Failing Marks

They had been damaged, but apparently not enough. Smith was able to access a fraction of what was left on one of the hard drives. From this, the CURE director was able to reconstruct the entire structure of IV's finances.

Remo had never seen his employer appear quite as shocked as when Smith successfully broke the IV encoding system and uncovered the vast holdings of the neo-Nazi organization.

Smith had immediately set to work cutting the purse strings to IV. Some corporations he sold off; others he forced into bankruptcy. It took five whole days of work, but Smith had finally finished that afternoon. Wherever Kluge was hidden, he would not be able to access any IV funds.

Once the finances were out of the way, Smith was able to finally devote full attention to locating the head of IV. So far Smith had had no luck. And without a trail to follow, Remo was helpless to do anything.

Remo wandered off the elevator on the second floor of Folcroft's administrative wing.

Smith's outer office was empty. Mrs. Mikulka had gone home hours before. Remo walked through the secretary's drab little work area and pushed open the door to Harold Smith's slightly larger but no less drab office.

Smith glanced up from his work when Remo entered.

"Nothing yet," he said. He looked back down at the computer screen set into his desktop. Smith's weary eyes scanned back and forth along thin lines of text. The dull amber glow of the computer screen cast a demonic glow across the CURE director's pale, haggard features.

The Master of Sinanju sat cross-legged on the threadbare rug before Smith's desk. Crossing the room, Remo sank down into a lotus position before him.

"Did you sleep well?" Chiun asked.

"Not a wink," Remo replied.

"Sleeplessness does not a great assassin make," Chiun intoned. He was a pool of calm.

"Did you write that little aphorism for the next Official Assassin's Newsletter?" Remo deadpanned.

Chiun's brow furrowed. "Is there such a publication?"

Remo shook his head. "No," he sighed.

Chiun nodded. "I did not think there was, for no one contacted me. I sincerely hope that when there is, I will be the cover story of its premier issue."

"Speaking of grand delusions," Remo said, "any luck with either of your statue ideas?"

Chiun shook his head. "Lamentably, no," he said. "Emperor Smith has been far too busy with his current project. He has offered to take the matter under advisement."

As good as dead, Remo thought. Aloud, he said, "I'll put in a good word for you."

Chiun nodded. The two men fell silent. The only sound in the room was the incessant tapping of Smith's fingers as they struck against the high-tech surface of his desk.

Remo and Chiun sat in stony silence for more than two hours when the phone on Smith's desk suddenly squawked loudly. Smith had been deeply engrossed in the seemingly endless scrolling text on his computer screen. The ringing shook him from his work with a start.

It was Folcroft's outside line. Sanitarium business. Smith reached for the receiver, at the same time looking at his watch. He frowned at the lateness of the hour.

"Smith," he said tartly. His features bunched into an unhappy mass as he attempted to discern what the speaker was saying. All at once, his eyes opened wide. He held the phone out to Chiun. "I believe it is for you."

Chiun scooped up the phone. Remo raised a quizzical eyebrow as the Master of Sinanju announced his formal title in archaic Korean.

"Who is it?" Remo mouthed.

"I do not know," Smith said with a frown. "However, I believe he was speaking rather frantically in Korean."

"Korean?" Remo said. Though his hearing was acute enough to have heard the speaker, he hadn't been interested enough to focus.

"They repeated 'Sinanju' several times. Is it possible that it is someone from Chiun's village?"

"I don't know," Remo admitted. His face registered intrigue.

He watched Chiun carefully. The Master of Sinanju's expression was unreadable. He tried to listen, but Chiun had pressed the receiver tightly against his shell-like ear. It was impossible for Remo to eavesdrop.

Smith cleared his throat. "Remo, I am not comfortable with the prospect that someone from Sinanju might have this number. There are security considerations."

Smith's admonishments were drowned out by the crashing of the handset onto the cradle of the phone. At the same time, a pained howl rose up from the very soul of the Master of Sinanju. It was a cry of both pain and rage.

Remo and Smith both wore wary expressions as they looked over at the elderly Korean.

"Oh, the dastards!" Chiun hissed. He was panting so hard Smith thought he might be having a heart attack.

"What is it?" Remo asked, concerned.

"Thieves! Scoundrels! Oh, the perfidy!" Chiun drummed his fist against his bony chest. He wheeled on Remo. "We must be off at once!" he cried.

"Off?" Remo said. "Off where?"

"To Korea, of course," Chiun snapped. "That this could happen after lo these many years. What is this world the gods have thrust down around one as trusting as I?"

"Chiun," Remo interjected, "I don't know what that was all about, but I am not going to Korea." Chiun wheeled. An accusing nail stabbed the air between them.

"Betrayal?" Chiun cried in shock. "From my own son?"

"How can I betray you? Dammit, I don't even know what the hell you're upset about."

"The treasure," Chiun explained, seething. His hazel eyes were furious. "The vast stores of priceless tribute to generations of greatness that is the House of Sinanju have been swept from the floors of my home like driftwood in a ferocious monsoon." He gripped fistfuls of brocade kimono fabric. "I have been robbed, Remo!" he wailed.

Remo let the tension drain from his shoulders. "Is that all?" he said, relieved.

When he saw the sense of relief in his pupil's face, Chiun snapped back into outrage mode. "How dare you be calm?!" he accused. A bony finger quivered at Remo. "The man you call father has been grossly violated. Thieves have pillaged my most prized possessions."

"That's too bad," Remo said. "Really. It's just that I thought there was something really wrong."

"'Really'?" Chiun cried. "'Really'?" His voice grew increasingly frenzied as he repeated the word. Although it was long after midnight, Smith was concerned Chiun's screams would be overheard. He shot a cautious look at his closed office door.

"Please, Master Chiun," Smith begged.

The Master of Sinanju spun on him, his long robes twirling madly. "Stay out of this, white," Chiun menaced.

"Look," Remo said, attempting to be the voice of reason, "the treasure was stolen before. We got it back then, and I'm sure we'll get it back now. We can go to Sinanju as soon as we've cleared up this Four business."

"No," Chiun insisted, tugging at his tufts of wispy hair in frustration. "It must be now. Every day we dally allows the trail to grow ever colder."

Remo was determined. He was about to insist that they stay put when Smith broke into their conversation.

"If I may interject," the CURE director said. Chiun twirled on him, eyes pinpricks of white-hot rage.

"I said mind your own business," he snapped.

"I only wanted to say that I have had little luck finding this Kluge. And, frankly, your presence here is drawing undue attention."

"You see," Chiun insisted, shifting gears so fast Remo swore he heard grinding. Though he spoke to Remo, he stabbed a bony finger at Smith. "The wisdom of a true emperor. Even Smith wishes us to go."

"If something comes up, I will contact you in Sinanju," Smith offered reasonably. "You still have a phone, correct?"

"The only one in the village," Chiun replied.

"Then it is settled," Smith said. Inwardly he was greatly relieved. He wasn't comfortable when Remo and Chiun stayed at Folcroft for extended periods of time.

"Don't I get any say in this?" Remo asked.

"No," said Smith and Chiun in unison.

Remo threw up his hands in defeat. "Fine," he said, exhaling loudly. "We'll go to Sinanju."

Whirling, Chiun raised a defiant hand as he marched over to the door. He flung it open grandly. "And woe to he who would pilfer the treasure of the most awesome house of assassins in the history of creation." He stormed outside.

"Yadda, yadda, yadda," Remo grumbled to Smith. His face held the look of a man totally devoid of enthusiasm.

Hands in his pockets, Remo followed Chiun reluctantly from the office.

Chapter 12

Adolf Kluge was born in La Plata, the capital of the province of Buenos Aires in Argentina.

In spite of the fact that it was the country's national language, Kluge hadn't heard a word of Spanish spoken until he was nearly seven years old. By that time, he already knew that he was different from the people around him.

No. Not just different. Adolf Kluge was better. Even before he could walk, the parents of young Adolf had taught their precious blue-eyed offspring that he was superior to all others. This-he would come to realize later in life-included them.

His proud Nazi parents had fled their homeland during the persecution that came in the wake of the Second World War. Wounded in the early days of the Polish incursion, his father had sat out the war as nothing more than an SS bureaucrat. If the brutality of the Nazi secret police force had never come to light, he might have been able to resume his anonymous life after the war. Unfortunately for the senior Kluge, his name turned up in several key files concerning the torture and deaths of dozens of suspected Allied spies. He had been forced to flee to South America in order to escape prosecution.

The Nazis of Argentina were a close-knit group. They lived together, socialized only with their peers, married one another and raised their children in the old way. And, most of all, they kept the Nazi dream of global domination alive long after the world thought a stake had been driven through its evil heart.

Kluge was born in the early 1950s into a community fueled by bitter hatreds and a festering, impotent rage at the treatment it received from the outside world.

As the community of Nazi exiles grew, so did its members' desire for a place to call home. Germany was out of the question. None of them could ever go back. Not under the climate that dominated so much of world opinion.

It was more than ten full years after the fall of Berlin that IV village was established. As a boy, Kluge remembered driving up with his parents to see the homes under construction. To the little child who had seen his parents' beloved homeland only in old photographs, it was as if they had somehow magically driven across the Atlantic and into the mountains of Bavaria. The funds looted by Hitler's regime and held by Swiss bankers had been used to re-create a small scrap of Germany for that nation's most pitiful outcasts.

Adolf Kluge would never forget how his father had stopped their car in the shade of the old stone fortress. As his mother stared in silence at the homes beyond the large open field, his father wept openly at the sight of the picturesque little houses.

Kluge would never forget the feeling of contempt his father's emotional outburst had raised in him. For, at the tender age of five, Adolf Kluge was as insufferably arrogant as he was intelligent.

Some people grew to rebel against that which they had been taught as children. Not Kluge. He fervently believed in the idea of the master race. He also fervently believed in his role as its eventual leader, a belief that became his driving ambition.

At the private German-only school he attended as a youth alongside the children of other refugee Nazis, he achieved the highest honors of any student in its history. He excelled at languages, mastering more than a dozen tongues by the time he graduated high school.

Kluge was sent to college abroad, studying in both England and the United States. The honors he received while away at school were such that, when his education was finally complete, he had left no doubt in the minds of his fellow villagers that he was the future of IV.

As the years peeled away, Kluge assumed a small position on the leadership council of the village. At that time, IV was still dominated by old-timers who thought that the vaunted Fourth Reich was on the verge of unfolding. Kluge knew that this was insanity. The old fools refused to admit to the political realities of an ever changing world. If IV was to survive, it would have to adapt.

Eventually and not unexpectedly, Adolf Kluge rose to his position as leader of IV. He was only the third in its history-the first from his generation.

At this point in his life, he no longer felt compelled to flaunt his superiority. Rather, he simply excelled at everything he put his mind to.

The life-styles of everyone in the village were enhanced because of Kluge's prudent investments. Unfortunately for the old surviving hard-liners, Adolf Kluge veered away from the principles of IV's founding.

Even though he was dedicated in spirit to the principles of Adolf Hitler, Kluge recognized the futility of trying to establish the Fourth Reich in the way IV's founders intended.

No one in the village seemed truly bothered by Kluge's leadership. Oh, they would scream and yell about the wrong-headed turn their nation of origin had taken, but they always returned to their cozy homes and warm meals. As long as their needs were met and their bellies were full, they didn't question the leadership of Adolf Kluge.

Until Nils Schatz.

One of the last of the original founders, Schatz had used stolen IV money to finance an invasion of Paris in a scheme that at its inception was doomed to fail. This maniac had brought the House of Sinanju down on all their heads.

Schatz was dead now, but his legacy lived on. It was a waking nightmare.

The money was all gone. The bank accounts were empty. The stocks and bonds were inaccessible. The companies were all under investigation. All IV assets were frozen.

Kluge thought he had been careful to cover his tracks. He should have known. Given the timetable under which he had been forced to work, something must have been left.

To his knowledge, every last scrap of information in the village had been destroyed. But some small thing must have survived. And whoever the men from Sinanju were working for had used that single thread to unravel the entire IV financial fabric.

IV was destitute. As was its leader.

With the companies all gone, Kluge had only a paltry hundred thousand dollars at his disposal. It was his innate intelligence that made him open the lone bank account in Germany. But it was his supreme arrogance that told him to put so little into it. Now even that money was gone.

He had spent nearly every cent he had on a ridiculous dream. A bedtime story.

But, in the end, it was all he had.

Kluge sat alone in the back of the Berlin restaurant, lamenting the sad turn his fortunes had taken. When he went abroad, he was used to dining in only the finest eating establishments. The place he was in today was part of a fast-food chain brought over from America. The thick smell of grease made his gourmet stomach churn.

Kluge kept his breathing shallow as he tried not to think about his sorry fate, but of course he couldn't help but dwell on it.

It was desperation.

IV would have been insolvent years ago if not for his leadership. His labors had always guaranteed him a lavish life-style. That life-style had been taken away from him in a flash. He could never hope to reclaim it without great risk.

But this risk...

It was insanity. Utter, foolish insanity. Yet what choice did he have?

Kluge's heart skipped a beat as he saw a familiar face pass before the brightly painted window. Keijo Suk glanced in once as he passed by before continuing along the sidewalk.

A minute later, he was inside the restaurant. Walking briskly across the virtually empty dining area, Suk slid into the booth across from Kluge. His fat face was flushed.

"You were successful," Kluge said. He stared at the wrapped package the man had placed on the table between them.

Keijo Suk nodded. "It was much easier than I thought." The Korean grinned and pushed the bundle over to Kluge.

"That is because they were not there," Kluge said.

He loosened the twine Suk had used to tie the bundle and carefully unfolded the paper. It fell away, revealing a slab of ancient petrified wood.

It was in perfect condition. Much more so than the quarter that had been in his possession at the IV fortress.

Kluge ran his fingertips across the uneven surface, feeling every ridge of the carved wood.

In spite of his better instincts, he began to grow more confident. Why would Sinanju have saved this scrap of wood for so many years if it wasn't significant?

He thought of the stained-glass window back at the ancient temple. How many times had he looked at it and not seen the piece of wood in Siegfried's hand? How could he possibly have missed something so significant for so long?

Suk tapped his hand on the table, shaking Kluge from his trance.

"I would like my money now," the Korean said.

"I am sure you would." Kluge smiled.

Looking down, he carefully folded the paper back up around the block carving. He stashed the bundle in a black leather valise that sat on the bench next to him. When he looked back up at Suk, his eyes were hooded.

"I do not have the money," Kluge stated simply. Suk was taken aback by the German's frankness.

"You do not have it with you." It was a statement, not a question.

Kluge shook his head. "I do not have it at all. I knew you would be greedy, Keijo. I did not have enough initially to split in half. If I had offered you half of that pittance up front and half after you gave the stolen object to me, you would have laughed in my face. Likewise, I knew that if I told you I had paid you everything up front you would have simply left with my money without performing the service for which you had been hired."

Keijo Suk shook his head in disbelief. "I have risked incurring the wrath of the Master of Sinanju for a scrap of firewood," he said, astonished.

"And a healthy sum of money," Kluge argued. "Eighty thousand is still a lot, Keijo."

"It was not enough," Suk snarled. He stood up, grabbing across the table for Kluge's valise.

As Suk snatched for the handle, Kluge locked his hand around the Korean's wrist. Twisting the fist around, the German thrust his other hand forward, fingers extended and rigid. They connected solidly with Suk's shoulder.

There was a crunch of bone and popping cartilage. Shocked air whooshed out of Suk's lungs.

Unable even to cry out in pain, the Asian dropped back into his seat. His lungs ached as he strained to refill them. He gulped for air, at the same time grabbing his injured shoulder with his good hand.

Kluge calmly retook his seat. He smiled grimly.

"I made a deal with you, Keijo, and I intend to keep it. I do not have the money now. But from what I have seen, this will allow me to pay you the balance in a few days." He nodded to the valise. "I will even compensate you for any medical expenses you might incur."

Suk shook his head in impotent rage.

"Of course," Kluge continued, "my generosity does not extend to anything the men from Sinanju might do to you. I am certain they frown on theft. It probably insults their honor or some other such nonsense."

Kluge collected his valise. He stood to go. "When will I be paid?" Suk begged, his teeth clenched.

"Soon, Keijo. Soon. Although, if I have judged you correctly, I would say that you left the home of the Master of Sinanju with more than just the block carving." He patted the valise. "You are a greedy bastard, Keijo. That is what I like about you." He stepped from the table.

"My risks are my own," Suk called after him. He was nursing the pain in his shoulder.

Kluge paused. "When one has nothing else to lose, risk becomes a tool of survival," he agreed. Adolf Kluge walked briskly away from the injured Korean. He crossed the linoleum floor of the sparsely filled restaurant and stepped out onto the crowded Berlin street.

Chapter 13

Standing just inside the doorway, hands jammed firmly against his hips, Remo was more than just a little miffed.

"You mean to tell me you dragged my ass halfway around the world for a crummy handful of gold coins?" he demanded angrily.

"It is not the amount that is significant. It is what it represents," the Reigning Master of Sinanju explained.

They were in the packed living room of the Master's house in Sinanju. Bright sunlight shone through the tall windows, casting warming rays over only a fraction of five thousand years of accumulated tribute. The rest of the Sinanju treasure trove was stacked all around the house, like uneaten loaves of bread in an overproducing bakery.

Chiun was stooping to examine the gold coins that Keijo Suk had dropped in his haste to leave several days before.

"This is ridiculous," Remo complained. "You made me think they cleaned you out."

"Today it is a handful," Chiun said seriously. "Tomorrow it is another. Where will it end?"

"Judging from the pile of junk you have heaped around this dump, I'd say somewhere in the middle of the millionth century," Remo said.

Chiun paid him no heed. He collected the three coins from the floor. Never in circulation at any time in history, they had been minted specifically for Sinanju by a grateful employer. They bore the face of Cleopatra on one side and the symbol of Sinanju on the other. Each coin would have been priceless to a collector.

Chiun tossed the three coins into the copper urn next to the door. There were seven more jars stacked nearby, each brimming over with identical gold pieces.

