more than just a little unusual. The demineurs never worked at night. It was dangerous enough to stumble around fields in broad daylight looking for eighty-year-old shells. To do so at night would be suicide.

It couldn't be a delivery.

So what was going on, then?

Maurice St. Jean, the second man on duty that night, had been working alone in the main office when Claude left on his rounds. Now there seemed to be several figures moving in the windows of the wooden building. Something was wrong.

Thoughts of 1951 immediately sprang up in Claude's mind.

Heart fluttering, he hurried over to the office.

CLAUDE FOUND several men inside. None was a demineur. St. Jean was nowhere to be seen. As one, the men inside turned to the door when Claude entered.

"What is wrong?" he demanded anxiously. "You are Claude Civray?" one of the men asked. The speaker was old. Perhaps seventy, perhaps older. Though his words were French, they were spoken clumsily. He was clearly a foreigner.

Claude became immediately suspicious. And haughty.

"This is a restricted facility," he said, pulling himself up proudly. "What is the meaning of this invasion?"

The foreigner carried a walking stick. He tapped it on the wooden floor.

"Curious choice of words," he said, casting a glance at the others in his party.

Some of the men laughed. The younger ones in particular. They guffawed loudly, slapping one another on their backs at the wit of the old man.

One man pulled off his winter hat. His head was shaved bald. Tattoos covered his bare scalp. Though the others didn't remove their hats, it was apparent from what could be glimpsed of their scalps that they were adorned like the first.

Civray had seen their kind before. Skinheads. NeoNazis. Though the young men laughed loudly and nervously, the leader of the group didn't even crack a smile.

The old man used his cane to point at Civray. "Put him with the other one."

The skinheads pounced. Claude found himself being grabbed by the arms, by the legs. He was half dragged, half carried out the door and into the yard.

"Unhand me!" Civray cried, twisting in their hard grips. His pleas fell on deaf ears.

They carried the struggling guard back several yards to an isolated spot off to the right near the side hurricane fencing.

Claude saw Maurice immediately. When he did, he stopped fighting. The other guard had been beaten to insensibility and tied to a wooden pallet beside a pyramid stack of 75 mm shells. For whatever reason Maurice must have foolishly opened the gate for these men. Civray would never find out why.

The skinheads didn't pause to give Claude the same treatment they had given his compatriot. They forced him down atop a neighboring pallet. They lashed him quickly and efficiently to the wood.

Even before he was tied down, the trucks began rolling through the gates.

There had been only the two of them assigned to guard the facility. Maurice must have told them that. With Claude out of the way, the intruders would meet no opposition.

An army of men swarmed from the backs of the trucks. They went to work immediately, gingerly collecting rusted shell casings and hauling them off as speedily as possible into the rear of the awaiting vehicles.

They worked for hours, carrying and loading. At one point one of the men working the truck nearest Claude dropped a case of "racket" German grenades. Claude was certain that it would go off.

It was a miracle that it didn't. "Dummkopf!"

The skinhead was berated for his carelessness by one of the supervisors of the operation. The grenades were carefully collected and the box was placed in the rear of the truck.

Eventually the trucks were packed to the point where they could hold no more. Only then did they begin turning slowly around. They headed in a long, careful convoy back out the gates of the Guise facility.

Claude couldn't see his watch, but he felt that it had to be somewhere near 3:00 a.m. The intruders had toiled for nearly four hours.

The last truck stopped in the inverted-V-shaped clearing made by the stacks of bombs that had been left near Claude and the still-unconscious Maurice.

The elderly man who had spoken to him in the main guard house stepped down from the passenger's side of the truck.

Several of the skinheads came running in from a point somewhere farther up the convoy. They each carried a large red metal can. The men shouted encouragement to one another in a language Claude was now certain was German.

Claude could hear liquid sloshing within the cans. The young men began dumping the contents of the containers in a trail from the gate up to the bombs nearest Claude.

While the young ones worked, the old man strolled over to view Civray, trussed up like a lamb for slaughter. He tsked when he glanced at the stack of 75 mm shells.

"Very dangerous," he confided to Civray, tapping the column of bombs with his cane. It made a dull rapping noise. The bombs sounded as solid as an anvil.

Claude cringed, waiting for the shells to explode. They remained blessedly intact.

"I thank you for holding these for us. They are back in the hands of their rightful owners now." One of the skinheads had come over next to the old man. He stood there patiently.

The wind suddenly shifted, bringing the sharp scent of gasoline to Claude Civray's sensitive nose. The rest of the men hurried away, out of sight.

In that moment Claude understood what these men had in mind for him. He shook his head dully. "No," he begged. The word was a croak.

The old man ignored him.

"Soak them," he said to the skinhead. He turned and walked briskly back to the truck.

Grinning, the young man upended his container over the bodies of Claude Civray and Maurice St. Jean.

The gasoline poured out clear in the dull lamplight. The acrid smell cut into Civray's flaring nostrils.

As the gas soaked into his clothes and mottled his hair, the truck carrying the old man drove calmly away. The man did not even cast a glance in Claude's direction.

When the man had finished dousing him with gas-oline, he laughed uproariously at the two helpless Frenchmen. Dropping the can onto Claude's legs, he ran from sight.

Maurice began to stir groggily. Claude prayed that his friend wouldn't awaken.

The minutes dragged on. It seemed to take forever.

After a time Claude allowed the hope that the men had reconsidered.

As the night insects chirped in the grassland around the facility, Claude Civray heard something approaching. It was a soft whooshing noise. Like the sound of a distantly racing train or wind across an open field.

The wall of flame slipped into sight up the dirt path. It glowed malevolently, illuminating the sides of the guardshack in weird patterns, stabbing streaks of yellowy-orange into the black French sky.

It came slowly. Looping in from the main gate, it almost seemed as if it might pass him by. But like a dog on a scent the flames caught the path of gasoline poured in to the spot where the two guards lay.

Much faster now, the strip of fire raced toward Civray.

Bracing for the flames, Civray didn't have time to be surprised that he felt nothing at all.

He didn't feel the fire because before the flames had reached him they had already found an opening in one of the stacks of shells.

As the first shell detonated, the rest in the stack of 75 mm shells exploded, as well. The ground rocked as the huge pallets with their tons of ordnance blew apart in a massive eruption of fire and twisted metal.

In less than a single heartbeat, Claude Civray was shredded into hamburger. Torn to pieces by bombs that had been dropped on his country at a time when his grandfather had been a young man.

OUTSIDE THE DEPOT, Nils Schatz watched the initial eruption with satisfaction.

The other trucks were gone. His was all that was left.

The first explosions set off a chain reaction around the base. The blasts spread in violent white pockets across the length of the depot. Finally, in a concussive burst heard for miles around, the entire base exploded. In the sleepy French countryside it was as if the end of the world had come.

Schatz's truck swayed ever so slightly on its shocks.

Unmindful of the bombs in the rear of his own vehicle and the danger they posed, Nils Schatz watched the entire depot erupt into a single ball of glorious fiery orange.

The brilliant light danced across his weary eyes, and for a blessed, happy instant the old Nazi was certain he could see an army of jackbooted soldiers marching from out the flames of history.

For the first time in more than fifty years, Nils Schatz smiled. Sitting back in his seat, he tapped his cane on the dashboard.

The truck drove off into the night.

THE SAME DRILL was completed simultaneously and without incident at three separate deminage facilities ranged around northeast France that night.

Of the many trucks laden with stolen ordnance, only one ran into trouble.

In the back of a truck parked the next day at an intersection in the busiest city in the country, a single bomb was accidentally dislodged from a stack. The resulting explosion took out half of the nearest building and most of the street.

Thirty-seven people were reported immediate casualties of the incident in Paris. Another seventy were severely wounded.

A sign had been blown from the column beside the gate of the building that had borne the brunt of the attack. It read simply United States Embassy.

Chapter 6

Smith arrived at Folcroft Sanitarium just before dawn and had been working at his computer for the better part of three hours. He wanted to get as much work done as possible before leaving for Europe. There would not be much of an opportunity to get anything accomplished with his wife around twenty-four hours a day.

Just the same, Smith planned to bring his laptop computer along on their trip.

His wife had told him the previous night that she would call him at noon to remind him of his flight. Mrs. Smith was well aware of her husband's ability to get lost for hours at a time in his work.

When the phone rang, he assumed it to be her. He glanced at the time display in the corner of the computer screen buried beneath the onyx surface of his high-tech desk. It was still midmorning. His wife wouldn't be calling for another three hours.

The call was on Remo's special line.

"Yes," Smith said, picking up the blue contact phone.

"Morning, Smitty," Remo's voice said. "Just thought I'd check in before you left."

"I take it by this morning's news reports that you had a busy night?" Smith asked dryly.

He had programmed his computers to pull up any suspicious deaths that might be attributable to Remo-who was CURE's special enforcement armor to Remo's mentor, Chiun, the Reigning Master of Sinanju. The body of Linus Pagget-with its knot of compressed skull-bore the unmistakable stamp of the ancient martial art of Sinanju.

"I told you I was antsy," Remo said.

"That was not a CURE assignment," Smith told him.

"It should have been."

"Nonetheless, I would appreciate it if you checked with me before engaging in these sorts of-" Smith searched for a word that would be appropriate when describing the gruesome condition in which the Nashua police had found Pagget's body "-activities," he finished.

"Next time. I promise. So, have you got anything else for me before you take off?"

"Nothing pressing," Smith admitted. "You and Master Chiun may enjoy the time off while I am away."

"You know I'd prefer to keep busy. C'mon, Smitty, there must be something."

Smith was surprised at Remo's eagerness to work.

It was not long before that he had been pushing for a vacation.

"Remo, if I had an assignment, I would use you. There is simply nothing large enough to warrant putting you into the field at the present time."

"I'm not a tractor, Smitty." His tone bordered on disgust.

Smith raised a thin eyebrow. "Is there something more to this than a simple desire to keep busy?"

Remo sighed. "You should be a shrink," he said glumly.

"I actually do hold a doctorate in clinical psychology," Smith noted.

"Yeah, right," Remo said absently. "It's just that there's always something more to do. One more creep determined to wreck the world for everybody else. Pagget left that nun barely breathing."

"She died this morning," Smith said tightly.

"I heard," Remo replied. His voice was laced with bitterness. "A fat lot of good I did her. I'm great at retribution, Smitty. What I stink at is getting there in the nick of time."

"Perhaps I am not the best person with whom to discuss this," Smith said, clearly uncomfortable. "Have you spoken to Chiun?"

"He thinks it's the same old story. Every year I get the blahs about the business. But it really isn't the same this time. I can't explain it. It's as if I know there's a lot of stuff that needs to be done, but I finally realize that I can't do it all. I mean really realize it." Remo exhaled loudly. "I don't know. Maybe it's time I finally packed it in."

Smith had only been half listening while Remo spoke. Like Chiun, the CURE director had grown used to Remo's frequent bouts of melancholia. But when he raised the desire to abandon the dangerous life he was in, Smith took notice.

The CURE director frowned. "Remo, someone told you something a long time ago. He used to say the same thing to me. 'One man can make a difference.'"

He heard a pensive intake of breath on the other end of the line as Remo considered the words.

"I don't think I believe that anymore," Remo said after a long, thoughtful pause.

Smith pressed ahead. "It was true enough for him. Conrad MacCleary believed that his entire life. That was why he recruited you. He knew that you could make a difference."

"MacCleary died more than twenty years ago," Remo countered. "He never lived in this America. He never saw anything as bad as what's going on out there today."

Smith paused. How could he tell Remo of the shared horrors Smith and MacCleary had witnessed as members of the OSS during World War II? It was a time when darkness threatened to engulf the entire planet. Subsequent generations had never known such a struggle. It was already history before Remo was even born.

In the end Smith decided not to even try.

"I will try to find something for you," the CURE director promised.

"Thanks, Smitty," Remo said. The news appeared to do nothing to lift his spirits.

Smith hung up the phone, turning his attention back to his computer.

While he had been talking to Remo, a news story had come in from one of the wire services. Smith had failed to notice the interruption on his computer screen. The electronically reproduced story had waited patiently for his perusal.

Smith's lemony features grew more pinched as he read the details, sparse for now.

There had been several large explosions in the north of France during the night. All at deminage depots. The French government was attributing the nocturnal blasts to recent procedural changes in the storage of old war supplies. Unwise changes, it had turned out.

The interior minister, speaking on behalf of the president, had assured the public that in the future there would be no more such alterations in the handling of the dangerous items warehoused on the bases. In the meantime the military and police were conducting house-to-house searches in the towns around the blast sites. They stressed that they had no desire to alarm the public, but they admitted that there was a possibility that some of the unexploded mustard-gas shells that had been stored on the bases could have been corrupted in the blasts. The gas would have been released during the explosions. They wanted to be certain that everyone in the surrounding communities was all right.

Something about the report struck Smith as false. Of course the mustard-gas shells would have gone off along with everything else. Why would the French army be involved for so simple a matter as this? Surely the gas would have dissipated long before it reached a populated area.

Smith dumped the story from the screen and began typing swiftly at his special capacitor keyboard. In a moment he had accessed the private lines within the Paris headquarters of the Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure, or DGSE.

Electronic mail inside France's premier spy organization was flying fast and furious. No one seemed to know precisely what was going on, but one thing was certain. The army was not conducting a door-todoor search for mustard-gas victims.

The explosions at the depots were not large enough, the resulting devastation not great enough, to account for all of the stored ordnance. According to reports, there were tire tracks leading away from every site.

All indications pointed to the fact that a massive amount of unstable surplus World War II explosives had been stolen. By whom and for what end had yet to be determined.

