Failing Marks td-114

by Warren Murphy

  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 t
heft," 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.

  When the back room was clear, the line leapfrogged out into the next room, passing the gold farther out into the corridor. From the corridor, they moved to the stairs, and from the stairs, outside.

  In this manner, the rear room was cleared out in just under five hours.

  When they were only halfway through the first room and he realized just how monumental an undertaking this was going to be, Remo had Heidi help him to contact Colonel Heine on the radio.

  When Heine had informed him earlier of the location of Kluge's trucks, Remo had warned the colonel to hold his men back while he and Chiun dealt with the neo-Nazi situation. Having seen with his own eyes the way Remo had walked through the heaviest firefight of his career, Heine was loath to upset the American.

  Remo now told the colonel that the situation was under control. Heine spluttered for a moment until Remo reminded him of the pain he caused the colonel's hand. The colonel promptly agreed to abandon the Black Forest.

  They worked for twelve hours straight. Kluge and his Border Police defectors had only three trucks on hand. They weren't enough to put so much as a dent in the huge pile of gold and jewels stacked around the windswept clearing.

  Dawn was breaking on their second day of backbreaking labor. The skinheads still hauled treasure up from below. They were weary from their many hours of ceaseless effort.

  Remo was just coming back from getting a drink at the river. Chiun danced happily up beside him. "It is a magnificent sight, is it not?" the Master of Sinanju proclaimed as he viewed the massive stack of moss-encrusted treasure.

  "Metal and rocks," Remo said with a bland shrug. He wiped at the grime on his forehead.

  Chiun waggled a playfully admonishing finger at him.

  "Do not sulk, Remo. It does not suit you." Chiun flapped over to inspect a crate of flawless diamonds that hadn't seen the warming rays of the morning sun in fifteen centuries.

  "Funny. I think it suits me just fine," Remo grumbled. He trudged back over to the mouth of the cavern.

  AS THE WINTER SUN broke over the damp riverside meadow, Adolf Kluge was as far away from its warming rays as he could have imagined. Filthy and sweating profusely, he was crawling on his belly in a narrow shaft that ran parallel to the long corridor at the bottom of the old stone stairs.

  The dull yellow glow of his flashlight shone brightly off the slippery walls of the man-made tunnel. The air was thick with the smell of overgrown moss. For Kluge, it was like crawling through a massive, fungus-filled laboratory petri dish. The years of mossy growth felt like one giant sponge. As he squished ahead on all fours, his pants and jacket grew sopped at the front.

  The feeling of claustrophobia Kluge had experienced in the corridor outside was magnified a hundredfold in this cramped interior.

  As he made his way along the cave, h
e pulled in deep, measured breaths. He had heard that this was supposed to have a calming effect. Kluge found that it did not.

  It should only be a few feet up ahead. Everything else had been the way the map had described. There was no reason to think that it wouldn't be here, as well.

  It was the Siegfried map that held the key. The Nibelungen king might have planned for the Hoard to be uncovered in a far distant future, but the future he had envisioned would have been measured in a few short decades. His fifth-century mind could not have considered that the cave would lie undiscovered until the twentieth century.

  Siegfried had imagined all along that this storehouse of treasure would be divided in his lifetime. But if it happened that the gold was uncovered at a time when he was aged and his mind was failing him, he wanted to be sure that he of all the interested parties would still hold a winning hand. That was why his section of the block carving was the only one to show a detailed route to the ancient booby trap.

  The narrow tunnel opened into a long vertical shaft. Kluge found that he was able to stand upright. He shone his flashlight up the slick walls of the cramped enclosure. The ceiling was invisible behind a gnarled ganglia of dangling roots. To Kluge it was rather like being trapped at the bottom of a capped well.

  Kluge turned the flashlight to his feet. He found what he was looking for immediately. It was a chiseled chunk of stone about three feet long. It appeared to be holding up another much longer support beam.

  This long stone brace rose up to the ceiling, disappearing amid an interlocking series of carved rocks. Siegfried had anticipated that he might be infirm when at last he used this shaft, so it would have been designed to dislodge easily. But that was many years ago. There was no telling whether or not Kluge would be able to budge it.

  The IV leader sat down at the mouth of the tunnel through which he had just crawled. The moisture from the cave seeped in uncomfortably at the seat of his trousers.

  Twisting unhappily, he braced one foot up against the slimy side of the propped stone.

  Kluge reached into the pocket of his filthy jacket, pulling out a walkie-talkie he had packed along with the rest of the provisions and turned it on.