The Empire Dreams td-113

by Warren Murphy

  Harold Smith glanced once at Remo, his expression cross. Looking back to the fleeing German troops, Smith resumed firing.

  At that moment the Master of Sinanju came racing into sight from the opposite direction. Seeing his pupil, he ran over to join him.

  Chiun nodded. "You have found Emperor Smith."

  "Sort of," Remo answered uncertainly. "Okay, Smitty, let me have it," he said gently.

  Remo tugged the gun from Smith's hands, tossing it to the sidewalk. Smith immediately grabbed for the gun slung over his shoulder. Remo took that one, too.

  "They're getting away!" Smith snapped. He started to give chase to the fleeing troops, but powerful hands restrained him. When he turned, he found the Master of Sinanju holding firmly on to his biceps.

  "You are a valiant warrior, O Emperor. But the pinheads are undone."

  "They're not getting away," Remo promised. "Not dressed like that. It's over."

  Smith glanced from Remo to Chiun. All at once the fight seemed to drain out of him.

  "Yes," he exhaled. "Yes, I suppose you're right."

  Remo looked around the area. The street was a littered mess. Several bodies-both skinhead and civilian-lay about the roadway. Bullet holes riddled the walls. Shattered glass lay everywhere. Nearby, the wreckage of an Me-109E burned freely. Plumes of black smoke rose into the gray sky.

  "Is this what it was like before?" Remo wondered aloud.

  "No." Smith was in the midst of adjusting his tie. "It was far worse," he said tartly, brushing dirt from his sleeve.

  "We've got to get these guys, Smitty," Remo said softly.

  No one seemed to hear him. A thought had suddenly occurred to Smith.

  "Maude! I left her in the Underground." He started across the street.

  "I will accompany you," Chiun announced. He trailed Smith back to the subway entrance.

  Remo stood for a few moments longer, staring at the wreckage around him. Smoke and fire raged, sirens wailed.

  Before leaving home a few short days before, he had been struggling internally with his life as CURE's enforcement arm. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

  Maybe he couldn't stamp out every last bit of evil in the world, but that didn't mean he should stop trying.

  Smith was right. Conrad MacCleary had been right.

  "One man can make a difference," Remo declared firmly. He resolved at that moment, looking at the grisly results of a reviled, decades-old evil, that-in this case-one man would do just that.

  There was no way these people were going to get away with this. No way at all.

  Face resolute, Remo walked back into the street. He headed back up the roadway in the direction of the battle-ravaged Nelson Monument.

  Chapter 20

  While bombs rained down over London and historic buildings erupted in flame and collapsed into rubble, a lone van made its way up the Boulevard Invalides on the famous Left Bank in Paris.

  It moved slowly in the afternoon traffic, traveling north toward the Seine.

  The driver didn't wish to attract undue attention. To anyone who saw it, this should have been merely another government van. One of many.

  It was an excellent cover. For this was Paris, where it seemed everyone had either a government job or was rudely interrupted on the way to real work by government employees whose duty it was to scowl at and deride those on whom they depended most. Namely the French taxpayers, of whom there was a dwindling force.

  The van drove past the Musee Rodin on the right and the Musee de l'Armee on the left. It stopped short of the Quai D' Orsay, which ran parallel for a time with the Seine.

  The driver cut the engine.

  Four men climbed from the van-two from the back, two from the front. The two in the rear carried with them a long, flat dolly, which they set on four well-oiled wheels. A retractable handle was drawn out from beneath the handcart and clicked into place at its side.

  Three of the men went to work hauling heavy boxes out of the rear of the truck.

  The fourth man looked on. Doubtless he was a supervisor of some sort. In a country with a per capita deficit greater than that of the United States, there were many government supervisors.

  At the direction of the older man, the group pulled their handcart of boxes to the nearest Metro entrance. They used the wheelchair-access ramp to roll their supplies down into the Paris subway system.

  A gendarme near the gate spied them immediately. Instead of fleeing like men with something to hide, the group of four crossed directly over to the guard. They brought their cart with them.