Smith was reading the most recent memos, dated 3:02 p.m. Paris time, when his computer beeped impatiently. His system had found something that warranted the CURE director's attention.

Smith quickly exited the DGSE network and returned to his own system. He found a fresh news report waiting for him.

The first stories were coming in of the bombing at the American Embassy in Paris. Smith read them with growing concern. Some members of the press were already connecting the Paris bombing with the explosions far north of the city.

When he had finished reading the news reports, Smith sat back in his creaking leather chair, considering. Through the one-way window behind him, Long Island Sound lapped lazily at the shore below Folcroft's rear lawn.

His plane took off from JFK International Airport at five that evening. It was a direct transatlantic flight to London's Heathrow Airport. His wife's itinerary wouldn't bring them to France for another two days.

If the situation there-whatever it might becould be cleared up before then, there wasn't much of a chance he and Remo would run into one another.

It would also give Remo something to keep his mind off quitting the organization.

The decision was made.

Chair creaking as he leaned forward, Smith reached for the phone.

Chapter 7

Helene Marie-Simone watched as the medical examiners pried the charred bodies from within the twisted remnants of the truck's cab. They cracked like crusted bread sticks.

There was practically nothing left. Black-smeared bones clutched a melted, U-shaped object that had once been a steering wheel. From the waist up, most of the soft tissue of the bodies had been burned completely away. Below, the skin had been turned to something resembling black leather. Clothing had been burned to ash.

Any attempt by the forensic scientists to do dental identification would be fruitless. If the doctors were able to find a single tooth, they would be lucky. The explosion had hit the men from behind. Their heads had been blown from here to Belgium.

"The lorry was rented from a place in Lille," a nearby police inspector informed Helene.

"Witnesses?" she asked sharply.

"Non, " the inspector replied. "It was not a first-rate establishment. The transaction was completed over the phone. Local police have informed us that the owner was involved marginally in drug trafficking. An envelope stuffed fat with franc notes, and he would not ask a question."

Her face was stern as she eyed her subordinate. "Bring him here," she ordered.

In the blown-out shell of the truck a brittle femur snapped. Helene winced angrily.

"Are you trying to destroy evidence?" she demanded.

The MEs looked apologetic. With greater care they resumed their work.

"The rental agent is already on his way," the inspector cut in. He looked back to his notes. "That is all we have so far." He stood, pen poised over paper, awaiting Helene's next orders.

Helene didn't offer any. She looked back toward the building behind her, biting her cheek thoughtfully.

She was the kind of woman who inspired resentment among professional men. Beautiful, arrogant. Helene knew that she was both of these things and cared not that she was either.

Her long, thin brown hair was a perfect frame for her pale, classically chiseled features. The designer clothing she wore clung to her every curve in the exact way it was supposed to but never seemed to do on ordinary women. She had been approached more than once by talent agents from the modeling business. Helene had laughed them all away. With her sharp mind and fierce patriotism, she preferred her job as a spy for the French government. Except on days like today.

The American Embassy lay in ruins. The entire front had been blown apart, exposing the interior to the street. The partially furnished rooms reminded Helene of a dollhouse she had had as a child.

Most of the outer portions of the floors in the multistoried building had collapsed after the blast, filling the courtyard with debris. Men in windbreakers were sifting carefully through the wreckage. Not one of them was French, Helene noted with agitation.

The Americans had flown in special investigative units that morning. Simultaneously an official offer had come from Washington to assist the French with their investigation of the bombing.

Of course, the French government had flatly refused the American offer. France was perfectly capable of handling the situation and had said so quite firmly. Stung, the Americans had left the local constabulary to clean up the aftermath in the street.

The French officials had begun to do just that. But when they expressed a desire to investigate the wreckage within the embassy courtyard, they were politely yet firmly rebuffed. The Americans had returned the rudeness of the French government in kind.

There was nothing that they could do about the embassy. Since it was officially United States soil, the government of France couldn't go in unless asked. The shortsightedness of Helene's superiors had effectively locked her out of a potentially vital aspect of this investigation.

Helene, an agent for France's DGSE, had been waiting impatiently on the street corner for the past three hours while the American men in their windbreaker jackets sifted through the charred ruins in the small embassy courtyard.

"If there is nothing else..." the inspector said leadingly.

Helene had been lost in thought.

She turned back to the man, perturbed.

"No," she sighed. "Nothing for now. Unfortunately." She indicated the blackened remains of the truck. "Go and tell those fools to be more careful with the bodies. There is little enough to work with as it is. They do not need to smash the skeletons any further."

Dutifully the inspector went off to comply with her orders.

As the man began arguing with the medical examiners, Helene stepped closer to the demolished embassy wall.

Chunks of brick lay strewed about the sidewalk and street. She picked her cautious way over these to the edge of where the embassy yard began. Yellow tape brought from America roped off the area. It fluttered and snapped in the stiff breeze.

Hopefully the Americans would soon come to their senses and allow her inside. This inactivity was killing her.

She was peering in around a broken yet still upright section of wall when with her peripheral vision she caught sight of a pair of men stepping toward her across the rock- and metal-strewn street. They were nearly upon her when she turned.

"You may not go in there," Helene insisted, her tone official.

"By the looks of it, most of in there is out here," said one of the men. He was looking at the rubble on the sidewalk.

"Oh. You are American," Helene said with some distaste.

"As American as apple pie and Chevrolet," said Remo Williams proudly.

"l, on the other hand, demand an apology for your coarse greeting," said Chiun, Reigning Master of Sinanju.

The old Korean stood at Remo's elbow, longnailed hands drumming impatiently atop the flapping sleeves of his fire-engine red brocade silk kimono.

He was five feet tall if he was an inch and had never seen the far side of one hundred pounds. Twin tufts of gossamer sprouted from a spot above each shell-like ear. The tan, taut flesh of his aged skull was otherwise bare. A wisp of beard adorned his wrinkled chin. Two young-appearing hazel orbs peered with bland malevolence from amid the knots of crumpled vellum that surrounded the old Asian's almond-shaped eyes.

Together the two men were an odd sight indeed. Helene was certain that these two were not associates of the Americans in windbreakers.

"I'd do it if I were you," Remo suggested knowingly to Helene.

"What?" Helene asked. She was genuinely confused.

"Apologize. It'll make things easier for all of us in the long run."

"Apologize?" Helene said. Her superior demeanor reasserted itself. "For what am I to apologize?"

"For a slur most base," Chiun sniffed.

"I said nothing to you," Helene insisted. "Much less insult you."

"She doesn't even know what she said, Little Father," Remo said.

"Typical for a Gallic wench. Their mouths are occupied in other depraved ways so much of the time, speech becomes secondary. Words of hate drip like poison from their weary tongues without even their knowledge." A single sharpened talon raised instructively. "Beware the daughters of Gaul, Remo. Their mouths are known for neither thoughtful consideration nor the ability to close when in the company of men, women or beasts of the field."

"I'll make a note of it," Remo said dryly. "Let's go."

Jumping, Helene barred them from entering the courtyard.

"Who are you? How did you get through the police cordon?" she demanded.

"Name's Remo. You just heard that. I'm with the State Department. I was supposed to be assigned here today." He looked at the bombed-out remains of the embassy building. "Guess I should have put in for that Bahamas assignment, huh, Chiun?"

The old man merely harrumphed, stuffing his hands inside the voluminous sleeves of his kimono. He stared at Helene.

"I demand to see some form of identification," Helene said officiously.

Remo shrugged. He pulled his and Chiun's dummy State Department ID from the pocket of his chinos.

Helene peered at the plastic-laminated cards for a full minute. At last she presented them back to Remo.

"These are in order. Though I am surprised that you would have come here today, considering what has happened," she added suspiciously.

"Diplomacy must go on." Remo smiled. He began stepping beneath the yellow tape.

"Wait," Helene said, struck with sudden inspiration.

"What?"

"Perhaps you could get me inside," she suggested, nodding to the embassy courtyard.

"There's really nothing to it," Remo said. "Look." He slipped beneath the tape, dropping it from his hand once he had reached the other side. "See?"

"You do not understand," she persisted. "There was an earlier misunderstanding between our respective teams. Your men have since stubbornly refused us entry."

"Perhaps you accused them of being American," Chiun offered, still on Helene's side of the flimsy barricade.

"They are American," Helene told him.

"Ah, but perhaps they do not like to be reminded of that fact," Chiun said sagely. Bending double, he joined Remo on the other side of the tape. The back of his kimono didn't even brush the tape.

"This is the point where you're supposed to figure out he wants you to say you're sorry for thinking he was American," Remo offered. "It's called the subtle approach."

Helene's eyes finally showed dawning understanding. She glanced at Chiun.

"I apologize," the French agent said. "Most sincerely. You are quite obviously not American." Her eyes narrowed, as if she were seeing the Master of Sinanju for the first time. "In fact, I would venture to guess that you are Korean, if I may be so bold."

Chiun's lined face brightened. "A woman of obvious good judgment," he said. "If somewhat delayed."

Helene knew at once that she had struck gold. She forged ahead.

"Forgive me, but sometimes my eyes are not so good," she lied. She nodded to Remo. "I saw this one and assumed you were both American. I see now that I was obviously in error."

Chiun studied her for a moment. "There is nothing wrong with your eyes," he concluded. Reaching out with a single curved fingernail-sharp as a titanium razor-he sliced through the yellow tape. The ends fluttered gently to the ground. "However, there is nothing a Frenchman does better than grovel." He indicated that Helene could join them within the courtyard.

Quickly she stepped over the split sections of tape. "The FBI isn't going to like this," Remo warned.

"You will talk to them," Chiun sniffed indifferently. "After all, they are Americans and are therefore better dealt with by their own kind."

Chiun and Helene stepped in through the wreckage, leaving a grumbling Remo to deal with the officials from Washington.

REMO DID TALK to the investigators. Rather than get into a hassle explaining why a low-ranking State Department official was stumbling about the remnants of the most significant foreign bomb attack since the Marine barracks explosion in Lebanon, he showed the agent in charge a different badge, this one identifying him as a member of the National Security Council. Chiun, Remo said, was with him. Helene was with Chiun.

There was surprisingly little said by the special agent within the cordon. He was far too busy directing his team of experts. His only warning was that Remo and his party should not destroy too much evidence in their pointless tour of the scene. A shot at the NSC. The harried agent had then gone back to work.

Remo found Chiun and Helene near the battered wall of the courtyard. The exploded truck was parked just on the other side. What was left of the men in the cab had at last been removed. The back of the truck was nothing more than a bare chassis. All around, the ground was charred black.

Helene was stooped down examining small fragments of debris on the ground. The Master of Sinanju was standing upright. His button nose was angled upward. He appeared to be doing some sort of deepbreathing exercises.

"We're okay with the Feds," Remo announced, coming up to them.

"Good," Helene said distractedly. Chiun ignored Remo altogether. He continued sniffing the air. "What's your name, by the way?" Remo asked Helene.

She seemed peeved by the interruption. "Helene Marie-Simone."

"Do you realize you have three first names?" No reply. Helene had become so engrossed in her meticulous search of the ground she no longer seemed to realize he was even there. Getting down on her hands and knees, she began brushing at the black grit that filled the spaces on the ground between the fallen embassy bricks.

Remo turned his attention back to Chiun.

The Master of Sinanju was still sniffing carefully at the air, drawing in delicate puffs of some distant scent.

"Okay, what is it?" Remo asked.

"I am not yet certain," Chiun responded. "But there is something here. Very faint. The boom devices have managed nearly to erase it." He turned ever so slowly in the direction of the battered truck, as if trying to sneak up on something long lost.

While they spoke, Remo caught Helene looking at them from the corner of her eye. When she thought that they were paying no attention to her, she pulled a small plastic bag from the pocket of her short leather jacket. Shielding her body from them, she quickly stuck something she had found from the ground in the bag and then hurriedly stuffed the whole bundle back into her pocket. Face flushed, she resumed her search.

"Back in a sec," Remo told Chiun. He wandered over to Helene. "What was that?" he asked, stopping above the kneeling agent.

She looked up at him, blandly innocent. "What was what?" she asked dully.

"Can the innocent act, Madam Clouseau," Remo droned, reaching down into her pocket and plucking out the small bag.

Helene jumped to her feet, eyes charged with horrified fury.

"That is evidence taken from the crime scene beyond the wall! It was collected on French soil!" She made a grab for the bag. Remo held it away from her grasping hands.

"I saw you pick it up from in here," he said. He held the bag up a few inches from his eyes.

Inside was a piece of jagged metal. It was a small fragment, no larger than a fingernail. It had survived the blast in surprisingly good condition, considering that corrosion had taken hold of it long before the explosives it had contained were detonated.

"Give me that this instant," Helene hissed. She snatched once more, missing again.

"Which world war is this from, do you think?" he asked aloud. He glanced over at her.

Helene's eyes immediately glazed over. It was a very deliberate affectation. She stopped jumping. "What do you mean?" she asked blandly.

"It's obviously part of the munitions that were stolen from your depots last night. I'd say it was World War I. That metal has seen at least seventy years' worth of air and water eating away at it."

Helene's stomach knotted. The thefts were not yet public knowledge. As far as everyone was concerned, the bombing at the embassy was separate from the explosions that were still designated as accidents at the deminage depots.

Helene scrutinized Remo carefully, as if seeing him for the first time.

"You are with your State Department?" she asked finally.

Remo smiled. "I guess I'm really a Jacques of all trades."

"That may be, but here you are mistaken," she said flatly. "First there was no theft at our storage facilities. Second there is no evidence to connect the two events. My government has no intention of linking those accidents with this act of terrorism."