"Ah-hah!" Chiun announced.

"What?" Remo asked, peeved. He was leaning on the door frame.

"See how the villain pauses." Chiun pointed at the footprints in the dust near the door. "He thinks whether he should steal from the glorious House of Sinanju, thus sealing his fate. An evil and stupid creature, he gives in to temptation." He indicated a mass of scuffed prints. "More hesitation. I have committed my base act of thievery, he thinks. If I must die, let me be cast into the Void for more than one handful of coins." Chiun raised an instructive finger. "He fills his pockets and than scurries off into the black of night, fearful even in his flight of the awesome vengeance to which he has condemned himself."

Remo looked at the marks on the floor. To him, they looked like a mass of dirty footprints.

"If you say so," Remo said dubiously.

A fire burned in the great iron furnace in the cellar, heating a huge cauldron of water, which in turn warmed the chilly air within the house. This method of heat dispersal had not become popular in the West until the twentieth century. The Master's House had enjoyed this luxury since the time of Plato.

Chiun's caretaker and the man who had lit the fire in preparation for the Master of Sinanju's arrival was an aged villager named Pullyang. The man who had contacted Chiun at Folcroft, Pullyang stood near the archway that led into the next room. He rubbed his hands together nervously.

"Master, I believe the thief was here, as well," the anxious caretaker said, voice tremulous.

Chiun marched boldly across the room. Remo trailed him reluctantly, hands stuffed in his pockets. Pullyang indicated an open door off of the next room. Remo and Chiun peered in around the frame. Crazed dust patterns swirled in the beams of hot yellow light that poured in through the lone window.

Remo knew the room to be a sort of library for the House of Sinanju. This was where nearly all the records of every past Master of Sinanju were kept.

When Remo had first seen the room years before, Chiun had promised him that one day the scrolls of Remo's own masterhood would be placed in here beside the rest.

"Whoop-de-do," Remo had said.

Remo was not so glib today. He knew how much the histories of Sinanju meant to his teacher. The look of pain on Chiun's face was almost enough to make him forget his desire to get back to America in order to continue the search for Adolf Kluge.

Remo saw the streak of upset dust at the same time as the Master of Sinanju.

"Brigand!" Chiun cried when he realized what was missing. "Robber!" he shouted as he bounced over the debris field that was the floor. "Bandit!" he wailed, after he had made certain the ancient wood carving had not fallen to the sturdy old floor.

"What was it?" Remo asked, stepping gingerly into the room. He had to climb over a pair of stone slabs.

"A map to a treasure forever lost. A piece of a puzzle whose other fragments were scattered to the winds of history. An invaluable reminder of the folly of fools."

"It doesn't sound that bad," Remo offered encouragingly.

"Bad?" Chiun moaned. "It is terrible."

"I'd say you made out okay," Remo said. "A couple of gold coins and a useless puzzle piece. We should get a lock for the front door. Maybe an alarm system." As Chiun continued to stare at the vacant spot on the shelf, Remo turned to Pullyang. "Is there electricity in this rathole of a village?" he asked.

"Only in the Master's house," the caretaker ventured.

"See, Chiun," Remo said. "An alarm system would be easy. I bet Smith could fix you up real nice."

Chiun refused to be encouraged. His eyes never wavered from the barren spot on the shelf. Beside the marks in the dust, an ancient rusted battle helmet sat on the counter. A corroded falcon was locked in a perpetual struggle to take flight on the front of the headpiece.

The look on his teacher's face was so forlorn as he stared at the shelf Remo couldn't help but feel a welling sadness of his own.

Remo felt uncomfortable with someone else seeing Chiun in this inconsolable state. The old caretaker was hovering at the edge of the room, the mass of wrinkles around his aged eyes pinched to narrow slits.

"We can handle it from here," Remo whispered softly to Pullyang.

The aged caretaker wasn't certain if he should take the suggestion of the Master of Sinanju's white pupil.

"Master?" he asked.

Chiun didn't say a word. He raised a long-nailed hand, waving it dismissively. Pullyang bowed respectfully from the room. A moment later, the front door opened and closed.

The Master of Sinanju continued to stare morosely at the empty spot on the shelf.

This was not like Chiun. His angry reaction to the missing gold coins-that was Chiun. But by his own admission, the item stolen from this room had been worthless. Yet he seemed to grieve more for its loss than for the loss of his beloved gold. To Remo, it didn't make sense.

"Chiun?" Remo said gently. "If it means that much to you, to hell with Kluge. We'll go after whoever did this. I promise you'll get everything back."

Chiun at last looked up. There was still sadness in his eyes, but there was a sliver of pride, as well. "You are a good son, Remo," Chiun said. Remo felt his heart swell.

"Look, I know what this stuff means to you. It means something to me, too. It's our history."

Chiun nodded. "It is that," he said glumly. "More than you know. Come, Remo, sit down." He indicated the two stone tablets on the floor. Remo obediently sank to a sitting position on the nearest slab. Chiun joined him on the other, arranging his orchid kimono hem neatly around his scissored knees. He settled easily into his role as instructor. Chiun closed his eyes, taking a deep steadying breath.

"You know, Remo, of Master Bal-Mung," Chiun began.

Remo nodded. "I know he's not on the A list," he said.

There had been several Masters of Sinanju in the long history of the ancient house of assassins who had in some way or another disgraced their ancestors. Most of them were stricken from the official history. Bal-Mung was one of the lucky ones. As part of his earliest lessons, Remo had learned Bal-Mung's name along with all of the other past Masters. However, he had learned nothing more. Until today, Bal-Mung had just been a name on a list with no connecting story.

"I have never told you the tale of Master Bal-Mung," Chiun began, "because it is a story that shames our House and all it represents."

It pained Chiun to even discuss this. In deference to his teacher, Remo resisted making a smart-alecky remark.

"What did he do?" Remo asked gently.

"Bal-Mung committed the most grievous of sins. He squandered his masterhood on a fool's search," Chiun said bitterly. "Before him, there were two other Masters called Bal-Mung. After the time of his disgrace, their names were changed in our records so as not to cause them the shame of being associated with such a one. Shame to you, Bal-Mung of the Fruitless Quest."

"He must have been pretty awful for someone to change the names of previous masters." Remo frowned.

"In truth, this was not so," Chiun lamented. "Until the time of his disgrace, Bal-Mung served his House and ancestors well. He was not on the level of the Great Wang, of course. But he was still not entirely inadequate."

Chiun's voice grew less inflected as he somberly related the painful tale of Bal-Mung's disgrace. "This occurred in the Sinanju Year of the Fire Petals, by your Western reckoning prior to 500 A.D. It happened that at that time Bal-Mung the Waster of Precious Time was known as Bal-Mung the Good. Not Great, for that is a title bestowed only at death. But Good. Good is not bad, Remo, remember this."

"So Bal-Mung," Chiun continued, "who at that time was considered good, journeyed far from his home to toil in the employ of a great king. This king was named Siegfried and he did rule the people known as the Nibelungs. The king had conquered this race years before and had taken as his own their abundant treasure. This wealth was so vast that it was deemed worthy of a name. Called the Nibelungen Hoard, this store of riches and its possessor became known the world over. News of the Nibelungen Hoard spread even to these shores where Master Bal-Mung was resting between assignments. So taken was he with the stories he had been told, Bal-Mung did abandon his rest in order to venture to the land of the Nibelungs."

"He smelled the cash all the way from Korea," Remo interjected.

"I did say, Remo, that he was good," Chiun reminded him. "And so Bal-Mung and his servant did travel far across the great desolate mass of land to the west. For weeks they trekked through dangerous terrain. The people they met grew paler of skin and rounder of eye. The Master's servant was greatly afeared of these cloud-skinned men, afraid that his master had led him to the land of the dead, and that these were ghosts whose curse it was to walk the frigid land with eyes of an improper wideness. But Master Bal-Mung did allay the fears of his youthful companion. Sinanju had worked for whites for many years, having toiled in Greece and Rome. But to his servant, this was all new and so he continued on in fear.

"Eventually they did find the court of King Siegfried, and the Master did offer his services as protector of both sovereign and gold."

"I'll bet I know which one he was more interested in," Remo grumbled.

"The gold, of course," Chiun sniffed.

"No surprise there."

"And there should not be, for as I have told you, up until now Bal-Mung had demonstrated the qualities of a Master of Sinanju destined for posthumous greatness."

"So did he get the gig?" Remo asked.

"Of course," Chiun said. "The reputation of Sinanju had spread even to this barbaric part of the world. The king immediately retained Master Bal-Mung as his royal protector. You have heard, no doubt, that Siegfried possessed a powerful sword, as well as a cloak of invisibility."

"To tell you the truth, the only Siegfried I know was on 'Get Smart,'" Remo admitted sheepishly.

"Your lack of education aside," Chiun continued dryly, "history records that the Nibelungen king owned both of these items. History-as so often happens when it is recorded by whites-is wrong. The name of Siegfried's powerful sword is said even by those in the West to have been called Balmung. It is a distortion of the Master's name but not of his performance as defender of King Siegfried."

"I assume he was also Siegfried's cloak of invisibility?" Remo asked.

"That is true," Chiun confirmed. "At that time, the ability to shield oneself in darkness was long known to Sinanju. So the two things for which the greatness of Siegfried's rule are improperly credited are in fact rightly attributable to Sinanju. All hail the House of Sinanju."

"Okay, you've given me the background," Remo said. "But how did Bal-Mung the Good become Bal-Mung the Not-So-Good?"

"Master Bal-Mung did labor in the service of King Siegfried for many years. So many, in fact, that Siegfried did come to think of him as a friend."

"Whoops," Remo said. "I'll bet that cost him a pretty penny."

Chiun nodded. "It is a mistake to assume friendship in a royal assassin," Chiun agreed. "And it is right to take advantage when a king relaxes his guard. If only to instruct future kings on the folly of this presumption."

"Bal-Mung shafted him big-time, didn't he?" Remo said knowingly.

"It was agreed upon as a final tribute to the greatness that is Sinanju, that the entire wealth of the Nibelungen Hoard be bequeathed to Sinanju upon Siegfried's death. With the provision that the death come late in life and be of causes not unnatural."

"I presume Bal-Mung somehow got the shit end of the stick," Remo offered.

"Siegfried was murdered by a knave named Hagan at the behest of the dalkyrie Brunhild. There is his battle helmet," Chiun said, indicating with a sweep of his hand the shelf behind him on which sat the ancient rusted headgear and its attendant falcon. "Found near his slain body."

"So we forfeited the loot," Remo said.

Chiun seemed genuinely surprised. "Why should we have?"

"Well, it's pretty obvious. You said natural causes late in life. The guy was murdered."

"And for kings, there is no more natural a cause for death than treachery," Chiun said with bland surprise.

"Oh, boy," Remo said warily. He knew where this was heading. "What about late in life?" he challenged.

"There is no later point in anyone's life than the point of death," Chiun replied simply.

"Bulldookey," Remo said. "Bal-Mung lost the booty fair and square. Case closed."

"While I do not agree with your childishly silly reasoning, your conclusion is one that would have served Bal-Mung. Would that he had considered this a closed case. He would not have squandered years in search of the lost Nibelungen Hoard."

"Lost?" Remo asked. "When did it get lost?"

"Before his murder, Siegfried sent Bal-Mung off on a pointless journey to Gaul. While he was away, Siegfried hid the gold in a secret treasure cave beneath a mighty river, thought by many to be the Danube. The precise location was known only to Siegfried. It was said that those who had constructed the tunnel and moved the gold were executed in order to forever preserve the secret."

"I guess old Siegfried wasn't as big a dope as Bal-Mung thought he was," Remo said. "He stashed it away as an insurance policy."

"It did him no good," Chiun noted. "When the Master returned, he found the body of the Nibelungen king. Had Sinanju been at his side, his death would have been avoided. Bal-Mung spent the remainder of his masterhood in search of the Nibelungen Hoard. He never found it." Chiun hung his head as if this was a personal disgrace.

"So what about the thing that was stolen from here? The puzzle piece-was it Siegfried's or Bal-Mung's?"

"It is believed that it was meant for Sinanju. Before his death, Siegfried commissioned a carver to make for him a four-piece map that detailed the resting place of the treasure. A quarter of this was found by Bal-Mung near the body of the king. It had fallen in water and was doubtless overlooked by his attacker."

"So where are the other three pieces?"

"Hagan-Siegfried's murderer-was believed to have one in his possession. One was thought to have been sent to the Burgundian king Gunther, who was brother-in-law to Siegfried. Another was said to have been passed down to Siegfried's own illegitimate son. None of this is known for certain, for each piece of the puzzle was guarded to the point of paranoia by its possessors. Each one coveted the prize. Several of the principal players vanished in their attempt to search for the Hoard themselves. Bal-Mung hunted for the Nibelungen Hoard for many years but never recovered it. He finally returned to Sinanju, where he died in disgrace."

"And no one could figure out from their own section where the dough was?"

Chiun shook his head. "Each piece of the map detailed only a portion of the Hoard's true location. It was designed in such a way that, without the other three, a single piece would be useless. When this room was constructed, the Sinanju piece was placed on that shelf as a reminder of the folly of BalMung." Chiun's eyes were sorrowful as he looked at the barren shelf.

After hearing the story, Remo found it difficult to work up much enthusiasm for going after a scrap of wood. However, Chiun meant more to him than anyone else in the world. If it was important to Chiun, it was important to Remo.

"I'm sorry, Chiun," Remo said, "but I think it could be a lot worse. But my promise still goes. If you want to find whoever did this, you can count me in."

Chiun nodded. "It is important to preserve our history," he concluded. "Future generations should not forget the lesson of the foolish Bal-Mung."

"Okay," Remo said, getting to his feet. "I'll give Smith a call and see if he has any ideas."

Chiun rose to his feet as well, revealing the square of stone he had been sitting on. The Master of Sinanju began padding to the door.

Remo craned his neck around to look at the spot where Chiun had been sitting.

"There's been something I've meant to ask for a long time," Remo said suddenly. "What are these?" He nodded at the two stone tablets on which they had been sitting. There was some kind of ancient writing burned into the surface of each. The tablets appeared to have been shattered at one time and fastened back together. Ancient fissures crisscrossed the stone.

Chiun shrugged. "They were of some significance to the Hebrews at one time. A Babylonian prince awarded them to the House as a bonus after a relatively easy assignment. More worthless junk. My grandfather used them as bookends." With that, Chiun left the room.

Remo peered at the inscriptions in the rock. There were five separate lines on each. Ten in all.

He remembered Charlton Heston smashing similar tablets in an old movie.

Not wishing to think about the possible significance of what he and Chiun had been using as stools, Remo quickly exited the Sinanju library.

Chapter 14

A good night's sleep had done nothing for Smith's persistent headache. It had, however, beaten back the fatigue he had been feeling for more than two weeks.

He arrived at Folcroft late, coming in at the lazy hour of 7:00 a.m. He had just taken his seat behind his desk and was opening his drawer for the morning's first dose of aspirin when the blue phone rang.

He tucked the receiver between shoulder and ear. "Yes," he said crisply as he twisted the aspirin bottle cover.

"Only me, Smitty," Remo's voice announced. "Chiun and I need a little favor."

"What is it?" Smith asked. He tossed two pills back into his dry throat. Quickly he picked up a glass from his desk and swallowed a mouthful of tap water.

Remo hurriedly explained the Sinanju legend of Bal-Mung and the objects taken from Chiun's home. In conclusion, he said, "So I guess what we need to know is if there's some way you can track either the coins or the wood carving."

"That might be possible," Smith said. He turned on his computer, quickly logging on. He continued to talk even as he typed. "Do you believe there might be a connection between this and Four?"

"Why should I?" Remo asked.

"I assumed that was the point of your call," Smith explained. "The story you have described is the Nibelungenlied. It is an epic German poem of around 1200 A.D."

"Chiun, you didn't tell me these people were German," Remo said off the phone.

"Forgive me, but I assumed in you a level of cultural erudition," Chiun's squeaky voice called from the distance. "Obviously an error on my part."

"I wouldn't get too full of myself," Remo grumbled. "That ain't exactly Masterpiece Theatre you've been watching to death lately."

"I found them," Smith interjected, drawing Remo's attention back to the phone.

"Everything?" Remo asked, surprised at the speed with which the CURE director had tracked the items.

"Just the coins," Smith said. "Following the German pattern, I thought to begin my search there. They were offered to a rare coin dealer in Berlin by a Korean cultural representative. The merchant was concerned that the coins might be stolen, so he brought in the authorities. When their authenticity was confirmed, the Korean was remanded to the custody of his embassy. With no explanation for how he came by them, he was sent back to North Korea to face disciplinary measures for their possession."

"Where are the coins?"

"They are being sent along with him. The Korean government requested them for use in the trial. With the cultural official's diplomatic immunity, they were useless to the Germans as evidence."

"What's his name and when does he arrive?" Remo asked.

"Keijo Suk," Smith said. "His plane lands in Pyongyang at three o'clock, your time."

"Thanks, smitty," Remo said. "I owe you one." He hung up the phone. "Did you get all that?" he asked, turning to the Master of Sinanju.

"I did," Chiun said. He was standing impatiently near the front door, arms tucked inside the folds of his kimono sleeves. "However, he did not mention the carving."

"They probably didn't think too much about it," Remo reasoned. "The coins would be more important to them. Anyway, it won't do any good to sit here and think about it. Let's shake a leg."

Remo headed for the door. When he pulled on the handle he was surprised to find that he had yanked into the house someone who had been grabbing the knob from the other side. The intruder tumbled forward into him.

Remo grabbed the toppling stranger by the shoulders, setting her on her feet. He was about to demand that she identify herself when he realized he recognized her face.

"Hello, Remo," said Heidi Stolpe. She smiled guiltily.

"I DID NOT MISLEAD you completely," Heidi promised.

They were racing along the highway away from Sinanju in a government car Remo had liberated earlier that day from the Pyongyang airport parking lot. Remo was behind the wheel. Heidi sat beside him in the front. Chiun had positioned himself like royalty in the center of the rear seat.

