Failing Marks td-114

by Warren Murphy

  Kluge's tired, roaming eyes ignored these. He had no great desire this day to dwell on the great Teutonic past. That was precisely what had brought them all to this dismal state.

  Instead, his gaze moved to the clear glass at the middle of the nearest window. He stared out the slightly frosted panes at the nearby peaks of the Andes.

  The air was thinner here in the mountains of Argentina, but his body seemed to have gotten used to it over the years.

  It was a shame he had to leave. This had been his home for much of his life. The home of IV, the community of renegade Nazis that Adolf Kluge led.

  An ultrasecret organization founded by the ragged losers of the Second World War, IV was to represent a rebirth of the fascist dream-the Fourth Reich, a Teutonic dynasty spanning generations.

  That had been the ideal at its founding, and in his early, idealistic days as IV's third leader, it had always been the ultimate plan of Adolf Kluge. However, Kluge was nothing if not pragmatic. As he grew older, he realized that it would be impossible in the modern world to achieve the original goal of the secret Nazi organization.

  With the abandonment of his youthful dreams and the approach of middle age, his concerns became more realistic. IV had a great deal of wealth at its disposal, riches looted from some of the finest families in Europe. During his tenure, Kluge began an aggressive covert campaign to involve IV in the financial markets of the world.

  At nearly every turn, he met with rousing success. Kluge, it turned out, was a financial wizard. When it came to investments, he had the Midas touch. In the years of his stewardship, IV's business portfolio burgeoned. The money he made was used to meet the expenses of the village in which the founders of the organization-now retired or deceased-had come to live.

  The building in which Kluge sat was an ancient structure, possibly Aztec, that had been constructed on a mountain peak that neighbored the IV village. A stone bridge connected the office stronghold with the main village. It was in this great old building that Kluge had made the first tentative steps toward the ruination of IV.

  Of course, it had been accidental. When the downward spiral had started several months ago, Adolf Kluge had no idea where it would lead.

  Back then, one of the many corporations in which IV had a financial interest was a technological giant, a German company called Platt-Deutsche. The company's subsidiary in the United States, Platt-Deutsche America, had developed a system that was able to create a link to the human brain with a computer via an electric signal. While refining the system, the company had run across a pair of agents in the employ of the U.S. government. One of these men was the legendary Reigning Master of Sinanju. According to the old men of the village, the Master of Sinanju was truly responsible for the death of Hitler. It was said that when the fuhrer learned that the wily Korean was on his way to Berlin to dispatch him, the German leader had taken his own life. The Master of Sinanju was said to possess remarkable physical powers. Kluge had foolishly approved a plan to use the computer program of Platt-Deutsche to download the abilities of the Master of Sinanju and his protege.

  The scheme had backfired completely. Sinanju had triumphed, and IV's operatives in America had been killed. It was only sheer luck that Kluge had been able to sever all connections with Platt-Deutsche before the neo-Nazi group could be uncovered.

  In the days that followed, Kluge was certain that the men from Sinanju would eventually show up on his doorstep. But as time went on, he realized that he and IV had stumbled into a bit of good luck; either Sinanju wasn't interested in him or didn't realize the extent of the Nazi organization's holdings.

  Whatever the reason, he was left alone. In spite of the loss of a major company, IV had survived. Adolf Kluge had breathed a sigh of relief. But this relief proved to be short-lived.

  All hope of anonymity for IV had been lost three months before. That was when the world as Kluge knew it ended and the entire delicately stacked structure of the decades-old organization had collapsed around his ears like a house of cards in a hurricane. One of the old founders of the village had left Argentina with the impatient hope of creating the vaunted Fourth Reich in his own lifetime. In a campaign that had played out before the entire world, the bitter old Nazi had created a modern reprise of World War II, complete with bombs dropping on London and the surprising takeover of Paris. Nils Schatz had financed all of this with stolen IV funds.