"Tell that to the DGSE," Remo said. "They seem pretty certain there's a connection. And they're also sure that a huge amount of stuff was stolen off the bases. Those explosions weren't accidents, but I'm willing to bet that this one was."

Helene refused to give in to incredulity. She forced calm into her voice. "Who are you?" she asked.

Remo brushed off the question as irrelevant. "See where the truck is?" Remo instructed, waving the bag with the bomb fragment toward the street. "Stopped in traffic. It wasn't in a spot where it could have inflicted maximum damage. Look at the wrecked part of the embassy. Superficial on this side. They could have taken out a lot more of the place if they parked around the east wall. And here's the biggest proof. No one's taken credit for the explosion yet. Everyone knows the types of people who do this stuff on purpose love to see their names on page one. "Nope, I'm willing to bet that one of the trucks with the stolen bombs just happened to be waiting here when one of the things went off by mistake." Remo waved the bag in her face. "One of these things," he mocked.

She made another desperate grab for the bag. This time he allowed her to snatch it away.

"Wild speculation," she snarled, stuffing the bag back into her jacket pocket. With sharp movements she fastened the flap with a metal snap.

"Call it what you like," Remo answered airily. "You're the ones with the problem. By now the metal casings on those things are so deteriorated a sneeze could set them off."

If Helene wanted to say something else, she didn't get the chance. The Master of Sinanju had completed his olfactory sweep of the area. He returned to Remo's side.

"What have you got?" Remo asked.

Chiun was frowning. "There is a hint of the gaseous condiment substance used by the barbarian Hun in the First Global Idiocy."

"Mustard gas," Remo said, nodding. "I thought I smelled it when we first showed up."

"No doubt there was some present on the vehicle when the booms went off. Though faint now, at first it interfered with my senses."

"But not anymore," Remo pressed.

Chiun shook his head. "I have isolated another scent. There is a definite odor of the Hun in this vicinity."

"From the bombs themselves," Remo suggested, though even he doubted the Master of Sinanju could smell traces of whoever had handled the rusted bomb casings some eighty-odd years ago.

"From the booms, yes," Chiun agreed. "But recently. The odor comes from the vehicle. The thieves were German."

"German?" Remo said with a frown.

"How could he know that?" Helene asked dubiously.

"Trust me, he knows," Remo informed her. "But Germany and France are no longer enemies. We are in NATO together. We are both members of the European Union. What he says makes no sense."

"The Germans reek of the fermented grains they drink and the pork products they eat," Chiun said firmly. "They are the dastards responsible for this." Helene's better instincts took over. She shook her head doubtfully.

"Your nose will no doubt forgive me if I investigate further?" Helene asked acidly. Stepping away from them, she resumed her search of the yard.

"There's nothing stronger to go on, Little Father?" Remo asked quietly once they were alone.

"I thought briefly there was, but the scent went away." The old man shook his head in frustration. "There are too many Frenchman fouling the area. If only a handful of them owned a washcloth and soap, it might be possible. As it is..." He threw up his hands, kimono sleeves snapping in annoyance like twin flicked towels. Irritated, he turned his attention away from the air and began examining the ground.

As the Master of Sinanju worked, Remo tried briefly to clear away the layers of odors filling the Paris street. It took a few minutes, but he finally got beyond the human and machinery scents. He found the distinctive German smell beneath the acrid odor of the burned-out truck.

Chiun was right. There was nothing more. The body odors made it impossible to go further.

With nothing more to do, he joined Chiun in his inspection of the grounds.

FORTUNATELY for the young man in the thick crowd of gawkers gathered on the other side of the French police line, the wind was blowing in the right direction. Had it not been, either Master of Sinanju would have easily been able to sniff out the beer-and-sausage lunch he had eaten not more than an hour before.

The man wore a black knit cap rolled down to cover the tattoos on his shaved scalp. A pair of khaki pants, a ripped black T-shirt and a denim jacket that advertised the name of an obscure German punk-rock band across the back and arms completed his ensemble.

The youth watched Remo and Chiun, as well as Helene and the rest of the investigators, for a few minutes longer. Eventually he grew bored with observing the meticulous search of the embassy wreckage.

He left the scene.

The young man walked several blocks through the heavy pedestrian traffic. Some of the government workers were again on strike-this time calling for a two-day work week and eight months paid vacation. It was just another excuse for them not to work. And the strikers were not alone. It seemed as if everyone was taking advantage of the beautiful Parisian afternoon.

Taking an infrequently traveled side street, the young man walked down half a block to a narrow, cluttered alley. At the end of the dank passageway was a rusted metal fire escape. The man climbed the groaning steps to a third-story fire door.

Ducking inside the building, he found a closed door at the end of a dimly lit corridor. It was warped with age. He rapped sharply on the painted wood.

With a pained creak the door opened a crack, revealing a suspicious, bleary eye surrounded by a relief map of wrinkles. When the old man on the other side saw who it was, the door was opened just enough for him to pass inside.

The apartment was not large. There was a living room beyond the door. Other small rooms extended off this one. Men were crowded inside. Several-including the one who had answered the door-were veteran members of IV. The rest were young like the new arrival.

Nils Schatz sat imperiously in a plush chair that overlooked the rest of the room. A few of the older men sat in other, rattier chairs and on the nearby threadbare sofa.

The room was hot with the collected body warmth of dozens of nervous men.

Once inside, the young man quickly doffed his hat, revealing a bald head of large, unsightly tattoos. The Roman numerals "I" and "V" were stained in blue ink in the most prominent spot just above his pale forehead. Above them, etched below the surface in dull red, was the twisted image of a swastika.

At the sight of the new arrival, Nils Schatz's lips tightened, but he had to hide his true feelings. Schatz was privately disgusted by the slovenliness of the young man. He and his kind would be the first that would be purged in the grand new order. But they were necessary. For now. The unkempt fools were loyal foot soldiers.

Schatz motioned the young man forward with a wave of his cane. A potentate granting an audience to an unworthy supplicant.

"What is happening?" the old Nazi demanded.

The young man shrugged. "Not much," he replied in a voice as dull as the light in his eyes. "The Americans have sent in some of their own people. The French are still everywhere."

Although none of this was fresh news, the repetition still seemed to upset Schatz.

"Are there any French government agents?" he demanded.

The young man shrugged. "Don't know. How can you tell?"

Schatz waved his cane wildly. "It is obvious," he spit, as if he had sent the man out to find the sky. "Were there any?"

"No, I don't think there were any agents," the boy answered cautiously.

There was fire in the old Nazi's eyes. He aimed his cane at the young man's chin.

"You do not think at all," Schatz threatened. For a moment some of those gathered thought that this would be a repeat of the incident at the Banque de Richelieu. Before things got out of hand, one of the other men, a former Nazi lieutenant named Fritz Dunlitz, interjected.

"Anything strange at all, Rudi?" Fritz pressed. "We need to know if they have connected this to us in any way."

"There was nothing that has not already been on the news," Rudi replied. "It is like the American movies. The police are searching for little scraps of clues."

"Bah! He is stupid," Schatz stated firmly. He waved vaguely at the young man with the end of his walking stick. It was as if the boy wasn't even in the room. He dropped the blunt end of the cane to the floor.

"I do not believe we need to be concerned, Nils," Fritz assured Schatz. "The police are not yet cracking down on the city. Much of the plan is already in motion."

"There was an old man," Rudi offered suddenly. Schatz and some of the other older men looked over at Rudi. The younger ones in the room were slower to follow suit, but eventually they, too, turned to the young skinhead.

"What?" Schatz asked tersely.

"At the American Embassy. An old Chinese man. He wore a long red robe. He came with another man. A younger man. They didn't look like police."

"An old Oriental," Schatz said flatly.

The other men from Schatz's generation were looking at one another and at their leader.

"How do you know he was Chinese?" Fritz demanded.

Rudi shrugged. "He was-I don't know ... Chinese." He stuck his index fingers into the flesh at the corners of his eyes and drew them away from his face, causing his eyes to slant. "Chinese," he repeated.

Fritz spun back to Schatz. "Is it possible?" he asked.

"Possible and probable," Schatz admitted thoughtfully. "The Master of Sinanju is still alive. At least he was several months ago. At that time IV learned that he was in the employ of the Americans. If it is he, they obviously sent him here to investigate the stupid, stupid accident at their embassy."

"What about the other one?" asked somebody nervously.

Schatz waved his cane dismissively. "The young one is his protege. We know of him, as well." His expression soured as he considered this new dimension to his plan.

After a time Fritz cleared his throat. Schatz looked up at him dully.

"It might be wise, Nils, to contact Kluge. He may have advice that-"

Schatz smashed his walking stick across the dusty surface of the wooden coffee table with a mighty crack.

"I know what his advice will be!" he snapped. The skinheads were startled by the outburst. Even some of the old ones jumped at the noise.

"Kluge would have us sit like helpless invalids awaiting the undertaker," Schatz hissed furiously. "We will wait no longer. IV will wait no longer. What we need to do is to distract Sinanju."

As the cloud of startled dust played around his weathered features, Schatz settled back in his comfortable chair. He said no more.

For a time the others looked at him in silent concern. None dared speak.

"How?" Fritz asked, finally, a confused expression spreading across his face.

Nils Schatz didn't say. But his expression was obvious to the old men who knew him all too well. It was a look of disdainful confidence. A plan was already under way.

Chapter 8

Harold Smith had been in England less than one hour and was already wishing he were home.

The plane had been only one hour late leaving JFK but had somehow managed to arrive in London more than three hours overdue. How Royal Airlines had managed that piece of aviating trickery was beyond him. He imagined they had spent some of their time in the air flying backward.

Only one of his wife's bags had been lost in transit. The airline assured the Smiths that they would quickly locate the errant luggage and send it along to their hotel.

Maude Smith took the loss of the ancient bag in stride. She was so excited with the prospect of spending one full week alone with her husband that she accepted the inconvenience of one misplaced suitcase without so much as a single cross word.

His wife's lost bag was of little concern to Smith as well. After all, he carried his most important piece of luggage with him. Throughout the flight, the battered leather briefcase that carried his CURE laptop had been nestled carefully between his ankles.

However, if the missing suitcase was not returned by the end of their trip, Smith would use the CURE mainframes back at Folcroft to track it down. After all, the bag had been a wedding present from Maude's aunt and uncle, and Smith had no intention of replacing it this late in his life.

A too expensive cab brought them from Heathrow to their hotel, a disinterested desk clerk gave them their key and a bellboy who had learned his manners watching Benny Hill reruns escorted them to their room.

Once they were settled in, Smith mentioned that he wanted to do a little work on his computer. His wife-not hearing a word he said-was thrilled with the prospect of an afternoon of sight-seeing.

"Ooh, let's go to the Thames River, Harold," Maude Smith announced excitedly. She pronounced every letter in the word. Mrs. Smith beamed as she looked at the glossy picture in the brochure she had picked up in the hotel lobby.

"That's pronounced 'Tems,' dear," Smith said absently from his seated position on the edge of the hotel bed. He placed his briefcase on his lap.

Still, she didn't hear him. She was too excited. "Oh, Hyde Park looks interesting. We could go there."

"Very well," said Smith. "Perhaps tomorrow afternoon."

He popped the special locks on his briefcase and lifted the cracked leather lid, revealing the small portable computer within. The sounds drew a response. "Harold." The voice of his wife was small. And sad.

Smith glanced up.

Maude Smith was looking down at the briefcase balanced atop Smith's bony knees. Her face was deeply hurt.

"This is our second honeymoon," she said softly. Already her eyes were welling up.

Smith hadn't seen his wife cry in many years. To witness such a display now came as a shock. She had always been a good wife. Undemanding. Dutiful. She had sacrificed her life for him and never had a complaint.

Something stirred deep in the rock-ribbed, unemotional core of Harold W. Smith. It was guilt. The same sensation that had compelled him to go on this trip in the first place. He found the emotion deeply unsettling.

Smith quietly shut the lid on the computer. He set the tamperproof locks on the briefcase and pushed it far under the bed. He stood up.

"Or we could go now," he offered, taking her hands gently in his.

Smith's rational mind knew that they had both changed. A great deal more than either of them had ever expected. But in that instant he was propelled back in time more than fifty years. The face he looked into was that of the shy young girl who had given him her youth.

A tight smile gripped his bloodless lips.

Maude Smith was so surprised by the sudden change in her husband that she wanted to burst out in tears of joy. But she knew Harold frowned on those sorts of emotional displays. When she cried, she generally cried alone. Ironically it was her aloneness that usually brought her to tears.

But she wasn't alone today.

She gripped her husband's gnarled fingers, sniffling slightly.

"I'll get the camera," Maude croaked feebly.

THEY FOUND several more rusted metal fragments from shattered bomb casings. Helene had even stopped denying that they were fragments of the ordnance stolen from the deminage bases. Her frown deepened at each discovery.

"So it was an accident," Remo mused. "But the stuff still got all the way down to Paris for some reason. Why?"

"There is only one reason to have booms," Chiun replied. He was watching the American investigators sift through the debris. They had found evidence of the deminage bombs, as well.

Remo nodded his agreement. "True. But we still don't know who has them. Any ideas, Helene?" he called over to the French agent.

She was talking into the cellular phone that she periodically removed from the pocket of her jacket. She pitched her voice low, little realizing that Remo could have heard her even if she were on the other side of the building and locked away in an isolation tank. Heard but not understood. Remo had never bothered to learn French.

It hadn't been easy, but he had convinced the Master of Sinanju to quietly translate some of what she was saying. It was during the first of these calls that Remo learned she was an agent for the DGSE.

"I do not support your conjecture," she called back. She hunched farther into her phone.

"She's not very helpful, is she?" Remo said to Chiun.