"I was in South America in search of fugitive Nazis," she continued.

"But that was only part of it," Remo said angrily. Frozen mud fields whipped past the speeding car.

"Not at first," she insisted. "But eventually, yes. You see, I am a descendant of Gunther, whose sister Kriemhild was married to Siegfried."

"Your relatives must have the stupidest-looking headstones in Nibelung," Rerno said. "Wherever the hell that is."

Heidi persisted. "I only recently became aware of the legend surrounding the treasure. My uncle died, and I inherited my family's castle in the Harz Mountains. In his personal belongings was Gunther's portion of the block carving. It has been in my family's possession for fifteen hundred years."

"This carving. It is in good condition?" Chiun asked from the back seat. He feigned disinterest.

"The map has survived intact," she said to him. Remo could tell that Chiun was intrigued. However, the Master of Sinanju was playing it cool.

"Still," Chiun ventured, "with only two sections we are no nearer the gold."

"Not two sections," Heidi said excitedly. "Three. "

"How is this possible?" Chiun asked with a frown.

"At the Four village in South America," Heidi explained. "While the two of you were chasing after Kluge through the tunnels, I searched through the things he left behind. One of the sections of the carving had been packed in a box but not taken with him. I suppose he did not think it crucial to whatever future he has planned for his group."

"Wait a minute," Remo said. "While we were risking our necks, you were on some frigging scavenger hunt?"

"I do not have to explain myself to you," Heidi sniffed.

"Damned lucky for you," Remo replied angrily.

"How did you know Kluge would have a map section?" Chiun asked, steering them back to the most important topic.

"I did not mention that?" she asked, surprised. "According to what I have learned, he is a direct descendant of Siegfried. The block has been in his family for as long as we have owned our respective sections."

"You used us," Remo said. "You knew about Kluge all along. You used us to get yourself safely into the village."

"There is still the final quarter," Chiun insisted, pointedly ignoring Remo. "Which, according to rumor, fell into the hands of the murderer Hagen."

"That piece will be difficult," Heidi said thoughtfully. "Through my uncle's records, I traced both Siegfried's and Hagen's descendants. The last of the family of Hagan died out around the time the Nazis came to power. His land and possessions were confiscated by order of Hitler. If there was a fourth surviving piece, it was lost back then."

Chiun sank back into his seat. The glimmer of hope threatened to fade from his hazel eyes. "Then we, too, are lost," he lamented.

"Not necessarily," Heidi stressed. "We have three out of four sections. It is possible that we could piece together enough of the map to locate the treasure."

"I suppose I don't have to remind you, Chiun, that she was in Sinanju to steal our piece of the map," Remo called over his shoulder.

Chiun stroked his thread of beard pensively. "She is enterprising," the Master of Sinanju offered. "It is an attractive trait. What did you have in mind, daughter of Gunther?"

"Whatever we recover will be split ninety/ten."

"That would be acceptable," Chiun nodded. Heidi seemed surprised. "I did not think you would agree to such an arrangement. According to my family record, the House of Sinanju is quite greedy."

"Give him a minute," Remo warned.

Chiun waved a magnanimous hand. "Ours is a reputation undeserved," Chiun proclaimed. "You have done much work. You have earned your ten percent."

"Bingo." Remo grinned.

"What?" Heidi demanded.

"It is a large sum, surely," Chiun said, considering. "Perhaps I should allow you only five. What do you think, Remo?"

"Don't get me in the middle of this," Remo said. Heidi was livid. Her porcelain skin had flushed red. "If anyone is getting five percent, it is you," she challenged.

"Are you mad, girl?" Chiun asked, shocked. "You did not believe I would allow you to steal nine-tenths of my money?"

"Your money?"

Chiun grew indignant. "The treasure is the rightful property of the House of Sinanju. If I so desired, I could keep the entire amount myself."

"Without my half of the map, your quarter is useless," Heidi reminded him.

"And without my quarter, your half is useless," Chiun countered.

Heidi fumed. "Seventy/thirty," she said eventually. "The seventy goes to me," she added quickly.

"That is ludicrous," Chiun huffed. "Sixty/forty. In the favor of Sinanju."

"No," Heidi insisted stubbornly.

"As an impartial observer who doesn't give a wet fart in a windbreaker about the gold, why not split it fifty/fifty?" Remo suggested.

"Outrageous," Chiun snapped.

"Out of the question," Heidi sniffed.

"In that case, you're both going to walk away with diddly. Just like your ancestors."

"That treasure is Sinanju property," Chiun fumed.

"You forfeited it when Siegfried was murdered," Heidi countered stubbornly.

"Are you deranged, woman? That is when it became Sinanju property."

"Siegfried only hid the Hoard because he did not trust your ancestor Bal-Mung," Heidi snarled hotly.

"Lies!" Chiun shrieked. Hands knotted in fists of furious bone. "Stop the car, Remo. I will not travel another inch with one who dares sully the name of my beloved ancestor."

"First off, I am not stopping. Secondly you weren't too charitable to him back at your house," Remo reminded him.

In Korean, Chiun snapped, "I may say what I want about my family. She may not."

"All right, all right!" Heidi snapped, angry that she couldn't understand what Chiun was saying. "I will agree to a fifty/fifty split."

"Sixty/forty," Chiun said quickly.

"Fifty/fifty," Heidi repeated firmly.

In the back seat, Chiun huffed as he considered the offer. At long last he broke his silence. "Though my heart breaks to cast away that which is so obviously mine, I fear I am at your mercy, devil woman. Fifty/fifty. And may you choke on your ill-gotten prize."

The Master of Sinanju settled back into the rear seat.

"Then we have a deal," Heidi said, exhaling in relief. "Where is your quarter of the map?"

"Here's where it gets tricky," Remo said, smiling.

"Why?" Heidi asked suspiciously. It was as if a light suddenly snapped on in her head. She spun around in her seat. "You do have it, do you not?" she asked Chiun.

"That would be not," Remo said.

"You are joking," she accused.

"Nope," said Remo happily. "That's why we're here. Somebody stole our section."

"I cannot believe this," she said, twisting back around. "Stop the car."

"Lady, I didn't do it for him-I'm sure as hell not doing it for you," Remo promised evenly.

"This is beyond duplicity," she said, astonished.

"It is no wonder Siegfried did not trust Bal-Mung. You are a family of liars. Stop this car!"

"I have memorized the map," Chiun said softly. Though she had been growing more enraged with each passing second until this point, Heidi instantly became calm. She peered cautiously at the Master of Sinanju.

"Is this true?" she questioned suspiciously. Chiun gently tapped the parchment skin of his temple with the tip of a tapered fingernail.

"Every detail of our map section is forever burned into my memory," he said pleasantly.

Heidi looked at Remo questioningly. Remo paid her no attention as he looked out over the hood of the speeding car. Finally she turned back to the Master of Sinanju.

"How good is your memory?" she asked. Chiun didn't respond to the insulting question. He merely stared out at the frozen paddies as the car soared down the empty highway.

Chapter 15

Keijo Suk could not believe how quickly he had been apprehended. He had always trusted in the basic dishonesty of every Western store owner. Unfortunately he had found the last honest merchant in the hemisphere.

The coin dealer had called Suk back to his shop twice before turning him over to the authorities. Suk had thought the man was working up the courage to purchase the coins he had stolen from the Master of Sinanju's house. In retrospect, he realized that the man was checking on their authenticity. Without proof of ownership of the heretofore unknown variety of coin, it was determined that Suk was quite obviously a thief. The only question was how he had managed to sneak into and out of Egypt with his stolen prize. Never mind the fact that while there he had discovered and looted an unknown yet apparently flawlessly preserved tomb.

Suk realized how useless it would be to explain where he had gotten the coins. He had decided to merely sit quietly and take whatever punishment was given, hoping that he would not encounter the Master of Sinanju.

In truth, Suk doubted the Master of Sinanju would ever find out about the theft. There was so much treasure in that rambling house that the infamous assassin could not possibly miss a few coins and a simple chunk of wood. Also it was known in his native land that the Sinanju Master spent much of his time in the decadent West where he had been commissioned to train a white in the ancient arts of his village. It was likely that he would not return for months. Perhaps years.

Reasoning thusly, Keijo Suk had managed to calm himself somewhat as the German authorities turned him over to the North Korean consulate in Berlin. Even the torn cartilage and fractured bone in his shoulder had begun to feel better.

His embassy had shipped him off to North Korea, where he would be placed under arrest the moment his plane landed.

The official government aircraft had just touched down at the airport in Pyongyang. As it taxied slowly to a stop, Suk made a final appeal to whatever gods might still listen to a thieving Communist that the Master of Sinanju would never learn of what he had done.

REMO PARKED THE CAR in the same spot from which he had stolen it that morning.

The Korean soldiers who patrolled the airport gave them a wide berth. Although it would have been more than reasonable to question an odd group like theirs, the reputations of both Masters of Sinanju preceded them. They were allowed to move across the parking lot with impunity, just as they had been after landing earlier that day.

But this time Heidi was with them. A thought suddenly occurred to Remo.

"How did you get in here, by the way?" Remo asked. He was looking at her very pale skin and obviously non-Korean features.

"Anything is possible with the proper bribes," Heidi said. She clearly didn't wish to discuss it further.

"Whatever." Remo shrugged.

Remo left the others and went inside the terminal to ask about the flight from Germany. He learned that it had landed only a few minutes before.

Coming back outside, Remo led their party out through the restricted chain-link fence onto the tarmac. The soldiers on duty made an effort to look wherever Remo and Chiun were not.

A boarding ramp had just been secured at the side of the government aircraft, and the first of the passengers was beginning to deplane. Keijo Suk was led out in manacles in the company of a pair of North Korean police officials.

The Korean cultural officer needed only one glance at the pale purple kimono on the old man who waited for him at the bottom of the ramp. His eyes grew wide in fright.

"Ahhhhh!" screamed Keijo Suk. He turned around and, shoving his captors roughly aside, raced back up the stairs, disappearing inside the plane.

Recognizing the flight instinct of a guilty man, Remo and Chiun each hopped up onto a railing of the ramp. They ran up, jumping onto the platform at the top. They followed Suk inside. Heidi was forced to push her way past the irate passengers. The men who had been escorting Suk stayed far behind in the doorway, fearful of the Master of Sinanju and his protege.

Inside, Chiun found Suk cowering on the floor behind the last three coach seats. He cradled his injured shoulder with his shackled hands.

"Thief!" the Master of Sinanju charged, eyes furious.

Chiun grabbed Suk by the front of his jacket and dragged the terrified man to his feet. Suk was sweating profusely.

"Don't kill him yet, Little Father," Remo warned, running up behind Chiun.

"Yes!" screamed Suk. "Please! Do not kill me yet!"

"Tell what you know, thief!" Chiun ordered. As incentive, he slapped Keijo Suk back and forth across his tear-soaked face.

"I know that I have stolen from the Glorious House of Sinanju and that I must be made to pay for my actions," Suk blubbered. He held his hurt shoulder away from Chiun.

"And so you will," Chiun hissed.

"But must that payment be in blood?" Suk pleaded.

"Of course," Chiun replied, as if Suk were an imbecile.

"Everything is negotiable," Heidi Stolpe volunteered in German. She was standing behind Remo.

"Silence, wench," Chiun menaced.

Suk looked up at her, a spark of hope in his eyes. "Yes," he said, also in German. "She is correct, Master."

"She is a woman and is therefore incapable of correctness. You are dealing with me," Chiun warned. "Where is my property?"

"The men who escorted me here have the coins," Suk answered.

"Remo," Chiun snapped. He jerked his head toward the men who still stood back near the door. Remo went dutifully, if somewhat reluctantly, over to the door. One of the men held a small package-about the size of a cigar box. He willingly handed it over to Remo.

"Wait here," Remo ordered. He jogged back to Chiun. "Here it is," he said. His tone was painfully uninterested.

Chiun ripped the box from his hands. Tearing it open, he fussed over the coins inside. They were wrapped in two long tubes of cellophane.

"Is this all?" he asked, knowing full well that it was.

"Oh, yes," Suk said pleadingly. "They are all there."

"Very well," Chiun said. Snapping the box shut, he handed it to Remo. "Where is the other item?"

"Other item?" Suk said. He was frightened beyond reason.

"The wood carving," Remo interjected.

"Oh, that. I no longer have it."

"What!" Chiun bellowed.

The old man picked up Suk as if he weighed no more than a packet of complimentary cashews. Kimono sleeves snapping, he hurled Suk against the bulkhead of the plane. Suk slammed full force against the wall. He slid painfully into a window seat.

Chiun was on him again. Yanking the whimpering man to his feet once more, the Master of Sinanju flung Suk to the other side of the plane. As he slammed against the far wall, the nearest Plexiglas window cracked beneath Suk's elbow. His bone fared no better.

Suk shrieked in pain. He scampered back against the wall as Chiun again approached him.

"I know who has it," Suk begged, cradling his arm.

"Who?" Chiun demanded.

"A man. A German," Suk panted. "Adolf Kluge."

"Kluge?" Remo asked, coming up behind Chiun. For the first time, this wasted trip began to interest him.

"Kluge?" Chiun demanded of the air. "Who is this fiend who springs up at my every turn?" As he asked the question, he shook Keijo Suk so violently the thief's molars rattled.

"I do not know," Suk whined. "He approached me a year ago for business reasons. He wished for me to broker a deal between our government and one of his companies. Only last week did he ask me to steal the piece of wood."

"Where can we find him?" Remo asked.

"I do not know," Suk breathed. "He always called me. He was going to contact me once more when he-" he looked down, ashamed "-when he collected the balance owed me for taking the carving."

"So, Kluge expected to come into some cash," Remo said.

"What?" Heidi asked. She hadn't understood a word of what had just been said until Remo's last comment in English. "What has Kluge to do with this?"

"He's the one who has our quarter," Remo explained.

"Not for long," Chiun said. He spun back to Suk.

"Mercy," the thief begged. He was on his knees, sobbing uncontrollably.

Chiun's lip curled as he regarded the pathetic figure before him. "You will have it though you did not earn it," he intoned.

A tight hand drew back and fired forward, slamming against Suk's chest. The thief's eyes sprang wide as his fragile heart exploded inside his chest cavity. Suk dropped forward onto the carpeted aisle of the plane, his mouth leaking a puddle of deep red.

Chiun pulled the box of taped coins from Remo. Wheeling, he marched up to Suk's waiting Korean entourage.

"You," Chiun said, pointing to one man. "Take these to my village. My caretaker will be there to collect these." A cautionary nail found a spot on the man's throat. "And be warned, I know precisely how many are there."

The official cast an eye to the body of Suk. He was unaware that he had begun nodding enthusiastically.

"Yes, Master of Sinanju. At once, Master of Sinanju."

He took the box in quivering hands, racing out the door and down the stairs. A moment later, Remo spied him out the window, running for all he was worth across the cold tarmac.

"And you," Chiun said to the other. "Remove this carrion from the Master of Sinanju's plane." He indicated the body of Keijo Suk.

"At once, Master of Sinanju," the government agent said.

As the agent hustled down the aisle and hefted the corpse awkwardly to his shoulders, Remo sidled up to Chiun.

"Your plane?" he asked.

"It is the least they can do, considering my ordeal," Chiun said. "After all, it was a representative of this despicable regime who violated the sanctity of the Master's House." Thus justified, he marched past Remo and took his usual seat over the left wing of the plane.

"I hope the despicable regime agrees with you," Remo muttered, shaking his head.

He ushered a confused Heidi Stolpe back down the aisle. The guard came past in the other direction carrying the body of the late Keijo Suk.

Chapter 16

Adolf Kluge hated living hand to mouth. As head of IV, he was accustomed to an opulent life-style. Now he was reduced to begging for every meal.

When he had taken over the stewardship of IV, one of his first acts had been to sever the organization's ties with Germany's neo-Nazi underground. He considered the years of money that had been lavished on these groups by his predecessors to be money completely wasted.

But Kluge was not without some vision. He had somehow planned for a day where he might be in the situation he found himself in now. It must have been on some instinctive level, for he certainly never truly expected it to happen. Lucky for him, his instincts had been correct.

Kluge had wisely not cut IV's ties with every neoNazi group. The ones that remained-while not eager to part with their money-were loyal to the cause and, therefore, loyal to Adolf Kluge. They shared what little they had with him.

It was only right. After all, at one time it had been Kluge's money.

Feeling the lightness of his wallet every step of the way, Adolf Kluge stepped into the lobby of Berlin's Unser Fanatischer Bank. Trying to preserve the sense of arrogance he had displayed his entire life, Kluge marched boldly over to the receptionist's desk.

"Please inform Mr. Riefenstahl that I wish to see him," he said officiously.

The woman was aware that Kluge was a large depositor at Unser Fanatischer. She immediately dialed the interoffice number of the bank manager, unaware of the hard times that had recently befallen Herr Kluge.

She found out soon enough.

When Riefenstahl answered the phone, the receptionist informed him of Kluge's request. There was a great deal of talking from the other end of the line-much more than there would have been a few short weeks before.

The receptionist grew nervous. Embarrassed, she tried to avoid eye contact with Kluge who stood-growing ever angrier-before her highly polished half-shell desk.

The bank manager was actually trying to avoid him! A far cry from the way the man had always fawned over Kluge when the IV leader controlled accounts in the millions.

It was more than Adolf Kluge could bear. Lunging across the desk, he ripped the phone from the startled receptionist's hand.

"Listen to me, you fat Prussian pig," Kluge hissed. He was so angry, his words launched spittle into the receiver. "I need access to my safe-deposit box. And unless you want me to turn you over to the national banking commission, I would suggest you drag your greasy carcass down here now!" He slammed the phone into the cradle.

Huffing and puffing and running as if the building were on fire, Otto Riefenstahl appeared down the lobby staircase twelve seconds later.

"Herr Kluge," he begged obsequiously. "Forgive the error. I was led to understand that you were someone else." As he mopped his forehead with a sopping handkerchief, he shot an appropriately dissatisfied look at the receptionist.

"My safe-deposit box," Kluge said, jaw clenched tightly. His eyes shot fiery daggers at the portly bank manager.