  "What is all this?" the policeman asked, indicating the boxes stacked on the wheeled conveyance.

  "Traps. For the rats," said the oldest of the four men, in perfect French. Eyes at half-mast, he spoke as if it was an effort to talk. An unlit cigarette was pasted to his lower lip.

  The officer sighed. "Finally. One ran across my shoe the other day," he said. He waved at the pointed tip of one polished black dress shoe. "Across the toe. When are they going to find a way to rid us of them?"

  The man shrugged. "These are new. The company has guaranteed them to work."

  "Humph," the police officer scoffed. "Give me the order," he said. He held out his hand for the paperwork.

  The man reached into the pocket of his white coveralls and produced a few yellow and pink carbon copies. He handed them to the gendarme.

  "Are you not past retirement?" asked the policeman as he peered at the papers.

  The old man coughed up a ball of thick phlegm, which he swallowed with an audible gulp. "What am I going to do?" he said with an indifferent shrug. "Sit at home until I die?" He waved a lazy hand. "Eh, when they put me in a box, my son will get whatever there is left."

  The gendarme was taking a little too long scanning the work forms. The old man had been assured by Nils Schatz's personal assistant that there would be no difficulties.

  Schatz had procured the services of the finest forgers in all of France. The paperwork should have been impeccably crafted.

  The gendarme finished up at the bottom of the third sheet of paper. He flipped them back together. According to the work invoices, these men were indeed subway custodians.

  "Good luck," the gendarme said, handing the orders back. "I have heard stories of some that are more than a meter long." Like a fisherman telling about the "one that got away," he held his hands about three feet apart to indicate the size of the rats in the Paris subways.

  The old man again shrugged apathetically as he replaced the paperwork in his pocket. Without another word he waved his men past the officer and toward the cavernous black tunnel at the far end of the raised platform.

  Just before they disappeared on the chipped concrete catwalk above the dirty train tracks, the gendarme shouted at the backs of the men.

  "Be certain you set the traps correctly!"

  "I get paid whether they work or not," said the old man who, fifty-five years before, had personally put to death seven French Resistance fighters and had ordered the deaths of many others. With his handcart laden with explosives, he and his trio of skinhead assistants vanished in the shadows of the long tunnel.

  OVER THE COURSE of several days, while the eyes of the world were on England, the same drama played out in hundreds of locales around Paris.

  At the Bibliotheque Nationale three deliverymen brought sealed crates of what were supposed to be books into a basement storage area. Instead of leaving them where they were instructed, they brought them to a dusty room where they wouldn't be discovered for days. By that time it would be too late.

  Unexpected shipments of historical artifacts and artwork showed up at several museums around the city. The Musee des Arts Decoratifs, the Musee National d'Art Moderne and the Musee de l'Histoire de France all received truckloads of crates. The Palais du Louvre received the most. Invoices accompanying the shipments stressed that the artifacts had to be opened under precise conditions, but didn't specify what those conditions were. Fearful of damaging the
precious contents, the staff left the boxes untouched.

  Invoices stolen from various museums gained the skinheads access to government buildings. Shipments of "art" were delivered with the same precautions given at the museums. Bureaucrats and government workers at the Palais de l'Elysee and other such buildings were even less likely to toy with the crates than the museum curators. The boxes were stored quietly away.

  The Aeroport Charles de Gaulle and the Forum des Halles were easier by far to deal with than anywhere else. At the bustling airport and the large underground shopping center, vans were strategically parked and then abandoned.

  By the beginning of the third day, all of the careful planning had finally paid off. Everything was in place.

  In the little living room of his dingy, out-of-the-way apartment building, Nils Schatz accepted the news of the deliveries with growing excitement.

  A detailed map of Paris was spread out on the scratched coffee table before him. Each time a call came in to inform them of a successfully completed mission, a small red mark was made in ink at the spot where the bombs had been placed.

  The map was covered with such marks.