"She is French." The Master of Sinanju shrugged, as if this explained everything.

Remo put his hands on his hips. Frowning unhappily, he surveyed the embassy wreckage.

"We've gone as far as we can here. I don't see anyone running up to tell us they did it."

"Perchance Smith might have new information," Chiun suggested.

"Chiun, I can't call Smith," Remo explained. "He's on the first vacation he's ever taken since I've known him. Besides, his wife is with him."

"Call Smith, do not call Smith. It matters not to me," Chiun said with a shrug of his birdlike shoulders.

Remo thought for a few more minutes. His frown deepened with each passing second.

"I think I'll call Smith," he said eventually.

He hopped over a pile of shattered wall debris and stepped up to Helene. When she noticed him coming toward her, she pulled more tightly into herself, whispering a torrent of French into the small phone in her hand.

Wordlessly Remo reached around her. Before she could issue a complaint, he plucked the phone from her clenched hand.

"She'll call you back," he announced into the receiver.

"Give me my phone!"

"Sorry, kitten. Official State Department business."

As Helene protested, Remo pressed the button that severed the connection. She continued complaining violently as Remo-humming all the while-punched in his personal access code for Folcroft. Smith had told him before he left that he could phone at any time in case of emergency. The call would be rerouted to wherever in the world the CURE director was staying.

"Give me that this instant," Helene insisted hotly, grabbing at the phone.

"When I'm through," Remo promised. He had finished dialing and, batting away Helene's grabbing hands, was waiting for the call to go through.

Eventually Helene gave up trying to get the phone back. Seething, she crossed her arms.

"You are a barbarian," she snarled.

"This from the people who brought you the guillotine," Remo said smilingly. He resumed humming a song from the musical Gigi. It was Maurice Chevalier's "Thank Heaven for Little Girls."

HAROLD SMITH HAD SEEN as much of London as he had ever wanted to see during World War II. And most of what he saw back then had been at night.

Large parts of his youth had been spent ducking shrapnel. As the air-raid whistles squawked their nightly preamble to horror, the streets emptied. Blackout shades were hastily drawn and Londoners huddled together in shelters awaiting the end of the Blitz.

That end had come decades ago. The sirens were silent now.

The sandbags and antiaircraft guns were gone. As he strolled with his wife from Kensington Gardens and across the street into Hyde Park, Smith didn't see a single British soldier or military vehicle.

On their tour he noted that some of the buildings that had been damaged in the war had been repaired. Others had been torn down to make way for fresh architectural eyesores. It was as if World War II had never so much as brushed the shores of England.

To Maude Smith's eyes, this was London. She had never seen what Smith had seen, and so to her the images of the war had been restricted to the far-off unreality of newsreels and, in later years, the occasional advertisement for a PBS documentary. She never watched the programs themselves. They were too depressing.

Happily oblivious to the horrors that had nightly occurred on these very streets, Maude Smith clicked picture after picture on her old Browning camera. Smith thought it likely that she hadn't even loaded the film correctly. She had never been very good at it. Whatever the case, it didn't seem to matter to Mrs. Smith.

"Isn't it beautiful, Harold?" Maude Smith trilled. As she spoke, she clicked away at the pond in Hyde Park. It could have been any small duck-filled body of water in any city in the world.

"Yes, dear," Smith agreed.

"Aren't you having a wonderful time?" she asked. Her face was beaming. Briefly-through the rounder face, the slackness and other marks of age-a hint of the girl he had married peeked through once more.

"I am, dear," Smith said.

And the truth was, he meant it. Smith hated to admit it, but he actually was beginning to enjoy himself. He found her good humor to be infectious.

They crossed the street and were beginning to make their way up Piccadilly to Trafalgar Square when Smith felt an odd electronic hum at his waist. "What was that?" Mrs. Smith asked.

Smith had already reached beneath his gray suit jacket to shut off the device. It was small and black-half the size of a deck of cards.

"I took the precaution of renting a pocket pager before we left home," he said, frowning.

"A pager?" she asked. "I didn't know one would work this far away."

"It is hooked in to a world satellite service," Smith explained. He glanced around for a phone.

"Harold," his wife said. It was an admonishing tone, but a mild one. Their day together had been too enjoyable so far to spoil it with nagging.

"It must be Mrs. Mikulka," Smith said. "I told her to contact me if there was a problem at Folcroft."

Mrs. Smith tsked. "Can't they run that place for a week without you?"

Smith spied a red phone box across the street. "It is probably nothing," he said, forcing the tenseness from his tone. "But I should return the call."

"Oh, very well," Maude said in a mock-impatient tone. "I need some more film anyway. There was a small store near Hyde Park Corner, I think. Yes, there it is. Did you know they call their drugstores 'chemist' shops?" Maude Smith explained, proud of her erudition. Leaving Smith to dwell on this kernel of knowledge, she walked over to the door of the shop. Smith hurried across the street.

In the phone booth, Smith unclipped the pager from his belt and carefully entered the number on the small display strip. Remo answered immediately. "Sorry to interrupt your vacation, Smitty."

"What is the problem?"

"Chiun and I have hit a dead end here. No one's taking credit for the bombing, and the French government hasn't been able to get much of anything from the truck or street, at least according to the DGSE."

There was a shout of surprised protest from the background. It was a female voice.

"Hey, it's not my fault you can't keep a secret," Remo called to the voice in the background. To Smith he said, "One thing we have been able to determine is that the bomb that went off outside the embassy probably wasn't really a truck bomb at all."

"Explain."

Remo went on to tell him about the metal fragments and his theory that the explosion had been accidental.

"Does Chiun concur with your hypothesis?"

"It is true, Emperor Smith," Chiun's squeaky voice called. "The attack on your Gallic outpost does not appear deliberate. And the parts of the boom devices we found were fifty or more years old."

"Did you get all that?" Remo asked.

"Yes."

"There's no doubt about it," Remo said. "The stuff that was stolen from the bases blew up the embassy."

"Only some of what was stolen," Smith clarified. "From what I learned, there was much, much more than a single truckload of explosives taken from the deminage facilities."

"That one truckload did a hell of a lot of damage," Remo said somberly.

"Yes," Smith replied, thinking. He was looking thoughtfully out one of the side glass windows of the phone booth. Across the street, he spotted his wife exiting the chemist's shop. "Remo, I will have to call you back. I do not have access to my laptop at present."

"You without a computer?" Remo said, surprised. "Isn't that part of your wardrobe? Like that itchy Brooks Brothers suit or that Dartmouth noose you wear around your neck? Better be careful, Smitty. If you keep going out like that in public, you're going to get nabbed for indecent exposure."

"At what number can I reach you?" Smith pressed wearily.

"This one'll do fine for now," Remo said. "Very well. When I return to my hotel, I will uplink with the CURE mainframes and see what I can find." Smith hung up the phone before Remo could say anything more.

On the other side of the street, he found Maude Smith searching the sea of pale faces on the sidewalk. Her eyes lit up when she saw him.

"I thought you'd left me."

"I must return to the hotel," Smith said quickly.

Mrs. Smith seemed crestfallen. "What's wrong?"

"An emergency has come up concerning one of the sanitarium's patients," he lied.

She could see from the determined set of his jaw that there would be no arguing with him.

"I'll go with you," she said, unable to mask the disappointment in her voice.

"No," Smith said. "It should not take long." He checked his Timex. "I will meet you in front of the National Gallery at five o'clock."

When he looked back at his wife he could see that she was no longer paying attention to him. She was staring up in the sky. Along the sidewalk many other pedestrians were looking up, as well.

"What are those, Harold?" Maude aimed a curious finger in the air. Smith followed her line of sight. The day was unusually sunny and mild for England. On a backdrop of thin, virtually transparent white clouds, he spotted several dark shapes flying ominously in from the western sky.

Smith's heart tripped.

As the small planes flew toward them, tiny objects began dropping from their bellies. A rumble-like distant thunder-rolled toward them in waves from the approaching aircraft.

They could feel the sound beneath their feet. Moments after the first rumble began, a different noise filled the air above London. It was a pained electronic screech. The crowd around them became more agitated as the persistent scream continued to assault their eardrums.

"What is that?" Maude Smith asked, crinkling her nose. She looked around for the source of the ungodly sound.

Smith was staring up at the sky, his haggard face clouded in disbelief and dread. When he spoke, his words were low.

"An air-raid siren," Harold Smith breathed.

And at that the first German bombs began dropping on London's Hyde Park.

Chapter 9

Colonel E. C. T. Bexton of Her Majesty's Royal Air Force was single-handedly responsible for permitting the first planes of the modern London blitzkrieg to cross over England and drop their payloads unmolested. He allowed this horror to be perpetrated against one of history's most famous cities because he refused to believe the word of a simple potato farmer.

His precise words were: "I will not scramble one of Her Majesty's elite RAF squadrons because some obviously pissed-to-the-gills toothless old git sees cabbage crates flying in across the briny. Tell him to take an aspirin and have a lie down."

Hanging up the phone, Colonel Bexton attempted to resume his work on next week's flight schedules. He had barely brought pen back to paper before the phone resumed its persistent squawking. Placing the pen on his desk with exaggerated patience, he reached for the receiver.

"Colonel Bexton's office. Bexton here," he announced to the party on the other end.

"Listen to me, you fool! There are German bombers flying in an attack formation toward London." Slender fingers tensed on the receiver.

"Who is this?" the colonel demanded. Though it was the same voice as before, he hadn't bothered to ask the clearly agitated man's name.

"I am Edmund Carter," the man explained with as much patience as time allowed. "I am a research scientist at the Jodrell Bank Experimental Station in Cheshire-"

"Jodrell Bank?" Bexton interrupted. "Aren't you supposed to be looking for little green men? I would have thought German warplanes would be a bit too terrestrial for your lot."

"We were alerted to this by a local farmer," the voice explained.

"Ah, yes," Bexton sympathized, "the poor old sot who still thinks he's seeing monkeys on the ceiling. You sound like a sensible chap, Carter. Surprised a man of science would be taken in by a boozer with one foot in the past and the other in the Boar's Head Tavern."

"I saw them!" Carter yelled. "My entire team saw them. We are tracking them as we speak."

"And what have you been drinking, Carter?" the colonel asked thinly.

"Let me talk to your superior officer."

"Oh, no," Bexton said, bristling. "You won't make me a laughingstock. Your old friend is merely reliving the war, Carter. Now I suggest that you and your colleagues over there in Cheshire spend more time in the heavens and less time in the pubs."

He slapped the phone down in the cradle.

If this was meant as some sort of prank, that should put a stop to it once and for all.

When the phone rang a third time several minutes later, Colonel Bexton lost what little reserves of patience he had left.

"Bexton!" he snapped into the receiver.

His face grew pale as the nasal voice of his immediate superior outlined the situation. This time the instant he hung up the phone, Colonel E. C. T. Bexton was placing an emergency call down the defense chain of command.

Per Bexton's order, a squadron of eight British Aerospace Harriers took off from a base in the London suburb of Croydon less than six minutes later. From what he later learned, it was already too late.

Chapter 10

The first aerial bombs ripped through the neatly trimmed lawns of Hyde Park Gardens, spraying the cars and people on the streets and roadways with clods of rich black English soil.

The crowd on the sidewalk around Smith and his wife had panicked the instant they realized the significance of the high-pitched whistling sounds of the falling bombs, which were audible over the blare of the air-raid siren.

Crowds of people were running in every direction. Smith pulled his wife into the relative safety of a stone overhang in the doorway of an old storefront. "Harold!" Maude Smith shouted in terror.

He gripped her arm.

"We have to get to the Underground," Smith stressed, referring to the subway system beneath London.

It wouldn't be safe for them to try at the moment. The crowd was too unruly, the people too frantic. Smith watched for the initial mob of running men and women to thin.

As he waited, the bombers grew closer.

Smith was as surprised by the look of the planes as by the attack itself. They all appeared to be surplus World War I and II aircraft. By the looks of it, they were all in perfect working order. He had counted more than a dozen of the planes as they flew in. The aircraft remained clustered tightly together. Even with so few of them, the sky seemed thick with menacing shapes from his past.

Screaming down out of the midafternoon sky, one plane-Smith saw now that it was a Messerschmitt-buzzed the building across the street. It opened fire with a set of wing-mounted machine guns.

The staccato gunfire was deafening. Bullets ripped into the glass and brick of the building's uppermost stories. Shattered glass and chunks of brick and mortar exploded outward, falling like hail to the street below.

The plane looked as though its forward momentum would surely slam it into the side of the building. But at the last minute the pilot cut his angle sharply. With a whine of engines, the plane did a rolling maneuver away from the building back out over the street. It soared back up into the air, dropping a dozen screeching bombs as it did so.

They impacted in the street among the gnarl of small British cars. A BMW near Smith became an explosion of flame and metal, its hood flipping up as the shell struck its mark.

Mrs. Smith screamed.

They couldn't wait any longer. As the crowd continued to break around them, as the planes continued to disgorge bombs from their bellies, Smith hustled his wife from the protective archway.

Like leaves dropped into a raging spring river, they were immediately caught up in the stream of people flooding for the nearest entry to the London Underground.

Mrs Smith clung to her husband's arm both for support and in fear. Face hard, Smith did his best to keep her safe from the panicked, shoving masses as they moved along the sidewalk.

Fear rippled palpably through the crowd. Someone had shut off the air-raid siren. The sounds of dropping bombs could be heard both nearby and from farther away. One struck very closely, pelting the crowd with bits of tar and dirt. And something else.

Blood spattered the faces of some of the nearer pedestrians. Smith saw that he and his wife had been lucky. They were in the center of the crowd and were thus shielded from the heaviest flying shrapnel. Screams of agony erupted around them as the whine of the attacking plane's engine faded away.