"Of course." The man smiled nervously. Riefenstahl waddled rapidly away from the desk. Kluge followed, hands clasped behind his back, fingers clenching and unclenching anxiously.

They detoured around the teller windows, heading through a doorway at the end of the long row of glass-enclosed booths. A long hallway lined with several offices led to yet another door-this one polished steel. Riefenstahl used a special key from a chain hooked to his ample midsection to gain admittance into the room.

A short hallway led to a bare archway. This opened into a large inner room. The bank's safe-deposit boxes were lined up along three of the four walls. There were hundreds of simple metal doors, each with two slots designed for two separate keys.

It was always cool in here, even in the summer. In winter, it was worse. Kluge shivered as they passed the rows of identical boxes and walked over to the larger cabinets that lined the narrowest wall. These were as big and plain as high-school lockers.

"Which was it, Herr Kluge?" Riefenstahl asked nervously.

"Achtzig," Kluge said.

Riefenstahl went to the eightieth locker and inserted his master key into the right slot. Kluge inserted his own key from the chain he had taken from his pocket.

They turned the keys simultaneously. The locks popped obediently. Kluge pulled down on the handle, and the door sprang open, revealing a large metal box.

"Let me know when you are finished," Riefenstahl said.

When Kluge said nothing more to him, the grateful bank manager hurried from the chilly room. Once Riefenstahl was gone, Kluge hefted the large box from the bottom of the locker. Bearing it ahead of him like a sacred relic, he placed it on one of several tables that were arranged around the center of the floor. Inserting the same key he had used on the safe deposit box door, Kluge opened the lock on the top of the large box.

There was not much inside. Just a dusty collection of useless things his father had been proud of. Things that Kluge had never really bothered with since assuming his position as head of IV.

His family's lineage had been lovingly recorded and preserved. Not that Kluge had ever believed that he was a direct descendant of the Nibelungenlied protagonist Siegfried. The entire history had been recopied sometime at the end of the last century. The pages of the book in which the Kluge family tree had been written were yellowed with age.

Kluge had only recently begun to lend credence to the old stories. Encountering the Sinanju Masters had been the catalyst. If they were real, then perhaps his father's fanciful stories were true, as well.

Looking down on those pages, he only wished that someone had had the sense of history to save the original manuscripts from which this one book had been compiled. They would have been priceless. Kluge placed the book to one side.

Aside from the lone manuscript, there was a folded Nazi flag tucked into a corner of the box. A memento of his late father's war days. There was other assorted junk-the Iron Cross, old letters. Kluge went instinctively to the two letters that were written and signed by Hitler himself. He had always sought these two out, even as a boy. He examined their dog-eared edges for a moment before putting them aside.

It was a paltry pile of useless junk.

The item Kluge had been looking for was at the bottom. Atop it, half-tucked into a yellowed envelope, was an old photograph.

Kluge picked up the envelope. Pulling the photo out, he examined it carefully.

He was disappointed to find that it was not as he hoped it would be. Most of the details of the map were clear; however, there had been an unintentional blurring in the lower right-hand corner of the picture.

He cursed himself inwardly for not being certain the box containing the IV section of the map had been spirited away with the rest of his personal belongings. There had been so much planning at the end, and-truth be told-even though he imagined early on that the village was doomed, he had never expected that the men from Sinanju would find a way to bankrupt the secret Nazi group. He had always thought to set up IV elsewhere. Now that his businesses were gone and he was forced to resort to archaeological sleuthing, all he had to go on was a blurry old photograph.

Well, not all, he realized.

The final item in the box was in an old black felt bag, which Kluge lifted gently from the bottom of the metal container. Unknotting the dingy cord at the neck of the bag, Kluge slipped a flat square object from inside.

Kluge examined the details of his family's section of the Siegfried block carving. It was in excellent shape. Better shape, in fact, than the IV square.

That piece of the puzzle-now missing-had been collected by his father during the height of Nazi Germany's power. The descendants of Hagan's family were weak. And, as an odd quirk of fate would have it, they had found themselves at that unfortunate time in history to be of a particular religious sect that was not in line with the progressive reforms of the fascist government.

After they were dead, Kluge's father had pillaged their belongings. His search had turned up not only the block carving, but also the stained-glass windows which would eventually be installed at the South American fortress of IV.

Kluge supposed he owed the Hagan family a favor. If not for the picture of Siegfried holding a piece of the block in that window, he might never have realized the significance of the sections already in his possession.

Kluge quickly slipped the block, as well as the picture of the missing piece, inside the cloth bag. Replacing the other items inside the safe-deposit box, he secured the lid. He put the container back inside the locker, shutting the door tightly.

After he locked the door, he collected the black bag from the table.

Though the Hagan block was no longer in his possession, he did have a photograph of it. That, along with his family's section and the Sinanju section so thoughtfully provided by Keijo Suk, had already given him a fairly strong idea where the treasure might be hidden.

But he needed to know for certain. There was one section left. And Adolf Kluge knew where it would be.

He hurried from the room, not bothering to tell the obese bank manager Riefenstahl that he was through.

Chapter 17

The North Korean government was surprisingly generous in loaning its plane to the Master of Sinanju and his party. Provided, of course, that the Master of Sinanju not blame the actions of Keijo Suk on the North Korean government.

Via the pilot's radio, Chiun had flatly stated that there would be no provisions. Government authorities had said that this was good; too, and told the pilot to do as he was told.

The jet had been cheerily refueled and allowed to take off from Pyongyang airport without delay. To Remo's delight and Chiun's dismay, there were no British situation comedies being played on the plane.

The long flight back to Germany was uneventful. As the plane finally began its descent over Berlin, Remo looked out the window at the rapidly growing rooftops.

"It feels like we just left here," he griped.

"I will not complain," Heidi said in her soft Spanish accent. "I spend far too little time here."

"Do not talk of spending, swindler," Chiun accused from the seat behind them.

"Is he going to start again?" Heidi asked Remo.

"One thing you should know about him," Remo explained. "He may quiet down for a continent or two, but he never really stops."

"Really, Remo, I do not know why you would converse with this flimflammer," Chiun called over the top of the seat. "We merely agreed to do business with her-we do not have to be nice to her. Look on her as you would a rat catcher or the Rooty Rotor man."

"This is your deal, Little Father," Remo reminded him. "At this point I'm just going along to zap Kluge."

"Remember that when we find the gold," Chiun cautioned. With that, the Master of Sinanju fell silent.

Remo rolled his eyes. "If we find it," he muttered.

"We have three-quarters of the map," Heidi reminded him. "Success may be in our grasp." She nodded serenely. "It is as it was intended to be."

"How so?" Remo asked, bored. He was looking out the window for the regimented runway lines of Tegel Airport.

"Siegfried was actually quite clever," Heidi said. "According to my family records, which date back to the time the carving was made, Siegfried wished that the money be divided equitably at the time of his passing. His son would have a segment, as well as each of our ancestors. At the time of his death, the location of the fourth piece would be revealed and the three interested parties would be able to find the Hoard. We could then divide it in thirds."

Behind them, Chiun snorted. "Poppycock," he volunteered.

Heidi pressed ahead. "With our two factions united, we need only bring aboard the descendant of Siegfried. If he is willing, we could all be much richer by morning."

"Wait a minute," Remo said, spinning away from the window. "You're not talking about cutting a deal with Kluge?"

"If necessary," Heidi admitted.

"Any separate deals you make will come out of your fifty percent," Chiun piped in.

"Think of another option," Remo told Heidi. She shrugged.

"We do not necessarily need to make a deal," she suggested. "As long as we acquire his portion of the block carving."

"No deals," Remo said firmly. He turned back to the small window. The airport runway was racing rapidly up to meet them.

Heidi sighed. "As you wish. It is a shame, however. We have come so far to fulfill the wishes of an ancient hero. This quest was intended by Siegfried to be a group effort by those deserving of the treasure."

"I deserve it all," called the Master of Sinanju's squeaky voice.

The Korean jet touched down with a heavy jounce and a shriek of tires.

AS HE WAITED in the car, Hirn Zeitzler touched the small flesh-colored bandage on his nose with delicate fingertips.

It still hurt, but nowhere near as much as it had when his nose rings had been ripped out.

That was two weeks ago.

Two weeks since the killer with the dead eyes had assaulted Hirn and his neo-Nazi friends in the Schweinebraten Bier Hall in Juterbog. Two weeks since the same man had killed Gus Holloway and Kempten Olmutz-Hohenzollerkirchen. Two weeks since the deaths of Nazi sympathizers had stopped. The assassin was obviously gone.

And with his departure, those who had been lucky enough to survive his attacks had woven tales of great heroism in which they played the dual role of both victim and hero.

Hirn's nose had been shredded so badly that it had required more than forty stitches to piece it back together. He had spent much of the past two weeks in great pain and with his proboscis swathed lavishly in gauze bandages. However, any discomfort he may have felt was not enough to stop Hirn from claiming that he was one of the ones who had stopped the assassin in his tracks.

Since the attacks by the killer had ceased after his encounter with Hirn, he felt safe making this boast.

Of course, he had had the good sense to wait a week and a half before bringing it up among the neoNazi beer-hall circuit. After all, Hirn wasn't completely stupid. The last thing he wanted was to invite the angry return of the man who had liberated him of not only his nose rings, but also of much of the cartilaginous ridge between his nasal hemispheres.

Once he had begun weaving his tall tales, it had taken just under two days for Hirn to actually begin believing his own stories concerning his deadly encounter with the mysterious assassin.

As they waited in the car, Hirn and his skinhead companions whiled away the time laughing and cursing as they recounted the story to one another. Each of the men managed to embellish the account further.

One of the other two-a youth named Erwin-had already gotten the remnants of his nose pierced. A silver swastika dangled on a chain from out the cluster of deep red furrows where his skin had been pieced together.

"Did that hurt?" Hirn asked, pointing to the chain. At the moment, he had no strong desire to have anyone poke anything through his nose.

"Not as much as it hurt for that American!" Erwin said with a raucous laugh.

Though they hadn't a clue what he meant, the other skinheads laughed uproariously.

The air inside the vehicle was fetid, the interiors of the windows covered with a thick fog of condensation. Their laughter carried to the sidewalk outside. Eventually, and with much difficulty, they got control of themselves. Eyes watering, they took long drinks from cans of thick German beer.

"Is he coming?" Erwin asked after he was through swilling his beer. He scratched the tip of his nose.

Hirn could not yet bring himself to do that. He was afraid his nose would come loose under his fingers-"What time is it?" he asked.

As if on cue, the rear door of the vehicle popped open. The trio of skinheads searched through the pile of trash on the seats and floor for their guns. Only Erwin found his. From the passenger's-side seat, he pushed the gun toward the figure who was climbing in the rear of the car next to Hirn Zeitzler.

As Erwin did so, Adolf Kluge grabbed the gun in his left hand, at the same time launching forward with his right. The rabbit punch connected with Erwin's quilt-work nose.

Howling in pain, Erwin released the gun. He grabbed at his nose, which had begun to spring several major leaks, none of which at the customary openings.

Kluge settled in beside Hirn, tossing Erwin's gun to the mountain of discarded cans in the footwell. "I do not have time for your stupidity," Kluge warned.

"Heil Hitler," Hirn said proudly. He slurred the words.

Kluge ignored him. "We must hurry," he said to Hirn.

Erwin cried anew as a fresh seam opened up along the bridge of his nose.

"Shut him up," Kluge hissed to the man behind the wheel.

The other skinhead in the front seat did his best to quiet Erwin. It seemed to help, for it gave the bleeding neo-Nazi someone against whom he could vent his anger.

As the two men in the front seat got into a slapping fight, Kluge concentrated on Hirn.

"You have contacted your men?" the IV leader asked.

"Yes, sir," Hirn enthused drunkenly. "How many?"

"Almost one hundred," Him said.

"How many?" Kluge repeated, more angry this time.

Hirn glanced up at Erwin. He was still bleeding as he fought with the driver. His hands were slick with blood.

"Fifty-eight," Hirn admitted. "But I called one hundred," he added quickly. "More than one hundred. But this was all that agreed to go. You must understand, Herr Kluge, the failure in Paris over the summer weakened the movement. No one has the belly for it. And the American killer who was slaughtering our men did even more damage. The three of us stopped him too late."

"You did not stop him at all, idiot!" Kluge snapped. "Save your tales of glory for the fools with whom you spend your drunken nights."

Hirn was like a chastised dog before his furious master. He grew very quiet, staring nervously at the head of IV.

"Fifty-eight," Kluge complained to himself. He shook his head. "It will have to do." He turned to Hirn. "You have rented the vehicles?"

"I had my men do it this morning."

"Good. See to it that all of your men show up at the designated rendezvous. I want fifty-eight there, Hirn. Not fifty-six. Not fifty-seven. It is going to be difficult enough with so few. Is that understood?"

Hirn looked at Erwin. The bleeding was slowing, but he was still a bloodstained mess.

"Yes, sir," Hirn said enthusiastically.

"Fine," Kluge said. "Now, before we can leave on this expedition, I need one last thing."

"Sir?"

Blue eyes washed in gray fixed on the young skinhead.

"I need you to steal a block of wood."

THE STOLPE FAMILY castle was a huge old-world edifice resting on a jagged slab of rock in the Harz Mountains in the Niedersachsen region of north-central Germany. It sprawled morosely across the craggy mountain peak in hideous contrast to the beautiful early-winter countryside through which they had just passed.

As they drove up the winding black road to the castle's front entrance, Remo noted the only thing that might have made the scene complete would have been a dose of crackling lightning and a couple of howling wolves.

"I don't want to sound rude or anything," Remo said as they passed beneath the rusted portcullis and into the spacious inner courtyard, "but this has got to be the crummiest castle I've ever seen."

"It has been in my family for generations," Heidi countered, a faraway look in her azure eyes. Remo could tell by her tone that she didn't disagree with his assessment. Following Heidi's instructions, he took the smooth path that skirted the inner battlements. Remo parked their rented car near the massive stone entrance to the tall, circular donjon.

"What is that?" the Master of Sinanju asked in disgust as they exited the car. He pointed to a deep furrow that had been carved along the exterior wall of the inner tower.

Heidi's cheeks flushed. Remo was surprised that the woman who had been so brave and ruthless in South America and Korea could be embarrassed.

"My uncle's idea. He was the last Stolpe to live here. It is supposed to be a moat."

"A moat?" Chiun asked. "At the interior? Tell me, girl, why was your uncle not committed to an asylum? This defacement is obviously the work of a deranged mind."

Again Heidi didn't argue.

"He thought that this was the image of a castle people would like. You see, we are forced in better weather to rent out to tourists," she said sadly.

Remo couldn't help but feel sorry for her. "That's a shame," he said, consolingly.

"A shame?" Chiun scoffed. "It is a crime. A fine home like this should never be turned over to fat American hamburger eaters and their squealing offspring."

"I agree." Heidi nodded. "And it will not be again if we are successful. Come, the carving is in here."

She led them up the half-dozen steep steps and through the rounded door frame of the old dungeon wing.

"This building predates the time of Otto the Great," Heidi remarked as she led them through a narrow corridor.

Chiun snorted.

"Did I say something wrong again?" Heidi asked warily.

"It's just that Otto wasn't so great as far as we're concerned," Remo said. "He used us to help him beat back the Magyars and enslave the Poles and the Bohemians, but then he got all caught up with the Church of Rome. Which," he said to Chiun, "I don't think is all that bad an idea."

"Spoken like one who was raised by virginal wimple wearers," Chiun commented.

"The nuns weren't so bad," Remo said defensively.

"Go on," Chiun said, striking his chest. "Defend them if you feel you must. Each ungrateful word twists the knife further into your poor old father's ailing heart."

"Put a sock in it, Tallulah Bankhead," Remo suggested.

The corridor ended at a narrow staircase. This led down into the old dungeon of the castle. At the bottom of the stairs, a replica of an old-fashioned wooden door was slightly ajar. Flickering torchlight, as well as hushed voices, came from within the room beyond. There was the sound of metal scraping against rock.

"There should not be anyone here," Heidi whispered.

Remo pressed his fingers to his lips. He and Chiun slipped down the staircase, making no more noise than a pair of thousand-year-old spirits. Heidi followed on tiptoes.

The voices grew louder as they neared the open door.

"How am I supposed to know?" someone said in German. "He said it was behind one of these."

"I checked those already," insisted another.

Remo-who was the only member of their group not fluent in German-stuck his head around the door frame. He caught sight of three figures inside one of the dungeon cells. Their actions were illuminated by a burning torch that had been jammed into a metal hoop in the wall.

Remo was surprised to find he recognized the trio of skinheads. Each of the three men he had met at the Schweinebraten Bier Hall carried a crowbar that he was jamming into the large fissures between the stones of the cell wall.

"Wait here," Remo whispered to Heidi. Curious, he sauntered into the room along with the Master of Sinanju. The men in the cell were so engrossed in their work that they didn't notice their visitors.

Remo paused near the rusted bars of the cell. He leaned against the open door.

"Hey, fellas," Remo said brightly. "What are you doing nosing around in here?"

The trio of skinheads nearly jumped out of their skins. As soon as they saw who it was who had spoken to them, their initial surprise rocketed into the stratosphere of abject terror.

Three separate hands flashed instinctively for three separate noses.

"Good," Remo said, stepping into the cell. "We don't have to get reacquainted. What are you doing here?"

The cell was small. Too small for much maneuvering. In spite of that, Erwin's fear of the terrifying Nazi killer got the better of him. As Remo approached, he took his crowbar in a double-handed grip and swung it fiercely at Remo's head. At least, that was Erwin's hastily hatched plan.

However, at the point where the crowbar should have made contact with Remo's face, something went desperately wrong. Remo's head was no longer where it was supposed to be.

Even as his eyes were registering the dull afterimage of Remo ducking out of the way of his mighty swing, Erwin's momentum was carrying the heavy crowbar in a wide arc. The bar whizzed around the cell, slamming with a loud finality into the forehead of the third skinhead. The man dropped like an undercooked strudel to the damp stone floor of the cell.