  Fritz was on the phone, receiving another update. "The Malesherbes bundle is in position," he said to Nils Schatz. Nodding, Schatz used his special red pen to make a mark on the map. "What about Avenue de Villiers?" Fritz said into the phone. As the party on the other end spoke, he glanced at a sheet of paper in his hand. "Oh, yes. Yes, I have it. Excellent, Klaus. Assemble your men. Call back when you are ready."

  He hung up the phone, making a mark through "Avenue de Villiers" on the paper. He had missed it the first time, underlining the words instead of crossing them out.

  "The last of the Metro packages are in place," Fritz announced, sitting down across from Schatz. He sighed heavily, as if he had personally hauled the hundreds of crates around Paris.

  "I know," Schatz said. He didn't raise his eyes. He stared at the map reverently, like a nun entranced with the cross dangling from a set of rosary beads. "Have there been any reports of the Master of Sinanju?"

  "None in France," Fritz hedged.

  Schatz looked up. "Where?"

  "London. As instructed, some of our ground troops stayed above the fray. They telephoned in as soon as the London phone system became operational. He and his protege were on the scene during the blitz."

  "Why was I not informed?"

  "I did not wish to upset you, Herr Schatz."

  Schatz looked back down at the map, jaw clenched. "In future, Fritz, do not concern yourself with my state of mind," he said icily.

  "Yes, Herr Schatz."

  "Our men in Paris," Schatz continued. "Do they understand what they are to do next?"

  Fritz nodded. "Klaus will lead them."

  "Klaus is a good soldier." He looked up at Fritz. "There are few of us left." His upper lip drew tightly across his yellowed teeth. The unaccustomed smile dropped so quickly, Fritz was surprised there wasn't a thud.

  It was a rare display of goodwill. Fritz decided not to squander it.

  "I am concerned about Herr Kluge," Fritz ventured.

  "Pah," Schatz spit, waving his hand. He was still staring at the map of Paris. His Paris.

  "I share your disapproval of his leadership, Nils. But Kluge is strong. My contacts at the village tell me that he is livid at our offensive against the English."

  Schatz looked up. His bleary old eyes gleamed with a distant brightness. They were embers stoked from the very heart of Hell.

  His voice was disarmingly soft, frighteningly cheerful. "If that is the case, tonight he will be very, very upset."

  His evil face serene, the old Nazi turned his attention back to the Paris map.

  Chapter 21

  In order to keep the enemy guessing, the secret headquarters of the British counterintelligence agency known as Source had been moved several times throughout its history. Somehow the enemy-for most of its history, the Soviet Union-had managed to find the new location every time. And each time that happened, Source moved.

  With the dissolution of the Soviet empire and the takeover at Number 10 Downing Street by the antiintelligence Labour Party, Source was sent back to its roots. It now occupied the same modest digs it had at its inception. A few simple floors in a building above Trafalgar Square. An apothecary shop that faced out on the wrecked street marked the secret entrance to the spy organization.

  For privacy, Remo Williams had come downstairs from the Source offices. He had left the false wall panel with its hidden staircase open wide behind him. At the moment he was talking to Smith on the phone in the back office of the dummy store.

  "I was forced to cast out a rather wide web," Smith was saying. "But I think I may have a lead on IV. There is a man in Germany named Gus Holloway."

  "That doesn't sound German," Remo commented.

  "It is not. Holloway is American. The man is a neo-Nazi who has spoken a few times about a coming Fourth Reich."

  "Him and about a billion other fascist wannabes," Remo said bitterly. As he talked, he waved his burned arm before his face. The reddish coloring the mustard gas had given it had faded to a light pink.

  "Precisely why we need more information. Remember, Remo, with nothing more concrete to go on, this is all speculation at this time. I will continue to look into Holloway, as well as other potential sources of information."

  "Speaking of Source," Remo said, "these guys haven't been much help. They got hold of some of the troops that were captured after yesterday's raid and came up dry."

  "Perhaps you could persuade them," Smith suggested.