As they ran, Smith saw one man with a streak of crimson flowing down the side of his head. A woman-presumably a wife or girlfriend-was trying to staunch the flow of blood with a strip of cloth as the crowd continued to race forward.

Some people had fallen, bloodied, to the pavement. The panicked mob trampled over them. Smith saw the mouth of the Underground over the bobbing heads before him. They had only a few yards to go.

A new sound caught his attention. It was heavier than that of the other planes. The noise from the older aircraft was more of a whining complaint. This sound was a ferocious, thick rumble that rattled the buildings around them and shook the ground beneath their feet.

A huge shadow passed above them. Still moving, some, including Smith, cast wary glances at the sky. There were more planes above London now. They had roared into view seemingly with the purpose of avenging angels. Smith saw that they were RAF Harriers.

Without hesitation, the newer planes opened fire on the German attackers.

The crowd had dragged the Smiths to the stairs leading down into the bowels of the British subway system. Smith guided his wife's hand to the metal railing. She hurried down the stairs away from him, so concerned with finding safety that she was oblivious to the fact that she was now alone. No matter. She would be safe.

Smith pushed flat against the wall of the subway stairwell, pausing briefly to look up at the dogfight above the skies of London. People jostled him as they bustled down the stone stairs.

A Harrier tore into sight from the east, leveling off after a fleeing Messerschmitt. As the newer aircraft banked over the string of sedate buildings, a long missile detached itself from the underside of the wing. For a moment it seemed as if this bomb would drop to the street, as well. But the tail quickly ignited and the missile was launched forward with a propulsive force greater than that of the Harrier itself.

The missile ate up the space between the two mismatched planes in an instant. The Messerschmitt took the full force of the explosion in a spot to the rear of its cockpit. The fragile explosives within the old plane detonated a split second after the fiery impact of the missile.

The plane erupted in a ball of flame, screaming down out of the sky in the direction of Hyde Park Corner. It hit earth a moment later.

Other Harriers roared in across the tall buildings. The small planes were outdated and outmatched. They broke off the attack and headed away from the skies above Piccadilly. Some looped away from the others, streaking off in the direction of Buckingham Palace.

Two Harriers pursued the rogue planes; the rest gave chase to the largest group of fleeing aircraft. It was over.

Not that it mattered to the terrified crowd.

Smith tried to move away from the wall in order to climb back up the stairs. He found it impossible to negotiate through the sea of running people.

Though the danger had passed, Smith was caught up in the rushing tide. Against his wishes he found himself being swept down into the subway along with the rest of the frightened crowd.

Chapter 11

Helene Marie-Simone had to be certain she had lost Remo and Chiun before she could talk freely. She had just received an urgent call from a most delicate source and had been forced to put the matter off for a few minutes until she was certain she was away from prying ears. Somehow-impossibly-the two men from America had been able to eavesdrop on her private conversations with the DGSE.

After hissing to the caller that she would return the call immediately, Helene had clicked off the cellular phone.

She shot a look at Remo and Chiun.

They didn't appear to notice. The old one was engrossed in the work of the American investigators. The young one didn't seem very interested in anything that was going on at the scene. He was yawning as he stared at the edge of the cordon.

Quickly she ducked out through a gap that the truck explosion had created in the courtyard wall. She headed down the street.

Helene didn't know who these men represented, but she knew one thing for certain. They were not with the American State Department. The men were obviously spies. Though for what agency she had no idea. They didn't seem like CIA. They were certainly not FBI. Probably they were with one of the more obscure American security agencies.

The Paris police had established a wide cordon around the bomb scene. Barricades had been constructed in the streets. Uniformed gendarmes kept the curious at bay.

Helene slipped between the wooden sawhorses and line of Paris policemen. Down the street a block she cut into a side boulevard near a florist shop.

She glanced back around the corner. There was no sign of the two men in the busy sidewalk traffic. Good. She hadn't been followed.

Helene quickly tugged the phone from her pocket and stabbed out the direct country code for England. "It's about bloody well time," a stodgy voice said by way of greeting.

Helene didn't appreciate the superior tone. But she was in no position to complain about it now. "What has happened?" she asked furtively.

"A bit of a mess in London," the male voice enthused. "We've got bally Jerry kites strewn all over Park Lane and Piccadilly."

"Aside from the street names, I do not know what any of that means," Helene whispered impatiently.

"Kites. Planes," the voice explained with a sigh. "Perfectly good English. Don't know what they teach you in those schools in Paris." He continued.

"German planes attacked London not fifteen minutes ago. The RAF scrambled a squadron too late to stop them cold. They got off a few good runs before we managed to send them nose over knickers. RAF's official word is that they had trouble with their ground crews. Bad weather slowed them up. Good chaps, ordinarily, but there's not a cloud in the sky."

"German planes?" Helene asked.

"Why are you telling me this? Call the Germans."

"That's the thing," said the voice. "They're not exactly German defense-force planes. They're more or less Nazi era-ish."

"Nazi?"

"World War II and all that. Surplus planes." Helene was trying to conjure up an image of airplanes fifty years out of date attacking modern London in broad daylight. She found it too out of her frame of reference to imagine.

"What about survivors among the pilots?" she asked.

"Not a bally one, I'm afraid," said the man on the phone. "Well, there was one. But the blighter went and blew the top of his head off with a Luger before we could get to him. Anyway, I was thinking that since you had a spot of trouble with your depots that you might be interested."

"Why would I?"

"I imagine it's more than coincidence that your surplus war bombs are stolen the day before London is bombed by surplus planes, don't you?"

Helene was so caught up in the incredible scenario that she failed to deny that the explosives were in fact stolen.

The voice pressed on. "Radar stations say the planes came down from the north, but local spotters saw them heading up from the south over the Irish Sea this morning."

"They went up and then down?"

"Most likely a trick to hide their true origin."

"Would they have enough fuel?"

"They could have been adapted to fly longer missions," the man said. "I'm really not sure what the range is on a Messerschmitt. However, if you're interested, after studying the possible origin of the flights we have traced them to only a couple of possible places. Mainland France or one of the Channel Islands. We have further learned that there were unusual shipments to Guernsey in the wee hours this morning."

"Why do you not investigate?"

"I've got quite enough to do here in London. And after all, they are your bombs. Therefore, they are your responsibility. Please do something about them, forthwith. There's a good girl."

The line went dead.

Helene clicked the small phone shut. She was frowning deeply.

Guernsey. In the English Channel. If the missing explosives had been shipped there, she would have to investigate at once.

Sticking the cellular phone in her pocket, she hurried back out onto the main street...

... and plowed straight into Remo.

He was leaning casually against the wall just around the corner from where Helene had been hiding.

"Hi." Remo smiled. "We missed you."

"Speak for yourself," said a squeaky voice. Helene jumped at the sound of the old Asian's voice. Wheeling, she cast a glance at the spot where she had been standing. Somehow Chiun had gotten behind her. He stood on the sidewalk, arms tucked inside the broad sleeves of his kimono. His face was as unreadable as that of a cigar-store Indian.

"I have important work to do," Helene said officiously. She pushed past Remo and began marching down the street.

Remo kept pace with her. Chiun trailed behind. "I heard. Mind if we tag along?" Remo said.

"Yes."

"Oh. Mind if we go anyway?"

"Yes."

"Too bad," Remo said with a grin.

Helene muttered a string of French phrases all the way to her official government car. Remo didn't bother to have Chiun interpret. Some things were universal.

HERRE MICHTLER HAD BEEN a sergeant in the German army at the young age of nineteen. Back then his only brushes with the Luftwaffe had been unpleasant ones. He found the members of the German air force to be arrogant. "Bastards to a man," he was fond of saying.

It was ironic, then, that at the ripe old age of seventy-five he found himself in command of fully half of IV's new German air forces.

Michtler toured the tarmac on the tiny air base on the island of Guernsey.

The wind off the English Channel grabbed strips of steel gray hair, which had been carefully plastered across his bald pate, and flung them crazily across his face.

Around him were thirteen vintage aircraft. Ten of them were Messerschmitts, two were World War I Fokkers and the last-the lead plane-was a Gotha G.V.

"How soon?" Michtler demanded in German.

"Another five minutes," replied the mechanic who was in charge of seeing that the planes were airworthy. Michtler knew him only as Paul. He was forty-five years old with a thick neck and a face filled with burst capillaries. In private life he was an aviation buff. In an even more private life he was also a high-ranking member in Germany's underground skinhead movement.

Michtler scowled.

"They shot down the first wave," he snapped.

"Did you think they wouldn't?" Paul asked in surprise. He didn't look up from the fuel line he was attending to. It led into the hungry belly of the mintcondition World War I Gotha.

Michtler harrumphed impatiently. Paul sensed the old man's anxiety.

"I have friends near Croydon," Paul said. He waved to the nearby tanker truck. A skinhead barely out of his teens began turning off the fuel. "Of course they have no idea who I am working for," Paul continued. "But they say over the computer that the Harriers have returned to their base. We will not have as easy a time of it this time, but it is possible."

"It had better be more than possible," Michtler threatened.

Paul smiled as he detached the fuel line from the plane. "Care to join us?" he asked. He knew full well Michtler's hatred of planes.

"Just speed it up," the old man growled. Spinning on his heel, he headed back to the small hangar at the end of the runway.

Still smiling, Paul climbed into his airplane. Clamping the dome-an added feature-down over his ruddy head, he began the start-up procedure. The other dozen planes arranged in a patient line on the tarmac nearby took this as a cue.

Thirteen plane engines coughed and smoked to life.

THEY HAD TAKEN a plane from Paris to Manche province. From there, a DGSE boat took them the thirty-five miles from Carteret to the cluster of England's Channel Islands.

They had already passed the small island of Sark. It seemed like little more than a speck as they raced by. Alderney was farther to the north, and the principal island of Jersey was to the south.

On the deck Remo watched, motionless, as the island of Guernsey rose up out of the sea before them. Chiun stood beside him. The rocking of the large boat on the choppy waves had no effect on the Master of Sinanju. The wizened Asian appeared to be more firmly rooted in place than the rocky island they approached.

The two men had been silent a long time. Salty water broke across the prow of the boat and sprayed their stern faces. At long last Remo spoke.

"That phone call she got said that London had been attacked," he said. "You think Smith is okay?"

"I do not have a psychic connection to Emperor Smith," Chiun replied simply.

Remo glanced over his shoulder. Helene was on the bridge of the large boat. She wasn't paying them any heed.

Remo pitched his voice low.

"You recognize the guy on the phone?" Remo asked.

"I did," the Master of Sinanju replied.

"I'm surprised Source doesn't handle this themselves," Remo mused. "After all, these islands are British property."

"He was likely too involved with selecting the proper wardrobe to wear as his nation's capital burned," Chiun suggested.

"Good point. My luck, he pulled through and Smith got creamed."

"Smith is fine," Chiun insisted.

"How do you know?"

"Because that is my luck," the old man said. He aimed a finger to the sea. "Behold! Our destination draws near."

Guernsey had grown even larger.

The shore seemed totally inhospitable. It was comprised largely of sharp igneous rock, heaped and angled to form a natural barrier against intruders. Remo wondered why the original settlers hadn't just turned around and gone back to wherever they came from.

Instead of heading north to St. Peter Port-the island's chief town-the French boat headed south. Waves crashed over the bow as they cut in as close to the shore as the hidden underwater rocks would allow.

Helene joined them on the rolling deck.

"That end looks more hospitable," Remo said, pointing to the northern side of the island.

"I have been in contact with my government. They have used satellite information to confirm that the illegal shipments were sent to the south."

"So you're admitting the stuff was stolen now?" Remo asked slyly.

"Not at all. Something was sent here from France during the night. I am merely here to find out what that something was."

"You've got the patter down," Remo said, impressed. "I'll give you that. You know, you remind me of another French agent I met a few years back. Remember Dominique Parillaud, Little Father?"

"Do not remind me of that dark time," Chiun sniffed.

They had met the French spy, whose code name was Arlequin, during an assignment that had taken them to the amusement park known as Euro Beasley. A weapon that used color to trigger heightened emotional reactions in its victims had caused both Masters of Sinanju to act in a less than heroic fashion. Neither man had been proud of his behavior during that crisis.

At the mention of the French spy's name, Helene's back stiffened.

"Looks like she knows her, huh, Chiun?"

"Knowing the proclivities of the French, it is no doubt in the biblical sense," the Master of Sinanju replied tightly.

"I do not know the person of whom you speak," Helene insisted.

"That's a load of crap," Remo said. "I'm a student of body language. And you just screamed volumes."

Helene bristled. "I am sure I do not know her," she said haughtily.

"She got drummed out of the spy biz after she failed to swipe the hypercolor laser, didn't she? Probably stuck doing full body-cavity searches at de Gaulle airport."

"And reveling in every depraved minute," Chiun chimed in.

"Poor Arlequin's persona non grata at DGSE HQ, isn't she?" Remo said sympathetically. "Better not screw up, Helene. She could be holding a seat for you."

"This is impossible!" the French agent announced, throwing her hands in the air. She marched a few yards away from the two men, dropping her hands on the slick boat railing. She kept her back to them.

"That was strangely unfulfilling," Remo said once Helene was out of earshot. In spite of the busy work at the American embassy and this unexpected side trip, he still found himself thinking about his earlier conversation with Smith. He and Chiun would track down a few stolen bombs and the world would continue to slide apace into the Abyss.

"You are still brooding," the Master of Sinanju said, nodding sagely.

Remo's mouth pulled into a tight smile. "I've managed to put on a happy face."