  The Master of Sinanju had again arrived on the scene, and again he and his heir vanquished IV. This time, however, they knew. In the months following the events in London and Paris, a definite pattern of violence had begun erupting in neo-Nazi groups throughout Germany. Always the description of the attackers was the same-an old Asian and a slender white man with thick wrists.

  The Master of Sinanju and his protege. Lately, in the reports he was getting, the old Korean was seen less and less. Adolf Kluge was not certain why this was. It could be that the Reigning Master-who looked quite old and frail-had finally succumbed to age.

  He could be sick. He could even be dead.

  What really mattered to Adolf Kluge was that the young Master of Sinanju was still alive. And he was coming for Kluge.

  Kluge glanced away from the distant mountain peaks, drawing his gaze across the sparkling crystalline pattern of ice on the transparent window panes.

  As he continued to reflect on his dire future, he found that his eyes had refocused on one of the stained-glass panes in the surrounding edge of the window.

  He recognized the image out of Germanic legend. Ironically, like the pictures of the murder victims on the table before him, a body lay sprawled on the ground. Bits of red, blue, yellow and green glass-polished to a great luster-depicted an outdoor scene.

  There was a river running near the body. The brilliant sunlight that eased across the Andes illuminated the strip of painted water, causing it to sparkle hypnotically. The effect as one stared at it was almost that of real running water. A vibrant testament to an artistic genius.

  There was a small streak of red running down the stream.

  Funny. Kluge had never noticed that before.

  He saw now the slit of a knife wound in the back of the body. A smile of blood. According to myth, Siegfried, the great Nibelungen king, had been stabbed from behind by the mercenary Hagan.

  More legends.

  It was the legend of Sinanju that had brought Kluge to this sorry state. Would that that legend had not been true.

  Kluge slapped his hands atop the table in impotent rage. He got to his feet, shoving the paperwork roughly to the floor.

  He marched over to examine the stained-glass rendering more carefully.

  It was foolish, really. Staring at a window that had been imported from a centuries-old European castle. But Adolf Kluge had little else to do while he awaited death.

  The stained-glass Siegfried had been designed by the artist to be a big, burly man. The creator of the scene had been able to capture a sense of strength in the ancient hero even in death.

  How old was the window? Kluge wondered. Several hundred years at least.

  The detail was exquisite. He had never really taken the time to study it in all the years the castle had been his home.

  Something at the hand of the dead king caught his eye.

  Kluge leaned back, surprised. He peered in more closely.

  It was there. Plainly evident beneath the gauntlet. To Kluge, it was rather like noticing for the first time one's own passport photograph in the background of the Mona Lisa.

  He frowned.

  It probably meant nothing. But his experience lately had proved that there was fact in some legends.

  Kluge strolled to the door, deep in thought.

  He paused once, looking back at the ancient death scene. The windows all along the wall shone like a thousand painted diamonds. For some reason, only one caught his attention.

  Since he had been stabbed in the back, Kluge wondered briefly if Siegfried ever knew who his murderer was. Adolf Kluge at le
ast knew who his killer would be. He had met the man who was coming after him.

  He even knew his name.

  Chapter 2

  His name was Remo and the tenement rooftops of former East Berlin stretched out before him like the sun-bleached surface of some giant concrete checkerboard.

  He stood on the flat tar roof of a tall high-rise and surveyed the city with a disapproving eye.

  Remo had been to the eastern bloc countries many times before the fall of the Iron Curtain and had always found them to be dismally depressing. This was his first trip to this part of Germany since the Berlin Wall had toppled, and he was surprised to see that things hadn't changed much.

  There was a little more color here now. On the streets below, as well as in the apartment windows. A few blocks away, Remo saw a billboard featuring the red-and-white logo of a famous American soft drink.

  But the place was still as somber as a funeral parlor. Of course, the Russians were to blame. Decades of Communist oppression had a tendency to take the fun out of anything.

  Remo wasn't certain what building he was looking for. The sameness of the tenements was startling and more than a little disconcerting. To him, it looked as if some Titan with an enormous square bucket and a limitless supply of beach sand had spent a lazy afternoon scooping up and plopping down building after identical building.