  "No good," Remo said, shaking his head. "Chiun and I worked some of them over. They were just a bunch of stupid Nazi skinheads doing what they were told. No one who survived knows who's behind this. Somebody just aimed them at London and pushed them out of the nest."

  "I am still puzzled as to how they were able to penetrate the air defenses around Great Britain," Smith said.

  "You didn't hear?" Remo asked, surprised. "They didn't come from outside England. The planes were here the whole time."

  "How is that possible?" Smith asked. "You were at the air base on Guernsey."

  "I was at an air base on Guernsey. The last attack came from a hidden airfield on a sheep farm in Shropshire. They took off from the middle of merry old England. I guess it never occurred to these royal doofuses to look inside the yard once they built their fence."

  "Hmm," Smith said thoughtfully.

  "I need something a little more concrete than that to go on, Smitry," Remo countered dryly.

  "I am afraid I have nothing to offer at present," Smith admitted.

  "Whoever these people are, they're well financed," Remo suggested. "Maybe you can get to them that way."

  "How?" Smith asked.

  "I don't know," Remo said, exasperated. "You're the one who's supposed to be the brains of this outfit. See if anyone's been out there buying up a lot of antique planes lately. Maybe you can use their creditcard records or something to trace them." Remo snapped his fingers. "Hey, that's not a bad idea."

  "Remo, it seems unlikely that a neo-Nazi group that has been careful enough to cover its tracks so effectively would purchase their air force with a credit card."

  Remo had been very proud of his sudden burst of inspiration. His shoulders sunk visibly as the truth of Smith's words sunk in.

  "I guess you're right," he grumbled. "Nonetheless, there might be other ways to track them using the planes. I have already initiated a computer search to that end. I must inform you, from what I have seen thus far, it is not encouraging." "Nothing has been lately," Remo groused. There was a brief pause over the line, as if Smith found his next words difficult to say.

  "How are you feeling, Remo?" he asked.

  "Since when are you concerned?" Remo asked.

  "I am concerned with everything that might affect the efficiency of the organization."

  "You're a real sweetheart, you know that, Smitty? I'm not
quitting, if that's what you mean. Not until we get rid of these scumbags, anyway."

  Smith seemed bolstered by this news. "I am glad to hear that," he said. "I might not have even sent you over here if you were not despondent at home. At least one small part of these events has been fortuitous."

  "Yeah, good fortune smiles on us all," Remo said lightly. "And don't talk to me about being despondent. You're the one who should be getting counseling. What was that Rambo act you pulled yesterday afternoon?"

  "Er, yes," Smith said uncomfortably. "There were no police present when the troops attacked. I merely saw an opening to assist. It was the proper thing to do, given the circumstances."

  "Bullshit," Remo said. "I saw the look on your face. You were reliving your glory days. Smith versus the Axis powers. You could have gotten yourself killed."

  Smith refused to be drawn in.

  "I will be leaving England within the hour. I will try to find some information for you to go on before that, but it seems unlikely that any will be forthcoming. I suggest you stay close to Source headquarters. They will be the first to learn if there are any new attacks against England."

  "I like to act," Remo muttered. "Not react."

  "That is all we can do until we locate the shadow organization behind all this. By the way, is the French agent nearby?"

  "Helene?" Remo asked. "She's upstairs. Why?"

  "I will call you on her phone if I learn anything. If you need to make contact, you may page me." That said, Smith hung up the phone. It was always the same way with the CURE director. The simple courtesy of a goodbye was a waste of valuable time. Remo dropped the old phone in its cradle. Leaving the dusty apothecary shop behind him, he trudged up the stairs to Source headquarters.

  REMO FOUND Helene Marie-Simone seated at a desk, talking in angry French into her cellular phone.

  The Master of Sinanju stood near her. The old Korean had changed into a pale blue kimono. He was staring out one of the large tinted-glass windows that looked out over Trafalgar Square.

  All of the fires had been extinguished. The crashed airplanes had been hauled away. Small remnants of shattered planes, piles of brick and gaping craters signaled some of the worst physical damage.