Chiun's own countenance was impassive. "Lamentably it appears to be the same as the ugly mask you always wear. The next time you change faces, you might try one with eyes of the proper shape. And the color is all wrong."

Remo sighed. "It was just a figure of speech," he grunted, dropping his knuckles to the railing.

"I would also trim the nose back by at least a foot." Chiun smirked.

THE SOUTH END of Guernsey rose three hundred feet to a rocky plateau. The small boat brought them into a harbor carved at the base of the foreboding wall of rock. A zigzagging staircase had been chiseled into the wall's craggy black face.

They found a dock that extended from a seawall of toppled stones. The boat moved in beside it, rocked all the while on the crashing waves. As soon as they were close enough, deckhands leaped out and began securing the boat to the dock.

The ship's pilot had barely cut the engines when Remo became aware of a collection of noises over the bluffs high above. There were thirteen distinct whines. Small engines.

He glanced at the Master of Sinanju. Chiun had heard the noise, as well.

The Master of Sinanju hopped from the deck of the rocking ship and onto the old wooden dock. He was running the instant his sandaled feet touched the pocked surface.

Remo jumped down after him.

"What is it?" Helene shouted from the deck.

"Planes!" Remo yelled back. "And by the sounds of it, they're ready for takeoff!"

PAUL NIEMLUR GAVE the young skinhead on the tarmac the thumbs-up sign. The youth pulled the canvas cord, wrenching free the oily wood chocks wedged beneath the wheels of the Gotha.

He ran over to the nearest Messerschmitt to repeat the procedure. Another skinhead was helping him, and between the two of them they quickly cleared the blocks away.

Paul began taxiing to the windswept runway.

The money that Nils Schatz had been skimming from IV accounts over the past several months had paid to construct this small runway on the site of a former Guernsey tomato farm.

It was somehow fitting that the attack against England should originate from here. After all, German forces had occupied the small island during World War II.

The runway was wide enough to accommodate two planes taking off at a time. The nearest Messerschmitt pulled in beside Niemlur. A second pair drew in behind.

Paul was certain to go slowly. The wind was heavy today. Ordinarily he wouldn't have risked taking off in gusts as strong as this. But this was different. The wind could go to blazes. After all, this was the dawn of the new reich. Anyway, once he was in the air it wouldn't be a problem.

For now he was concerned about the ancient bombs he was carrying. The Gotha had been designed to carry six one-hundred-pound bombs. He had that many aboard right now. They sat, rusted and beautiful, in the rear of the plane.

Paul pushed down on the throttle. The plane began to skim forward. The rocky scenery whipped past the Plexiglas dome he had installed aboard the aircraft.

For all he knew, some of the bombs he carried could have been dropped by this very plane over France more than eighty years ago. Back then they had been duds. There was no doubt about it this time, however. They were so fragile the slightest bump might set them off.

They would find their targets. And they would rain fiery death upon them.

As he picked up speed, this thought filled Paul with contentment while he carefully steered the plane toward the end of the runway. And into the jaws of history.

REMO AND CHIUN had attacked the first stone stairs with a ferocity of purpose. The staircases were like a stack of giant Zs carved into the solid cliff face.

Both men were buffeted by the cold ocean wind as they raced at top speed for the summit of the cliff. The stairs ended abruptly at a rock-hewed landing. Here the rock tapered off and split in either direction. From this vantage they were able to see farther inland.

The runway was to their left. It cut off sharply toward the cliff face to the west. They could see the small tin hangar squatting in the scrub grass farther beyond the long asphalt strip.

More than a dozen planes were heading away from the hangar area. Though he had no idea what kind they were, Remo saw that they were from a different era.

Two had already picked up considerable speed and were racing for the edge of the bluffs. Others were moving obediently in behind them.

Remo and Chiun didn't stop when they reached the summit. Cutting west after the fleeing planes, they loped through the tall grass toward the runway. They reached it in a few dozen quick strides.

"Should we try to stop these?" Remo shouted to Chiun over the roar of the planes and the wind. They had pulled abreast of the field of slower-moving planes.

Chiun shook his head. Wisps of hair flew wildly in the gale. "It is too dangerous. We will take those in the lead."

Remo knew what Chiun meant. The bombs the aircraft doubtless carried made this a tricky matter. They didn't want to jolt the planes and accidentally set them off. It would be an easier matter to stop them when airborne.

Although, Remo thought as he nodded his reluctant agreement, easier was a relative term.

The two men raced past the slower-moving aircraft toward the pair of planes that were even now preparing for takeoff.

Remo and Chiun were no longer running unnoticed. Radios aboard the planes squawked hurried questions in German.

A gunner opened fire as they raced past. A single bullet nicked the fuselage of one of the Fokkers. The old plane instantly exploded in a ball of bright orange flames and a spray of jagged metal fragments.

After that the other planes held their fire.

Legs and arms pumping madly, the two Masters of Sinanju left the edge of the runway and moved into the center behind the foremost planes.

The wheels of the Gotha had already left the ground. The Messerschmitt was outpacing it, but had not yet begun to skim the runway surface.

Chiun broke to the right, tearing off after the newer plane. Remo stayed on course, running at full speed for the tail of the fleeing Gotha.

Cold wind whipped against his face as he ran past the tail assembly. Wind caught the dorsal tail, fluttering it ferociously as he outpaced the rear of the plane.

A line of ragged grass sprouted up before them. The end of the runway. Beyond that a threehundred-yard drop to the rocks below.

And Remo was running full out. Even if he wanted to, he doubted he could stop on time.

There would only be one chance at this.

The Gotha was pulling up into the air. Legs pumping crazily, Remo forced a single burst of furious acceleration. He leaped from the surface of the runway and spread-eagled himself on the bottom left wing of the large biplane.

The plateau surface suddenly dropped out from beneath him. Far below, frothy waves crashed against basalt rock.

The plane was airborne.

The Gotha tilted slightly, attempting to right itself. The engine whined in protest as the aged aircraft soared off over the English Channel.

Chapter 12

Unlike most people whose lives were fraught with doubt, Helene Marie-Simone was certain of almost everything. The most recent thing she found herself being certain of was the fact that she didn't trust Remo and Chiun.

But she had learned the hard way back in Paris that she should trust certain aspects of the two men. Their hearing, for one.

If they said that they heard planes taking off from the plateau high above the rocky shore, then she was certain that was exactly what they heard.

The minute the two men had broken for the stairs, Helene had climbed down from the boat and raced after them.

They were the most agile climbers she had seen this side of the monkey house at the Paris Zoo.

The two men quickly outdistanced her, leaving her to huff and puff her way up the many flights of stairs to the top of the cliffs. When she did finally reach the top, she was just in time to see Remo make a flying leap onto the wing of a departing Gotha G.V. She thought she saw a streak of crimson that might have been Chiun's kimono splayed across the wing of a fleeing Messerschmitt, but she couldn't be sure. Both aircraft dropped from the edge of the bluff and then ascended back up into sight farther out over the channel. They pulled into the sky in a whine of engines.

She could see neither man after that.

They had committed suicide. For however good their hearing might be, they would never survive perched like birds atop the wings of two ancient warplanes.

The rest of the planes were lining up for their turn in the air. Two more were about ready to tear off the edge of the cliff and soar into the pale blue sky.

They zipped past the burning ruins of a single plane.

The bouncing of the ancient ordnance aboard must have been the cause of its destruction, Helene surmised. Just as it had been in the truck back at the American Embassy in Paris.

And if a minor disturbance could destroy one plane, it could easily disable some of the others. Helene pulled her handgun from her pocket. Her lungs were raw as she ran down to the field.

THE GOTHA WAS TEARING through the air at a speed in excess of one hundred miles per hour.

The wind pressed like a powerful fist against Remo's chest. His T-shirt fluttered crazily in the back. Short hair blew angrily around his head.

It was an old plane, but it had fallen into the hands of a tinkering hobbyist. Although it looked identical to the original model, structurally it had been greatly improved upon. Remo stood up on the aluminum lower wing. He held on to the hollow, lightweight metal support tubes that were strung between the upper and lower wings.

Mindless of the racing wind, he advanced on the cockpit.

Remo's presence on the plane hadn't gone unnoticed by the pilot. Paul Niemlur had been startled by the sudden shift of weight at the moment of takeoff.

Concerned that the unexpected imbalance might upset his sensitive cargo, he had quickly moved to right the plane. It was only after he had leveled off over the channel that he dared look out at his left wing.

He could not believe what he saw.

The thin stranger with the deep-set eyes and abnormally thick wrists was strolling over to Paul across the wing as casually as a friend might step across the road in Paul's native Dusseldorf. Except the expression Remo wore was not that of a friend. It was the face of Doom.

Ever mindful of the payload he carried, Paul slowly tipped the plane to the left.

Remo didn't budge.

Paul edged the plane farther over, trying to dislodge the man on the Gotha's wing.

All at once something heavy shifted in the back. With a dangerous, instinctive quickness, Paul tugged the steering column level once more. He could feel the weight shift back to where it belonged.

He didn't have time for a sigh of relief. Remo was at the cockpit dome.

Niemlur pulled at the authentic World War II Luger in its lovingly preserved leather combat holster at his hip. As he fumbled with the strap on the holster, he heard a horrid tearing sound all around him. He felt the sudden blast of cold air against his face. His eyes squinted and teared against the gale-force wind.

Turning away from the howling blast of air, he caught sight of the specially adapted bubble dome tumbling down the length of the fuselage. It bounced off the tail and disappeared into oblivion.

Even while this was going on, Paul had continued to fumble with his gun. The weapon was free by now.

He raised the Luger from beside his hip only to feel it being torn from his hand before he could even fire.

His fingers were numb. His wrist ached from the wrenching force that had ripped the gun away. Paul saw that the man on the wing was now holding his weapon.

"You won't be needing this!" Remo announced over the buffeting wind.

With a flick of his wrist, Remo tossed the Luger into the Gotha's slipstream. Paul saw the gun flying backward, like the dome. It clunked off the rear of the plane and fell to the sun-dappled water of the English Channel some four hundred feet below.

"Time for twenty questions!" Remo was forced to shout even though Paul was only a foot away. "Let's start with who you work for!"

The German decided that politeness was the best way to respond to this lunatic, particularly considering the capabilities he had so far displayed. Unfortunately, though he wanted to speak, he couldn't bridge the language barrier.

"Entschuldigen Sie?" Paul said with a polite shrug.

"Oh, crap," Remo griped. "Do you speak English?"

"Nein," Paul admitted with a helpless shrug. The wind continued to howl against his exposed face. His ruddy cheeks had grown bright red in the bitter gale. He had turned his right ear against the wind. It ached. "Great," Remo grumbled.

He peered over the cockpit and down the alley created by the Gotha's long wingspan. Half a city block away, the Master of Sinanju was climbing along the fuselage of the Messerschmitt. As the old man slid along the upper part of the plane, his crimson robe fluttered like a crazy flag in a hurricane.

Remo could kick himself sometimes for not trying harder to learn some of these languages. Chiun understood German. The Master of Sinanju would have to be the one to find out what was going on.

In the meantime the best Remo could do would be to turn this one plane back to Guernsey.

"Back," Remo ordered. He twirled his hand around in the air and pointed back in the direction of the Channel Island.

Paul seemed to get the idea. He nodded agreeably. The Gotha's control panel looked pretty straightforward. Paul was drawing the U-shaped wheel to the left to begin his arc back to shore when there was a sudden, furious whine of engines from the south. Both Remo and Paul turned in time to see a lone Bf-109F Messerschmitt tearing down towards them from an altitude of five hundred feet. Sunlight glinted off the plane's gleaming shell as the pilot opened fire from the wing-mounted machine guns.

Two dozen holes ripped through the nose of the Gotha from a spot just behind the propeller to an area a fraction ahead of the cockpit.

When the attacking plane opened fire, Remo immediately grabbed on to the lip of the open cockpit for support and vaulted over to the other side of the plane. With the sudden shift of weight, the Gotha angled downward on the right.

The movement shifted the hundred-pound bombs in their bays at the center of the plane.

Sweating in spite of the wind, Paul tugged at the steering column to straighten out the listing plane. As he did so, he scrambled for the radio microphone. "Nein! Nein!" Niemlur screamed over the radio. The pilot in the other plane wasn't listening. He had torn over the wings and cut sharply back. Swooping around, he made another strafing run from the rear.

A hail of lead tore through the air around them. The old plane was peppered with fresh wounds, these near its tail. Miraculously none of the explosives in the back was detonated.

The Messerschmitt continued firing on the slower plane, stopping only as it buzzed over the upper wings of the Gotha.

Remo saw its gleaming underbelly as it soared above them. He glanced at the huge magazine case on the wing near him. There was another on the other side. Jutting out at the front of each of the upright boxes was a single machine-gun muzzle.

"How do you work them?" Remo asked, pointing at the guns.

Paul only shrugged, frightened and confused.

The Messerschmitt had broken off the attack for the moment. Spying Chiun sliding across the fuselage of the other plane, the pilot took a strafing run at that aircraft. The radio squawked with another panicked German voice as the Messerschmitt opened fire.

Chiun dodged the bullets by simply letting go of his grip. The wind grabbed his kimono and flung him back toward the tail section of the plane. He grabbed hold again as the shadow of the attacking warplane passed over the midsection of Chiun's plane.

The bullets had missed the explosives stored aboard the aircraft, but they had caused damage nonetheless. Acrid smoke began pouring from the engine, filling the air behind it with a widening cloud of oily black.

With a pained hum the plane began losing altitude. Like a shark smelling blood in the water, the attacking Messerschmitt swooped around for another pass.

Remo had no time to worry about the language barrier. He grabbed Paul by the back of the neck. The pilot went as rigid as a board.