  Remo didn't realize how true this analogy was until he leaned against the upper rim of the roof he was standing on. The cheap mortar crumbled to sand beneath his hands.

  Jumping back toward the roof's center, he slapped the dust from his palms and shook his head in disbelief.

  "Good thing this isn't an earthquake zone," he muttered to himself as he surveyed the halfcrumbled wall.

  The structure he was trying to find was somewhere east of Grotewohlstrasse beyond the location of the old Wall.

  Remo's best course of action would have been to stay on the ground and head east until he ran into a helpful pedestrian. But there were two very important reasons why he couldn't ask directions. The first was simple enough: Remo didn't speak German. The second reason was a bit trickier. The number of bodies Remo had been leaving in his wake lately had begun to attract undue attention. He had been given explicit instructions to eliminate only those who were absolutely necessary.

  Of course, all of this would be simpler if Chiun hadn't stopped coming along with him. He understood German. If Remo's teacher had come with Remo rather than sitting like a Korean lump in their Berlin hotel room, the two of them would probably be back home by now.

  Thanks to Chiun, Remo's only hope was to find the place himself. And so here he was, standing alone amid the seemingly limitless sea of cheap, Communist-era buildings.

  With a put-upon sigh, Remo climbed gingerly atop the crumbling four-foot wall that rimmed the roof.

  He was an average-looking man with deep-set eyes and dark hair. He wore a dark green T-shirt and a pair of tan chinos that fluttered in the early-winter breeze. Although the thermometer hovered around the forty-degree mark, Remo seemed unaffected by the cold.

  Just beyond the toes of his loafers was a five-story drop into a filthy alley. Thirty feet across the empty air was an identical roof.

  Remo hopped over to it.

  It was an impossible jump even for an Olympic athlete. Remo made the leap with ease.

  One instant he was standing; the next he was airborne. He landed atop the neighboring roof a second later.

  Even though he had dispersed his weight in flight so that upon landing he would be no heavier than a handful of feathers, the mortar promptly crumbled beneath his weight. He hopped down to the main roof just as the avalanche of bricks and mortar slipped out from underneath him, landing with a terrible crash in the alley far below.

  An angry shout rose up from one of the apartments beneath him. He ignored it.

  Remo continued forward.

  He picked up speed, running to the edge and leaping for the next building. As he ran, he glanced all around, looking for something in particular. Something the last man he had killed told him would be there.

  Building, alley, leap. Run.

  Building, alley, leap.

  He covered blocks in a matter of minutes.

  While he leaped from rooftop to rooftop, Remo found himself thinking of the city's recent history. It was pretty disheartening.

  First the fascists, then the Communists. Which was worse? It was a testament to the utter evil of both philosophies that he had a hard time deciding.

  Remo finally chose the fascists as being the worst of the two. After all, they were a better reflection of the dark souls of the indigenous population. The Communists had ruthlessly seized control after the Second World War. The Nazis had been voted in.

  Remo was above a street parallel to the main concourse of Unter den Linden, leaping to the next building, when something far ahead caught his eye.

  Movement. Briefly, he spied someone with a gun. Remo landed softly and skittered crab-like over to a massive vent cap. Twirling slowly in the soft wind, the cover resembled a tin chef's hat.

  He peered out from behind it.

  Remo didn't know where precisely his leapfrogging had taken him. The man he saw was several buildings away. For all he knew, it could be a guarded government or bank building. It wouldn't help the low profile he was supposed to be keeping for him to assault a few innocent bank guards. Upstairs would blow a gasket.

  Remo waited until he spied what he was after. The man turned slowly away from him, scanning the rooftops to the north.

  There it was. In plain daylight.

  A red armband was wrapped tightly around the armed man's biceps. Within a white circle on the crimson band, the crooked black lines of a swastika were clearly visible.

  No doubt about it. This was the place.

  He came out from behind the vent cover and strolled casually across the roof. At the edge, he hopped over to the next building. He continued his harmless amble toward the distant rooftop.