Erwin's brain was trying to register what his body had just done. He stared dumbly down at the corpse of his friend. So amazed was he by what had transpired that he didn't feel the crowbar being plucked from his hands. He only briefly became aware of the metal rod as it was bent over the back of his skull. Then he was no longer aware of anything.

Remo tossed the twisted crowbar onto Erwin's body.

"So much for Larry and Curly," he said dryly. Remo turned to the surviving skinhead.

"We were sent to find a block of wood," Hirn blurted out. His hand was still over his bandaged nose.

"This was what they were after," Heidi Stolpe said, excited. She stepped past Chiun and made her way into the cell.

Heidi tugged at a rusted manacle that was secured to the wall. It pulled away easily, along with the facade of the rock beneath. A hollow behind revealed the contours of yet another section of the Siegfried carving. Heidi took out the wooden block, handling it with great reverence.

"Whoever they are working for must know at least part of my family's history to know of this hiding place," she said, examining the block.

"Of course," Remo said sarcastically. "Isn't everyone in on this dink-ass treasure hunt of yours?" Heidi and Chiun weren't listening to him. The Master of Sinanju had padded into the cell behind Heidi. Both of them were observing the carvings in the surface of the ancient petrified wood. They quickly left, arguing about the true location of a river.

Remo turned his attention back to the lone skinhead.

"Who sent you?" he asked Hirn.

"What?" Hirn asked, startled. He had been watching Chiun and Heidi bicker.

"If you're hard of hearing, I can match your ears to your nose." He reached for the sides of Hirn's head.

"Kluge! His name is Kluge. Adolf Kluge." Remo's bloodless lips thinned to invisibility. Hirn recognized the predator's glint in his eyes. The skinhead again pressed a hand over his injured nose. His free hand he placed over an ear. He was forced to jam the other ear protectively into his shoulder. "Where is he?" Remo asked.

"What?" Hirn yelled.

"Oh, for heaven's sake." Remo slapped the skinhead's hands away from his face. "Kluge," he repeated. "Where?"

"At an inn," Him said, nervously rubbing his smarting hands. "Waiting for us. It's in the Black Forest." He gave Remo the name of the lodge. "I can take you there," he offered lamely.

"Thanks," Remo said, "I already have a guide." He launched a hard finger deep into Hirn Zeitzler's broad forehead. Surprisingly, the neo-Nazi's brain must have performed some function in life, for when it ceased to operate, so too did Hirn Zeitzler. As the skinhead was collapsing atop his neo-Nazi comrades, Remo was already heading up the dungeon stairs.

His cruel face held the promise of violent death.

Chapter 18

He sat alone on the terrace. Waiting.

The late-afternoon air was cold. Adolf Kluge watched his breath escape in tiny puffs of steam. He checked his watch.

Late.

Hirn should have been here hours ago. It was a simple matter. The only way Kluge could have made it simpler would have been to take them by the hand and lead them to the block carving himself. These skinhead creatures were moronic.

He would have sent one of the Numbers, but there were precious few of them left. Some were here. He had sent more with his aide, Herman, to help with the South American relocation of the IV villagers. Most of the genetically engineered men were dead. To Kluge's knowledge, only one was unaccounted for. He was the last of the four-man team Kluge had sent to Berlin weeks ago to intercept the two Masters of Sinanju at the airport. Presumably that one had ended up like his companions. All dead. All thanks to the men from Sinanju.

Kluge glanced at his watch again. Barely fifteen seconds had elapsed since the last time he checked. All the planning he had done would come to naught if Hirn failed to get the final piece of the ancient puzzle. The skinhead's friends were already camped in the woods up the road from the Pension Kirchmann. Only thirty-eight of them had shown up. In truth, that was more than Kluge had expected. He had augmented the band of skinheads with a few of the surviving Numbers from the IV village.

Kluge had the vehicles and the men. If the gold was in the right place, he would have that, too. But only if Hirn came down from whatever drug- or alcohol-induced stupor he was in today and brought Kluge the one thing he needed to make the whole plan come together.

Somewhere in the forest nearby, an animal snorted.

Kluge had never spent much time in this area of Germany, but in spite of his newness to the region he knew one thing: this part of the Black Forest had been appropriately named.

Staring into the woods from his terrace at the rear of the inn was like staring into the great abyss. The trees were ghastly, gnarled aberrations. As old, it seemed, as time itself. Kluge tried to see between the nearest ones, attempting to find whatever animal had made the noise. It was probably just a local dog.

He leaned forward, looking intently, but saw nothing.

The first snow had not yet fallen. It would have helped to have something light as background. Even just a dusting of powdery crystals would have reflected some light.

Whatever had made the noise, it was probably long gone now. Kluge settled back into his chair. His head hadn't touched the fanned wooden back of the handmade chair when Kluge felt a sudden, intense pressure around his throat.

It was as if all of the veins and muscles of his neck had somehow impossibly animated themselves and had wrapped snakelike around his throat. He felt the blood clog in his head. His eyes watered and bulged as he grabbed at the constricting force at his throat.

Instead of finding a neck, Kluge felt a hand. Woozily he followed the hand to an abnormally thick wrist. As his vision swirled around him, his spinning gaze somehow located the person at the other end of the hand.

Adolf Kluge found himself staring into the eyes of the Angel of Death.

"The gold rush is over, Kluge," Remo said tightly.

Kluge gasped for breath, but none could pass beyond Remo's clenching fingers. He pulled at Remo's hand, but to no avail. It was as powerful as a vise.

At the moment when he was about to black out, the strong grip relaxed slightly.

"Wait a minute," Remo said, peering intently at Adolf Kluge. "I know you."

Kluge sucked down a pained lungful of air. His head began to clear.

"Yes," Kluge rasped, nodding. He found the effort difficult with Remo's hand still clasped around his throat.

"From Paris, right? You claimed to be a British secret agent. You're the one who whacked Smith."

"Yes," Kluge panted. "I helped you stop Schatz."

"Helped, my ass," Remo said, remembering the neo-Nazi takeover of Paris. "He was a renegade from Four. The only reason you wanted to stop him was to cover your tracks. It didn't do any good. I'm here now. And you're checking out."

Remo increased the pressure on Kluge's neck once more.

A frantic voice shrieked suddenly from the corner of the inn. The Master of Sinanju had just come running into view near the well-tended shrubberies.

"Unhand him!" Chiun shouted desperately. Kimono sleeves flapped as he raced up along the rear of the building beneath the dining-room windows. Heidi trailed behind him.

Remo and the Master of Sinanju had gone in opposite directions when they arrived at the Pension Kirchmann. Remo had been lucky enough to stumble on Kluge first.

Chiun vaulted up over the low hedge that rimmed the terrace. He landed next to Remo and the seated Kluge.

"I'm not letting him go, Chiun," Remo warned evenly.

"Remo, your village needs that treasure," Chiun cried.

"That bunch of ingrates has so much loot they could eat it, wear it and smoke it for a hundred years and not make a dent in it," Remo retorted. He continued strangling Kluge.

Heidi Stolpe rounded the terrace and ran up the rear stairs. Sliding to a stop, she watched the drama unfold, helpless to do anything to stop Remo.

Chiun's tone grew soft. "Do it for me," he pleaded.

Remo's hand relaxed. He looked at Kluge's bright red bullfrog features. He glanced at the Master of Sinanju. The man who had given him everything in life. He hesitated.

"Smith's orders were clear, Little Father," Remo said.

"Pah! Smith's orders," Chiun mocked. "This gold will be with us long after Smith has issued his last demented decree."

Remo's grip had slackened to the point where Adolf Kluge was able to suck in a huge gulp of air. The IV leader wheezed painfully.

"Gold doesn't matter to me. Never has."

"It matters to me," Chiun insisted, eyes imploring. "Therefore it should matter to you."

Chiun had tossed down his trump card. Toying with Remo's affection for him. Remo knew that the wily Korean was only playing with his emotions. Unfortunately Chiun was right. Even though he was motivated purely by greed, it would hurt Chiun if Remo killed Kluge. For this reason alone, Remo couldn't bring himself to complete the act.

With great reluctance, he released his grip on the gasping IV leader.

Kluge hacked and wheezed alternately, dragging cold, ragged mouthfuls of air down into his oxygen-deprived lungs.

Chiun smiled. "You are a good son," he said proudly.

"No," Remo answered solemnly. His eyes were flint. "That's a load of baloney. You wanted to make me feel guilty, and it worked. End of story."

Chiun was taken aback by Remo's candor. "You were being rash. Sinanju needs that gold."

Remo shook his head sadly.

"I'm not buying it anymore, Chiun," he said. "You want the gold. Now you'll get it. The almighty buck has always been the love of your life. Maybe it'd be good for you to remember that that's what got Bal-Mung into trouble."

Remo turned abruptly away from the silenced Chiun. Marching past Heidi, he began walking alone across the vast, darkening lawn behind the rambling, old-fashioned inn.

He didn't look back.

HOUR FED INTO HOUR.

Night had taken firm hold of the ancient forest around the Pension Kirchmann. Elongated rectangles of amber light stabbed across the black lawn from the inn's brightly lit rear windows, marred only by the crisscross pattern of the painted wooden strips separating each pane.

Heidi Stolpe pulled her woolen coat more tightly around her shoulders as she crossed the sprawling lawn. Her years spent in South America had spoiled her. She wasn't used to such cold weather. And winter was only just beginning.

She found Remo sitting in the dead autumn grass, his back propped against the trunk of a huge European ash.

Remo's arms were crossed stiffly. He stared angrily at another nearby tree. If looks alone could fell a tree, the one Remo was scowling at would have already been halfway to the lumber mill.

Heidi stared at him for a long time. When he realized she wasn't going to go away, he finally looked up.

"What do you want?" he asked, flat of voice.

"I only wished to see that you were all right," she said gently. "Your father said you would be."

"You mean Daddy Warbucks stopped wheeling and dealing long enough to think of me?" Remo said, feigning shock.

"Do not be overly harsh with him, Remo. He is not a young man. Appreciate him for who he is." She paused, as if considering whether she should speak further. At long last, she continued. "I never knew my father," she whispered, staring wistfully into the forest.

"He isn't my biological father, Heidi," Remo said.

Her smile held an odd sadness. "I am not blind," she said softly. "But biology cannot be everything, can it?"

There was something deeply troubling in the way she said it, as if her life held some sorrowful burden that was almost too great for her to bear.

Her sadness touched him.

For a time years ago, Remo had searched for his biological parents. But when he learned the truth of the two strangers whose DNA he carried, he found that they could never replace the man he had come to know as his spiritual father. And here was Heidi-virtually a stranger to him-defending Chiun. Remo's heart went out to her.

"I'll get over it," he murmured.

Heidi smiled once more. She hugged herself for warmth. "Aren't you cold?" she asked, changing the subject.

He had worn nothing but a thin T-shirt since she met him. It had to be below freezing out here.

"No," Remo said simply.

She nodded. "I suppose I should get back inside. Before they cut me out of the deal altogether."

"How's it going?" Remo asked.

"Kluge wanted to divide it into thirds. He argued that this was how it was historically supposed to be."

"Chiun didn't go along with that," Remo said firmly.

"Not in the least." She laughed. "He still maintains that the deal we made is the one that supersedes all others."

"The one where he gets fifty percent," Remo said knowingly.

"Yes," Heidi said. "I eventually agreed to split my fifty percent evenly with Kluge, if only to get all of this over with. That seemed to satisfy them both."

"For now."

She agreed. From the way she stared off toward the bright lights of the inn, Remo could tell she was thinking about the future. "Kluge has trucks and men to haul the treasure. I think it is for this reason as much as any that Chiun is allowing him to live."

"You haven't known him long, but you know him well," Remo said with a shrewd smirk.

"He and I are very much alike. I am desperate to keep my family's property from falling into bankruptcy. It is a far worse thing, Remo, to have had money and lost it than to never have had it in the first place. We were nobles at one time. With the Nibelungen Hoard, we will be again."

"I don't know what the big fuss is about gold," Remo grumbled. "It's just like any other metal."

She squatted, patting him gently on the shoulder. "Tell that to the landlord when the rent is due," she said plaintively.

Remo felt an odd tingle of electricity from her touch. There was an air of mystery about her that he hadn't noticed before. Her concern for his relationship with Chiun and the way she shielded the secrets in her past-it was almost as if there was a strange connection between the two of them.

Remo had no time to act on these newfound stirrings before she was gone.

Heidi's hand brushed away from his shoulder. She turned abruptly on her heel. Marching briskly, she headed back across the frozen yard toward the sprawling old inn.

THE LIGHTS BURNED well after midnight as Chiun, Kluge and Heidi labored over all the details of the expedition.

Kluge thought that he should be compensated for the use of his people and equipment. Chiun agreed and told him to see Heidi. Heidi said that this was out of the question since she had already cut her share of the take in half. She suggested that the cost of mounting the expedition was offset by his dishonesty in stealing the Sinanju piece of the carving.

Chiun agreed with all of this, provided it didn't cost him anything.

It was approaching 12:30 a.m. when Kluge finally agreed to absorb the cost of the trucks and supplies. The three of them then set about recording the terms of their contract on paper to allay any confusion as to precisely what terms had been agreed upon. This started the whole negotiating process anew.

At one point, Remo stuck his head in the door to the inn's library where the trio was negotiating. He announced that he was turning in for the night. No one-not even Heidi-seemed to notice he was there.

It was approaching two in the morning when their meeting at last broke up. Each of the interested parties went to bed with a version of the contract, handwritten by the Master of Sinanju himself in Korean, English and German.

The ink was still wet on his copy of the contract as Adolf Kluge made his weary way up to his bedroom. He shut the door behind him with a soft click.

Alone, Kluge massaged his aching throat as he stepped over to his suitcase.

Folding the seven sheets of paper carefully, he tucked the contract in his meager luggage. He dared not throw it away. Not yet. Kluge would keep up the act until it was no longer necessary.

Kluge had memorized the details of the Sinanju and Siegfried family sections of the map. Likewise, he had committed to memory all that was visible in the photograph of the Hagan piece. He had then destroyed all three.

Chiun claimed to know all that was on the Sinanju piece.

Heidi had the full Hagan segment.

But only Kluge had seen the Siegfried quarter. Apparently, the Nibelung king had told the carver to put something extra on the piece he had intended for himself. It was probably an incentive for the others to not stumble blindly into the treasure trove, even if they somehow managed to find it without the missing piece.

It was King Siegfried's revenge from beyond the grave.

And since Kluge was the only one who knew what was on that quarter, he was the only one of them who would be truly safe when they opened the age-old chamber.

Kluge would sign as many contracts as they wanted him to sign. He would argue passionately for each bargaining point as if it truly mattered to him. But it did not.

With what he had learned from the piece of the carving in his family's safe-deposit box, he had all the bargaining chips he would ever need.

Tomorrow they would find Siegfried's gold. And then Chiun, Remo and Heidi would die.

Chapter 19

The shabby convoy was lined along the ancient road that snaked through the thickest forests of Schwarzwald, eventually leading to the shores of the famous Danube River.

The sallow sky held the promise of snow, though no meteorologist had forecast it. The swollen white clouds vied with gray, pressing down like a gloomy canopy to the gnarled treetops.

It was 6:00 a.m. The Master of Sinanju went from truck to truck, inspecting tires and checking equipment. He found Remo leaning against one of the rear trucks.

"I would have thought this sort of thing would be beneath you," Remo commented as Chiun tugged at one of the bungee cords on the supply truck.

Chiun regarded him with flinty eyes. "I do what I must," he said.

"I've noticed that about you," Remo said, nodding. There was no malice in his tone.

At that moment, Heidi walked into view around the truck, nearly plowing into Remo.

"Oh-" she seemed surprised to see him "-good morning, Remo. Are you going with us?"

Remo shook his head. "Naw. I'm sitting this one out."

Heidi nodded her understanding. Her face was flushed as it had been the previous day at her family's castle. This time, however, it was not from embarrassment, but excitement.

She and Chiun began the long trek up to the lead car. It was the one Remo had rented on their return to Germany the previous day. Since he didn't intend to leave the inn until they returned, he would have no use for it.

As Chiun and Heidi walked beside the trucks full of skinheads, Remo trailed distantly behind them. He noted that there were a few of the blond-haired mutes from the IV village mixed in with the rest. Remo couldn't help but think of the vast number of them that had been mowed down by Kluge's machine guns beneath the shadow of the old stone fortress.

There were fifteen trucks lined up behind Remo's rental car. Chiun commented to Heidi that they would likely not be enough.

Kluge was seated behind the wheel of the rental car. Chiun climbed into the back. Heidi debated for a moment whether she should join the Master of Sinanju but finally decided against it. She sat in the front beside Kluge.

The head of IV started the car's engine. Behind him, the other fifteen vehicles rumbled to life. Before the car could drive off, Remo tapped on the rear window. Kluge powered it down from the front.

"Little Father?" Remo called in softly.

Chiun's hazel eyes were focussed on the road ahead.

"Yes."

Remo smiled tightly. "Good luck."

The Master of Sinanju nodded crisply. The window rolled back up with a smooth hum.

Kluge waved his arm out his own window in a circular fashion. With a crunch of gravel, the convoy began moving forward down the long road. The last of the trucks pulled away a minute later.

Standing alone on the desolate country road, Remo could only watch them go.

NEWS OF THE EXPEDITION to find the lost treasure of the Nibelungs reached the hands of the German chancellor by fax at nine o'clock that morning.

It was the sort of crank note that would have been filed and forgotten under ordinary circumstances. The thing that made this fax different from the rest was the signature. At the bottom of the page where there would ordinarily have been a name, a Roman numeral had been sketched in large, careful letters. It was the number IV.

His assistant had brought it to him at once.

The chancellor's pudgy fingers shook as he scanned the few short lines of text. Swirls of sweat had dampened the curled fax paper by the time he placed it on his desk.

This was a crisis far greater than that of a few short months before. The neo-Nazi takeover of Paris had been an embarrassing reminder of Germany's unsavory past.