Remo manipulated the German's neck muscles expertly. Paul responded like a marionette. The pilot's hands gripped the half-moon steering wheel and tipped the Gotha into an angled dive.

One of the bombs broke free of its mooring in the rear of the plane. It tumbled forward into the bulkhead directly behind them with a crash. Somehow it failed to explode.

They were closing in on the attacking plane.

A stream of smoke continued to pour from the lead aircraft. Through the hazy black fog, Remo could no longer see the Master of Sinanju.

The pilot of the first Messerschmitt had cut back toward shore as his plane descended. The rock face of Guernsey's south shore rose up like a deadly stone barrier directly ahead of them.

They were within range of the attacking plane. Without help from the pilot, Remo would have to guess at what the firing mechanism was for the machine guns. Scanning the cockpit, he found what he was looking for. It was a single stick with a flat button embedded in the tip.

Delicately shifting the muscles in Paul Niemlur's neck, Remo had the German release one hand from the steering column. Helpless to do anything to stop Remo, Paul gripped the stick in his right hand. Remo had him stab down against the button with his thumb. Nothing happened.

Up ahead the Messerschmitt seemed to take its cue from Remo's plane.

The instant Paul had depressed the firing button, the aircraft up ahead opened fire on the damaged and smoking lead plane. The bullets tore violently into the fuselage of the first plane.

One or more of the small leaden projectiles must have come into contact with the ordnance stored aboard the front plane. As Remo struggled to work the machine guns on his own plane, the lead aircraft erupted in a blinding ball of orange-white light.

Shattered bits of steel launched backward. Small shards pinged off the propeller of the Gotha.

Remo dodged the spray even as he searched the sky for bodies.

There was no sign of Chiun. What remained of the plane the Master of Sinanju had been atop belched fire and smoke as it raced down into the waters below.

It crashed atop the waves a moment later. Furious, Remo glanced around the cockpit of the Gotha. He found a small toggle switch on the dashboard marked in red. He reached over Paul and flipped the switch.

The attacking Messerschmitt had remained before them throughout the spectacular crash, but once the lead plane was down it began pulling up into the sky, exposing its back to them. Remo could see the pilot grinning victoriously in the cockpit.

Remo cranked a knot of muscles on Niemlur's neck.

The Gotha's huge wing-mounted machine guns with their stacks of ammunition burst to life.

The bullets caught the Messerschmitt square in the cockpit. The glass that didn't shatter was sprayed with the blood of the pilot as the projectiles ripped through the body of the plane.

The aircraft had been perched on its tail like a dolphin clearing the water. But now, with no one to guide it, gravity quickly took hold of it.

Spiraling out of control, it screamed back to earth. It crashed into the first cluster of rocks that stabbed out from Guernsey into the English Channel.

Remo was surprised that the island was so close. He had little time left to work.

Paul seemed relieved that the ordeal was nearly over. That relief turned to shock as Remo turned his attention away from the crashed Messerschmitt back to the Gotha.

"Auf Wiedersehen," Remo said to Paul, summoning up what little German he knew.

He reached into the cockpit and ripped out a handful of wires. For good measure he wrenched at the steering column.

It came free like a half-loose tooth. Tendrils of wires still connected it to the rest of the plane. Remo didn't have time to complete the job. The rock wall of Guernsey loomed larger before them. Hoping he had done enough, he dropped the broken steering column onto the pilot's knees. Turning, he leaped backward, off the wing of the plane.

At the point when his feet left the wing, the aircraft was only about fifty feet above the channel. Remo sliced into the cold waters a few seconds later. Kicking sharply, he broke through the surface just in time to see the crippled Gotha crash directly into the cliff face of the island.

The impact propelled the payload of six hundred-pound bombs forward into the rear of the cockpit. The explosion was massive. It blew up and back in a huge plume of fire and smoke. In slow motion the charred remnants of the aircraft broke away from the wall and fell to the sea. Minutes afterward huge slabs of loosened basalt rock continued to sheer away from the cliff wall, crashing down to the rocks below. Bobbing in the cold water, Remo didn't exult in the scene. A sick feeling clenched his belly. Chiun was out there somewhere. In what condition, Remo had no idea. However, he couldn't help but think the worst.

He was about to head back out to sea to begin his search for a body when a familiar squeaky voice called from the nearby rocks.

"Do you intend to splash about like a lazy walrus for the rest of the day?"

Remo turned his head in the direction of the voice. Relief had flooded his soul when he'd heard the first tones.

The Master of Sinanju stood on the strip of black rocks that jutted like a crooked finger from the unforgiving shore. The old Korean was dripping wet.

"You're okay!" Remo called over. His voice was a mixture of joy and relief.

"No thanks to you," Chiun clucked unhappily. "When I saw that you would be no help, I was forced to risk life and limb by jumping from that flying Hun contraption. First I made it so their aircraft would not gain altitude."

There was a hum of engines on the cliffs far above them.

Both men looked up.

Like angry wasps leaving their nest, a line of aircraft began launching into the air above the channel. There were eight of them in all. The swarm of planes collected into a tight flight formation and took off across the channel toward the English mainland. "It appears we were only partially successful," Chiun intoned gravely. "Hurry!"

As Remo swam to shore, the old Asian began picking his way across the uneven pile of rocks toward the main island.

WHILE REMO AND CHIUN were still clinging to their respective planes high above the English Channel, Helene Marie-Simone was racing on foot alongside the runway.

Her lungs burned from the long climb up the stairs. Though it was late summer, the air on the island was cold. Her throat was raw by the time she began gaining on the cluster of small airplanes.

Aside from a lone Fokker, the planes that remained were all Messerschmitt Me-262As. She recognized the early jet aircraft. Built during World War II, it could achieve a top speed of more than five hundred miles per hour. For these planes, it would be a short hop over the channel for London.

Helene couldn't allow that to happen.

The Fokker was much slower than the others. The runt of the litter, it lagged behind the rest of the pack, its engine humming with the manic intensity of a frantic puppy.

The bombs would be somewhere between the tail section and the cockpit. She was close enough now. Dropping to one knee in the high grass, Helene lifted her pistol and began firing into the fuselage of the taxiing plane.

No sooner had the second bullet struck its target than the entire Fokker erupted in a ball of fire. The pilot threw himself out the door, his clothes ablaze. Helene caught the screaming skinhead in the forehead with a carefully placed round.

Burning, the old plane continued rolling forward down the small runway.

Helene heard shouting behind her. With the explosion, someone had radioed the other aircraft to stop. One did not heed the order. It launched itself out over the channel after Remo and Chiun's fleeing planes.

Helene saw several men running from the open mouth of the small hangar. One remained near the door. An old man, he screamed orders in German to the group of men.

They were coming toward her!

Helene dropped into the grass and began crawling toward the rest of the planes. They were close together, their engines idling. If she could take just one of them out, she might succeed in starting a chain reaction that would destroy all of the remaining planes.

A heavy footfall dropped nearby.

Helene rolled onto her back. She saw the young skinhead running into sight above her. A pair of Nazi swastikas had been etched in blue in the flesh at his temples.

The man jumped back, as if startled to be the one to find the object of their search lying in the grass before him.

In that split second of hesitation, Helene fired. The bullet grabbed the young man in the throat, flinging him back into the grass in a violent spurt of blood.

The angry yelling increased.

She crawled faster now. With frantic purpose. But it was no use. She had given her position away. The next men to find her were not as timid as the first. They fell atop her from three different directions. A football tackle.

She tried to get off even a single shot, but a knee had dropped solidly onto her wrist. Something hard-perhaps a rock, perhaps a gun butt-slammed against her curled fingers. She dropped her weapon.

The group of skinheads dragged her roughly to her feet. Grabbing her arms and loose clothes, they hauled her back through the grass and onto the tarmac.

The lone figure was still waiting at the large door to the hangar. Even from this distance she could see that the old man's face was a mask of rage.

"Get her in here!" Hans Michtler screamed. Furious, he ducked back inside the hangar.

A minute later the engines of the planes whined back to life. The aircraft pulled farther down the runway in the direction of the building before wheeling back around. Two at a time, they began zipping once more down the strip of asphalt.

As Helene watched, the first pair launched out into the air over the channel.

The French spy felt the tingle of failure in her chest and stomach. She barely noticed the surrounding men as they dragged her into the hangar.

She had failed.

The next wave of bombers was on its way to London.

Chapter 13

Nils Schatz accepted the news from Fritz with an angry tapping of his walking stick. When they had first set up shop in the small Parisian apartment, he had made a habit of striking the bronze cane tip against the bowed slats of the aged wood floor.

It was not long before the downstairs neighbors had complained.

After that he'd gone to great pains to muffle the sound by drumming the cane on the rug. It had been a supreme effort, but Schatz had no desire to call undue attention to himself in the early days of this great action.

Now he no longer cared. Now they were close to completion of his great plan.

Der Geist der stets verneint.

The words came to him now. Mocking him.

He banged the cane loudly against the wooden floor beside his straight-backed kitchen chair. There was a muffled shout of complaint from the apartment below.

"This is Michtler's fault," Schatz complained hotly. "Is there no one in the SS that could have handled this assignment?"

Fritz shook his head. "There are few of us left, Nils," he apologized.

"Pah. How many planes were destroyed?"

"Two. Both Fokkers. The rest left the base unharmed. Although Michtler admits that he lost radio contact with three of them. There was some frantic talk of a dogfight."

Schatz closed his eyes. He was attempting to access stores of patience that he didn't possess.

As his thoughts roiled, he rammed his cane harder and harder in short, desperate jabs against the floor. A small section of the wood began to splinter, splitting away in long slivers at the force of the metal tip.

"Sinanju," he hissed.

"Surely they could not have survived," Fritz said. "They were atop the planes."

Schatz opened his eyes. He gave his assistant a glare that in his younger days had caused subordinates to release the contents of their bladders down the legs of their starched Nazi uniforms.

Fritz swallowed nervously.

Schatz pointed his cane at the man with whom he had grown old in that accursed South American village.

"You tell Michtler to be prepared."

"Yes, sir," Fritz snapped, clicking his heels. The movement came so naturally it was as if he had been magically transported back fifty years. "And what of the Frenchwoman?"

Schatz shrugged. "I do not care. Kill her." He began rapping his cane against the floor once more. Fritz nodded his understanding. He started walking toward the living room, where the apartment phone was located. He hadn't gotten more than a few paces when the tapping of the cane stopped.

"Wait," Schatz called. His tone had grown considerably lighter. "I believe I have an idea."

His yellow teeth bared in an evil rictus of a smile.

HERRE MICHTLER THOUGHT it was stupid to await the arrival of men who would never come.

The two fools who had leaped atop the planes as they soared off over the channel were dead.

The other aircraft had radioed back news of the wreckage moments after takeoff. Michtler had been late to the radio, so busy was he with capturing the French spy.

One plane had crashed into the bluffs just below the end of the runway. It had flown in too low for them to see from atop the rocky plateau. The other two were simply missing.

It was the bombs they had been carrying, Michtler concluded. They must have gone off prematurely. He had told this to Fritz in his second phone conversation with Paris, once it was learned why the planes had lost contact with the Guernsey base.

Their cargo was unstable. The pilots had simply panicked when they found two fools clinging to the skins of their aircraft and somehow had shifted the dangerous cargo. Boom. It was that simple.

But it was only that simple for Hans Michtler. Schatz thought otherwise.

So, because of a couple of fools who had died twenty minutes before, Hans Michtler had to deal with this idiocy.

He was a good soldier. Always had been. He followed every order given him. Whether it was shooting at Russians, hurling grenades at Americans or marching his fellow countrymen into ovens. An order was an order. Hans Michtler couldn't be held accountable for the things his superiors had commanded him to do.

After the war he found that the world thought differently.

His zeal for his work in the Treblinka concentration camp had made him a target for the various Jew-sponsored groups whose job it was to persecute simple soldiers who were only following orders.

Michtler had been forced from his homeland to the small IV village in the mountains of Argentina. When Nils Schatz had come to the other old Nazis with his bold proposal, Michtler had jumped at the chance to leave. The truth was, in life there were those who gave orders and there were those who executed those orders. Hans Michtler was one of the happy few who actually enjoyed following orders. Until now.

"Your friends are dead. You know that, do you not, girlie?" Michtler sneered. He was a big, lummoxy thing. His hands were as large as small baseball gloves.

"They are not my friends," Helene replied evenly. She was strapped to a chair in the middle of the hangar. There was a wooden floor beneath her, stained with oil. All around were stacked piles of ordnance stolen from the deminage depots. Helene had found some of what she was after, but was maddeningly unable to do anything about it.

Michtler curled his lip in disgust. He turned to the skinheads spread about the hangar. "Has the boat moved?"

"It is still docked below," one of the men enthused.

"No one aboard has made a move toward us?"

"There are only four aboard that we can see. They have remained on the boat."

Michtler nodded. "After we take care of her, we will kill them and scuttle their boat," he announced. He slapped his big hands together for warmth, glancing at the men. "For now we wait. Pointlessly."

There were about a dozen skinheads standing around the room. They each held a Schmeisser submachine gun. Michtler was so confident that the men they awaited were dead that he had left his own gun on a nearby table.

The man shot by Helene in the field beside the runway had been propped up next to a door that led into a small office. He sat wheezing and bleeding. Someone had given him a filthy cloth to hold over the gurgling wound in his neck. It was already drenched with blood. His complexion had grown waxy over the past several minutes. He appeared close to death.

Michtler glanced over to the open doorway. An oversize garage door, it was wide enough for two planes to roll in and out of the hangar.

