The Empire Dreams td-113

by Warren Murphy

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

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

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

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

  "What have you got?" Remo asked.

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

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

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

  "But not anymore," Remo pressed.

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

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

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

  "German?" Remo said with a frown.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  He left the scene.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "What is happening?" the old Nazi demanded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "What?" Schatz asked tersely.

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

 
"An old Oriental," Schatz said flatly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Chapter 8

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Smith glanced up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  A tight smile gripped his bloodless lips.

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

  But she wasn't alone today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

  "Give me my phone!"

  "Sorry, kitten. Official State Department business."

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

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

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

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

  "You are a barbarian," she snarled.

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

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

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

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