But this...

This could spell financial ruin for one of the greatest economies in the West. Perhaps, if the legends were true, it could even send the world into a spiraling depression, the likes of which had not been seen since 1929.

And the Great Depression was what had given rise to Adolf Hitler. After the turmoil of the German national elections less than two short months before, anything was possible. The chancellor shuddered at the thought.

The rough details were all there in the letter. Siegfried and Hagan. Something about a long-lost map to the Hoard, alleged to have belonged to the two players in the Nibelungenlied.

All backed up by the mark of IV.

That was what confirmed it to the chancellor.

He had been aware of IV for years as it hovered at the edge of legitimate society. But until now, the actions of the secret organization had always benefitted the economy of Germany.

But this came too close on the heels of the Paris incident. If IV had finally decided to make its move to destabilize the German mark, what better way to do it than by flooding the gold market? That much of the priceless metal dumped at once would surely devalue gold prices to the point of worthlessness.

IV's holdings were already on shaky ground as it was. Vast sums of cash had been exchanged over the past few weeks. Companies thought strong were collapsing before their stockholders' eyes. Others were being sold off for bargain-basement prices. The result was a growing uncertainty in the stock market in Frankfurt.

As those reports had come in, the chancellor had thought that IV was dying. Either internally, or due to some unseen external force. He now realized he had been mistaken.

He now saw that it was most certainly part of some grand strategy by the shadowy neo-Nazi organization to make one last grab at power.

And it would destroy Germany to do it.

The chancellor pressed the button on his desk intercom.

"Yes, Chancellor?" asked his concerned assistant. It was the same nervous man who had brought the fax to the German leader.

"Get me the head of the Federal Border Police," the chancellor intoned. His voice was grave.

Chapter 20

Within the confines of his modest Folcroft office, Smith watched the uncertainty unfolding in the German market with a look of pinched displeasure.

Always an erratic business, it was difficult now to gauge precisely why the market was slipping. But there was no doubt that it was.

It was very slight at the moment. The overall market had lost only five percent of its value since trading had begun that morning. The London market had reacted to the trend, dropping by a few points, as well.

It was a ripple effect that was barely registering. Trading on Wall Street had begun only an hour before, and the European markets had yet to have anything more than a minor influence on the Dow Jones. It appeared that it did not yet matter to anyone of consequence.

Except Harold W. Smith.

Smith had been watching the markets carefully ever since he had begun dumping shares of IV companies onto the German trading floors. There had been a gradual downward trend in Frankfurt about two weeks before. This had brought a minor adjustment all around the world. Wall Street had caught on to the trend. As a result, the Dow had dipped by about thirty points before adjusting to the hit caused by the liquidation of the secret organization's vast holdings. Barely a hiccup. Afterward the markets had rebounded and had pressed bullishly upward. It had been smooth sailing ever since.

Until now.

Something was causing a downswing in European trading. And it was originating in Germany. Utilizing a program he had created during the stock-market upheavals of the late eighties, Smith accessed the private computer lines of one of Germany's largest brokerage firms. Not wasting time with the transactions themselves, Smith went immediately to the top. Typing rapidly, he accessed the company president's morning E-mail.

He found that it was all pretty dry stuff.

There were concise digests of the previous night's activities on Japan's Hang Seng Stock Exchange. A note had been sent from the lawyer of the company president's soon-to-be ex-wife. As Smith watched his screen another electronic letter materializedthis one from the man's mistress.

He chose not to be voyeuristic.

Abandoning the personal note, Smith scanned quickly through the rest of the mail. He was about to deem his search a failure and move on when he found something startling nestled comfortably between a pair of interoffice memos. Smith blinked in surprise, for a moment forgetting the dull, constant ache in his head.

IV.

The Roman numeral leaped out at him, mocking him from beneath the neat rows of letters lined up on his high-tech computer screen.

Smith scanned the electronic note. With each line, his eyes grew wider behind his rimless glasses. After he was finished reading, he backed out of the system and dived quickly into the E-mail of some of the other large Frankfurt brokerage firms. The same note had been sent to each. At the bottom of every letter was the same legend: "IV." Smith was acutely aware of his headache now. It pounded in sharp, furious bursts at the back of his skull as he exited the last of the German stockmarket computers.

He had thought he had finished them. They had no funds. Smith had been so very careful in his market manipulations. Certainly some unlucky investors had experienced losses, but he had averted a major downward turn with his deft handling of the IV accounts.

Now it might all have been for naught.

On another level, it concerned Smith that so many powerful men in Germany had been aware of IV for years and kept silent. It didn't reflect well on a nation trying to crawl out from under its fifty-year-old past.

Obviously the news contained in the E-mail had not yet exploded on the European trading floors. But it had leaked out. And the hesitation in the day's market was the result.

The reluctance to accept the fanciful tale at face value was probably the only thing that had saved the world market from collapse. But if the rumors contained in the memo proved true, the panic would be worldwide. For in the end, the stock market would react however the stock market chose to react. Smith would be helpless to avert a total meltdown.

But for now, there was still cause for hope. By the sound of his last phone conversation with the CURE director, Remo was already in the thick of things.

The future of the world's economic stability-and, by extension, civilization itself-was in the hands of CURE's enforcement arm. Harold Smith only hoped that Remo was up to the challenge.

Chapter 21

Remo sat on his private, second-story balcony at the vine-covered side of the Pension Kirchmann. The empty road leading into the Black Forest snaked off around a tree-shrouded bend far away. There had been no traffic on the desolate path since Chiun's caravan had left eight hours ago.

All Remo could do was wait.

On the floor of the balcony before his chair were several handfuls of small stones. Until an hour before, they had rested in a large decorative clay pot near the black-painted wrought-iron railing.

Remo had dumped the stones out where they could be easily reached. Bored, he would occasionally flick one with the toe of his loafer. The trunk of a tree at the side of the yard had borne the brunt of the deadly missiles.

The resulting clap as each stone hit and burrowed inside the tree was enough to draw a few increasingly curious guests from the warmth of the lodge. Two swore they had heard gunshots. Suspicious eyes strayed in Remo's direction.

Whenever they looked up from the lawn, Remo would shrug his confusion and pretend to search the treetops. Each time they would eventually give up and return to the inn. The last time they had gone inside was barely two minutes before.

Remo was pulling another rock into firing position when the room phone squawked at his elbow. Not wanting to get up from his chair, he had placed it on the cheap metal table next to him. Remo hefted the phone to his ear, at the same time snapping his toe into the next stone in line.

The rock took off like a shot. It moved in a blur, cracking audibly into the thick black tree trunk. There was a shouted voice from below. "Remo?" asked the puzzled voice of Dr. Harold W. Smith. Since lifting the receiver, Remo had failed to speak.

"Just a minute, Smitty," Remo whispered, leaning forward.

A group of lumpy Germans and Continental tourists came bustling into view below him. They were pointing at the woods and chattering excitedly to one another.

Two of them were dressed in khaki clothing. These took off through the underbrush. There was crashing and shouting as they stumbled and panted out of sight.

Their labors had a comforting effect on Remo. "Yeah, Smitty," he said. "How'd you track me down?"

In the distance, the hunters still labored through the woods.

"Your credit card," Smith explained quickly. "Are you and Chiun still searching for the Nibelungen Hoard?"

"It's always right to the chase with you, isn't it?" Remo said. He toed another rock into place. With a sharp kick, he launched it into the forest. There was renewed shouting as the stone struck a tree much farther in.

"Remo, I need to know," Smith demanded urgently.

"I'm not," Remo replied. "Chiun is."

"He is not with you?"

"Nope."

"Have you any idea where he has gone?"

"Into the Black Forest," Remo said. "Which isn't really all forest. Did you know that?"

"Yes," Smith said tersely.

"Really? 'Cause I didn't."

"Remo, I have come across information that indicates that Four is also in search of the Hoard. They plan to disrupt the economy of Germany by dumping the treasure onto the market all at once."

"So what?" Remo said. "I thought America was supposed to be all worried about Germany's big-shot new economy. I say let 'em wreck it."

"It is not that simple," Smith said. "There is an interconnectedness among economies in the modern age. And Germany's is one of the most complex of the Western world. If it topples, it could bring the rest down with it."

"Again," Remo said, "so what?"

"It could be the dawn of a new Dark Ages."

"Sinanju survived the first Dark Ages," Remo countered. "In fact, Chiun would probably be happy if the world economy collapsed. There'd be a whole slew of regional despots vying for our attention. It'd be an assassin's feeding frenzy."

Remo could hear Smith taking patient, calming breaths. He heard the rattle of one of Smith's pill bottles. The CURE director had just downed a few more baby aspirins.

"Remo," he said levelly, after the pills had gone down, "please be serious. Things could very well be as you say. If the world economy collapses, the type of people who would stand to benefit the most are those least suited to lead. We have encountered men from Four twice before. I cannot believe that you would want the likes of them leading the world. And I find it less likely that you would want to work for them."

Remo frowned. "You got that right."

Smith persisted. "Chiun, on the other hand, would have no such reservations. If he chose to throw in with Four, there would be an inevitable rift between the two of you."

"Where were you yesterday?" Remo muttered.

"What do you mean?" Smith asked.

"I mean it's already too late. Chiun took off this morning into the Black Forest with Adolf Kluge's band of merry Nazis to find the lost pile of gold." "You actually met Kluge?" Smith asked, shocked.

"So did you, Smitty," Remo said. "He's the guy who cracked you over the noggin in Paris. He's teamed up with Chiun and that girl we met in South America. They're going to divvy up the prize when they find it."

Smith was attempting to absorb this information. "You cannot allow that to happen," Smith urged. His lemony voice was tight with concern.

"Too late," Remo said. "The ink's already dry."

"You have to stop them, Remo," Smith insisted. "Chiun wouldn't listen," Remo explained, sighing. "He'd just be ticked at me for keeping him from his precious gold."

"Remo, I am ordering you to find Adolf Kluge and kill him." The serious treatment Smith was giving this was evident by his choice of words. Ordinarily he would substitute a euphemism for the distasteful kill.

"Hold that thought," Remo said all at once.

He heard a rumble of engines in the distance. For an instant, he thought Chiun was returning. He soon realized, however, that the sound was coming from the wrong direction. As he spoke to Smith, a line of drab blue official-looking trucks pulled slowly into view on the road in front of the inn. They headed off in the direction Chiun had taken.

"Hey, Smitty," Remo asked, "are they sending the army into the forest?"

"One moment," Smith said. Remo heard the drumming of Smith's fingers against his desktop. A moment later, he returned. "That would be the Federal Border Police," he said. "A letter was sent to the chancellor of Germany this morning identical to the ones E-mailed to the major brokerage houses in Frankfurt."

"Whoa," Remo said. "What letters?"

"I did not mention them?" Smith said. He sounded annoyed at his own forgetfulness. He went on to tell Remo about the notes that told of IV's plan to dump the Nibelung gold onto the German market.

"That doesn't make much sense," Remo said afterward. "Wouldn't they want the element of surprise?"

"Perhaps their arrogance is such that they don't feel concerned," Smith suggested.

"Maybe," Remo hedged. He didn't sound convinced. Brow furrowed, he watched the large column of trucks continue to roll forward into the forest. "Do you know what time those E-mails came in?" he asked.

"The first went to the chancellor at 9:00 a.m. The others were sent out shortly thereafter."

"That isn't right," Remo said, confused. "They left hours before that."

"Perhaps Kluge left a representative behind," Smith suggested. There was uncertainty in his voice.

"To rat him out?" Remo said skeptically.

"I will not pretend to understand the thoughts of a madman, Remo," Smith said. "I only know that if there is any truth to the legends surrounding the Nibelungen Hoard, Kluge would have enough raw capital to reestablish Four, as well as to ruin Germany's-and possibly the world's-economy. It is imperative that you stop him. Whatever the cost to your relationship with the Master of Sinanju."

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

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

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

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

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

It was a tricky affair.

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

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

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

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

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

"How fast are we going?" Heine asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You are not German," Heine accused.

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

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

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

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

"You know about them?" Remo asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter 22

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That is correct," Chiun said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kluge did as he was told.

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

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

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

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

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

"The Nibelungen Hoard," Kluge corrected flatly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Here," she said.

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

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

"What do you mean?" Heidi asked blandly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Perhaps-" Heine began meekly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Remo was crouching at the fork.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Naw," Remo said. "We've screwed around enough. I think we're going to have to start picking up the pace."

He headed back to the jeep. Heine followed reluctantly.

Chapter 23

In spite of the cold weather, they found the digging easy. The nearness of the small stream kept the ground where they worked much damper than the rest of the forest floor.

The skinheads were caked with slippery brown mud. They grumbled among themselves with each shovelful of rich, cold earth they overturned.

The pile of displaced slimy sod had grown large over the past two hours. The Master of Sinanju remained at a cautious distance, ever aware of even the slightest dollop of mud that might fly his way. Whenever a skinhead would overshoot the pile and send a speck of dirt near Chiun's brilliant yellow kimono, the Master of Sinanju would let out a horrified shriek.

Once, when a clod of dirt came perilously close to his brocade robe, Chiun had stomped over to the diggers and wrenched the shovel from the perpetrator's hands, clanging the young man over the head with the flat end of the metal spade. After that, both the skinhead and his companions had made an extra effort to keep the mud within the designated area.

Kluge had brought three small folding stools from the rental car, one for each of them. Chiun had refused the seat, preferring instead to stand as close as possible to the deepening hole. Heidi paced back and forth between the line of stools and Chiun. Only Adolf Kluge opted to sit.

Kluge was sitting there now, hands folded patiently across his precisely crossed knees. The only outward hint of any inner agitation the IV leader might have felt was at his mouth. Kluge's tongue darted forward with unswerving regularity, dampening his lower lip. It was a nervous habit he had picked up years before.

"Pah!" Chiun complained, spinning from the massive mound of jiggling mud. "It is too deep."

"That is the correct spot according to the map," Heidi said nodding. Arms crossed, she chewed one thumbnail anxiously as she watched lumps of mud fly up from the hole.

"Fifteen hundred years is a long time," Kluge suggested. He pointed at the marks in the surrounding uneven forest floor. "It appears as though the river ran directly through this area at one time. Surely sediment would have collected, covering it more deeply."

"But if the river was here, how did they build it to begin with?" Heidi asked.

"That which you call engineering was not invented for the convenience of this century," Chiun said impatiently. "Such a feat would not have been impossible. It would also explain the difficulty my ancestor had in finding the Hoard."

"I hope we have better luck than him," Heidi said. She continued to stare into the wide hole at the muddy riverbank.

The men dug for another half hour. Kluge was about to suggest that they should redraw the map, this time with more care, when a sharp clang emanated from the deep hole. It was followed by another.

Kluge got to his feet.

"There is something here!" one of the skinheads called from within the deep pit.

Kluge and Heidi looked at each other, neither of them certain what to do next. Heidi seemed genuinely surprised.

The Master of Sinanju was first to react. He flounced to the edge of the hole, looking in his jaundiced kimono like a huge yellow bird that had just spied a particularly succulent worm. He stopped at the muddy edge of the pit.

Only five skinheads could fit in the hole at one time. The area they had excavated was more than ten feet deep. The men inside were looking up from the bottom, their bodies coated with thick black mud.

"See?" one of the skinheads said.

He handed his shovel to one of the others and got to his soiled knees. With the palms of his filthy hands, he wiped away a pile of thick, gloppy mud, revealing a flat surface underneath. The men were standing atop what appeared to be a buried strip of sidewalk.

Kluge and Heidi came up behind Chiun.

"Clear off the rest!" the Master of Sinanju boomed. His eyes sparkled brightly.

The men did as they were told. More shovelfuls of mud had to be removed to clear the stone to its edges. It was found to be rectangular in shape.

Some of the blond-haired men brought buckets from one of the trucks. As the last of the dirt was hauled out, water was brought from the nearby stream. Lowering the pails into the hole, they washed the surface of the chiseled granite.

"I cannot read it," Kluge said. He strained to look down at the ancient letters. They appeared to be nothing more than a series of indecipherable slashes. He glanced at the Master of Sinanju for help.

Chiun's eyes had narrowed to narrow slits, swallowing up any small spark of hope in his hazel orbs. His mouth was a thin, furious line.

"Accursed fiend," Chiun hissed. There was far more menace in the softness of his tone than in a thousand screaming voices. "He dares mock the House of Sinanju from across the ages." His rage suddenly boiled over. "Villain! Cur! Fraud! Lying Hun thief!"

Like a crazed Olympic diver, Chiun flew down into the hole. A swirling, frenzied yellow tempest, he swatted vicious, angry hands at the skinheads still gathered below. The slime-coated men scurried up the muddy banks in fear.

Mindless of the grime, Chiun dropped to his knees atop the stone. It was as large as a big door. He pried slender fingers around its smooth edge.

"What does it say?" Kluge asked in wonder as he watched the aged Korean tear at the stone.

"I believe those are runic characters," Heidi said. Her eyes narrowed as she attempted to read what was visible around Chiun. They looked like random cat scratches. "I am not entirely unfamiliar with this. Those are bitter runes. They are intended to bring down evils upon enemies."

Kluge glanced from the scampering form of Chiun to Heidi. "This is not the storing place of the Nibelungen Hoard?" he asked. He could not mask his disappointment.

Heidi smiled tightly. "I am afraid not," she said. In the pit, the Master of Sinanju had pried up the massive flat stone, heaving it to one side. There was nothing beneath but a pile of mud-swamped rocks. "Aiieee!" Chiun screamed.

His hand flew toward one of the short sides of the stone. There was a sound like a thunderclap. As Kluge watched, the flat rock split in two long halves. Before the pieces had even fallen to the bottom of the pit, Chiun's pipestem legs shot out in two quick jabs. The halves split in half again, falling into smaller pieces. Chiun fired his tiny fists forward into the quarters, cracking the chunks of stone into ever smaller fragments. All the while, he screamed his anger and frustration at the mud walls of the deep, slick pit.