  Remo didn't want to alarm the sentry. If the man saw him too soon and Remo was running like a maniac in his direction, the neo-Nazi might have time to warn others. This way, as long as Remo wasn't spotted actually jumping from one building to the next, he would look like nothing more than an underdressed apartment dweller who had gone up to fix his antenna.

  As it was, the sentry failed to see Remo until after the final leap from the adjacent roof.

  Remo dropped down directly in front of the startled neo-Nazi. He smiled.

  "Hi. I'm here to kill Gus. Is he in?" Shock.

  The young neo-Nazi immediately swung the barrel of his machine gun in Remo's direction. He tried to pull the trigger but was stunned to discover the gun was no longer in his hands. Looking desperately for the weapon, he found to his astonishment that it had somehow ended up in the hands of the strange intruder.

  "No, no, no," Remo admonished, as if speaking to a toddler who had just scribbled crayon cave paintings all over the living-room walls. "Mustn't make boom noise."

  As the neo-Nazi watched in horror, Remo took the gun barrel in two hands and twisted sharply. There was a quick groan of metal as the barrel bent in half.

  A six-foot-high section of wall nearby was dotted with ancient rusted hooks that had been once used to secure lengths of clothesline. Remo hung the U-shaped gun barrel around one of the hooks. Immediately a large section of the wall collapsed under the relatively light weight of the gun. Some of the debris fell to the alley. Most fell to the roof. When they hit the roof's surface, the slabs of concrete continued downward. They crashed through the rooftop, landing in a heap in the apartment directly below.

  "Well, crap," Remo griped, peering down into the hole.

  There was shouting from the apartment. Through the dancing dust, a wide, pale face peered up through the opening. When he saw Remo, the man grew panicked. The face hastily withdrew.

  Since landing on the roof, Remo had been between the guard and the stairwell door, which was rusti
ng on its hinges in an alcove beyond the toppled wall. With Remo's attention redirected momentarily, the guard made a break for the door.

  Remo grabbed the man by the back of his brown shirt collar before he could take two steps. He held the man several inches off the roof. "Hold up a second, Frankenfurter," Remo said.

  "No, no!" the young man screamed in heavily accented English. "Let me go! Let me go!!"

  "In a minute," Remo promised. "First things first. Where's Gus Holloway?"

  "I do not know a Gus Holloway."

  "That is a lie," Remo said simply. "Every lie gets a whack. In case you were wondering, this is a whack."

  Whirling, Remo slammed the neo-Nazi's forehead into the remains of the half-toppled side wall. A square section of mortar shattered from the force of the blow, toppling to the alley far below.

  When Remo brought the neo-Nazi back from the wall, his frightened face was caked with dust. He coughed, and a puff of concrete powder gusted into the chilly air. A streak of blood trickled down his dirty forehead.

  "My next question is surprisingly similar to my first. Where is Gus Holloway?"

  "I do not know!" the man cried. He blinked blood and dust from his eyes.

  "Wrong answer," Remo said. "Whack time." He slammed the man's head against the wall once again. Again more concrete tumbled away. "I'd feel safer living in a shoe box," Remo frowned, looking down at the rubble in the alley.

  "Please!" the young man begged woozily. "I do not know this Holloway."

  Remo shook his head. "You must," he stated, firmly. "My last lead pointed me here. And your 'Hi, I'm an asshole Aryan' merit badge-" he nodded to the swastika armband "-indicates to me that you're maybe not being entirely forthright. Hey, I know what might jar your memory!" Remo said brightly. "A whack!"

  He slammed the man's head against the wall. This time most of what was left crumbled away, tumbling in long angry sheets to the asphalt five stories below.

  Once it was gone, only one four-foot finger of mortar remained upright.

  "Gus ...Gus," the man wheezed, choking on dust. "Gustav? Do you mean Gustav?" He looked desperately up at Remo, one eye shut painfully. A shard of concrete had gotten stuck beneath the lid during his last whack. By now his forehead was bleeding profusely.