Ordinarily there was room for four of the small aircraft inside at one time. But there were two partially dismantled Messerschmitts in the hangar now. They had been scavenged for parts for the working planes. These, along with the rusted shell casings, left little room for functioning planes.

When not being worked on, the IV air force had bided its time outside beneath heavy tarps and camouflage mesh.

Michtler looked out at the spot on the grassy field where the planes had sat idle for weeks. Two skinhead guards stood on either side of the open doorway.

Bored, he began to daydream.

He pictured the planes en route to England. His mind drifted to thoughts of London. Ablaze.

It was a beautiful sight.

REMO KNEW that their greatest challenge would be to keep the Germans from blowing them all sky-high. When they had rounded the shore and gone back up the stairs to the plateau airfield, the first thing he and Chiun had done was to sneak a peek inside the hangar from one of the side windows. They were disturbed to see explosives stacked everywhere.

Helene Marie-Simone sat strapped to a chair beside a doltish-looking, aging Nazi. The French agent was, in effect, seated in the middle of one gigantic bomb.

"That complicates things," Remo whispered to the Master of Sinanju. He was peering at the bound Helene.

"Why?" Chiun said blandly.

"For starters we've got to save Helene and one Nazi for interrogation without getting ourselves blown up."

"What need have we of the woman?" "For one thing, I could use her phone."

"Save her phone, then," Chiun sniffed. "Allow fate to take charge of the daughter of Gaul."

Remo raised an eyebrow. "You're sounding more mercenary than usual."

"Sinanju has not found work from France for many years. Let the Bourbons worry about their own."

"Let's give them a freebie this time out, okay?" Remo replied deadpan. He looked back in the window. "Okay, here's the plan. We get the younger nasties out of the hangar. Less chance of their bullets setting off the bombs. Once we've thinned their ranks, we can go in after Kaiser Baldy. Does that sound good to you?"

"Everything save the part where we are to follow a plan of your design," the Master of Sinanju replied.

"If you've got a better idea-" Remo began. But Chiun was no longer there. The diminutive figure was already flouncing around to the front of the hangar where the first of the skinhead guards stood. Remo had to run to keep up.

STILL LOST in his own thoughts, Michtler had just drawn up an image of the stodgy British parliament building gutted by dancing flames when something flashed across his line of sight.

It was a subtle movement. So small Hans Michtler could not quite figure out what it was.

He blinked.

The hangar door was there. Open, as before. The grass was still pressed down in the field beyond where the planes had sat. The guards...

Hans Michtler started.

The two skinheads at the door were missing. "Where did they go?" Michtler roared.

"Who?" one of the skinheads asked.

Michtler stabbed a pudgy finger at the door. "Those two! Tell them to get back in here!"

With a sullen nod the young man went obediently to the large entryway. Rifle in hand, he stuck his head around the corner. In the next instant he was yanked outside.

Michtler watched the young man's black boots disappear around the edge of the door frame. "Impossible," he exhaled. Wheeling, he flung an open hand at the door. "Get them!" he snarled at his men.

As the remaining skinheads bounded obediently toward the door, Hans Michtler raced over to a desk against the wall. To collect his Luger.

SO FAR THE PLAN was working perfectly.

Chiun had taken the left, Remo the right. Already the Master of Sinanju had eliminated two of the guards. The old Korean flitted around the side of the building.

After Remo took out the man on the right of the door, he ducked around the side opposite Chiun. Someone shouted inside. Although the order was in German, Remo guessed that it was a command to attack. The other men would be swarming out any minute.

There was a steel drum next to the corrugated-steel wall of the hangar. Remo vaulted atop it.

The toe of one loafer barely brushed the surface rim of the oily barrel before Remo was propelling himself farther upward. Twisting in midair, he landed on the back-angled roof with no more noise than that of a falling leaf.

Remo waited.

He didn't have to hold his position long.

The skinheads came barreling into sight. Outside the door they split up. Some went right, while others moved to the left. Three of them tromped around the side of the building near Remo, waving their guns menacingly. One was farther ahead, and two were shoulder to shoulder taking up the rear.

All of them were anxious to fire. With the constant threat of detonating the war ordnance, their eagerness would make matters all the more tricky.

When the two in the back paused near the oil barrel, Remo dropped down from the roof, landing lightly behind the pair of skinheads.

They hadn't even become aware of his presence before his hands flashed out.

Years of diet and exercise had made Remo's fingers harder than titanium. The index and middle fingers of both hands struck off center in the backs of the skinheads. Splitting only a single rib in each body, the fingertips shot through the thoracic cavities, puncturing the rear walls of two nervously beating hearts.

Quick as a shot, Remo's fingers withdrew. They had gone in with the speed and precision of a surgical laser. So fast had Remo moved that not a single drop of blood showed on his fingertips.

The men grew rigid. The attack had come so quickly that they felt the pain and shock only when their hearts began spurting blood wildly throughout their chest cavities. That lasted only a second.

They dropped to the ground.

As the first fell, his gun dropped against the metal barrel. It made a loud clang.

The remaining skinhead was firing his submachine gun even before he wheeled on Remo.

Bullets pinged against the steel wall of the hangar. Remo twisted through the barrage, advancing on the shooter, all the while waiting for the building beside him to erupt in a ball of flame and fragmented metal. Luckily he reached the man in time.

Swatting the gun harmlessly into the nearby field with his left hand, Remo sent his right hand forward, palm flat. The skinhead's rib cage was crushed to jelly.

Remo waited a fraction of a second.

The only sound from within was an angry shout. He heard more voices, these ones outside. They had heard the gunshots and were coming to investigate.

"I'm never going to live this down," he griped. Leaving the three skinheads where they lay, Remo bounded back up atop the hangar roof.

AS REMO DUCKED around one side of the building, Chiun was mirroring his pupil's movements in the opposite direction.

The old Asian found himself in a small, enclosed junkyard filled with discarded airplane parts. At the far end of the lot a chain-link fence capped with razor wire lent a prisoner-of-war-camp feel to the area. There was too much junk between him and the fence. And while Chiun could cross the space easily, his pursuers would have a much harder time of it. Chiun had hoped to draw the men away from the building and the bombs within. He was angry at himself for not heading out across the tarmac and into the open fields.

Vowing that this would be the last time he would allow Remo to talk him into a plan, Chiun turned around and headed back in the direction from which he had come.

He hadn't gone more than two paces before a pair of skinheads marched around the corner of the hangar.

Seeing Chiun, they hastily raised their weapons to fire.

"Thank you, Remo the Plan Maker," the Master of Sinanju grumbled.

He couldn't allow them to get off a shot. Any one of the chunks of metal in the courtyard could cause a ricochet that would blow up the entire area.

His wizened face displaying his annoyance, Chiun quickly scooped up a pair of five-foot-long propellers that were leaning against a rusting engine nearby. Bringing the heavy blades back up over his shoulders, he snapped his hands down and forward, releasing the curving pieces of metal when they were at the farthest point from his body.

The propellers whizzed through the air at a speed faster than any aircraft engineer could have dreamed of.

In that fraction of an instant before the fingers of the skinheads pressed against the triggers of their machine guns, the props slammed against the extended gun barrels.

The propellers ripped through the metal barrels, bending them back like banana peels, embedding both curling ends into the chests of the two men. The propellers continued on their forward paths, pulling both men from the ground and launching them back into the steel wall of the hangar.

The side of the structure quivered like a beaten drum as the men slammed against it, chunks of gun and propeller jutting from their chests. An instant later they grew limp against the wall, their boots hanging slack a foot above the ground.

More voices.

There were other men coming in his direction. Chiun prepared himself for another assault.

There was a sudden short burst of gunfire on the other side of the hangar. The men coming toward him grew distracted, running back in the other direction toward the new sound. Muffled, wet thuds met them. Then all was silent.

In the next instant Chiun saw a flash of movement atop the hangar. When he looked up, he saw Remo crouching on the flat rooftop.

"Before you blame me, it wasn't my fault," Remo whispered.

"No," Chiun agreed, his expression stern. "It is my fault for being foolish enough to listen to you."

"Fine with me. As long as we've got the blame thing settled."

Chiun frowned with his entire face. "Get out of the way, General Patton."

As Remo ducked back, Chiun bounded up onto the roof next to him. Red kimono skirts settled around pipe-stem legs.

"How many did you get?" Remo said as they slid stealthily away from the edge of the roof.

"Two."

"Three for me. I took out a couple more from up here. Aside from Conrad Siegfried downstairs, that should be it."

Chiun stopped dead. "Siegfried? Who told you that was his name?" he demanded. The look in his hazel eyes was furiously intent.

Remo was taken aback by Chiun's jarring attitude change.

"No one," he said. "It was just a joke."

The old man eyed his pupil with suspicion. Detecting no visible deceit on Remo's part, he at last nodded.

"Very well."

Chiun began moving away across the roof. Remo hurried to keep up.

"What was that all about?"

"There is no time for idle conversation, O Plan King. In case you have forgotten, we are standing atop a giant boom device. We must find a way inside that does not result in our untimely arrival in the Void."

As they slid along the steel roof, Remo spied what looked like a square hatch near the rear of the building. He touched Chiun on the sleeve.

"I have a plan," he said with a smile.

MICHTLER DIDN'T WANT to think about what was going on outside. He'd heard the gunfire to his right a few minutes before.

He immediately dropped to the wooden floor, covering his head in his meaty hands.

He didn't care how foolish he looked, nor did he consider the utter pointlessness of this gesture of selfpreservation, given the amount of explosives that were stored around him.

The gunfire ended abruptly. It was proceeded by an even more frightening calm.

No one came to tell him that the two men were dead.

Michtler climbed unsteadily to his feet. He glanced up at the far rear wall of the hangar. A single red light shone down out of the darkness. Beyond it was the trapdoor to the roof.

Turning away from the light, he looked back toward the entrance.

Until the actual moment his Luger was ripped painfully from his huge hand, Michtler had no way of knowing that Remo and Chiun had slipped into the hangar through the office door during the split second he had turned away.

"I still say we should have used the roof door," Remo complained.

"Need I remind you that, had this pastry-fed Hun managed to fire a single shot, we would be having this argument in the company of my ancestors?" the Master of Sinanju declaimed, as if affronted by the mere idea.

It took the big German a moment to realize what was going on. Like a great lumbering dinosaur, Michtler turned on the intruders. He sent a huge fist toward Remo's head. There was a horrid sound of crunching bone. Again it was another moment before Michtler realized that the noise hadn't come from the skull of the man he thought he had just punched but rather from his own hand.

The German howled in pain as he stuffed the fist with its four shattered fingers into the safe haven beneath his left armpit. He dropped to his knees on the wooden floor. The boards creaked beneath him.

Hands tied tightly behind her, Helene watched the drama playing out before her in amazement. "How-?" she gasped once Michtler was subdued.

"Clean living, baby. By the by, do you actually get paid for this spy stuff?" he asked as he tossed the German's gun out the hangar door. "You're really bad at it." He wrenched apart the ropes that bound her to the chair.

It was as if she hadn't heard him.

"There are not enough bombs here," Helene announced, standing. Her face was urgent.

"There's plenty for me," Remo replied.

"No. There was much more than this stolen from the bases," she insisted. "This is only a fraction of what is missing."

"You're admitting they were stolen now, hmm?" Remo said with a superior smile.

"We must get back to France at once," Helene insisted. She glanced from Remo to Chiun, hoping the men shared her sense of urgency.

When she looked at Chiun, she saw that the Master of Sinanju was peering up into the distant corner of the large room where the single red light glowed from the shadows:

"We are being observed," the old man said. Remo glanced up at the stationary camera on the wall. He had felt the hum of electronic equipment upon entering the building but had been too preoccupied with Helene and Michtler to locate the source. The single red eye peered angrily at them.

Remo turned his attention back to Hans. "Okay, Colonel Klink, who's running-?"

He never had a chance to complete the thought. There was another hum of electronic equipment from somewhere beneath their feet. All four of them heard a single metallic click, followed by a steady hiss.

An oily yellow mist began seeping up through dozens of knotholes in the pitted wooden floorboards. The short hairs on Remo's exposed forearms telegraphed the danger before the mist reached their small group.

"Mustard gas!" Remo snapped. Chiun had sensed the hazard, as well.

"If you wish to save that one, you must hurry," he said sharply. With that the Master of Sinanju hauled Helene up off the floor. Dodging bursts of the deadly chemical agent, he raced toward the open hangar door.

The largest cloud had poured up through a hole near the kneeling Hans. His eyes bulged as he clawed at his constricting throat.

Remo was forced to reach in through the cloud to grab the big German. He immediately felt an intense burning sensation on the flesh of his bare forearm.

Pulling Hans free of the mist, Remo held him at arm's length as he raced out the door.

CHIUN WAS a hundred yards away from the hangar before he even began to slow down. When he sensed that they were free of the danger zone, he turned, depositing Helene on the grassy field. Remo ran across the tarmac to meet him.

As he ran, Remo's body worked double-time to slough the deadly toxin from his skin. By the time he reached the others, he was in no danger. Even so, the area where the chemical had touched flesh was a bright cherry color.

"You are well?" Chiun asked, concerned.

"I'll be okay," Remo said. "Which is more than I can say for him."

Hans Michtler was dead, his fat tongue jutting from between thick lips. Remo dropped the German's body to the grass.

"That is an unspeakable evil," Chiun intoned, nodding to the open door of the hangar. The mustard gas was seeping out in small dribbles, catching pockets of wind before swirling away across the grassy plains. "It interferes with breathing."

"That's putting it mildly, Little Father."

"My phone!" Helene said suddenly. "It is inside!"

She made a move back toward the hangar. Remo restrained her. "Are you insane?" he asked. "You'll have to wait for the gas to clear."