Kluge backed slowly away from the hole. Witnessing the awesome sight of the wizened Asian shattering a two-ton slab of rock as if it were made of glass, Kluge felt almost a little grateful that he hadn't been able to follow through on his plan to kill the Master of Sinanju. This lasted only as long as it took him to realize that the wealth he so coveted was not there. Without that money, there would be no reestablishing IV. The fifty-year-old ultrasecret Nazi organization was finished.

And along with it, Adolf Kluge.

This realization was only just beginning to sink in when Kluge spied the first figure creeping through the underbrush on the other side of the river.

He stiffened. Made an effort not to stare.

Kluge tried not to let the man know he had spotted him as he casually began to scan the surrounding flora.

There was another. And another.

Creeping forward, they were attempting to stay hidden in the winter woods. The men were all armed.

In the pit behind him, the Master of Sinanju continued to pound away at the diminishing chunks of rock. Dust and pebbles flew up out of the hole as if from some insane sculptor's underground studio. The tiny Korean's screams had grown less fierce with every passing second.

Kluge hardly noticed Chiun's tantrum any longer. Keeping his arms close to his sides and his movements subdued, he walked with forced casualness over to Heidi.

She was in the process of gathering up Kluge's three collapsible stools from where they had been propped on the forest floor. They were draped over her forearm as Kluge stepped up to her.

"We are being watched," he said in a measured tone.

She had been lost in thought, obviously thinking of the amount of gold she had lost.

"What?" she asked, perturbed. She handed the stools off to a waiting skinhead. "What are you talking about?"

Her answer exploded from across the small river. The first gunshot ripped through the torpid silence of the ancient forest.

The bullet caught the skinhead beside them square in the chest. The young man wheeled around, flinging the three stools into the air as he did so. They flew through the air, landing in a tangle of bushes near the heap of displaced mud.

The dead skinhead fell to the forest floor as the next bullet tore from the tangle of low plants across the river.

Kluge threw himself to the ground. His elbow slammed against a flat rock. He ignored the shooting pain in his arm as he half crawled, half pushed himself along the damp forest surface to the protection of a cluster of thick pine trees.

All around him, Kluge's mud-soaked neo-Nazi followers had drawn weapons. Ducking for cover themselves, they had begun to shoot blindly at their concealed attackers.

Gunfire erupted all around.

The men who had ambushed them were in no hurry to advance. They stayed at a distance, firing with care into the cluster of neo-Nazis. From his vantage point behind the trees, Kluge could see that the first man he had noticed wore the uniform of the German Federal Border Police. He skulked on the other side of the small tributary, popping into view every few seconds with a blast of automatic-weapon fire.

A volley of bullets ripped into the soft trunk of the tree above him, sending splinters of pulpy wood down onto Kluge's sandy hair.

Kluge glanced frantically the other way. Through the overgrown forest, he could barely glimpse his parked convoy of trucks. As he watched, the lead car began rolling off down the road. It was joined a moment later by several of the trucks. The Numbers were fleeing.

He was so shocked that he began to climb to his feet. A fresh hail of bullets made him reconsider. Dropping back to his belly, Adolf Kluge began crawling slowly through the tangle of bushes toward the road.

He got only a few feet before his injured elbow fell atop the toe of a boot. Kluge had no weapon. He rolled over onto his back, hands held up in surrender.

A group of men dressed in the drab uniforms of the Federal Border Police fanned around him. They grabbed Adolf Kluge by the arms, pulling him to his feet.

As the firefight continued to rage over near the river, the men spirited Kluge to the waiting line of trucks.

THE DETACHMENT of Federal Border Police had split up at the river, hoping to ensnare the entire band of neo-Nazis within their widely cast net.

Remo was on the other side of the river when he heard the first gunshot. It was followed almost immediately by a sustained firefight. He turned to Colonel Friedrich Heine.

"Who told them to start shooting?" Remo demanded.

"They are not authorized," Colonel Heine said angrily.

Remo didn't wait for more of an explanation. He began running through the woods toward the sound of the guns.

He broke into a small clearing on the side of the river opposite the neo-Nazis. He saw the deep mud hole beside the small man-made hill of displaced earth. Tiny puffs of dust rose from within the pit.

Colonel Heine came running up behind Remo, desperately short of breath. The firefight was blazing, with swarms of angry lead projectiles whizzing around his head as Heine slammed up against the thick trunk of a bullet-riddled tree. He pulled out his side arm.

"You," he demanded, pointing at one of his men crouching in the nearby bushes. "Who gave the order to fire?"

The man shrugged. "It simply happened, sir," he said.

Heine shook his head to Remo, fiercely apologetic. "Not all of these men are pro-Nazi," he explained. "Some are like me. Although I was hoping for a peaceful resolution."

"That's shot to hell right about now," Remo snarled.

The skinheads were entrenched on the other side of the river. The border police had only managed to pick off a few of them early on. The rest were dug in behind trees and boulders, preserving ammunition by firing in short, directed bursts at their attackers.

The border police had lost the element of surprise. They were hunkered down across the river, unable to advance on the skinheads. The other half of Heine's men appeared to have vanished.

It was an equally matched standoff.

Remo didn't seek cover like the others. He stood in the open near the river, dodging the occasional bullet that flew his way. He frowned as he looked across the river. He didn't see the Master of Sinanju anywhere. Nor Kluge or Heidi, for that matter.

"Get down!" Heine insisted. He was amazed that Remo had not yet been shot.

Remo didn't appear to hear the colonel. He sighed even as he sidestepped a violent burst from a skinhead's Uzi. "Leave it to the only American here to have to clean up this mess," he grumbled. Leaving Heine to splutter that he was committing suicide, Remo hopped onto a moss-slick stone that jutted up a foot out from the river's edge.

It wasn't far across. Though the water raced fast, it was more of an overgrown stream than a real river. Hopping from damp stone to damp stone, Remo bounded over to the other side in a few short leaps. He landed in a clump of brown weeds.

Remo hadn't taken more than two steps up the bank before a wild-eyed skinhead came screaming at him from out of a heavy thicket. The man wielded a large hunting knife before him. The scream was apparently meant to distract his victim as he plunged the knife home.

Without even missing a single step, Remo snatched the skinhead by the wrist. With a quick, fluid motion, he redirected the knife back and around. The young man's hand traced an elaborate circle in the air as the blade whirred back toward the attacker. It buried itself up to the hilt in the startled skinhead's unmuscled abdomen.

Striding forward, Remo flung the doubled-over body into his wake. The skinhead toppled into the weeds and then rolled over, splashing into the racing water. He floated only a few feet downstream before his body snagged on a rock. The river splashed over and around his lifeless form.

Remo continued onward, his expression grave. He had yet to see Chiun anywhere.

Judging from the gunfire, there weren't as many men in the woods around him as had left the inn during the wee hours of the morning. Some must have escaped when the shooting began. Realizing he might have been too hasty killing his first attacker, Remo sought out another skinhead.

He found one crouching amid a tangle of bushes. The man was firing shots from his assault rifle in random bursts at the police across the river. The slender barrel of his West German Gewehr jutted out from a tangle of laurel.

Coming up from the man's blind side, Remo wrapped his fingers around the gun barrel and yanked hard. The startled skinhead popped out from the bushes, still hanging on to the other end of his weapon. He seemed shocked to find someone else attached to his gun barrel.

"Okay, pfeffernusse," Remo began, unmindful of the young man's surprised expression. "Do you-?"

A loud series of gunshots sounded across the river. A cluster of crimson stains erupted across the skinhead's chest and stomach. His eyes rolled back in their sockets as his head lolled to one side. The man fell back to the bushes, propped up by the thick branches. He didn't move again.

"Hey, watch it!" Remo shouted to the border police. Their response was even more gunfire. So far, none of it was directed at him.

Dropping the man's weapon angrily, Remo went off in search of another skinhead.

His yelling alerted those close by of his presence. As Remo walked in the direction of the mountain of mud, a pair of skinheads who had been waiting in ambush leaped out of the bushes before and behind him.

This time Remo was unable to get out a single word before the men were mowed down by the police.

"Dammit," Remo snapped as the pair of bodies fell.

This was obviously not going to work the way he planned. Taking a different tack, Remo dived into the bushes where his keen senses told him a cluster of neo-Nazis was hiding.

There were six of them.

Unfortunately they had witnessed the horrible deaths of the other men Remo had so far encountered. Not wanting to end up like their comrades, the men fled into the open as soon as Remo appeared before them. They were instantly fired upon by the border police and were slaughtered to a man. "Dammit, dammit, dammit," Remo griped.

He heard a scuffling somewhere before and above him. A single, rapid heartbeat filtered down through the thick pine branches. Boots scraped along rough bark.

Remo took a few steps forward. He found a lone skinhead hiding in a tree above the spot where the six men had been hunkered down. The man was attempting to hold on to the tree trunk while at the same time angling his rifle down at the top of Remo's head.

Before the man could fire, Remo reached up and grabbed him by his loose shoelace. He pulled.

The skinhead came crashing out of the tree like a clumsy fat bird, collapsing to the forest floor amid a pile of broken branches. Pine needles continued to rain down on him as he shook his head in groggy confusion.

The flurry of activity around the tree started a new wave of gunfire from across the river. Luckily for Remo, they were behind the broad tree trunk, safe from the bullets of the Federal Border Police.

"Speaky the English?" Remo asked the skinhead.

"Yes," the man answered fearfully. He shook some of the needles out of his hair. Though his eyes stayed locked with Remo's, his hand searched for his dropped gun.

"The old Korean who was with Kluge. Where is he?"

"There," the man said, nodding out toward the hole.

Remo looked out at the mound of earth. He raised a skeptical eyebrow.

Even as he did so, the skinhead was grabbing up his gun from the ground. Still seated, he spun around with the weapon, aiming it at Remo's exposed belly.

In a move so swift that it was almost blinding, Remo used one hand to pull the gun away from the man. As he was tossing the weapon away, he used his free hand to pull the skinhead to his feet.

"I'll check, but you better not be lying," he warned. With that, Remo tossed the man out into the clearing. There was the expected burst of gunfire, followed by the sound of the dead skinhead dropping to the ground.

Remo hardly noticed the noise as he strode out into the wide opening. Both sides began to fire wildly-the skinheads at the closeness of the intruder, the border police in anticipation of more assured kills. Remo had to twist and turn spastically to dodge the lead volleys as he made his way across the clearing to the edge of the hole.

At the muddy rim, amid the hail of bullets, he looked down in surprise on a familiar tiny shape standing among the ruins of the unearthed stone marker.

"I gotta hand it to you. Money hasn't changed you one bit," Remo said from the edge of the pit. Bullets zinged like pesky flies around his head.

The Master of Sinanju looked up, his face cross. He stood ankle deep in a pile of chipped stone. "The gold was not here," he snapped.

"I gathered as much."

"The scoundrel Siegfried left a carved note in runic berating thieves who would attempt to locate the Hoard without a proper map."

"I thought you had the whole map," Remo said. Chiun tipped his head. "As did I," he said. He had been so intent on venting his anger and frustration against the stone marker that he had lost all reason. As he stood there now, however-coated with mud in the remnants of his own destructive rage-a thought seemed to pass visibly across his aged features. He looked up at Remo, head tipped in sudden confusion. "Is it possible that my partners have betrayed me?"

"Oh, I don't know," Remo replied sarcastically. "One was a Nazi who broke into your house and tried to have us killed about a zillion times. The other was a woman we knew pretty much nothing about except that she lied to us and tried to break into your house. Sounds like a decent enough bunch to me."

"Descendants of dastards," Chiun hissed.

"Look," Remo called down. He jumped to avoid a fresh batch of autofire, "the thing is, I'm kind of getting shot at up here. So if you're done working this vein, I'd suggest the two of us skedaddle." Chiun nodded. Remo didn't see his legs tense beneath the hem of his mud-splattered kimono, but the Master of Sinanju was suddenly airborne. He appeared to float gracefully up from the bottom of the ten-foot-deep pit-the reverse film of a feather sinking to the ground. He landed on the muddy lip beside Remo. Bullets zipped relentlessly around them from every direction.

The instant he had landed, they were both running. Remo and Chiun took off for the protective cover of the forest.

"What have you started up here?" Chiun demanded as they ran through the driving storm of lead. His nose crinkled unhappily as he eyed the half-hidden skinheads.

"Don't blame me. This was your party, remember?"

"It was peaceful before your arrival," Chiun said. They made it safely to the trees on the side of the clearing opposite the river. Once they were beyond the firing line, Chiun began glancing around the woods.

"Where is the thief and the harlot?" he demanded.

"I haven't seen them." Remo shrugged.

The look of pain that passed over the aged features of the Master of Sinanju was so great it was as if someone had reached into his body and plucked out his very soul.

His eyes held a look of horror Remo had never before seen. When he spoke, his voice was faraway. "My money," Chiun croaked.

Chapter 24

The rented car bounced crazily through the rough terrain beside the mighty Danube River.

The vehicle hadn't been built for this type of driving. Heidi knew this to be true even as she steered down into a broad gully in the middle of the unused road. The rear wheels caught briefly in a pool of muddy water before grabbing on to the sandy clay beneath.

The car lurched suddenly forward, clamoring madly up the far side of the shallow indentation. It bounced wildly as it flew back up onto the road. Heidi had to cling to the steering wheel for dear life.

Her head slammed against the roof of the car even as the vehicle settled back down onto its straining shock absorbers.

The stretch of road ahead of her seemed positively level compared to the area she had just passed through. Used only for access in the warmer months, the road was lucky to see a single government truck every few weeks. She aimed the car down the rugged straightaway, unmindful of the rocks and potholes that littered the path before her.

She had to be sure first. After that, everything would fall into line.

She couldn't believe how easy it had been. Kluge and the Master of Sinanju were so blinded by greed that they didn't notice her deception.

Indeed, how could they? They had taken her word that the quarter of the map she had drawn in the dirt had been real. They had never expected her to lie.

Chiun with his blind avarice. Kluge, just as greedy, yet masking his money lust in a blase veneer.

It had been too easy.

Of course, the piece she and the men from Sinanju had retrieved from her family castle in the Harz Mountains was a forgery. It had been commissioned by one of her ancestors in the century after Siegfried's death. Her family had the bogus segment carved as a decoy for thieves.

She had destroyed the original copy months ago. Heidi had memorized the genuine quarter long before she had gone back to her family castle with the two Masters of Sinanju.

It was all a show. She had to make it look as if she didn't intend to cheat them. It had worked. The speeding car struck a deep rut. The front right wheel grabbed at the road for a moment and the car began to slide to one side.

Heidi cut the wheel into the turn, stomping down harder on the accelerator. The car popped free of the pothole. Skidding in the dirt, she righted the car expertly.

Without a change in speed, she continued racing down the bumpy road.

"THAT IS NOT HIM!" Chiun screamed as the border police brought forward the tenth skinhead body. He swatted at the corpse with his long talons.

The police officer holding the body dragged it away. The others nearby were herding captured neo-Nazis into the backs of awaiting Federal Border Police trucks.

"I'm afraid it looks like he's gone, Little Father," Remo said. "Along with Heidi and a bunch of their men."

"And some of my men, it seems," Colonel Heine admitted.

"Woe is me," Chiun moaned to himself. He was staring over at the empty mud hole.

Remo ignored him. "What happened here?" he asked the colonel. He indicated the carnage around the small clearing with a nod.

"I am afraid my men were divided in their loyalties," Colonel Heine said, shamefaced. "Somehow word of our mission leaked to them before we even left our headquarters. They had been discussing the entire way here how they would proceed once we met up with our intended targets. Some apparently decided to throw in with the neo-Nazis."

"Leaked?" Remo asked. "How?"

"A mysterious letter was sent via electronic mail to our barracks this morning. I was not aware of it until now." Heine glanced at the police who were waiting near the trucks.

A few of the men around him seemed embarrassed. Though they hadn't joined the Nazis, neither had they betrayed their fellow border police-men who had every intention of joining the expedition they had been sent to apprehend.

"What is it with all these E-mails?" Remo asked no one in particular.

"Oh, my precious, precious gold," Chiun moaned pitifully.

Remo was still thinking aloud. "The chancellor gets one, telling him about Four's plan to wreck the economy. The top money guys get them, as well. Now you're telling me your men got them, too. It's like someone wanted to make sure this expedition was followed."

"Why would that be?" Heine asked.

Remo shrugged. "I don't know. But throw out enough bait, and you're bound to catch a fish."

"Is the answer not obvious?" Chiun lamented. "They wished to prevent me from claiming that which is mine."

Remo nodded reluctantly. "I guess it looks that way."

Heine changed the subject. "I have contacted the chancellor. On his order, reconnaissance planes are en route to the area. If they locate the missing trucks, they will inform us."

Remo frowned, pointing down the road. "Where does this lead?" he asked.

"The Danube, eventually," Heine said. "There are other roads that lead off of it along the way. They could have taken any one of them."

"Chiun, didn't you say the treasure was supposed to be buried under the Danube?"

"That was the legend," Chiun admitted. "So why were you digging here?"

"The map indicated that this was the proper location. I assumed the Nibelungenlied's mention of the Danube to be Siegfried's final mendacity. The river is, after all, not far from here." His face was clouded.

Remo crossed his arms. "So this Danube is pretty big, I take it?" he asked unhappily.

Heine nodded. "It is the second longest river in Europe," he said.

Remo sighed. "I suppose I should be happy it's not the longest," he said. He held out a hand to Heine. "Keys."

After a moment's hesitation, the colonel reluctantly pulled the keys to his jeep from his pocket. He had only had them back in his possession for under an hour. Heine dropped them into Remo's outstretched palm.

"Don't wait up," Remo said, trudging over to the jeep.

The Master of Sinanju walked behind him in his mud-splattered kimono. His cheerless expression never wavered.

HEIDI HAD SET UP her surveying equipment in the clearing a few dozen meters away from the raging Danube River.

She had gone through the same procedure only a few short hours before back at the false site. Here, however, she was not merely putting on an act to fool the others.

She was far more careful this time as she peered through the eyepiece of the theodolite. Her fingers delicately adjusted the leveling screws.

