Failing Marks td-114

by Warren Murphy

  "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 c
ontacted 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 li
ked 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.