Heidi had been genuinely surprised when they had discovered the stone carving at the other site. She expected the excavation to be futile. Actually she had planned it that way. Heidi had assumed that they would dig and dig until they finally gave up.

The more she thought about it, however, the more she realized that it should not have been totally unexpected. Her deviation from the map had been the logical turn it should have taken. It was the guess that someone might have made had they not been in possession of the entire map.

That had been the devious charm of the quartered block carving. Without even one piece, it would be impossible to extrapolate the rest of the map.

The runic writing on the other stone was Siegfried's final joke from beyond the grave. There were probably many other mocking stone carvings buried all around the area.

But not here.

Heidi wasn't having an easy time surveying. The reference points that would have been used originally were long gone. Even the geography of the region had changed over the past fifteen hundred years.

It was painstaking work.

In the end, Heidi was forced to use a mishmash of mathematics and geography to determine where the excavation should be. Even with the passage of fifteen centuries, there were enough clues for her to make a reasonably educated guess.

The spot was a minor declivity in a field a stone's throw away from the cold, churning water of the river.

Leaving her equipment and notebook behind, Heidi stepped gingerly across the small windswept meadow. She felt as if she was disturbing an old grave.

Using four broken twigs, she staked out a square around the spot. It was the best she could do for now without any help. All she could do in the meantime was wait.

Heidi looked down at the area she had marked off. It was approximately six feet by eight feet. Mottled frozen grass lay damply away from the rivera weed army toppled by the relentless wind.

That it could be here! Just below her boots!

As she looked down on the spot, Heidi suddenly noticed something in the tall, knotted grass. It had escaped her detection during the hour she had been surveying. There appeared to be a single solid line almost completely buried beneath the clumpy soil.

She dropped to her knees in the grass, feeling along the edge of the long section of stone.

Her heart tingled excitedly as she realized it was not naturally occurring. It was man-made.

She used her fingers to rip up divots of grass, flinging them away. Clawing along the rough edge of the buried chiseled rock, she uncovered a fourinch-wide strip. Her hands were shaking as she tore away the years of earthen buildup atop the stone boundary.

It stopped at a right angle. Heidi followed this shorter section of stone to another angle.

She worked furiously. Her hands were caked with black grime by the time she completed the square. When she was finished, the outline of an ancient stone boundary was clearly visible.

Heidi knelt-filthy and panting-in the grass before the sealed opening beyond which lay the fabled Nibelungen Hoard. Unmindful of the ferocious wind that whistled down the neck of her heavy woolen coat, she stared in awe, sweating from both exertion and excitement.

Her feeling of exhilaration was short-lived. There was a sound behind her. A dull clap-clap-clap.

Unenthusiastic applause.

"Bravo," a voice shouted over the wind.

She recognized it instantly. She hadn't heard his approach over the fierce gusts of frigid air.

Heidi's shoulders sank in defeat. As she climbed to her feet, she began turning around, snaking a hand inside the unzipped front of her jacket.

"Uh-uh. Slowly," cautioned Adolf Kluge.

Heidi pulled her hand from her coat. Woodenly she did as she was told.

Kluge was there with a few of his skinhead henchmen. He had also brought with him a number of Federal Border Police. Out of respect for the service they had abandoned, the ex-police had taken the liberty of removing their official insignia. However, their guns were still plainly evident, and were aimed at Heidi.

One of the former police trotted over to her. He reached inside her coat, removing her handgun from her shoulder holster. He stuffed it into his belt.

"Did you intend to keep the treasure all to yourself?" Kluge asked with an evil smile.

"Didn't you?" she countered.

Kluge shrugged. "Of course," he said. "But at least I had sense enough to bring along a little help. I suppose you intended to dig it out all by yourself and then carry it away in your pockets?"

Heidi didn't respond.

Kluge appraised her for a long moment. Finally he pulled a shovel from the hands of one of his skinhead thugs. He threw it over to where Heidi stood. It fell near her feet, clanging on the stone lip that she had exposed.

"You have a few more hours to live," Kluge said magnanimously. "They may as well be productive. Dig."

Heidi considered refusing. However, that would surely encourage Adolf Kluge to shoot her that much sooner. She decided that if she stalled for time, she might yet be able to get out of this alive.

She picked up the shovel at her feet.

As a few skinheads came over to join her in the excavation, Heidi jammed the tip of the spade into the cold ground. She forced it in deep with the sole of her boot.

With no fanfare save the howling Danube wind, Heidi Stolpe turned over the first spadeful of earth that had entombed for centuries the fabled Nibelungen Hoard.

THE TALL PINES of the Black Forest roared past at breakneck speed. Though they were driving like a bat out of hell, Chiun recognized the blurry clutch of conifers that flew past the jeep for the third time.

They squealed around a corner on two wheels. Long black skid marks from their previous two journeys around the same corner marred the roadway.

"You are driving aimlessly," Chiun challenged Remo.

Remo was hunched behind the steering wheel. His hands gripped the pebbled surface of the wheel tightly.

"I can't pick up their damned trail. They could have gone anywhere," Remo said testily.

"They have not gone anywhere," Chiun snipped. "They have gone to steal my gold."

"I liked you a lot better when all you cared about was building statues of comedians."

"I am through with that," Chiun announced huffily. "Jesters come and go. Only gold lasts forever." The jeep radio suddenly squawked to life. The anxious, accented voice of Colonel Heine came on. He spoke in English.

"This is Colonel Heine of the German Federal Border Police to the driver of my jeep. Come in, please." He had never bothered to learn Remo's name. His voice was anxious.

"Answer it," Chiun demanded, pointing to the radio.

"Um..." Remo said.

"You do not know how," Chiun said accusingly.

"Do, too," Remo replied.

"Prove it."

Remo answered the radio. For some reason he couldn't fathom, the windshield wipers came on. "I told you," Chiun said.

"It is urgent," said Heine's voice. "Please respond."

"You do it." Remo aimed his chin defiantly at the radio.

"It is beneath me." Chiun crossed his arms.

"You don't know how, either," Remo challenged.

"Please respond," begged Heine.

"I'll admit I don't know how if you admit you don't know how," Remo offered cagily.

Chiun appraised the radio. "It is a model with which I am not entirely familiar," he admitted.

"Fine," said Remo. "Let's answer it together."

THEY DIDN'T HAVE to dig as long here.

The rim of stone Heidi had uncovered by hand turned out to be the topmost portion of four buried walls. The excavation went down only about six feet in this narrow enclosure before the first shovel clanked on solid rock.

As before, they used their hands to clear off a flat stone. It rested level in the buried square of rock. A horizontal door.

The edges of the stone were cleared away, revealing a stone casing. Again icy water was brought from the nearby river to wash off the ancient accumulation of dirt.

When they were finished, a narrow gap was visible between the large stone and the strips of interlocking rock that bordered it.

"We need to pry this up," Heidi called up to Kluge. She was squatting in the hole atop the stone. With her hand, she felt around the edge of the ancient slab of settled rock.

There were two skinheads still inside the pit. They were on their knees assisting Heidi.

"Get the crowbars," Kluge told a few of the border police who were standing with him at the edge of the hole. The men ran obediently off.

Inside the shallow pit, Heidi was trying desperately to contain her excitement. She had to keep reminding herself that under the circumstances it did not matter if this was the right spot. The discovery would do her no good if she was dead. Somehow she had to get out of this alive. And she could. If only the others showed up in time...

"It is a pity you didn't see me following you," Kluge called in mock sympathy from the edge of the pit. "From your perspective, of course," he quickly added. "After you turned onto the access road, it became a simple enough matter. There are no paths leading off it. Those twisted genetic bastards had the right idea for once, it seems. They had sense enough to steal my trucks and make a run for it. Not you. You led me directly here."

As Kluge thought of the missing blond-haired Numbers from the IV village, his face suddenly clouded over. He peered more closely at Heidi Stolpe. All at once, his eyes opened in delighted surprise. It was a spark of joyous realization.

"You are one of them, aren't you?" he asked happily. He beamed as the truth of his words sank in. "I knew you looked familiar when I first laid eyes on you. But I never knew our friend Dr. von Breslau created a female lab rat. Perhaps you were an accident? An improvement on the men, I must admit. You at least can talk. That is, until now." He smiled a wet, superior smile.

In the pit, covered with dirt, Heidi tried to hold his condescending gaze. She nearly succeeded. But as she stared into the fiery blue-gray eyes of Adolf Kluge, a sinking feeling of inferiority seemed to settle like a fog over her slender frame. Her shoulders sank. She averted her eyes, ashamed.

Kluge knew in that instant that he had guessed correctly. Somehow Heidi Stolpe was the freakish sister to the hundreds of Aryan males mass-produced by IV more than thirty years before.

He would have been fascinated to learn more about her life. About how she alone of all the embryos concocted in that Nazi lab in South America had been born female. About how she had come to be where she was today. About her apparent knowledge of IV. But it turned out that Heidi was not the only one surprised at that moment.

Kluge felt a rough shove between his shoulder blades. The air was knocked from his lungs from the severity of the blow. He toppled forward into the open hole.

Kluge thudded hollowly atop the huge stone slab beside Heidi, banging his knees painfully against the rock.

He rolled over onto his back on the cold chunk of stone. Kluge was shocked to see, framed in the square of light above him, a familiar mud-splattered yellow kimono. Above it was an enraged parchment face.

"Claim jumpers!" the Master of Sinanju announced.

The two skinheads who remained in the hole with Heidi helped Kluge to his feet.

The IV leader had to think quickly.

"Ah, you made it," Kluge called up to Chiun. "Excellent." He smiled weakly.

Remo Williams slipped into view beside the old Korean.

"Don't bullshit a bullshitter," he advised Kluge.

"No, really," Kluge insisted. "It was bedlam back there. I am genuinely pleased that all of the interested parties have found their way here."

"It wasn't luck," Remo said. "The German air force spotted your stupid convoy headed this way. They radioed your position to the border police, who put us on your tail."

"It is fortunate that I knew how to operate the radio device," Chiun announced. "Or we might still be driving aimlessly through this bleak forest."

"Hey, I thought we were going to share the credit for the radio," Remo complained.

"Oh, please, Remo," Chiun remarked testily. "While you occasionally display signs of almost being a good son, I live in constant fear that you will someday die in a bathroom after misremembering the operation of the doorknob."

"Man, you're nasty when you're greedy," Remo said. He left the edge of the hole to go off and sulk near the river.

Chiun was too busy to be concerned with Remo's fragile state of mind.

From beyond Kluge's and Heidi's limited field of vision, the Master of Sinanju produced two handfuls of long metal crowbars. Each weighed approximately fifteen pounds. Chiun held them in his hands as if they were plastic drinking straws. He flung the bars to the bottom of the pit where they clanged in an angry pile.

"Remove the stone," he commanded imperiously.

IT TOOK LONGER than either Kluge or Heidi had expected. Perhaps they had imagined it would not be so difficult after seeing Chiun fling the previous stone with such ease.

It would have taken Chiun no time at all to pull the ancient stone from its age-old resting place, but the Master of Sinanju was not about to dirty his hands this time. He let the others strain and tug along with the neo-Nazis and former border police.

It took twenty minutes.

Remo tried to remain aloof for most of the time, but curiosity eventually got the better of even him. He stood above the hole alongside the Master of Sinanju.

Panting from her exertions, Heidi joined them up above, allowing the men to pry and tug at the stubborn edges of the fifteen-hundred-year-old block of buried stone. Her eyes strayed only once to the woods at the edge of the field.

After many long minutes of grunting and straining, the stone finally popped loose. A burst of fetid, swampy air poured up from around the edges of the dislodged slab of ancient rock. The men in the pit struggled to avoid the urge to vomit at the stench.

The worst of the smell passed as they labored to stand the rock door on its side. With difficulty, the men managed to lean the huge piece of stone up against the dirt-smeared rock wall of the shallow pit.

Below the spot where the ancient stone had rested for more than a millennium was an empty blackness. Stone stairs led away into darkness.

The Master of Sinanju couldn't contain his joy. He bounced happily on his sandaled feet.

"Come, Remo," he enthused. "Let us reclaim the treasure of poor maligned Master Bal-Mung." He headed for the edge of the hole.

"What about them?" Remo asked, indicating the skinheads and border police who were still standing in the small field.

Chiun paused, looking at the collection of men. There were only about twenty of them in all. "We will need them to transport my treasure," Chiun said merrily.

He hopped down into the hole.

Remo and Heidi followed, along with the curious group of neo-Nazis and Nazi sympathizers.

The moss-coated stairs led deep underground. As the motley collection of treasure hunters made their way down the long, treacherous flight, more than one skinhead slipped and fell. Once, Remo had to grab Heidi when the heels of her boots slid out from beneath her. Only Remo and Chiun descended the ancient staircase with ease.

The waning late-afternoon sunlight from above grew dim when they were only halfway down the stairs. Their group had only two weak flashlights, which they played along the slime-coated walls and slick staircase. Adolf Kluge held one of the lights as he stepped gingerly down the stairs immediately behind the Master of Sinanju.

The staircase led into a narrow, stone-hewed hallway. There was a shelf set into the wall on which rested dozens of slender rock-carved torches.

Siegfried must have considered the possibility that the treasure might languish down there for many years. While it would have been traditional to fashion a torch from wood, wood rotted. Stone did not.

Chiun took one of the unlit torches down from the wall. As Kluge shone a flashlight on him, the Master of Sinanju made an unhappy face.

The torch had a wide cup that tapered down into a long handle. It was like an oversize golf tee. Chiun dipped his index finger into the hollow at the top of the rock torch. He removed it, pressing the finger to his tongue.

Angry, Chiun spit the drop of oily substance between Adolf Kluge's boots.

"Your ancestor's final theft," he said to Kluge. Chiun continued forward down the corridor, toying with the top of the torch.

As the Master of Sinanju walked away, Remo took down one of the torches. He smelled the end, nodding.

"What is it?" Kluge asked, confused.

"Old family recipe," Remo explained. "Lasts for years."

Far down the corridor, Chiun's torch flared to life. The narrow walls were instantly illuminated in a brilliant flash of white-hot light. The light from the torch then faded to a steady yellow incandescence. Remo instructed the men with them to gather up several of the torches. As he and Heidi walked past Kluge, the IV leader could see Remo rubbing his thumb and index finger rapidly together above the bowl of the torch. Somehow the friction he produced caused his own torch to burst aflame.

Remo used his flame to ignite the other torches. The mass of men moved down the hallway. Adolf Kluge lagged behind.

A feeling of intense claustrophobia had enveloped Kluge. He couldn't allow it to get the better of him. Not if he hoped to succeed in his plan to kill the others. Steeling himself, Kluge trailed the rest down the hallway.

"Why are there skeletons everywhere we go lately?" Remo griped as he picked his way through a litter of bones.

The hallway had ended in a large chamber. Above them could be heard the muted roar of the Danube. The chamber had been constructed in such a way that-even after all these years-the river had not burst through.

The broken bones of murder victims were spread all around this large room. In spite of the dampness, they cracked like scattered potato chips beneath the heels of the intruders.

"Siegfried would not want his secret made known," Chiun explained. "Doubtless these are the bodies of those who constructed this place."

"They are likely the men who moved the gold, as well," Heidi offered from her spot at Remo's elbow.

"What did he do if you didn't help him?" Remo asked.

There was a sconce at the wall just inside the door. Remo put his torch there. It was bright enough to illuminate the entire room, which was roughly the size of a high-school classroom from the time when such rooms held more than five students, one teacher and fifteen teacher's aides.

There were at least two more rooms leading off of the one they were in. Weird shadows danced along the moist, moss-covered walls.

Beyond the skeletal remains on either side of the chamber were two large piles of slime-coated rock. Lichens and moss sprouted from every conceivable crevice in the huge stone piles. A narrow space ran up between the mass of slippery rock into the next chamber.

Beyond the right pile, a relentless drip reminded them of the nearness of the Danube above their heads. An elaborate sluice system constructed at the sides of the slightly slanted floors carried the dripping water away.

"I guess ol' Siegfried did it to you again, Chiun," Remo commented sadly, looking around the fungus and ooze filled room. "I've got to hand it to him, though. I almost believed this one."

The Master of Sinanju wasn't listening. His eyes held an eager glow as he handed his torch back to Remo. Remo took it, confused.

"What's with him?" he asked, turning to Heidi. She wasn't listening, either. Both Heidi and Kluge broke away from the pack, their faces awed. They moved with nervous reverence after the Master of Sinanju.

When they came up behind him, Chiun was already crouched next to the nearest pile of moss-covered stone. Heidi and Kluge didn't look at one another. Didn't blink. Didn't dare take their wide eyes off the hands of the old Korean.

Chiun snaked a bony hand toward the rock pile. Remo had no time to voice his disgust before the Master of Sinanju had clasped firmly on to one of the slippery stones atop the main pile. Spiriting it to his chest, Chiun used his free hand to brush away the years of slimy growth that had built up atop the stone.

Remo had just opened his mouth to complain when he spied an odd glimmer in the bright torchlight within the cavern. It came from Chiun's hand. And its color was gold.

Stunned, Remo took a step forward.

Both Heidi and Kluge watched in wonder as Chiun's long fingernails expertly wiped away years of residue that had built up atop the object that all of them now knew was not merely a piece of rock.

It came clean with surprising ease. When he was finished, Chiun held in his hand a single brick of solid gold. He turned to Remo.

"Behold," Chiun said, with quiet awe. He held a grand arm out toward the mossy piles within the cavern, "the long shame of Master Bal-Mung is lifted. I give to you the Nibelungen Hoard."

Chapter 25

The decision was made by the Master of Sinanju to haul the entire Nibelungen Hoard from its ancient resting place in one massive move.

Every available man, with the exclusion of Chiun himself, formed a line into the farthest rooms within the underground catacombs. Piece by piece, the lumps of gold were passed forward. There were also crates brimming over with fabulous jewels. Although the wooden boxes had originally been preserved in the same manner as the block carving map, given the soggy conditions of the tunnels in which they had been stored, they had not held up as well. However, most were strong enough to survive being passed down the line of waiting men.